The Barry Award 2013
THE BLACK HOUSE by Peter May - 2013 Barry Award WINNER Best Novel Category The Black House
By Peter May
The Isle of Lewis is the most remote, harshly beautiful place in Scotland, where the difficulty of existence seems outweighed only by people's fear of God. But older, pagan values lurk beneath the veneer of faith, the primal yearning for blood and revenge. When a brutal murder on the island bears the hallmarks of a similar slaying in Edinburgh, police detective Fin Macleod is dispatched north to investigate. But since he himself was raised on Lewis, the investigation also represents a journey home and into his past. Each year the island's men perform the hunting of the gugas, a savage custom no longer necessary for survival, but which they cling to even more fiercely in the face of the demands of modern morality. For Fin the hunt recalls a horrific tragedy, which after all this time may have begun to demand another sacrifice. The Blackhouse is a crime novel of rare power and vision. Peter May has crafted a page-turning murder mystery that explores the darkness in our souls, and just how difficult it is to escape the past. SilverOak - October 2, 2012 – 368 pages – ISBN 1454901276


The Blackhouse: A Novel
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn -2013 Barry Award Shortlist Best Novel Category Gone Girl
By Gillian Flynn
Marriage can be a real killer. One of the most critically acclaimed suspense writers of our time, New York Times bestseller Gillian Flynn takes that statement to its darkest place in this unputdownable masterpiece about a marriage gone terribly, terribly wrong. The Chicago Tribune proclaimed that her work “draws you in and keeps you reading with the force of a pure but nasty addiction.” Gone Girl’s toxic mix of sharp-edged wit and deliciously chilling prose creates a nerve-fraying thriller that confounds you at every turn.

On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer?

As the cops close in, every couple in town is soon wondering how well they know the one that they love. With his twin sister, Margo, at his side, Nick stands by his innocence. Trouble is, if Nick didn’t do it, where is that beautiful wife? And what was in that silvery gift box hidden in the back of her bedroom closet?

With her razor-sharp writing and trademark psychological insight, Gillian Flynn delivers a fast-paced, devilishly dark, and ingeniously plotted thriller that confirms her status as one of the hottest writers around. Random House – June 5, 2012 – 432 pages – ISBN 030758836x
Gone Girl
Trust Your Eyes by Linwood Barclay-2013 Barry Award Shortlist Best Novel Category Trust Your Eyes
By Linwood Barclay
Thomas Kilbride is a schizophrenic who spends his days and nights on a Web site called Whirl360. He travels the world without ever leaving his bedroom and memorizes the details of every street in every city. Then one day, he sees an image that looks like a woman being murdered in a window in New York City. Thomas’s brother, Ray, knows Thomas’s paranoia all too well. But if this time it’s real, both of them will have more to deal with than Thomas’s delusions. Because someone somewhere is watching them.... Penguin – September 4, 2012– 508 pages – ISBN 1101602716
Trust Your Eyes
Defending Jacob By William Landay- 2013 Barry Award Shortlist Best Novel Category Defending Jacob
By William Landay
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Entertainment Weekly • The Boston Globe • Kansas City Star

“A legal thriller that's comparable to classics such as Scott Turow's Presumed Innocent . . . Tragic and shocking, Defending Jacob is sure to generate buzz.”—Associated Press

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney for two decades. He is respected. Admired in the courtroom. Happy at home with the loves of his life, his wife, Laurie, and teenage son, Jacob.

Then Andy's quiet suburb is stunned by a shocking crime: a young boy stabbed to death in a leafy park. And an even greater shock: The accused is Andy's own son—shy, awkward, mysterious Jacob.

Andy believes in Jacob's innocence. Any parent would. But the pressure mounts. Damning evidence. Doubt. A faltering marriage. The neighbors' contempt. A murder trial that threatens to obliterate Andy's family.

