Thomas & Mercer

Excerpt: THE FRIEND OF THE FAMILY by Dean Koontz (Thomas & Mercer)

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Today, we have an excerpt from The Friend of the Family, the latest novel from Dean Koontz. The latest novel from one of the most prolific and popular suspense authors working today, it was recently published by Thomas & Mercer. Here’s the synopsis:

A girl liberated from a carnival sideshow discovers her mysterious purpose…

The human “oddities” in the Museum of the Strange are less wondrous than the gawking rubes had been promised. But Alida is something else. The real thing. Traveling Depression-era America from carnival midways to speakeasies, Alida is resigned to an exploited and lonely life on the road as the museum’s golden ticket. Until she’s rescued by two compassionate strangers.

Franklin and Loretta Fairchild see in Alida a gifted and uncannily well-read girl in need of a loving touch and a family. With the openhearted couple and their three precociously imaginative children, Alida finds it. Yet despite everyone’s overwhelming generosity and acceptance, Alida knows she is still a very different kind of girl. Her dreams bear that out. They’re vivid, unsettling, and threatening. Alida fears that they’re also warnings. And that it’s the Fairchilds who may need rescue from a bad, bad world.

Alida will do anything to help those she now holds nearest and dearest. Empowered with a purpose to vanquish evil, she will not fail her family.

Continue reading →

Excerpt: GOING HOME IN THE DARK by Dean Koontz (Thomas & Mercer)

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Today we have an excerpt from the latest thriller by best-selling author Dean Koontz: Going Home in the Dark. Due to be published in May, the publisher has let CR share the first chapter. First, though, here’s the synopsis:

When hometown horrors come back to haunt, friendship is salvation in a novel about childhood fears and buried secrets…

As kids, outcasts Rebecca, Bobby, Spencer, and Ernie were inseparable friends in the idyllic town of Maple Grove. Three left to pursue lofty dreams―and achieved them. Only Ernie never left. When he falls into a coma, his three amigos feel an urgent need to return home. Don’t they remember people lapsing into comas back then? And those people always awoke… didn’t they?

After two decades, not a lot has changed in Maple Grove, especially Ernie’s obnoxious, scary mother. But Rebecca, Bobby, and Spencer begin to remember a hulking, murderous figure and weirdness piled on mystery that they were made to forget. As Ernie sinks deeper into darkness, something strange awaits any friend who tries to save him.

For Rebecca, Bobby, and Spencer, time is running out to remember the terrors of the past in a perfect town where nothing is what it seems. For Maple Grove, it’s a chance to have the “four amigos,” as they once called themselves, back in its grasp.

Continue reading →

Quick Review: FOG AND FURY by Rachel Howzell Hall (Thomas & Mercer)

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HallRH-H1-FogAndFuryUSHCIntroducing Sonny Rush, former LAPD now small-town P.I.

She’s a new PI in a beautiful seaside town. It’s dirtier than it looks — and more dangerous too — in a twisting novel of suspense…

After ten years on the force, LAPD cop Sonny Rush relocates with her elderly mother to peaceful Haven, California, to join her godfather’s burgeoning PI business. What crimes could possibly happen in a town nicknamed “Mayberry by the Sea”? Sonny’s first case: find Figgy, a missing goldendoodle last seen sporting a Versace collar. At least scouting out a dognapper gives Sonny a chance to get to know her new neighbors.

Forty-eight hours in town and Figgy’s disappearance entangles Sonny in an unwelcome reunion with her ex, one of Haven’s wealthiest citizens. And when the body of a teenage boy is found along a popular hiking trail, Sonny is drawn into a web of strange beyond anything she ever saw in LA.

Then comes a local’s warning: question everything. Haven hides secrets that could destroy its idyllic facade. Or destroy Sonny first.

This is the first novel in a new mystery series from Rachel Howzell Hall, and it’s a great introduction to both the protagonist and the idyllic-on-the-surface town of Haven. As will surprise no one, there’s plenty of ugliness brewing below the surface of this town… This is a solid start to a new series. I enjoyed it. Continue reading →

Quick Review: THE SUMMER GUESTS by Tess Gerritsen (Thomas & Mercer/Penguin)

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GerritsenT-MC2-SummerGuestsUSHCThe excellent second novel in the Martini Club series

When former spy Maggie Bird retired to the seaside hamlet of Purity, Maine, she settled in for a quiet life with breathtaking views. But enemies from her past soon threatened to destroy everything.

