Just a couple more during September......
A heist thriller set in Queensland, Melbourne and Thailand. Think Richard Stark’s Parker, Garry Disher’s Wyatt, and Wallace Stroby's Crissa Stone. Add a touch of Surfers Paradise sleaze and a very dangerous stopover in Asia.
Gary Chance is a former Australian army driver, ex-bouncer and thief. His latest job takes him to Surfers Paradise, Queensland, working for aging standover man, Dennis Curry. Curry runs off-site, non-casino poker games, and wants to rob one of his best customers, a high roller called Freddie Gao.
The job seems straightforward but Curry's crew is anything but. Frank Dormer is a secretive ex-soldier turned private security contractor. Sophia Lekakis is a highly-strung receptionist at the hotel where Gao stays when he visits Surfers Paradise. Amber, Curry's female housemate, is part of the lure for Gao. Chance knows he can't trust anyone, but nothing prepares him for what unfolds when Curry's plan goes wrong.
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| My favourite Scottish author - copy from publisher! |
He has to clear thoughts of Joanne and thoughts of the past out of his mind. He has to think about himself, his situation. Think about the next hour. The last thirty-two years don't matter; whatever remains of the rest of his life doesn't matter. It's the next hour. In that hour, everything will be decided.
Usman Kassar is comfortable in his older brother's shadow, for now. Staying off the radars of the big players lets him plan big scores with little danger of detection. But dangerous jobs will get you noticed, whether you want them to or not.
Martin Sivok is a gunman without a target. An outsider in a new city who doesn't know how to make a fresh start. But when you desperately need doors to start opening, someone like Usman might just persuade you to pull at the wrong handle - like the one that opens a safe full of dirty money. Dirty money that the Jamieson organization, one of the most dangerous criminal outfits in town, wants back.
Any job can have brutal consequences when it threatens the reputation of Nate Colgan. Nate can't help being frightening; a man with darkness inside him. As the reluctant 'security consultant' for a fracturing criminal organization, he knows that unless he recovers the stolen money quickly, much more than his livelihood will be on the line. But if you've been forced into a job that you know could be your ending, how hard will you fight to keep it?
A multi-layered, humane and unnerving portrait of gangland Glasgow, For Those Who Know the Ending is the gripping new novel from the award-winning Malcolm Mackay.
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| Net Galley access - I love Thomas Perry! |
Edgar Award-winning author Thomas Perry writes thrillers that move almost faster than a speeding bullet ("Wall Street Journal"). "The Old Man" is his latest whip-smart standalone novel.
To all appearances, Dan Chase is a harmless retiree in Vermont with two big mutts and a grown daughter he keeps in touch with by phone. But most sixty-year-old widowers don t have multiple driver s licenses, savings stockpiled in banks across the country, and a bugout kit with two Beretta Nanos stashed in the spare bedroom closet. Most have not spent decades on the run. Thirty-five years ago, as a young hotshot in army intelligence, Chase was sent to Libya to covertly assist a rebel army. When the plan turned sour, Chase reacted according to his own ideas of right and wrong, triggering consequences he could never have anticipated. And someone still wants him dead because of them. Just as he had begun to think himself finally safe, Chase must reawaken his survival instincts to contend with the history he has spent his adult life trying to escape. Armed mercenaries, spectacularly crashed cars, a precarious love interest, and an unforgettable chase scene through the snow this is lethal plotting from one of the best in crime fiction. "
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| Amazon FREEBIE in the month! |
Whose side is he on? The drug company curing dementia or the animal rights activists protesting outside?
Brody Taylor exploits the weakest link in all computer systems. Humans. If he's hired to break into your network, he will target the weakest point. You.
The problem with always manipulating people is that even those closest to you don’t trust you.
And Brody’s just fallen for Melanie, a beautiful, zany animal rights activist. But she’s in love with the character he’s trapped himself in, not the real Brody, social engineer and computer hacker. Can Brody social engineer his way to the truth and save his relationship with Melanie?
A novella that introduces Brody Taylor in a suspense filled standalone adventure. At 60 pages, SOCIAL ENGINEER can be read in under two hours!
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| Editor invite to review - you ain't saying no to Lawrence Block now are you? |
A truly unprecedented literary achievement by author and editor Lawrence Block, a newly-commissioned anthology of seventeen superbly-crafted stories inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper, including Jeffery Deaver, Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, Lee Child, and Robert Olen Butler, among many others.
"Edward Hopper is surely the greatest American narrative painter. His work bears special resonance for writers and readers, and yet his paintings never tell a story so much as they invite viewers to find for themselves the untold stories within."
So says Lawrence Block, who has invited seventeen outstanding writers to join him in an unprecedented anthology of brand-new stories: In Sunlight or In Shadow. The results are remarkable and range across all genres, wedding literary excellence to storytelling savvy.
Contributors include Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Olen Butler, Michael Connelly, Megan Abbott, Craig Ferguson, Nicholas Christopher, Jill D. Block, Joe R. Lansdale, Justin Scott, Kris Nelscott, Warren Moore, Jonathan Santlofer, Jeffery Deaver, Lee Child, and Lawrence Block himself. Even Gail Levin, Hopper’s biographer and compiler of his catalogue raisonée, appears with her own first work of fiction, providing a true account of art theft on a grand scale and told in the voice of the country preacher who perpetrated the crime.
In a beautifully produced anthology as befits such a collection of acclaimed authors, each story is illustrated with a quality full-color reproduction of the painting that inspired it.
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| Pufferfish number 7 - Tasmanian crime - copy from the author! |
Tasmania's rise and rise as a tourist destination makes the island an ideal location for the cashed-up international polo set, jetting in from Europe, Buenos Aires, Shanghai and LA for their late summer carnival and relaxathon in the world's latest clean-green hotspot. They play fiercely and party hard at the swish Polo Palace, built near beautiful beaches through the largesse of an island-loving, polo-mad billionaire Bahraini businessman.