It is the ultimate test for any parent: How far would you go to protect your child? It is a test of devotion. A test of how well a parent can know a child. For Andy Barber, a man with an iron will and a dark secret, it is a test of guilt and innocence in the deepest sense. How far would you go? Delacorte Press – January 31, 2012 – 432 pages – ISBN 0385344228


Defending Jacob: A Novel
Live by Night by Dennis Lehane - 2013 Barry Award Shortlist Best Novel Category Live by Night
By Dennis Lehane
Boston, 1926. The '20s are roaring. Liquor is flowing, bullets are flying, and one man sets out to make his mark on the world. Prohibition has given rise to an endless network of underground distilleries, speakeasies, gangsters, and corrupt cops. Joe Coughlin, the youngest son of a prominent Boston police captain, has long since turned his back on his strict and proper upbringing. Now having graduated from a childhood of petty theft to a career in the pay of the city's most fearsome mobsters, Joe enjoys the spoils, thrills, and notoriety of being an outlaw.

But life on the dark side carries a heavy price. In a time when ruthless men of ambition, armed with cash, illegal booze, and guns, battle for control, no one—neither family nor friend, enemy nor lover—can be trusted. Beyond money and power, even the threat of prison, one fate seems most likely for men like Joe: an early death. But until that day, he and his friends are determined to live life to the hilt.

Joe embarks on a dizzying journey up the ladder of organized crime that takes him from the flash of Jazz Age Boston to the sensual shimmer of Tampa's Latin Quarter to the sizzling streets of Cuba. Live by Night is a riveting epic layered with a diverse cast of loyal friends and callous enemies, tough rumrunners and sultry femmes fatales, Bible-quoting evangelists and cruel Klansmen, all battling for survival and their piece of the American dream. At once a sweeping love story and a compelling saga of revenge, it is a spellbinding tour de force of betrayal and redemption, music and murder, that brings fully to life a bygone era when sin was cause for celebration and vice was a national virtue. William Morrow Paperbacks - May 14, 2013 - 416 pages – ISBN 00621-7754


Live by Night: A Novel
Dead Scared by S.J. Bolton- 2013 Barry Award Shortlist Best Novel Category Dead Scared
By S.J. Bolton
When a rash of suicides tears through Cambridge University, DI Mark Joesbury recruits DC Lacey Flint to go undercover as a student to investigate. Although each student’s death appears to be a suicide, the psychological histories, social networks, and online activities of the students involved share remarkable similarities, and the London police are not convinced that the victims acted alone. They believe that someone might be preying on lonely and insecure students and either encouraging them to take their own lives or actually luring them to their deaths. As long as Lacey can play the role of a vulnerable young woman, she may be able to stop these deaths, but is it just a role for her? With her fragile past, is she drawing out the killers, or is she herself being drawn into a deadly game where she’s a perfect victim? Dark and compelling, S. J. Bolton’s latest thriller—a follow-up to the acclaimed Now You See Me—is another work of brilliant psychological suspense that plumbs the most sinister depths. Macmillan - Jun 5, 2012 - Fiction - 384 pages - ISBN 0312600534
Dead Scared
A Killing in the Hills by Julia Keller -2013 Barry Award Shortlist- First Novel Category A Killing in the Hills
By Julia Keller
In A Killing in the Hills, a powerful, intricate debut from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Julia Keller, a mother and a daughter try to do right by a town and each other before it's too late.

What's happening in Acker's Gap, West Virginia? Three elderly men are gunned down over their coffee at a local diner, and seemingly half the town is there to witness the act. Still, it happened so fast, and no one seems to have gotten a good look at the shooter. Was it random? Was it connected to the spate of drug violence plaguing poor areas of the country just like Acker's Gap? Or were Dean Streeter, Shorty McClurg, and Lee Rader targeted somehow?

One of the witnesses to the brutal incident was Carla Elkins, teenaged daughter of Bell Elkins, the prosecuting attorney for Raythune County, WV. Carla was shocked and horrified by what she saw, but after a few days, she begins to recover enough to believe that she might be uniquely placed to help her mother do her job.

