5 New Books to Read this Week: October 17, 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, a new John Sandford and Faye Kellerman highlight a fantastic week of books! See what else we're reading:

Deep Freeze by John Sandford

Virgil knows the town of Trippton, Minnesota, a little too well. A few years back, he investigated the corrupt—and as it turned out, homicidal—local school board, and now the town’s back in view with more alarming news: A woman’s been found dead, frozen in a block of ice. There’s a possibility that it might be connected to a high school class of twenty years ago that has a mid-winter reunion coming up, and so, wrapping his coat a little tighter, Virgil begins to dig into twenty years’ worth of traumas, feuds, and bad blood. In the process, one thing becomes increasingly clear to him. It’s true what they say: High school is murder.

Read Doreen Sheridan's review of  Deep Freeze!

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The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine

Amber Patterson is fed up. She’s tired of being a nobody: a plain, invisible woman who blends into the background. She deserves more—a life of money and power like the one blond-haired, blue-eyed goddess Daphne Parrish takes for granted.

To everyone in the exclusive town of Bishops Harbor, Connecticut, Daphne—a socialite and philanthropist—and her real-estate mogul husband, Jackson, are a couple straight out of a fairy tale.

Amber’s envy could eat her alive … if she didn't have a plan. Amber uses Daphne’s compassion and caring to insinuate herself into the family’s life—the first step in a meticulous scheme to undermine her. Before long, Amber is Daphne’s closest confidante, traveling to Europe with the Parrishes and their lovely young daughters, and growing closer to Jackson. But a skeleton from her past may undermine everything that Amber has worked towards, and if it is discovered, her well-laid plan may fall to pieces. 

Read Kristin Centorcelli's review of The Last Mrs. Parrish!

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Righteous by Joe Ide

For ten years, something has gnawed at Isaiah Quintabe's gut and kept him up nights, boiling with anger and thoughts of revenge. Ten years ago, when Isaiah was just a boy, his brother was killed by an unknown assailant. The search for the killer sent Isaiah plunging into despair and nearly destroyed his life. Even with a flourishing career, a new dog, and near-iconic status as a PI in his hometown, East Long Beach, he has to begin the hunt again-or lose his mind.

A case takes him and his volatile, dubious sidekick, Dodson, to Vegas, where Chinese gangsters and a terrifying seven-foot loan shark are stalking a DJ and her screwball boyfriend. If Isaiah doesn't find the two first, they'll be murdered. Awaiting the outcome is the love of IQ's life: fail, and he'll lose her. Isaiah's quest is fraught with treachery, menace, and startling twists, and it will lead him to the mastermind behind his brother's death, Isaiah's own sinister Moriarty.

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Killing Season by Faye Kellerman

He went searching for the truth. Now a killer has found him.

The more you know, the more there is to fear…

Four years ago, fifteen-year-old Ellen Vicksburg went missing in the quiet town of River Remez, New Mexico. Ellen was kind, studious, and universally liked. Her younger brother, Ben, could imagine nothing worse than never knowing what happened to her—until, on the first anniversary of her death, he found her body in a shallow grave by the river’s edge.

Ben, now sixteen, is committed to finding the monster who abducted and strangled Ellen. Police believe she was the victim of a psychopath known as the Demon. But Ben—a math geek too smart for his high-school classes—continues to pore over the evidence at the local police precinct, gaining an unlikely ally in his school’s popular new girl, Ro Majors. In his sister’s files, Ben’s analytical mind sees patterns that don’t fit, tiny threads that he adds to the clues from other similar unsolved murders. As the body count rises, a picture emerges of an adversary who is as cunning and methodical as he is twisted.

At first, the police view Ben’s investigation with suspicion. Soon his obsession will mark him as a threat. But uncovering the truth may not be enough to keep Ben and those he loves safe from a relentless killer who has nothing left to lose.

Read John Valeri's review of Killing Season!

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Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead: Return to Woodbury by Jay Bonansinga

To risk everything…

She has weathered over four years of the apocalypse. She has done things that she would not have dreamt of doing in her darkest nightmares. But she has survived. And now, she has staked a claim in the plague-ravaged city of Atlanta. It is a safe haven for her people, rising high above the walker-ridden streets, a place of warmth and comfort.

But for Lilly Caul, something is missing…

She still dreams of her former home—the quaint little village known as Woodbury—a place of heartache as well as hope. For Lilly, Woodbury, Georgia, has become a symbol of the future, of family, of a return to normal life amidst this hell on earth. The call is so powerful that Lilly decides to risk everything in order to go back… to reclaim that little oasis in the wilderness.

Against all odds, against the wishes of her people, Lilly leads a ragtag group of true believers back across the impossible landscape of walker swarms, flooded rivers, psychotic bands of murderers, and dangers the likes of which she has never known. Along the way, she discovers a disturbing truth about herself. She is willing to go to the darkest place in order to survive, in order to save her people, in order to do the one thing she knows she has to do: return to Woodbury.

Read an excerpt from Return to Woodbury!

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