Big-Name Authors, International Settings, and More | Thriller Previews, Mar. 2021, Pt 2 | Prepub Alert

Big-Name Authors

Graham, Heather. Danger in Numbers. Mira: Harlequin. Mar. 2021. 384p. ISBN 9780778331452. $27.99. THRILLER

Patterson, James with David Ellis. The Red Book. Little, Brown. Mar. 2021. 400p. ISBN 9780316499408. lrg. prnt. CD. THRILLER

Rollins, James. Kingdom of Bones: A Thriller. Morrow. Mar. 2021. 448p. ISBN 9780062892980. 28.99. lrg. prnt. CD. THRILLER

Graham’s latest stand-alone, Danger in Numbers, a state police agent links arms with an FBI specialist on cults to solve a ritualistic murder in small-town northern Florida (125,000-copy first printing). In The Red Book, from Patterson and Illinois justice/Edgar Award winner Ellis (Line of Vision), Det. Bill Harney of the Chicago PD’s Special Operations Section is fresh on the job and walking the finest of lines when the turmoil surrounding a drive-by shooting turns political (520,000-copy first printing). In Rollins’s Kingdom of Bones, Sigma Force faces huge swaths of Africa where the populace has turned quiescent even as plants and animals become cunningly fierce; has the biosphere run amok or is fiendish engineering involved (250,000-copy first printing)?

Identity Crisis

Andrews, Alexandra. Who is Maud Dixon? Little, Brown. Mar. 2021. 336p. ISBN 9780316500319. $28. Downloadable. THRILLER

Lovering, Carola. Too Good To Be True. St. Martin’s. Mar. 2021. 352p. ISBN 9781250271372. $27.99. CD. THRILLER

Musso, Guillaume. Central Park. Little, Brown. Mar. 2021. 288p. ISBN 9780316590952. $28; pap. ISBN 9780316590969. $9.99. Downloadable. THRILLER

Oliva, Alexandra. Forget Me Not. Ballantine. Mar. 2021. 352p. ISBN 9781101966846. $28. Downloadable. THRILLER

In debut author Andrews’s Who Is Maud Dixon?, Florence Darrow, assistant to pseudonymous author Maud Dixon (actually Helen Wilcox), awakens in a hospital after a terrible accident with no memory of the event and Helen missing in action—so why not take over her life (75,000-copy first printing)? In the latest from Lovering (Tell Me Lies), things prove to be Too Good To Be True as starry-eyed Skye Starling blissfully accepts a marriage proposal from her sophisticated older boyfriend, actually a devious skunk whose dark secrets the story backtracks 30 years to reveal (150,000-copy first printing). How does upright Parisian cop Alice end up on a park bench in Central Park, New York, chained to a Dublin musician she doesn’t know and in possession of a gun significantly missing a bullet? Read top French author Musso’s Central Park to find out. Following Oliva’s The Last One, Forget Me Not features a lonely women still trying to make sense of her past—she was born to replace a dead sibling, escaped the 20-acre compound in Washington State where she had been pretty much abandoned, and at age 12 suddenly faced an incomprehensible world.

International Setting

Downing, David. Wedding Station. Soho Crime. Mar. 2021. 336p. ISBN 9781641291071. $27.95. THRILLER

Finlay, Alex. Every Last Fear. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. Mar. 2021. 368p. ISBN 9781250268822. $26.99. THRILLER

Kayode, Femi. Lightseekers. Mulholland: Little, Brown. Mar. 2021. 432p. ISBN 9780316536615. $28. Downloadable. THRILLER

Matheson, Nadine. The Jigsaw Man. Hanover Square: Harlequin. Mar. 2021. 352p. ISBN 9781335146564. $27.99. THRILLER

Sten, Camilla. The Lost Village. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. Mar. 2021. 352p. tr. from Swedish by Alexandra Fleming. ISBN 9781250249258. $26.99. THRILLER

Prequel to Downing’s World War II Berlin–set “Station” series, Wedding Station introduces John Russell, an English crime reporter at a Berlin newspaper whose grim tales of everyday mayhem are increasingly swallowed by the darkness descending upon Germany under new chancellor Hitler. In the pseudonymous Finlay’s buzzy Every Last Fear, NYU student Matt Pine learns that his entire family has perished while vacationing in Mexico, and the FBI and State Department are questioning the accidental gas leak story put forth by the local police. In Kayode’s Lightseekers, Nigerian investigative psychologist Philip Taiwo travels to a remote town in his country's south to probe the public torture and murder of three university students in what he comes to realize is a lot more than a moment of crowd madness. In her #ownvoices debut, London-based criminal attorney Matheson, winner of the City University Crime Writing competition, sets DI Anjelica Henley the unenviable task of stopping a criminal imitating The Jigsaw Man before the real hack-up-his-victims killer gets the copycat himself (100,000-copy first printing). Already grabbed by 17 territories worldwide, Stein’s Scandi-set The Lost Village features documentary filmmaker Alice Lindstedt’s efforts to chronicle the mining town whose inhabitants—save for a dead woman and an abandoned newborn—all vanished on a single day in 1959. But bad things keep happening on set (100,000-copy first printing).

Coming of Age

Flynn, Laurie Elizabeth. The Girls Are All So Nice Here. S. & S. Mar. 2021. 320p. ISBN 9781982144623. $27. THRILLER

Ginsburg, Melissa. The House Uptown. Flatiron: Macmillan. Mar. 2021. 256p. ISBN 9781250784186. $26.99. THRILLER

Flynn, who as a YA author writes as L.E. Flynn, goes adult with The Girls Are All So Nice Here, as Ambrosia Wellington recalls the not-so-nice thing she did one night with former best friend Sully and receives ever more threatening missives about an event she thought was history (150,000-copy first printing). In The House Uptown, Ginsburg’s follow-up to Sunset City, 14-year-old Ava winds up in New Orleans after her mother’s death, living with a bohemian artist grandmother who finds Ava’s presence a reminder of dark things past (50,000-copy first printing).