After all, what better way to repair their fragile, damaged relationship? But could Carla also end up doing more harm than good—in fact, putting her own life in danger? Macmillan - Aug 21, 2012 - 371 pages- ISBN 1250003482


A Killing in the Hills
The Yard by Alex Grecian-2013 Barry Award Shortlist- First Novel Category The Yard
By Alex Grecian
1889, LONDON. JACK THE RIPPER’S REIGN OF TERROR IN FINALLY OVER, BUT A NEW ONE IS JUST BEGINNING.

Victorian London—a violent cesspool of squalid depravity. Only twelve detectives—The Murder Squad—are expected to solve the thousands of crimes committed here each month. Formed after the Metropolitan Police’s spectacular failure in capturing Jack the Ripper, the Murder Squad suffers the brunt of public contempt. But no one can anticipate the brutal murder of one of their own…

A Scotland Yard Inspector has been found stuffed in a black steamer trunk at Euston Square Station, his eyes and mouth sewn shut. When Walter Day, the squad’s new hire, is assigned to the case, he finds a strange ally in Dr. Bernard Kingsley, the Yard’s first forensic pathologist. Their grim conclusion: this was not just a random, bizarre murder but in all probability, the first of twelve. Because the squad itself it being targeted and the devious killer shows no signs of stopping before completing his grim duty. But Inspector Day has one more surprise, something even more shocking than the crimes: the killer’s motive. Berkley Trade – April 2, 2013 – 432 pages – ISBN 0425261271


The Yard
Sacrifice Fly by Tim O’Mara-2013 Barry Award Shortlist- First Novel Category Sacrifice Fly
By Tim O'Mara
Raymond Donne wasn’t always a schoolteacher. Not only did he patrol the streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, as one of New York’s Finest, but being the nephew of the chief of detectives, he was expected to go on to bigger things. At least he was until the accident that destroyed his knees. Unable to do the job the way he wanted, he became a teacher in the same neighborhood, and did everything he could to put the force behind him and come to terms with the change.

Then Frankie Rivas, a student in Ray’s class and a baseball phenom, stops showing up to school. With Frankie in danger of failing and missing out on a scholarship, Ray goes looking for him, only to find Frankie’s father bludgeoned to death in their apartment. Frankie and his younger sister are gone, possibly on the run. But did Frankie really kill his father? Ray can’t believe it. But then who did, and where are Frankie and his sister? Ray doesn’t know, but if he’s going to have any chance of bringing them home safely, he’s going to have to return to the life, the people, and the demons he walked out on all those years ago.

Intense, authentic, and completely gripping, Tim O’Mara’s Sacrifice Fly is an outstanding debut from a stellar new voice in crime fiction. Macmillan - Oct 16, 2012 - Fiction - 320 pages - ISBN 1250008999


Sacrifice Fly
The Dark Winter by David Mark  - 2013 Barry Award Shortlist- First Novel Category The Dark Winter
By David Mark
A series of suspicious deaths have rocked Hull, a port city in England as old and mysterious as its bordering sea. They have captured the attention of Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy. He notices a pattern missed by his fellow officers, who would rather get a quick arrest than bother themselves with finding the true killer. Torn between his police duties and his aching desire to spend more time with his pregnant wife and young son, McAvoy is an unlikely hero: a physically imposing man far more comfortable exploring computer databases than throwing around his muscle. Compelled by his keen sense of justice, he decides to strike out alone—but in the depths of the dark winter, it’s difficult to forget what happened the last time he found himself on the wrong side of a killer’s blade… Plume – March 26, 213 - 304 pages – ISBN 0142196975
The Dark Winter: A Novel (Detective Sergeant McAvoy)
Black Fridays by Michael Sears -2013 Barry Award Shortlist- First Novel Category Black Fridays
By Michael Sears
One of Booklist's "Year's Best Crime Novels"

After two years in federal prison, Jason Stafford is no longer welcome on Wall Street. But due to his financial crime expertise, one firm wants him to quietly look for irregularities in the books of one of their junior traders, whose body was just pulled from the Long Island Sound.

