Welcome to September, thriller fans!
This month, maybe more so than any other month this year, is packed with numerous must-read books from some of the biggest names in publishing today. As always, we’ve highlighted a few titles that stand a notch above the rest, headlined by the return of Mitch Rapp in Kyle Mills’ Total Power, my highest rated novel of the year.
Browse all the new releases hitting bookstores over the next few weeks below, then leave us a comment and let us know which titles you’re most excited to get your hands on.
Happy reading!
Tuesday, September 1st
One True Patriot by Sean Parnell
Special operative Eric Steele must stop a foreign assassin targeting top-tier U.S. military personnel and derail a strike aimed at the heart of America in this third electrifying military thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of All Out War, perfect for fans of Brad Thor, Vince Flynn, and Tom Clancy
Two months after taking down terrorist Aleksandr Zakayev, Eric Steele is back in action. Though he is completing his Alpha assignments with the same deadly efficiency as always, he has lingering questions about his missing father—and his own future in the Program.
When Steele gets the alert that a fellow Alpha is in serious trouble, he rushes to Paris—only to arrive too late. Jonathan Raines, Stalker Six, is dead, the victim of a brutal attack. While on leave in the City of Light, Raines had met an attractive art historian who lured him into a trap. Before she vanished, the mysterious woman left a warning for anyone from the Alpha program who might follow her.
One of the best and most effective warriors in the top-secret Program, Steele has been trained to take on enemies, and no threat will deter him from avenging a fallen brother. But the killer won’t be easy to find. The search takes Steele around the world, from France, to the Adriatic coast of Italy, to the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria, and to a top-secret prison in Russia— where, unexpectedly, he finds more clues about his father—before finally taking him back to the streets of Washington, D.C.
No one is safe while the killer is on the loose, and the danger is heightened when Steele discovers intel that killing Alphas is just the beginning of a larger, more nefarious plot. The real target is much, much bigger—and it’s up to Steele to prevent catastrophe before he becomes the next elite warrior to fall.
Interference by Brad Parks
From international bestselling author Brad Parks comes an emotional, heart-pounding thriller that explores the scientific unknown—and one woman’s efforts to save her husband from its consequences.
Quantum physicist Matt Bronik is suffering from strange, violent seizures that medical science seems powerless to explain—much to the consternation of his wife, Brigid.
Matt doesn’t think these fits could be related to his research, which he has always described as benign and esoteric. That, it turns out, is not quite true: Matt has been prodding the mysteries of the quantum universe, with terrible repercussions for his health. And perhaps even for humanity as a whole.
Then, in the midst of another seizure, Matt disappears. When foul play is feared, there is no shortage of suspects. Matt’s research had gained the attention of Chinese competitors, an unscrupulous billionaire, and the Department of Defense, among others.
With Matt’s life in clear danger, Brigid sets out to find him. Will Matt be killed before she reaches him, or could the physics that endangered him actually be used to save his life?
Chaos by Iris Johanson
All The Devils by Louise Penny
The 16th novel by #1 bestselling author Louise Penny finds Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Quebec investigating a sinister plot in the City of Light
On their first night in Paris, the Gamaches gather as a family for a bistro dinner with Armand’s godfather, the billionaire Stephen Horowitz. Walking home together after the meal, they watch in horror as Stephen is knocked down and critically injured in what Gamache knows is no accident, but a deliberate attempt on the elderly man’s life.
When a strange key is found in Stephen’s possession it sends Armand, his wife Reine-Marie, and his former second-in-command at the Sûreté, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, from the top of the Tour d’Eiffel, to the bowels of the Paris Archives, from luxury hotels to odd, coded, works of art.
It sends them deep into the secrets Armand’s godfather has kept for decades.
A gruesome discovery in Stephen’s Paris apartment makes it clear the secrets are more rancid, the danger far greater and more imminent, than they realized.