So when this idyll is gruesomely interrupted by the murder of Sebastian Wicken, a dashing and wealthy Englishman famous for wielding his stick and ball, Pufferfish, aka seasoned Detective Inspector Franz Heineken of the Tasmanian Police Force, is called to investigate. And investigate he does.
For starters, what possible relationship could there be between this visiting bludgeoned aristocrat and Tassie's worst-of-the-worst career villain, psychopathic Morgan Murger? What ghastly behaviour unites them in blood?
Pufferfish and his offsiders Rafe and Faye work double time to try and fathom who did what to whom, and why - while keeping an antsy tourist industry at bay - but then the strange intrusion of a quavery voice from rural England, being Sebastian's aunt Eugenie, deepens the mystery.
Meanwhile Faye, against advice, has got herself personally involved in the theft of a stamp album from a workingclass primary school. Silly kids and all that. Except it's no ordinary stamp album, sucking in and mightily distracting Pufferfish from the politically-charged polo mess.
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| Charity shop purchase - ostensibly for my son who spent the summer in Budapest working. I like the look of it myself. |
What do you get when you add together a bottle of whiskey, a bad gambler, a flea-market wig, a plastic gun and a Hungarian bank? $5,900. And what do you get twenty-nine of these robberies later? The legend of the Whiskey Robber. When the Eastern bloc thawed, some extraordinary stories were revealed. But none is as entertaining as this. Attila Ambrus escaped late-eighties Romania for Hungary - but soon found that living on his wits wasn't getting him very far. Becoming goalie for a third-division ice hockey team brought no fortune and little glory, and his procession of moneymaking ruses fared little better - until he discovered robbery. With a supporting cast of car-wash owners, exotic dancers, drunk army generals and cocaine-snorting Hungarian rappers, Julian Rubinstein's tale is a spectacular debut, immortalizing the most charming outlaw since the Sundance Kid.
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| Courtesy of a Goodreads giveaway win! |
A gritty and suspenseful Boston thriller for fans of Dennis Lehane and The Departed
You came back here to bury your past ... Thing is, you gotta kill it first
Brighton, 1975: a Boston neighbourhood where racial tensions run high and gangs jostle for dominance in the trades that matter ? drugrunning, book-keeping and theft. Fifteen-year-old Kevin Pearce knows his best hope is to get the hell out before its bloody streets get a grip on his dreams. Bitterness and brutality stalk the hard-drinking generations of his Irish immigrant family. But when an act of violence tears their home apart, Kevin is forced to leave for New York, changing the course of his life forever.
Twenty-seven years later, in 2002, Kevin wins the Pulitzer Prize for an investigative article on the wrongful conviction and death of a man from Brighton, and decides to visit his old neighbourhood for the first time in decades. But his past has long shadows ? shadows which have taken on a life of their own. And when Kevin's prosecutor girlfriend Lisa asks his advice on a murder case, he is plunged into a web of deception and bloodshed that will test his loyalties to the limit and place the life he has built at risk.
Grittily realistic, razor-sharp and darkly compelling, Brighton is about the meaning of family, the price of friendship, and survival in a world where one misstep can cost everything.
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| Dard - the French writing machine - copy from publisher Pushkin Vertigo |
I understand why you did it. It'll be our secret.
Seventeen-year-old Louise Lacroix is desperate to escape her dreary life. So on her way home from work every evening she takes a detour past the enchanting house of Jess and Thelma Rooland - a wealthy and glamorous American couple - where the sun always seems to shine.
When Louise convinces the Roolands to employ her as their maid, she thinks she's in heaven. But soon their seemingly perfect life begins to unravel. What terrible secrets are they hiding?
Dripping with tension and yearning, Crush is a chilling Fifties suspense story of youthful naivety, dark obsession - and the slippery slope to murder.
Praise for Dard's thrillers:
'The French master of noir' Observer
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| Love a bit of Frank - Amazon purchase! |
TWO WRONGS starts with great sex: ends in sudden death. US Navy SEAL Stretch McCann believes he’s met the girl of his dreams. Trouble is, she’s married to someone else; another military man not inclined to suffer rivals lightly. When she’s involved in a crippling car crash, Stretch loses much more than just a lover. He and she have been mightily wronged.
Enter an altogether unusual Englishman, JJ Stoner, covert investigator and occasional assassin. Stoner offers Stretch an opportunity for action. Can Stretch set things straight, no matter what the cost? And why, exactly, have the FBI taken a sudden interest in Stoner?
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Ditto above!
JJ Stoner once killed people for a living.
In the military his kills were government-sanctioned. As a mercenary they were privately contracted. He doesn’t mention the other kills, those of his own initiative.
Highly-trained, finely-honed and used hard, Stoner now seeks not to kill as he investigates underworld activities for official intelligence agencies, an entirely deniable operative in sleazy situations. Less the blunt instrument, more the swift stiletto.
A series of brutal, blood-soaked murders looks to be right up Stoner’s street. When the investigation spirals in queasy circles, JJ finds release in the music of the blues and in weird sex with treacherous women. An old army comrade, equally lethal and with less to lose, steps out of the shadows. Friend or foe? And who are the seductive killing sisters? Stoner must find focus, find the killer, maybe even find himself.
The time has come for Stoner to kill again...
Frank Westworth shares several characteristics with JJ Stoner: they both play mean blues guitar and ride Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Unlike Stoner, Frank hasn’t deliberately killed anyone. Instead, he edits RealClassic magazine and has written extensively for the UK motoring press. Frank lives in Cornwall with his guitars, motorcycles, partner and cat.
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