Raising an autistic five-year-old alone, Stafford can’t refuse the lucrative offer. The job is supposed to last two weeks, tops. But soon he’s facing threats and intimidation, and more people are dying. Stafford must fight for his life—while struggling to save his son from a different kind of danger...

Nominated for the Edgar® Award for Best First Novel

Berkley – September 3, 2013 – 432 pages – ISBN 0425269043

Black Fridays (Jason Stafford) icon
The Professionals by Owen Laukkanen-2013 Barry Award Shortlist- First Novel Category The Professionals
By Owen Laukkanen
Four friends, caught in a terrible job market, joke about turning to kidnapping to survive. And then, suddenly, it’s no joke. For two years, the strategy they devise works like a charm—until they kidnap the wrong man.

Now two groups are after them—the law, in the form of veteran state investigator Kirk Stevens and hotshot young FBI agent Carla Windermere, and an organized crime outfit looking for payback. As they crisscross the country in a series of increasingly explosive confrontations, each of them is ultimately forced to recognize the truth: The real professionals, cop or criminal, are those who are willing to sacrifice everything. Penguin - Mar 29, 2012 - 496 pages – ISBN 1101561300

The Professionals (A Stevens and Windermere Novel)
Mr. Churchill's Secretary by Susan Elia McNeal -2013 Barry Award Shortlist- Best Paperback Originaly Mr. Churchill's Secretary Susan Elia McNeal
By Susan Elia McNeal
MR. CHURCHILL’S SECRETARY, by Susan Elia McNeal (Bantam) For fans of Jacqueline Winspear, Laurie R. King, and Anne Perry, Mr. Churchill’s Secretary captures the drama of an era of unprecedented challenge—and the greatness that rose to meet it.

London, 1940. Winston Churchill has just been sworn in, war rages across the Channel, and the threat of a Blitz looms larger by the day. But none of this deters Maggie Hope. She graduated at the top of her college class and possesses all the skills of the finest minds in British intelligence, but her gender qualifies her only to be the newest typist at No. 10 Downing Street. Her indefatigable spirit and remarkable gifts for codebreaking, though, rival those of even the highest men in government, and Maggie finds that working for the prime minister affords her a level of clearance she could never have imagined—and opportunities she will not let pass. In troubled, deadly times, with air-raid sirens sending multitudes underground, access to the War Rooms also exposes Maggie to the machinations of a menacing faction determined to do whatever it takes to change the course of history.

Ensnared in a web of spies, murder, and intrigue, Maggie must work quickly to balance her duty to King and Country with her chances for survival. And when she unravels a mystery that points toward her own family’s hidden secrets, she’ll discover that her quick wits are all that stand between an assassin’s murderous plan and Churchill himself.

In this daring debut, Susan Elia MacNeal blends meticulous research on the era, psychological insight into Winston Churchill, and the creation of a riveting main character, Maggie Hope, into a spectacularly crafted novel. Bantam – April 3, 2012 – 384 pages – ISBN - 0553593617


Mr. Churchill's Secretary: A Maggie Hope Mystery icon
Blessed Are the Dead by Malla Nunn- 2013 Barry Award Shortlist- Best Paperback Original Blessed Are the Dead
By Malla Nunny
Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper returns in this powerful, atmospheric novel about two communities forced to confront each other after a murder that exposes their secret ties and forbidden desires in apartheid South Africa, by award-winning author Malla Nunn.

The body of a beautiful seventeen-year-old Zulu girl, Amahle, is found covered in wildflowers on a hillside in the Drakensberg Mountains, halfway between her father’s compound and the enormous white-owned farm where she worked. Detective Sergeant Cooper and Detective Constable Samuel Shabalala are sent to the desolate landscape to investigate. They soon discover that Amahle’s life was woven into both the black and white communities in ways they could never have imagined. Cooper and Shabalala must enter the guarded worlds of a traditional Zulu clan and a divided white farming community to gather up the secrets she left behind and bring her murderer to justice.