Maggie survived, thanks to her wits and the collective intelligence of the Martini Club, the circle of ex-CIA friends in her cocktail-sipping book club. Their handiwork, however, caught the attention of young police chief Jo Thibodeau. Now Jo and her neighborhood ex-spies have an uneasy alliance.

After a teenager vanishes ― and Maggie’s neighbor becomes the prime suspect ― she joins the investigation, determined to prove her friend’s innocence. But the girl’s wealthy family pushes for an arrest. And when authorities discover a long-dead corpse in a nearby pond, the case becomes doubly complicated, with unthinkable ties to long-buried secrets.

As Jo grapples with two unexplained mysteries, the Martini Club races to uncover the truth behind shadowy secrets… before more lives are lost.

The Spy Coast, Gerritsen’s first novel featuring the Martini Club, was the first of the author’s novels that I read and it quickly hooked me, and ever since finishing it I’ve been eagerly anticipating the sequel. While it isn’t published until March 2025, I was lucky to receive a DRC of The Summer Guests, which I started right away, and blitzed through — I’m very happy to report that it’s an excellent continuation of the series! Continue reading →

Quick Review: THE FINAL ACT by Lisa Gray (Thomas & Mercer)

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GrayL-FinalActUSHCA missing actress, the uncaring world of Hollywood, and the peculiarity of fame in America

All she wanted was to see her name in lights. Now, her disappearance has made her front-page news.

It’s been twenty years since Madison James had any kind of success in Hollywood. Now she’s disappeared and a TikTok sleuth has found her purse discarded in a Los Angeles park. The news spreads like wildfire across a nation hungry for celebrity tragedy, and the struggling actress’s mysterious disappearance quickly becomes a national obsession.

Detectives Sarah Delaney and Rob Moreno of the LAPD Missing Persons Unit take the case. But truth is a rare commodity in Tinseltown; some people will stop at nothing to get what they want and Delaney and Moreno soon find themselves mired in Hollywood’s dark underbelly with little in the way of clues.

As revelations from the past emerge, it becomes apparent there is more going on than meets the eye. With an obsessive public watching every step of the investigation, can the police find Madison before she becomes more than just missing?

This is the first of Gray’s novels that I’ve read, and I very much enjoyed it. Long-time readers of CR will know that mysteries/crime novels set in and around Hollywood are like catnip for me, and this one was engaging and quickly paced. Thanks to a bout of insomnia, I ended up reading this in just two sittings. Continue reading →

Upcoming: THE SUMMER GUESTS by Tess Gerritsen (Penguin/Thomas & Mercer)

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GerritsenT-MC2-SummerGuestsUKHCIn March 2025, readers will be able to get their hands on The Summer Guests, the second novel in Tess Gerritsen‘s Martini Club series. The Spy Coast was, somewhat surprisingly, the first of Gerritsen’s novels that I read, and it left me very keen to read more. As I finished it, the sequel had already been announced by Thomas & Mercer (North American publisher), and yesterday I noticed that the cover artwork had been unveiled for both the UK and North American editions. One of my most-anticipated reads of next year, here’s the synopsis:

The chilling follow-up to The Spy Coast, plunging the Martini Club into the search for a missing teen — with a startling connection to their own pasts.

When former spy Maggie Bird retired to the seaside hamlet of Purity, Maine, she settled in for a quiet life with breathtaking views. But enemies from her past soon threatened to destroy everything.

Maggie survived, thanks to her wits and the collective intelligence of the Martini Club, the circle of ex-CIA friends in her cocktail-sipping book club. Their handiwork, however, caught the attention of young police chief Jo Thibodeau. Now Jo and her neighborhood ex-spies have an uneasy alliance.

GerritsenT-MC2-SummerGuestsUSHCAfter a teenager vanishes — and Maggie’s neighbor becomes the prime suspect — she joins the investigation, determined to prove her friend’s innocence. But the girl’s wealthy family pushes for an arrest. And when authorities discover a long-dead corpse in a nearby pond, the case becomes doubly complicated, with unthinkable ties to long-buried secrets.

As Jo grapples with two unexplained mysteries, the Martini Club races to uncover the truth behind shadowy secrets… before more lives are lost.

Tess Gerritsen’s The Summer Guests is due to be published by Bantam Books in the UK (March 27th, 2025) and Thomas & Mercer in North America (March).

