Thriller. After a fellow diner leaves a file folder on a nearby table in a London restaurant, visiting climatologist Adam Kindred picks it up and uses the stranger's business card to locate his home with the intent of returning it. But when Adam gets there, he finds the man dying of a knife wound, and, with the killer still in the ransacked apartment, he flees. Wanted for the murder by police and pursued by an assassin hired to clean up loose ends, Adam takes to London's vast underground to hide. But what exactly is in the folder that's worth killing over? As days, then weeks, then months go by, the resourceful Adam comes to the conclusion that it may contain his last and best chance to regain all he's lost.

Suspense Fiction. Despite having inherited untold wealth, Key Largo beach bum/loner Thorn is still a semi-hermit, only now he's got millions of dollars to put towards preserving Florida's land. But a huge deal that would protect not only land from development but animals from being hunted goes sour when one man is killed and Thorn is kidnapped and tossed in a sinkhole by contract killers who smell big money. The 11th novel to star Thorn, Silencer has a little more character development and a little less action than most books in the series (Thorn's in a hole, after all). While you needn't read them all in order, the 1st, Under Cover of Daylight, explains Thorn's choices to live off the grid.

Crime Fiction. Charlie Huston's latest is set in the near future, a grim place in which an epidemic of fatal insomnia is sweeping the world. There's no cure, but a hard-to-come-by drug to ease the symptoms is available; meanwhile, the global economy is collapsing, lawlessness is rampant, and strung-out insomniacs with hours to fill pass their time in an online doomsday game that grows increasingly powerful. Los Angeles cop Parker Haas--whose wife suffers from the disease--hears of a black market source for the drug, but in hunting down the source finds much more than he bargained for. If you're looking for a dark, post-apocalyptic read along the lines of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, don't miss this noirish gem.

Spy Fiction. It's 1942. As if Germany's relentless bombing of the strategically located Mediterranean island of Malta weren't enough, at least one young woman has been murdered, and fingers are beginning to point towards the British servicemen stationed on the island. RAF morale and information officer Max Chadwick--charged with keeping spirits high and with spinning war news to the local press--now has an additional responsibility: trying to decide how much to reveal to the press when suspicions fall on one British submariner. Check The Information Officer out for a "vivid portrait of...a principled man trying to resolve the conflict between duty and justice" (Publishers Weekly).

Political Thriller. Former British spy Kate Lockhart has created a successful career for herself as a high-powered lawyer in New York, but she returns to Britain when her estranged lover, David Eyam, is killed in a terrorist bombing. Surprised to discover that she is his main beneficiary, Kate's suspicions are roused by what she uncovers in going through the estate. It appears that David was trying to expose a plot to misuse a massive surveillance system. Since England is already host to a plethora of CCTV cameras, and not everyone agrees with the reach of the Patriot Act in the U.S., this chilling tale of the destruction of privacy hits close to home (it was originally published in England under the title The Dying Light).

Crime Fiction. In this intensely violent, complex, and highly praised thriller, there are no real "good guys." There are, however, plenty of bad guys and plenty of bad choices. Set in a gritty Cape Town, South Africa, the book starts off with a carjacking that ends in murder. In the car is a suitcase full of cash that more than one person is eager to get their hands on, including a mercenary just returned from Iraq. Add in a psychopathic killer, a pair of vicious thugs, a cop named Ernie Maggot, and the tangled web that ties them all together, and you've got a book you won't be able to put down. Fans of writers like Elmore Leonard or Dennis Lehane--or Deon Meyer's similarly Africa-set books--will appreciate Wake Up Dead.

Psychological Suspense. Out on the town for a little fun, 18-year-old hoodlum Andreas starts by mugging a young mother (with horrible consequences), then moves on to the home of a 60-ish saleslady. But although Andreas confidently enters the house alone, he doesn't come out. When he doesn't show up the next day either, his mother alerts the police. Meanwhile, Andreas is alive but incapacitated, and his "victim" is much more complicated than Andreas could have suspected. Switching perspectives ratchets up the suspense, and although this book is the 3rd in a mystery series featuring Inspector Konrad Sejer, it has far more in common with Stephen King's Misery and the psychological suspense of Minette Walters or Barbara Vine.

Psychological Suspense. Moments after discovering that her doctor husband has been having an affair, a woman driving along a winding country lane fails to see a cyclist and strikes her, killing her instantly. She then drives away. Overwhelmed by guilt, the driver begins to haunt her victim's husband; he has started to write letters to his dead wife, Ruth, and his grasp on reality deteriorates the more he writes. Between these letters, the narrator's own startling musings, and a novel Ruth had been writing, readers will see the stories of two marriages unfold, while the narrator herself must come to terms with her life, what's she done, and what she intends to do about it.

Psychological Suspense. Seven years ago, 11-year-old friends Alice and Ronnie "rescued" an unattended baby, and something terrible happened. The two girls are now out of juvenile detention and living at their homes, just a few blocks from where the baby lived. But a toddler has disappeared, and suspicion naturally falls on the newly released teenagers, whose names have been leaked to the press. From the beginning, it's unclear who deserves the greater share of guilt for what happened seven years before, and author Laura Lippman utilizes changing perspectives as she draws deft portraits of the tension and emotion involved in both the old case and the new.

Psychological Suspense. From the time she was a child, Clodagh Brown has found freedom in climbing--first trees, then steeples and electrical pylons, and then, as a young woman, the rooftops of London. Scarred by trauma, she befriends a group of equally alienated youths, and from her vantage point on the rooftops she witnesses not only people's intimate lives and secrets but their propensity for jealousy and evil as well. "Master of suspense" (Publishers Weekly) Barbara Vine is the pseudonym of crime writer Ruth Rendell; for one of hers, try The Water's Lovely.

Psychological Suspense. Talented war journalist Connie Burns is used to dealing with the stresses inherent in terrorism. But when her efforts to find out more about a man she suspects of multiple sadistic murders leads to her abduction in Iraq (and subsequent release), she hides away in a remote English house. Her fear and panic attacks cut her off from everyone but her parents and her reclusive neighbor, whose past she delves into as she waits, knowing her abductor will return. The Devil's Feather is an intense, harrowing read--you'll definitely be sleeping with the lights on after reading this one.