In a country deeply divided by apartheid, where the law is bent as often as it is broken, Emmanuel Cooper fights against all odds to deliver justice and bring together two seemingly disparate and irreconcilable worlds despite the danger that is arising. Atria/Emily Bester Books – June 19, 2012 – 336 pages – ISBN 1451616929


Blessed Are the Dead: An Emmanuel Cooper Mystery
The Other Woman's House by Sophie Hannah-2013 Barry Award Shortlist-Best Paperback Original The Other Woman's House
By Sophie Hannah
The latest psychological thriller from the internationally bestselling author of The Wrong Mother and The Cradle in the Grave

It's past midnight, but Connie Bowskill can't sleep. To pass the time, she logs on to a real estate website in search of a particular house, one she is obsessed with for reasons she's too scared to even admit to herself. As she clicks through the virtual tour, she comes across a scene from a nightmare: a woman lying facedown on the living room floor in a pool of blood. But when she returns to show her husband, there is no body, no blood—just a perfectly ordinary room, with a perfectly clean beige carpet.

The sixth book in Sophie Hannah’s beloved Zailer and Waterhouse series, The Other Woman’s House offers unforgettable suspense and a heart-stopping conclusion that Ruth Rendell and Tana French fans will love. Penguin - June 26, 2012 - 464 pages – ISBN 1101586877


The Other Woman's House (Lasting Damage) (A Zailer & Waterhouse Mystery)
Bloodland by Alan Glynnv - 2013 Barry Award Shortlist- Best Paperback Original Bloodland
By Alan Glynnv
A helicopter crash off the coast of Ireland sends unexpected ripples through the international community in this intricate new thriller from the author of Winterland and Limitless (now a major motion picture).

Susie Monaghan was on the cusp of stardom when her life was cut short by a tragic helicopter crash. After a full investigation, her death was ruled an accident: case closed. But a hungry young journalist named Jimmy Gilroy isn't buying the official story. Before dying, Susie's path had crossed with an unlikely gallery of powerful men: an ex-Prime minister with a carefully guarded secret; the businessman brother of a U.S. Senator angling for the Oval Office; and a billionaire investor with his eye on an extremely rare commodity. Might there also be a link between Susie's death and a deranged security contractor operating in Congo? Piece by piece, Jimmy uncovers a bizarre nexus of coincidence among these disparate people and events, revealing a conspiracy of frightening reach and consequence--one that could cost him his life.

Set against a vividly drawn world of corporate and political intrigue, Alan Glynn's Bloodland is a riveting paranoid thriller of uncommon depth and page-turning suspense. Picador Original – January 31, 2012 – 384 pages – ISBN 9780312621285

Bloodland: A Novel
Beneath the Abbey Wall by A.D. Scott-2013 Barry Award Shortlist- Best Paperback Original Beneath the Abbey Wall
By A.D. Scott
AS A DECADE OF CHANGE COMES TO A CLOSE, MURDER HITS CLOSE TO HOME IN A SMALL SCOTTISH TOWN. . . .

On a dark, damp Sunday evening, a man taking a shortcut home sees a hand reaching out in supplication from a bundle of sacks. In an instant he knows something terrifying has happened.

In the Highlands in the late 1950s, much of the local newspaper’s success was due to Mrs. Smart, the no-nonsense office manager who kept everything and everyone in line. Her murder leaves her colleagues in shock and the Highland Gazette office in chaos. Joanne Ross, a budding reporter and shamefully separated mother, assumes Mrs. Smart’s duties, but an intriguing stranger provides a distraction not only from the job and the investigation but from everything Joanne believes in.

