5 New Books to Read this Week: March 14, 2017

Every Wednesday, we here at Criminal Element will put together a list of Staff Picks of the books that published the day before—sharing the ones that we are looking forward to reading the most!

This week, Tessa Arlen released a new Lady Montfort historical mystery, and Christobel Kent published a gripping new psychological thriller that will have you on the edge of your seat—and perhaps questioning your spouse a bit more than usual. See what else this week brings in the way of books:

Never Let You Go by Chevy Stevens

Eleven years ago, Lindsey Nash escaped into the night with her young daughter and left an abusive relationship. Her ex-husband, Andrew, was sent to jail and Lindsey started over with a new life.

Now, Lindsey is older and wiser, with her own business and a teenage daughter who needs her more than ever. When Andrew is finally released from prison, Lindsey believes she has cut all ties and left the past behind her. But she gets the sense that someone is watching her, tracking her every move. Her new boyfriend is threatened. Her home is invaded, and her daughter is shadowed. Lindsey is convinced it’s her ex-husband, even though he claims he’s a different person. But has he really changed? Is the one who wants her dead closer to home than she thought?

Read an excerpt from Never Let You Go!

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Testament by David Gibbins

586 BC 
The ancient world is in meltdown. In desperation the priests of the Temple look to the greatest navigators ever known to save their treasures. On a far distant shore, after a voyage more astonishing than any ever undertaken before, a Phoenician named Hanno flees for his life from a terrifying enemy, the place the prophets called the Chariot of the Gods…

1943 
In the darkest days of the Second World War, Allied codebreakers play a game of life and death. For some, the stakes are even higher, a top-secret exchange of deadly materials between the Nazis and the Japanese that must be stopped at all costs. Yet even they know nothing of the ancient artifact hidden on board a ship whose fate they have just sealed…

Present-day 
Marine archaeologist Jack Howard and his friend Costas undertake one of the most perilous dives of their lives, hunting for Nazi gold. What they glimpse there, before a cataclysm that nearly destroys them, sets Jack on one of the most extraordinary trails he has ever followed―to a Phoenician shipwreck off England, to a WWII codebreaker with an amazing story to tell, to the ruins of ancient Carthage. He pieces together the truth of one of the greatest ancient voyages of discovery, one whose true purpose he could scarcely have imagined.

Read an excerpt from Testament!

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The Cutthroat by Clive Cussler

The year is 1911. Chief Investigator Isaac Bell of the Van Dorn Detective Agency has had many extraordinary cases before. But none quite like this.

Hired to find a young woman named Anna Pape who ran away from home to become an actress, Bell gets a shock when her murdered body turns up instead. Vowing to bring the killer to justice, he begins a manhunt which leads him into increasingly more alarming territory. Anna Pape was not alone in her fate—petite young blond women like Anna are being murdered in cities across America.

And the pattern goes beyond the physical resemblance of the victims—there are disturbing familiarities about the killings themselves that send a chill through even a man as experienced with evil as Bell. If he is right about his fears, then he is on the trail of one of the greatest monsters of his time.

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The Loving Husband by Christobel Kent

“Be careful, Fran,” the man said quietly. “About what you think you know.”

In a dilapidated farmhouse out in the vast waterlogged plains of the English Fenlands, Fran awakes groggily to her baby’s cries one February night and finds the bed empty beside her. Her husband, Nathan, is gone.

Moving uneasily through the drafty rooms, searching for her husband, Fran soon makes a devastating discovery that upends her marriage and any semblance of safety. As she tries desperately to make sense of what happened to Nathan, Fran is forced to delve dangerously into the undercurrents of his claustrophobic hometown and question how well she knew him in the first place. Fran, increasingly isolated, grows paranoid―but Nathan isn’t the only one hiding something. Though she can’t tell a soul, Fran is shielding a damning secret of her own: a hazy, dreamlike memory from the night of Nathan’s disappearance that might be the key to it all.

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A Death by Any Other Name by Tessa Arlen

The elegant Lady Montfort and her redoubtable housekeeper, Mrs. Jackson, investigate a murder among a group of amateur rose-breeders while the idyllic English summer days count down to the start of WW1.
When Mrs. Jackson receives a visit from a cook who believes she was an indirect witness to murder from a poisoned dish of breakfast kedgeree Lady Montfort promises to do what she can to clear the cook's name, and contrives an invitation to Hyde Castle, the home of a self-made millionaire, to investigate a murder of concealed passions and secret desires. With the help of the invaluable Jackson Lady Montfort sets about solving the puzzle surrounding the death of the rose society's most popular member and discovers a villain of audacious cunning among a group of mild-mannered, amateur rose-breeders.

While they investigate, the headlines bring news of the continuing conflict in Prussia following the assassination of the heir to the Austrian empire. As each day brings more threatening news and the very real fear that Britain will be drawn into war Lady Montfort and Mrs. Jackson must race the clock to solve the mystery before Britain declares on Germany.

Read an excerpt from A Death by Any Other Name!

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