Soon the whole family is caught up in a web of lies and deceit. In order to find the truth, Gamache will have to decide whether he can trust his friends, his colleagues, his instincts, his own past. His own family.
For even the City of Light casts long shadows. And in that darkness devils hide.
Tuesday, September 8th
Robert B. Parker’s Fool’s Paradise by Mike Lupica (Featured Selection)
When an unknown man is found murdered in Paradise, Jesse Stone will have his hands full finding out who he was–and what he was seeking.
When a body is discovered at the lake in Paradise, Police Chief Jesse Stone is surprised to find he recognizes the murder victim–the man had been at the same AA meeting as Jesse the evening before. But otherwise, Jesse has no clue as to the man’s identity. He isn’t a local, nor does he have ID on him, nor does any neighboring state have a reported missing person matching the man’s description. Their single lead is from a taxi company that recalls dropping off the mysterious stranger outside the gate at the mansion of one of the wealthiest families in town…
Meanwhile, after Jesse survives a hail of gunfire on his home, he wonders if it could be related to the mysterious murder. When both Molly Crane and Suitcase Simpson also become targets, it’s clear someone has an ax to grind against the entire Paradise Police Department.
One by One by Ruth Ware
“The Agatha Christie of our generation.” —David Baldacci, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“Diabolically clever.” —Riley Sager, author of Final Girls
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Turn of the Key and In a Dark Dark Wood returns with another suspenseful thriller set on a snow-covered mountain.
Getting snowed in at a luxurious, rustic ski chalet high in the French Alps doesn’t sound like the worst problem in the world. Especially when there’s a breathtaking vista, a full-service chef and housekeeper, a cozy fire to keep you warm, and others to keep you company. Unless that company happens to be eight coworkers…each with something to gain, something to lose, and something to hide.
When the co-founder of Snoop, a trendy London-based tech startup, organizes a weeklong trip for the team in the French Alps, it starts out as a corporate retreat like any other: PowerPoint presentations and strategy sessions broken up by mandatory bonding on the slopes. But as soon as one shareholder upends the agenda by pushing a lucrative but contentious buyout offer, tensions simmer and loyalties are tested. The storm brewing inside the chalet is no match for the one outside, however, and a devastating avalanche leaves the group cut off from all access to the outside world. Even worse, one Snooper hadn’t made it back from the slopes when the avalanche hit.
As each hour passes without any sign of rescue, panic mounts, the chalet grows colder, and the group dwindles further…one by one.
Shadows in Death by J.D. Robb
In the new novel in the #1 New York Times-bestselling series, Lt. Eve Dallas is about to walk into the shadows of her husband’s dangerous past…
While Eve examines a fresh body in Washington Square Park, her husband, Roarke, spots a man among the onlookers he’s known since his younger days on the streets of Dublin. A man who claims to be his half brother. A man who kills for a living―and who burns with hatred for him.
Eve is quick to suspect that the victim’s spouse―resentful over his wife’s affair and poised to inherit her fortune―would have happily paid an assassin to do his dirty work. Roarke is just as quick to warn her that if Lorcan Cobbe is the hitman, she needs to be careful. Law enforcement agencies worldwide have pursued this cold-hearted killer for years, to no avail. And his lazy smirk when he looked Roarke’s way indicates that he will target anyone who matters to Roarke…and is confident he’ll get away with it.
Eve is desperate to protect Roarke. Roarke is desperate to protect Eve. And together, they’re determined to find Cobbe before he finds them―even if it takes them across the Atlantic, far outside Eve’s usual jurisdiction . . .
Tuesday, September 15th
Total Power by Kyle Mills (Featured Selection)
“Mills’s suspenseful, strikingly original sixth Mitch Rapp novel…is as riveting as anything penned by Mitch’s creator, Vince Flynn (1966–2013). Mills has really hit his stride with this franchise entry.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“One of the best thriller writers on the planet.” —The Real Book Spy
In the next thriller in the #1 New York Times bestselling Mitch Rapp series, it’s a race against the clock when ISIS takes out the entire US power grid and throws the country into chaos.