Beneath the Abbey Wall brilliantly evokes a place still torn between the safety of the past and the uncertainty of the future, when rock ’n’ roll and television invaded homes, and a change in attitudes still came slowly for many. As the staff of the Highland Gazette probes the crime, they uncover secrets deeply rooted in the past, and their friend’s murder becomes the perfect fodder for strife and division in the town and between her colleagues. Atria Books – November 13, 2012 – 352 pages – ISBN 1451665776


Beneath the Abbey Wall (Joanne Ross)
Pago Pago Tango by John Enright-2013 Barry Award Shortlist- Best Paperback Original Pago Pago Tango
By John Enright
Detective Sergeant Apelu Soifua knows firsthand how cops work in the big city; he spent seven years on the beat with the San Francisco PD. There, the job was just a job. But back home on American Samoa, it’s personal. On an island, there are no strangers. Secrets may be commonly known but they’re never discussed, and solving crimes requires a certain…finesse. Here, Apelu walks the line between two cultures: Samoan versus American, native versus new, each with its own unique way of coping when things go wrong. And never is that more evident than when a seemingly random break-in at a white family’s home turns out to be anything but random. Following a tangled evidence trail that wends between cultures, Apelu must navigate dead bodies, hidden codes, and a string of lies before he can uncover the ugly truth buried at the heart of paradis. Thomas & Mercer – October 23, 2012 – 264 pages – ISBN 1612185002


Pago Pago Tango (Jungle Beat Mystery)
The Fallen Angel by Daniel Silva - 2013 Barry Award Shortlist- Best Thriller Category The Fallen Angel
By Daniel Silva
After narrowly surviving his last operation, Gabriel Allon, the wayward son of Israeli intelligence, has taken refuge behind the walls of the Vatican, where he is restoring one of Caravaggio's greatest masterpieces. But early one morning he is summoned to St. Peter's Basilica by Monsignor Luigi Donati, the all-powerful private secretary to His Holiness Pope Paul VII. The body of a beautiful woman lies broken beneath Michelangelo's magnificent dome. The Vatican police suspect suicide, though Gabriel believes otherwise. So, it seems, does Donati. But the monsignor is fearful that a public inquiry might inflict another scandal on the Church, and so he calls upon Gabriel to quietly pursue the truth—with one caveat.

"Rule number one at the Vatican," Donati said. "Don't ask too many questions." Gabriel learns that the dead woman had uncovered a dangerous secret—a secret that threatens a global criminal enterprise that is looting timeless treasures of antiquity and selling them to the highest bidder. But there is more to this network than just greed. A mysterious operative is plotting an act of sabotage that will plunge the world into a conflict of apocalyptic proportions. . . . An intoxicating blend of art, intrigue, and history, The Fallen Angel moves swiftly from the cloistered chambers of the Vatican to the glamorous ski slopes of St. Moritz to the graceful avenues of Berlin and Vienna—and, finally, to a shocking climax beneath the world's most sacred and contested parcel of land. Each setting in this extraordinary novel is rendered with the care of an Old Master, as are the spies, lovers, priests, and thieves who inhabit its pages. It is a story of faith and of the destructive power of secrets—and an all too timely reminder that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Harper – June 25, 2013 – 464 pages – ISBN 006207315X


The Fallen Angel (Gabriel Allon)
The Last Refuge by Ben Coes- 2013 Barry Award Shortlist- Best Thriller Category The Last Refuge
By Ben Coes
With time running out to stop the nuclear destruction of Tel Aviv, Dewey Andreas must defeat his most fearsome opponent yet. Off a quiet street in Brooklyn, New York, Israeli Special Forces commander Kohl Meir is captured by operatives of the Iranian secret service, who smuggle Meir back to Iran, where he is imprisoned, tortured, and prepared for a show trial.

What they don’t know is that Meir was in New York to recruit Dewey Andreas for a secret operation. Meir had been tipped off that Iran had finally succeeded in building their first nuclear weapon, one they were planning to use to attack Israel. His source was a high-level Iranian government official and his proof was a photo of the bomb itself.

Dewey Andreas, a former Army Ranger and Delta, owes his life to Meir and his team of Israeli commandos. Now, to repay his debt, Dewey has to attempt the impossible ---to both rescue Meir from one of the world’s most secure prisons and to find and eliminate Iran’s nuclear bomb before it’s deployed---all without the help or sanction of Israel or America (at the near certain risk of detection by Iran).