Also on CR: Review of The Spy Coast

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Instagram, Twitter

Quick Review: THE SPY COAST by Tess Gerritsen (Thomas & Mercer/Bantam)

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GerritsenT-SpyCoastUSHCIntroducing Maggie Bird and the Martini Club…

A retired CIA operative in small-town Maine tackles the ghosts of her past…

Former spy Maggie Bird came to the seaside village of Purity, Maine, eager to put the past behind her after a mission went tragically wrong. These days, she’s living quietly on her chicken farm, still wary of blowback from the events that forced her early retirement.

But when a body turns up in Maggie’s driveway, she knows it’s a message from former foes who haven’t forgotten her. Maggie turns to her local circle of old friends — all retirees from the CIA — to help uncover the truth about who is trying to kill her, and why. This “Martini Club” of former spies may be retired, but they still have a few useful skills that they’re eager to use again, if only to spice up their rather sedate new lives.

Complicating their efforts is Purity’s acting police chief, Jo Thibodeau. More accustomed to dealing with rowdy tourists than homicide, Jo is puzzled by Maggie’s reluctance to share information — and by her odd circle of friends, who seem to be a step ahead of her at every turn.

As Jo’s investigation collides with the Martini Club’s maneuvers, Maggie’s hunt for answers will force her to revisit a clandestine career that spanned the globe, from Bangkok to Istanbul, from London to Malta. The ghosts of her past have returned, but with the help of her friends — and the reluctant Jo Thibodeau — Maggie might just be able to save the life she’s built.

This is the first novel in Tess Gerritsen’s new series, the Martini Club. It is also, somehow, the first of Gerritsen’s novels that I’ve ever read — not entirely sure how this happened, given that the Rizzoli & Isles series looks like it should definitely appeal. (I also enjoyed the first season of the TV adaptation). Anyway, I digress: The Spy Coast is a really good start to a series, which I really enjoyed, and it will definitely not be my last Gerritsen read. Continue reading →

Upcoming: THESE TOXIC THINGS by Rachel Howzell Hall (Thomas & Mercer)

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HowzellHallR-TheseToxicThingsUSI’m a relative newcomer to Rachel Howzell Hall‘s fiction. She is the author of the Eloise Norton crime series, and the stand-alone novels They All Fall Down and the excellent And Now She’s Gone (hopefully not to be a stand-alone for long). The author’s next novel is These Toxic Things, due to be published by Thomas & Mercer:

Mickie Lambert creates “digital scrapbooks” for clients, ensuring that precious souvenirs aren’t forgotten or lost. When her latest client Nadia Denham, a curio shop owner, dies from an apparent suicide, Mickie honors the old woman’s last wish and begins curating her peculiar objets d’art. A music box, a hair clip, a keychain — twelve mementos in all that must have meant so much to Nadia who collected them on her flea market scavenges across the country.

They mean a lot to someone else, too. Mickie has been getting threatening messages from a long-dormant serial killer to leave Nadia’s past alone.

It’s becoming a mystery Mickie is driven to solve. Who are the women, now dead or disappeared, who once owned these odd treasures? How did Nadia really come to possess them? Who is the killer watching every move Mickie makes? Discovering the truth means navigating the secrets of a sinister past. One, Mickie fears, might be inescapably entwined with her own.

Rachel Howzell Hall’s These Toxic Things is due to be published by Thomas & Mercer in North America and in the UK.

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Twitter

Quick Review: LOST HILLS by Lee Goldberg (Thomas & Mercer)

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GoldbergL-ER1-LostHillsIntroducing Eve Ronin, unwitting celebrity LA Sheriff’s homicide detective…

A video of Deputy Eve Ronin’s off-duty arrest of an abusive movie star goes viral, turning her into a popular hero at a time when the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is plagued by scandal. The sheriff, desperate for more positive press, makes Eve the youngest female homicide detective in the department’s history.

Now Eve, with a lot to learn and resented by her colleagues, has to justify her new badge. Her chance comes when she and her burned-out, soon-to-retire partner are called to the blood-splattered home of a missing single mother and her two kids. The horrific carnage screams multiple murder — but there are no corpses.

Eve has to rely on her instincts and tenacity to find the bodies and capture the vicious killer, all while battling her own insecurities and mounting pressure from the media, her bosses, and the bereaved family. It’s a deadly ordeal that will either prove her skills… or totally destroy her.

The start of a new crime series set in Malibu and Los Angeles, Lost Hills is a quickly-paced crime thriller. It introduces us to Eve Ronin, a newly-minted homicide detective in the Los Angeles County Sherrif’s Department. Early in her tenure, she’s thrown into a grisly murder investigation. This is a good introduction to the character(s), and an enjoyable, fast-paced crime/mystery novel. Continue reading →