When Mitch Rapp captures ISIS’s top technology expert, he reveals that he was on his way to meet a man who claims to have the ability to bring down America’s power grid. Rapp is determined to eliminate this shadowy figure, but the CIA’s trap fails.
The Agency is still trying to determine what went wrong when ISIS operatives help this cyber-terrorist do what he said he could—plunge the country into darkness. With no concept of how this unprecedented act was accomplished, the task of getting the power back on could take months. Perhaps even years.
Rapp and his team embark on a desperate search for the only people who know how to repair the damage—the ones responsible. But his operating environment is like nothing he’s experienced before. Computers and communication networks are down, fuel can no longer be pumped from gas stations, water and sanitation systems are on the brink of collapse, and the supply of food is running out.
Can Rapp get the lights back on before America descends irretrievably into chaos?
This compulsive thriller proves once again that the Mitch Rapp series is “the best of the best when it comes to the world of special ops” (Booklist, starred review).
The Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author, a thrilling and addictive new novel–a prequel to The Pillars of the Earth–set in England at the dawn of a new era: the Middle Ages
It is 997 CE, the end of the Dark Ages. England is facing attacks from the Welsh in the west and the Vikings in the east. Those in power bend justice according to their will, regardless of ordinary people, and often in conflict with the king. Without a clear rule of law, chaos reigns.
In these turbulent times, three characters find their lives intertwined. A young boatbuilder’s life is turned upside down when the only home he’s ever known is raided by Vikings, forcing him and his family to move and start their lives anew in a small hamlet where he does not fit in. . . . A Norman noblewoman marries for love, following her husband across the sea to a new land, but the customs of her husband’s homeland are shockingly different, and as she begins to realize that everyone around her is engaged in a constant, brutal battle for power, it becomes clear that a single misstep could be catastrophic. . . . A monk dreams of transforming his humble abbey into a center of learning that will be admired throughout Europe. And each, in turn, comes into dangerous conflict with a clever and ruthless bishop who will do anything to increase his wealth and power.
Thirty years ago, Ken Follett published his most popular novel, The Pillars of the Earth. Now, Follett’s masterful new prequel The Evening and the Morning takes us on an epic journey into a historical past rich with ambition and rivalry, death and birth, love and hate, that will end where The Pillars of the Earth begins.
The Pandora Deception by David Bruns and J.R. Olson
With The Pandora Deception, Bruns and Olson return with a captivating portrayal of modern-day combat that “compares with the best of the timeless classics by Tom Clancy, Dale Brown, and Stephen Coonts.” (Mark Greaney)
To effectively combat the rise of global terrorism, the U.S. military must now rely on more than traditional weapons and tactics. Don Riley of the U.S. Cyber Command is given charge of a brand new effort: a new team in the CIA Operations Directorate called Emerging Threats. To establish this team he recruits three talented recent commissioned naval officers―Janet Everett, Michael Goodwin, and Andrea Ramirez―and together they uncover a new terrorist group. The group is going under the name of the Mahdi, a messiah figure of Islamic mythology, and is operating in the geopolitical tinderbox that is the Nile River basin.
But the Mahdi is no ordinary terrorist group. Their stock in trade is not the usual suicide bombings and surprise attacks. In fact, the Mahdi has created and is about to release the worst kind of weapon: a hugely destructive bioweapon, known as Pandora, with a devastating fatality rate. And it will take all the resources that the U.S. can bring to bear―intelligence assets, cyber warfare, and military assaults―to not only find out who is really behind the Mahdi but to stop them before they successfully destroy the balance of power in the Middle East.