Unfortunately, Dewey’s first moves have caught the attention of Abu Paria, the brutal and brilliant head of VEVAK, the Iranian secret service. Now Dewey has to face off against, outwit, and outfight an opponent with equal cunning, skill, and determination, with the fate of millions hanging in the balance. St. Martin’s Press – July 3, 20122 – 416 pages – ISBN 9781250007155


The Last Refuge: A Dewey Andreas Novel
The Right Hand by Derek Haas -2013 Barry Award Shortlist- Best Thriller Category The Right Hand
By Derek Haas
Meet Austin Clay, the CIA's best-kept secret.

There has always been a need in the spy game for operations outside the realm of legality-covert missions so black no one in the American government, and almost no one in intelligence itself, is aware of their existence. The left hand can't know what the right hand is doing.

Austin Clay is that right hand, executing missions that would be disavowed by his own government were he ever to be compromised. His team consists of only his trusted handler and himself. His missions are among the most important and dangerous in U.S. history.

Clay is sent to track down a missing American operative, a man who was captured outside of Moscow, in the Russian countryside. Soon he discovers the missing officer is only the beginning of the mission, and finds himself protecting a desperate woman who believes a mole has penetrated the top levels of the U.S. government, throwing the international balance of power into jeopardy.

With blistering pace, international intrigue, and a high-stakes plot that spans continents, THE RIGHT HAND introduces a new hero, from the novelist whose work the New York Times Book Review has proclaimed "devastatingly cool." Mulholland Books – December 10, 2013 – 272 pages – ISBN 0316198498


The Right Hand
A Foreigin Country by Charles Cumming-2013 Barry Award Shortlist- Best Thriller Category A Foreigin Country
By Charles Cumming
On the vacation of a lifetime in Egypt, an elderly French couple is brutally murdered. Then, days later, on the streets of Paris, a young French accountant is kidnapped. When Amelia Levene, who in six weeks is due to take over as the first female Chief of MI6, disappears without a trace while in the south of France, it is the gravest crisis MI6 has faced in more than a decade. Desperate not only to find her but to keep the press from learning that she has gone missing, Britain’s top intelligence agents turn to one of their own: disgraced former MI6 officer Thomas Kell. St. Martin’s Press – April 30, 2013 – 448 pages – ISBN 1250029988


A Foreign Country icon
House Blood by Mike Lawson-2013 Barry Award Shortlist- Best Thriller Category House Blood
By Mike Lawson
DeMarco is asked to look into the murder conviction of a lobbyist. But he has other worries on his mind: his boss is no longer Speaker,his girlfriend has left him, andhis friend Emma may be dying. DeMarco doesn’t expect to free the lobbyist – much less to become the target of two of the most callous killers he and Emma have ever encountered. Grove Press – June 11. 2013 – 624 pages – ISBN 0802146074


House Blood: A Joe DeMarco Thriller icon
Red Star Burning by Brian Freemantle-2013 Barry Award Shortlist- Best Thriller Category Red Star Burning
By Brian Freemantle
Britain’s MI5 tolerates Charlie Muffin because he’s their best field agent. What none of his colleagues knows, though, is that he is married to Natalia Fedova, a colonel in the FSB, the Russian intelligence successor to the KGB. It’s a secret that could land her in front of a firing squad, and him in jail for life. Worst of all, their daughter would then end up in a Russian state orphanage. But a frantic call from Natalia has brought their secret out, and Charlie must lead a combined MI5/MI6 mission to rescue her. He soon realizes that his higher-ups have other priorities than his family’s safety. Charlie will have to outwit not just the Russians but his own government as well to protect the lives of his wife and child.

Clever, unpredictable, and exciting, Red Star Burning shows why Brian Freemantle has been widely praised as one of the greatest living espionage novelists. Thomas Dunne Books – June 19, 2012 – 368 pages – ISBN 1250006368

Red Star Burning: A Thriller