Reading Ahead: August 2015, part 1

Need a chilling suspense read to beat the heat? Reserve your copy now to get through the dog days come August!

Deadly Assets, by W.E.B. Griffin. Griffin returns with an eerily timely new installment of his bestselling Philadelphia police saga, which finds the city--suffering among the country’s highest murder rates--locked in rising tension between the Philadelphia Police Department and its Citizens Oversight Committee. That turmoil turns from bad to worse shortly after the committee begins targeting police shootings—especially those of twenty-seven-year-old Homicide Sergeant Matt Payne, the “Wyatt Earp of the Main Line”—and then the committee’s combative leader is found shot dead point-blank on the front porch of his run-down Philly row house, sending an already tenuous situation to the boiling point. Fans looking for a gripping read need look no further.

Alert, by James Patterson & Michael Ledwidge. New Yorkers aren't easily intimidated, but someone is doing their best to scare them, badly: why? After two inexplicable high-tech attacks, the city that never sleeps is on edge. Detective Michael Bennett, along with his old pal, the FBI's Emily Parker, have to catch the shadowy criminals who claim responsibility--but they're as good at concealing their identities as they are at wreaking havoc. In the wake of a shocking assassination, Bennett begins to suspect that these mysterious events are just the prelude to the biggest threat of all. Soon he's racing against the clock, and against the most destructive enemy he's faced yet, to save his beloved city--before everyone's worst nightmare becomes a reality.

Trap, by Robert K. Tannenbaum. When a tremendous blast rocks an old school building in East Harlem during a meeting of the New York Charter Schools, killing six and wounding a dozen others, it’s initially blamed on a natural gas explosion. However, as Butch Karp digs a little deeper, he discovers the explosion was the work of a mysterious serial arsonist in the employ of the teacher’s union president, who is angry at the unqualified successes of the charter school movement in New York City and worried for the corrupt public school system. Also involved in the planning and cover-up is a major law enforcement player and a political hack who panders to the union for financial support and gets caught up in the homicidal scheme.
At least that’s the conclusion Butch Karp is operating under when he indicts the pair for murder. But is it a trap?

The Murderer’s Daughter, by Jonathan Kellerman. Kellerman has been called the master of the psychological thriller (People) and has the bestselling Alex Delaware series behind him to prove it. Now he presents readers with a stand-alone novel featuring Grace Blades, brilliant, deeply dedicated psychologist who has a gift for treating troubled souls and tormented psyches—perhaps because she bears her own invisible scars: Only five years old when she witnessed her parents’ deaths in a bloody murder-suicide, Grace took refuge in her fierce intellect and found comfort in the loving couple who adopted her. But even as an adult with an accomplished professional life, Grace still has a dark, secret side. When her two worlds shockingly converge, Grace’s harrowing past returns with a vengeance.