The Killings at Kingfisher Hill: The New Hercule Poirot Mystery by Sophie Hannah (Featured Selection)
“I was thrilled to see Poirot in such very, very good hands.”— Gillian Flynn, New York Times bestselling author of Gone Girl
The world’s greatest detective, Hercule Poirot—the legendary star of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile—returns to solve a delectably twisty mystery
Hercule Poirot is traveling by luxury passenger coach from London to the exclusive Kingfisher Hill estate. Richard Devonport has summoned the renowned detective to prove that his fiancée, Helen, is innocent of the murder of his brother, Frank. Poirot will have only days to investigate before Helen is hanged, but there is one strange condition attached: he must conceal his true reason for being there from the rest of the Devonport family.
The coach is forced to stop when a distressed woman demands to get off, insisting that if she stays in her seat, she will be murdered. Although the rest of the journey passes without anyone being harmed, Poirot’s curiosity is aroused, and his fears are later confirmed when a body is discovered with a macabre note attached . . .
Could this new murder and the peculiar incident on the coach be clues to solving the mystery of who killed Frank Devonport? And if Helen is innocent, can Poirot find the true culprit in time to save her from the gallows?
Tuesday, September 22
The Coast to Coast Murders by James Patterson and J.D. Barker (Featured Selection)
Funeral for a Friend by Brian Freeman
You’re safe, Stride. I found the body at the Deeps. I buried him.
Jonathan Stride’s best friend, Steve Garske, makes a shocking deathbed confession: he protected Stride by covering up a murder. Hours later, the police dig up Steve’s yard and find a body with a bullet hole in its skull.
Stride is pretty sure he knows who it is. Seven years ago, an out-of-town reporter disappeared while investigating anonymous allegations of rape against a prominent politician. Back then, the police believed that the reporter drowned at a dangerous swimming hole called the Deeps but the discovery of the body changes everything. Now Stride’s partner, Maggie Bei, is forced to ask Stride an uncomfortable question: Did you kill him?
Stride is obviously hiding things. He was the last person to see the reporter alive. And he admits lying to Maggie about that meeting, but won’t tell her why. With suspicion in the murder pointing at him, Stride finds himself off the case and on leave from the Duluth Police.
His only ally in clearing his name is his wife, Serena, who retraces the reporter’s investigation into the explosive allegations. The clues all point to a hot Duluth summer years earlier that everyone in town would prefer to forget.
Someone was willing to kill rather than let those long-ago secrets come out, and the suspect with the strongest motive is Stride.
The Last Agent by Robert Dugoni (Featured Selection)
An Amazon Charts, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal bestselling series.
An American operative in Russia is on the run for his life in a thriller of heart-stopping betrayal and international intrigue by the New York Times bestselling author of The Eighth Sister.
Betrayed by his own country and tried for treason, former spy Charles Jenkins survived an undercover Russian operation gone wrong. Exonerated, bitter, and safe, the retired family man is through with duplicitous spy games. Then he learns of a woman isolated in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison.
If it’s Paulina Ponomayova, the agent who sacrificed her life to save his, Jenkins can’t leave her behind. But there’s no guarantee it’s her. Or proof Paulina is still alive. To find out, Jenkins must return to Russia. Next move: blackmail Viktor Federov, a former Russian officer with his own ax to grind, into helping him infiltrate Lefortovo. The enemy who once pursued Jenkins across three continents is now the only man Jenkins can trust.
Every step of the way—from Moscow to Scandinavia to the open ocean—they’re hunted by a brutal Russian agent on a killer quest of his own. Out of loyalty to Paulina—dead or alive—Jenkins is putting everyone’s life on the line for a new mission that could be his last.
Next to Last Stand by Craig Johnson
The new novel in the beloved New York Times bestselling Longmire series.
One of the most viewed paintings in American history, Custer’s Last Fight, copied and distributed by Anheuser-Busch at a rate of over two million copies a year, was destroyed in a fire at the 7th Cavalry Headquarters in Fort Bliss, Texas, in 1946. Or was it? When Charley Lee Stillwater dies of an apparent heart attack at the Wyoming Home for Soldiers & Sailors, Walt Longmire is called in to try and make sense of a piece of a painting and a Florsheim shoebox containing a million dollars, sending the good sheriff on the trail of a dangerous art heist.
