This week many highly anticipated books are being released! Sandra Brown and Stuart Woods fans are rewarded with new novels by both! It is well into back to school season and the weather, at least in Canada, is getting colder again. Time to curl up with a good book on a rainy night and get back into the swing of things since summer is officially over.
Reamde by Neal Stephenson – Release Date: Sept 20th, 2011
Neal Stephenson is quite rightly known as a writer of ideas, but don’t put it past him to pen a straightforward thriller. True, the plot of said thriller hinges on a massively multiplayer online game that’s a step beyond what’s actually available on the Internet circa 2011, but that’s as far as the sci-fi goes. Enter “REAMDE,” an online virus that brings together a super-rich CEO, a Chinese hacker, a rogue Russian mafioso, an assimilated East African beauty, an itinerant Hungarian software programmer, two insanely prolific fantasy writers, and guns, guns, guns. (The book features so much firepower that Stephenson enlisted what he calls a “ballistics copy editor.”) It takes a veritable master of pacing to make a thousand pages feel like barely a third of that, but Stephenson is that master; his breakneck narrative starts fast and never, ever lets up. As such, Reamde is as likely to turn off fans of his more cerebral fiction as it is to gain him scads of new devotees. Regardless, it marks an inimitable highlight of this year’s thriller roster
Son of Stone by Stuart Woods – Release Date: Sept 20th, 2011
A new addition to the New York Times-bestselling Stone Barrington series.
After an eventful trip to Bel-Air and a reunion with his sophisticated (and very wealthy) former love, Arrington Calder, Stone Barrington is back in New York, and he’s looking to stay closer to home and cash in on his partnership at Woodman & Weld.
But Arrington has other plans for Stone…including introducing him to the child he fathered many years ago.
Daniel X: Game Over by James Patterson and Ned Rust – Released Sept 20th 2011
When Daniel X discovers that a duo of evil extraterrestrials is plotting to control kids around the world through videogames, he’s determined to take them both out of commission. This pair of wicked game masters wants to destroy the human race by turning brainwashed videogamers into an unstoppable army of doom! They’re also running an endangered species hunting club on the side, and their next target is none other than Daniel. He’ll have no choice but to turn to the aliens’ rebellious son who needs help to stand up to his malicious parents. But can Daniel trust the progeny of this treacherous twosome? Or will it be “Game Over” for the alien hunter?
Lethal by Sandra Brown – Release Date: September 25th 2011
When her four year old daughter informs her a sick man is in their yard, Honor Gillette rushes out to help him. But that “sick” man turns out to be Lee Coburn, the man accused of murdering seven people the night before. Dangerous, desperate, and armed, he promises Honor that she and her daughter won’t be hurt as long as she does everything he asks. She has no choice but to accept him at his word.
But Honor soon discovers that even those close to her can’t be trusted. Coburn claims that her beloved late husband possessed something extremely valuable that places Honor and her daughter in grave danger. Coburn is there to retrieve it — at any cost. From FBI offices in Washington, D.C., to a rundown shrimp boat in coastal Louisiana, Coburn and Honor run for their lives from the very people sworn to protect them, and unravel a web of corruption and depravity that threatens not only them, but the fabric of our society
Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks by Ken Jennings
It comes as no surprise that, as a kid, Jeopardy! legend Ken Jennings slept with a bulky Hammond world atlas by his pillow every night. Maphead recounts his lifelong love affair with geography and explores why maps have always been so fascinating to him and to fellow enthusiasts everywhere.Jennings takes readers on a world tour of geogeeks from the London Map Fair to the bowels of the Library of Congress, from the prepubescent geniuses at the National Geographic Bee to the computer programmers at Google Earth. Each chapter delves into a different aspect of map culture: highpointing, geocaching, road atlas rallying, even the “unreal estate” charted on the maps of fiction and fantasy. He also considers the ways in which cartography has shaped our history, suggesting that the impulse to make and read maps is as relevant today as it has ever been. From the “Here be dragons” parchment maps of the Age of Discovery to the spinning globes of grade school to the postmodern revolution of digital maps and GPS, Maphead is filled with intriguing details, engaging anecdotes, and enlightening analysis. If you’re an inveterate map lover yourself—or even if you’re among the cartographically clueless who can get lost in a supermarket—let Ken Jennings be your guide to the strange world of mapheads.
The Affair: A Reacher Novel – Lee Child – Release Date: Sept 27th, 2011
Everything starts somewhere. . . For elite military cop Jack Reacher, that somewhere was Carter Crossing, Mississippi, way back in 1997. A lonely railroad track. A crime scene. A coverup.
A young woman is dead, and solid evidence points to a soldier at a nearby military base. But that soldier has powerful friends in Washington.
Reacher is ordered undercover—to find out everything he can, to control the local police, and then to vanish. Reacher is a good soldier. But when he gets to Carter Crossing, he finds layers no one saw coming, and the investigation spins out of control.
Local sheriff Elizabeth Deveraux has a thirst for justice—and an appetite for secrets. Uncertain they can trust one another, Reacher and Deveraux reluctantly join forces. Reacher works to uncover the truth, while others try to bury it forever. The conspiracy threatens to shatter his faith in his mission, and turn him into a man to be feared.
A novel of unrelenting suspense that could only come from the pen of #1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Child, The Affair is the start of the Reacher saga, a thriller that takes Reacher—and his readers—right to the edge . . . and beyond.
Feast Day of Fools by James Lee Burke – Release Date: Sept 27th, 2011
ames Lee Burke’s impressive body of work spans five decades and includes two Edgar Award-winning mysteries–yet his 30th book, Feast Day for Fools, may arguably be his best effort to date. In this sequel to his 2009 novel, Rain Gods, Burke returns to the hard-scrabble Texas town on the Mexican border, and its contemplative sheriff Hackberry Holland. Holland is a quintessential Burke hero—deeply moral, tortured by past sins, appalled at the depravity of our fallen world, and firmly committed to justice. Feast Day for Fools opens with a horrific murder in the desert. One man is tortured and dismembered by a menacing psychopath named Krill. Another man, a government agent whom Krill kidnapped and planned to sell to Al Qaeda, escapes into the night. In its aftermath, Holland encounters a vibrant cast of characters—including Anton Ling, an enigmatic woman whose home is a place of refuge to desperate immigrants, and the riveting Preacher Jack Collins, a terrifying serial killer, who had seemingly died at the end of Rain Gods. Packed with lush imagery and allegorical heft, Feast Day for Fools is a tightly wound thriller that reconfirms James Lee Burke’s status as a master storyteller.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
