While I was in the store recently I saw Second Life by S.J. Watson which I forgot about. All I remember is someone or some people saying that it was a disappointment next to Before I Go To Sleep. Seeing this book got me excited about the idea of reading a thriller novel.
Having her own detective agency would give her
the independence she had always longed for. It
would also give her the chance to show those people
who shunned her that she could be successful. People
were getting rich. They owned property, money,
business, and cars. With new freedom and opportunities
came new crimes. There would be much that
she could do.”
Present day, Beijing. Mei Wang is a modern, independent woman. She has her own apartment. She owns a car. She has her own business with that most modern of commodities — a male secretary. Her short career with China’s prestigious Ministry for Public Security has given her intimate insight into the complicated and arbitrary world of Beijing’s law enforcement. But it is her intuition, curiosity, and her uncanny knack for listening to things said — and unsaid — that make Mei Beijing’s first successful female private investigator.
Mei is no stranger to the dark side of China. She was six years old when she last saw her father behind the wire fence of one of Mao’s remote labor camps. Perhaps as a result, Mei eschews the power plays and cultural mores — guanxi — her sister and mother live by…for better and for worse.
Mei’s family friend “Uncle” Chen hires her to find a Han dynasty jade of great value: he believes the piece was looted from the Luoyang Museum during the Cultural Revolution — when the Red Guards swarmed the streets, destroying so many traces of the past — and that it’s currently for sale on the black market. The hunt for the eye of jade leads Mei through banquet halls and back alleys, seedy gambling dens and cheap noodle bars near the Forbidden City. Given the jade’s provenance and its journey, Mei knows to treat the investigation as a most delicate matter; she cannot know, however, that this case will force her to delve not only into China’s brutal history, but also into her family’s dark secrets and into her own tragic separation from the man she loved in equal parts.
The first novel in an exhilarating new detective series, The Eye of Jade is both a thrilling mystery and a sensual and fascinating journey through modern China.
On a normal day in provincial China, a bored high-school student goes about his regular business. But he’s planning the brutal murder of his only friend, a talented violinist. He invites her round, strangles her, stuffs her body into a washing machine and flees town. On the run, he is initially anxious, but soon he alerts the police to his whereabouts, surrenders to undercover agents in a pool bar, and sabotages all efforts by China’s judiciary system, a steady stream of psychologists and his family to overturn the death penalty, all without ever showing a shred of remorse.
A Perfect Crime is both a vision of China’s heart of darkness — the despair that traps the rural poor and the incoherent rage lurking behind their phlegmatic front — and a technically brilliant excursion into the claustrophobic realm of classic horror and suspense. With exceptional tonal control, A Yi steadily reveals the psychological backstory that enables us to make sense of the story’s dramatic violence and provides chillingly apt insights into the psychology behind a murder committed simply as an intellectual challenge to relieve the daily tedium of existence.
Like the bestselling novels of Gillian Flynn and S. J. Watson, The Book of You—an utterly original fiction debut—is a sophisticated psychological thriller that will haunt you long after it reaches its terrifying, breathtaking conclusion.
Most people dread the prospect of jury duty, but university administrator Clarissa wants nothing more than to be selected for a trial. Every day she serves means a day away from her job and, more important, the unwanted attentions of her colleague Rafe. An academic expert on the darker side of folk tales, he has always unnerved Clarissa. She spent one drunken night with him while mourning the demise of a previous relationship, an inexplicable decision she can only attribute to her break-up. Rafe, however, sees things differently. The encounter, which may not have been as consensual as Clarissa originally believes, only serves to fuel his growing obsession with her—and he is not about to let her slip away.
The Book of You is a visceral, riveting portrait of a woman terrorized—emotionally and physically—by a man bent on possessing her completely. It is a chilling saga of predator and prey; as a disturbingly violent crime unfolds in front of her in court, Clarissa finds herself experiencing a different, but equally harrowing, nightmare in real life. Rafe’s taunts become more sinister by the day, but each carefully calibrated assault is designed to devastate her without ever crossing the line of the law. Realizing that she bears the burden of proof, Clarissa knows she is powerless unless she can hold out long enough to amass sufficient evidence against him. Piece by piece, she uncovers the twisted, macabre fairytale Rafe has spun around them both, discovering that the happy ending he envisions is more awful than she could have ever imagined.
Deftly constructed around an achingly convincing narrative, The Book of You explores the darkest corners of the human heart, where the lines between love and suffocation, fantasy and reality, can become dangerously blurred. A riveting story about Clarissa’s desperate attempts to escape the nightmare in which Rafe traps her, it is also a profoundly moving story about one woman’s will to survive.
What if overcoming the legacy of American slavery meant bringing back that very institution? A young black attorney is thrown headlong into controversial issues of race and power in this page-turning and provocative new novel.
Martin Grey, a smart, talented black lawyer working out of a storefront in Queens, becomes friendly with a group of some of the most powerful, wealthy, and esteemed black men in America. He’s dazzled by what they’ve accomplished, and they seem to think he has the potential to be as successful as they are. They invite him for a weekend away from it all—no wives, no cell phones, no talk of business. But far from home and cut off from everyone he loves, he discovers a disturbing secret that challenges some of his deepest convictions…
Martin finds out that his glittering new friends are part of a secret society dedicated to the preservation of the institution of slavery—but this time around, the black men are called “Master.” Joining them seems to guarantee a future without limits; rebuking them almost certainly guarantees his death. Trapped inside a picture-perfect, make-believe world that is home to a frightening reality, Martin must find a way out that will allow him to stay alive without becoming the very thing he hates.
A novel of rage and compassion, good and evil, trust and betrayal, Forty Acres is the thought-provoking story of one man’s desperate attempt to escape the clutches of a terrifying new moral order.
The sensational new psychological thriller from the bestselling author of Before I Go To Sleep.
She loves her husband. She’s obsessed by a stranger.
She’s a devoted mother. She’s prepared to lose everything.
She knows what she’s doing. She’s out of control.
She’s innocent. She’s guilty as sin.
She’s living two lives. She might lose both . . .
themollyweather 