Summer Reading Series, Part 2: Suspense & Thrillers!

As promised, the Summer Reading Series continues with a different kind of beach read entirely—the thriller.  For those of us who are desperately missing our favorite crime-genre TV shows during the summer doldrums (CSI, Bones, Law & Order…  Can’t be just me, right?), and are sick of reruns, sometimes a summer spent enjoying books in the same genre is just what you need to get you through.  Here are some of my favorites to get you started.

Shadow Man, by Cody McFadyen.  This is the start of McFadyen’s series featuring FBI agent Smoky Barrett.  As main characters go, Smoky is among the more complicated and haunted.  After personal tragedies and an attempt on her life, Smoky is resilient, stubborn and loyal, but also vulnerable and flawed.  Along with her team of agents, both amusing and sinister, Smoky spends this first book (of four, as of summer 2011) in pursuit of madman Jack Jr., who believes himself to be a direct descendant of Jack the Ripper, and sends proof of his violent deeds as a taunt to Smoky’s team.  Extremely fast-paced, creepy as all get out, you’ll be rooting for Smoky and her team all the way.  Like it?  Continue the series with the second book, The Face of Death.

Never Knowing, by Chevy Stevens.  Stevens is a newer author, and Never Knowing is only her second novel, but she has already made a major mark with readers as an author who can grip a reader from the first sentence, and who won’t let go, even after the last page.  In Never Knowing, Sarah has always wondered about her birth parents.  As an adult, she finds her birth mother after months of research, only to be met with disappointment and horror; her birth mother was the only victim to escape a serial killer who has been hunting women every summer for decades.  And what’s worse than knowing about her father…is that now he knows about Sarah.  Guaranteed to give you goosebumps on the hottest summer day.  Like it?  Try Stevens’s first novel, Still Missing.

And finally, one of my favorite suspense authors, Lisa Gardner.  Start with Alone, in which we meet Massachusetts police sniper Bobby Dodge.  Twenty five years after suffering abduction and captivity by a madman, Catherine Gagnon is now fighting to keep her son, Nathan.  On a cold November evening, Bobby Dodge shoots Catherine’s husband, Jimmy, after Catherine’s 911 call that Jimmy was attempting to harm Nathan.  Doubts arise quickly after the shooting.  Did Catherine engineer her husband’s death?  Did Bobby fall under her spell?  The plot twists and turns, and will leave readers guessing to the very end.  Like it?  Follow up with the second novel following Bobby Dodge, Hide.

Next up in our Summer Reading Series: Movie Tie-Ins from the Summer Blockbusters.  Great for movie buffs and book-lovers alike!