Coming Soon -- Summer Thrills

Thrillers make big reading in the summer. Mark your calendars for these titles -- all released between June and August for your summer reading pleasure.

Some of the usual suspects—the big name authors whose names consistently top the best seller lists—are ready to go with new summer releases. James Patterson has two new thrillers this summer Second Honeymoon (M) (June) and Mistress (M) (August). Second Honeymoon is the follow-up to 2005's Honeymoon and Mistress is a new standalone.

For fans of spy thrillers, there is a new Gabriel Allon book due in July. English Girl (M) by Daniel Silva is sure to excite fans of the series. Catherine Coulter also has a new title in July, Bombshell (M) continues the Savich and Sherlock series. Another consistently big name, Brad Thor, releases his latest political thriller Hidden Order (M) in July as well.

Last summer was marked by the breakout success of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl—the third novel by an author who'd previously had moderate success but nothing like Gone Girl. Who is this summer's Flynn? Maybe it's one of these authors:

Always Watching (M)
by Chevy Stevens (June 18)

Canadian author Stevens returns with a new psychological thriller that will keep you up long summer nights. "Psychiatrist Nadine Lavoie has a true desire to help people put their demons at rest. But she has demons of her own—some she can barely think about and some she can't even remember. When a new patient, Heather Simeon, is brought to the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit after a suicide attempt, Nadine is assigned to work with her. As Nadine gently coaxes the story out of Heather, she learns of some troubling parallels to their lives"

Curiosity (M)
by Stephen Kiernan (July 9)

"The Time Traveler’s Wife meets Michael Crichton in a powerful debut novel about a man frozen in ice for more than a century, who reawakens in the present day...When Dr. Kate Philo and her exploration team discover what appears to be a seal frozen in an Arctic iceberg, they believe they have made a momentous breakthrough in their research. Kate is part of the Lazarus Project, run by the egocentric genius Erastus Carthage. To date they have brought small creatures like plankton and shrimp “back to life”—for one tenth of a creature’s natural lifespan. As the underwater excavation begins, Kate and her team realize it is not a seal they have found, but a man."

The Fire Witness (M)
by Lars Kepler (July 9)

The third volume in the Swedish set series featuring Detective Inspector Joona Linna. " Detective Inspector Joona Linna, under internal review by the National Police for an alleged infraction, is on leave to solve some troubling personal business when he is called in to "observe" the investigation of a gruesome and strange murder at Birgittagarden, a youth home for wayward teenage girls. But it's not long before Linna is drawn deeply into the intricate, disturbing case." For those unfamiliar with the series start with The Hypnotist, already in the library collection.

Plan D (M)
by Simon Urban (July 15)

"A modern-day Cold War thriller: Robert Harris's Fatherland meets John le Carré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Imagine a world in which the Berlin Wall never fell... October 2011. While West Berlin enjoys all the trappings of capitalism, on the crowded, polluted, Eastern side of the city, the GDR is facing bankruptcy. The ailing government's only hope lies in economic talks with the West, but then an ally of the GDR's chairman is found murdered -- and all the clues suggest that his killer came from within the Stasi."

The Never List (M)
by Koethi Zan (July 16)

Described as ideal for fans of Karin Slaughter and Laura Lippman, this one seems a bit too dark for my taste, but maybe it's just what you're looking for!? "For years, best friends Sarah and Jennifer kept what they called the "Never List": a list of actions to be avoided, for safety's sake, at all costs. But one night they accept a cab ride with grave, everlasting consequences. For the next three years, they are held captive with two other girls in a dungeon-like cellar by a connoisseur of sadism. Ten years later, Sarah is still struggling to resume a normal life, unable to come to grips with the fact that Jennifer didn't make it out of that cellar. Now, her abductor is up for parole and Sarah can no longer ignore the twisted letters he sends from jail."

Blood of the Lamb (M)
by Sam Cabot (August 6)

A supernatural thriller with threads of the Da Vinci Code, if you've finished all your Dan Brown by August you may be ready for this one. "In Rome...rival groups are searching for a document that holds a secret that could shatter the Catholic Church. While in Rome, American Jesuit priest Thomas Kelly is called upon to reclaim a centuries-old document that was stolen from the Vatican. An enigmatic letter guides him to the work of a 19th-century poet, in which Thomas discovers cryptic messages that might lead to the missing manuscript."