Tuesday, September 29th
The Orphan’s Guilt by Archer Mayor
In Archer Mayor’s intriguing new Vermont-based mystery, The Orphan’s Guilt, a straightforward traffic stop snowballs into a homicide investigation after Joe Gunther and his fellow investigators peel back layer upon layer of history and personal heartbreak to learn a decades-old hidden truth.
John Rust is arrested for drunk driving by a Vermont state trooper. Looking to find mitigating circumstances, John’s lawyer hires private eye Sally Kravitz to look into the recent death of John’s younger brother, purportedly from a childhood brain injury years earlier. But what was the nature of that injury, and might its mechanism point more to murder than to natural causes? That debate brings in Joe Gunther and his team.
Gunther’s efforts quickly uncover an ancient tale of avarice, betrayal, and vengeance that swirled around the Rust boys growing up. Their parents and the people they consorted with―forgotten, relentless, but now jolted to action by this simple set of circumstances―emerge with a destructive passion. All while the presumably innocent John Rust mysteriously vanishes with no explanation.
Unrestricted Access (A short story collection) by James Rollins
Experience the exciting breadth of #1 New York Times bestselling author James Rollins’s wild imagination and adventurous spirit in this anthology of his short masterworks, including a new full-length novella featuring Captain Tucker Wayne and his military war dog, Kane, as well as eleven previously published short stories, gathered together for the first time.
In this breathtaking collection of short fiction, his first-ever anthology, James Rollins brings together twelve thrilling stories that dig a little deeper into his creative stomping grounds and open vistas into new landscapes and characters.
At the center of Unrestricted Access is the never-before-published novella “Sun Dogs.” While trekking through the Sonora desert, a gunshot thrusts Tucker and Kane into an adventure that challenges their considerable skills. The discovery of secrets known only to the native tribes of Arizona threatens to unleash an ancient force that could irreparably alter the future. It also forces Tucker to make a terrible choice that will shatter his relationship with his soul-bonded companion, Kane. As these partners learn, nothing remains buried forever and old debts must be paid, no matter the cost.
Other stories—each with an introduction by James Rollins—are just as compelling, offering broader insight into this acclaimed master’s fictional universes, including:
“The Pit”: a young dog is kidnapped and brutalized into becoming the bloody champion of a dog-fighting ring. But can this tortured monster find redemption and a path back to the boy who first raised him with love and compassion?
“Tagger”: A pair of teenage street artists must protect San Francisco from a demon who has been seeking revenge for centuries.
“The Devil’s Bones”: In this jungle adventure—the first joint story from Rollins and Steve Berry—Commander Gray Pierce and Cotton Malone must work together using their unique skills to survive a deadly threat.
The stories “The Midnight Watch,” “The Skeleton Key,” “Tracker,” and “Kowalski’s in Love” shine light into some of Sigma Force’s secrets. Who were these characters before they were recruited by Sigma? What solo adventures did they experience? How do these short adventures tie into the larger Sigma universe? Rollins offers some clues.
And rounding out this collection are a pair of entertaining stories “Blood Brothers” and “City of Screams” that complement The Order of the Sanguines series.
Filled with adventure, intrigue, history, and speculative science, Unrestricted Access demonstrates Rollins’s remarkable creative powers and is a must-have collection for his many fans.
Praised as “One of the hardest working, most thoughtful, and fairest reviewers out there” by #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Scottoline, Ryan Steck has “quickly established himself as the authority on mysteries and thrillers” (Author A.J. Tata). Steck also works full-time as a freelance editor and pens a monthly thriller column for CrimeReads. For more information, be sure to follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He currently lives in Southwest Michigan with his wife and their six children.