Meg's Picks: May 2017, part 1

It should be no surprise that with summer on the horizon, the deluge of great books is beginning in earnest. Here are a few I've held back, saving (some of) the best for last.

Into the Water, by Paula Hawkins. Hawkins's 2015 debut, The Girl on the Train, was an international bestseller and spawned a popular film adaptation starring Emily Blunt in 2016. So it seems natural that fans of psychological suspense fiction would be interested in her followup novel, due out next week. When two different women are lost to the depths of the river that runs through town, both events occurring just months apart, it stirs up the town's dark history--these two women were not the first, and likely will not be the last, to suffer this watery fate. However, one of the women has left behind a daughter, fifteen and friendless, left to be raised by an aunt who ran away decades earlier and is loathe to return. Fans of Megan Miranda, Ruth Ware, Gillian Flynn, or Hawkins's debut should absolutely check this out. Also available in Large Print.

The Boy on the Bridge, by M.R. Carey. I'm a bit of a fan when it comes to Carey's unusual novels--I adored The Girl With All The Gifts, and am currently reading Fellside. His insight into human nature is both haunting and heartbreaking, and I'm fairly certain this new outing will have that same beautiful tension. Here, in a world where monsters live beyond the gates, a town comes to the consensus that they must send out their best, most clever citizen in order to be saved. But that clever citizen is a seven-year-old boy. If you're like me and into psychological thrillers just off the beaten track, I highly recommend Carey's work.

Less Than a Treason, by Dana Stabenow. After a long hiatus, Stabenow is gracing readers with a new Kate Shugak mystery, twenty-first in the series, and the first Kate Shugak novel since 2013's Bad Blood. If you're new to the series and would like to read it from the beginning, start with A Cold Day for Murder. Kate Shugak is a native Aleut working as a private investigator in Alaska. She's 5'1" tall, carrires a scar that runs from ear to ear across her throat, and owns a half-wolf, half-husky dog named Mutt. Resourceful, strong-willed, defiant, Kate is tougher than your average heroine—and she needs to be, to survive the worst the Alaskan wilds can throw at her. And throw their worst the wilds have: Kate and Mutt have both been shot. Mystery readers who like some adventure in their mysteries should absolutely try out Stabenow's series.

Party Girls Die in Pearls, by Plum Sykes. Chick-lit author Sykes (Bergdorf Blondes, The Debutante Divorcee) tries her hand at a mystery, just in time for summer. Set at Oxford University during the decadent 1980's, where Pimm's, punting and ball gowns are de riguer, the debut stars studious country girl Ursula Flowerbutton, who arrives for her first term anticipating nothing more sinister than days spent studying old books in cavernous libraries. But when she discovers a glamorous classmate on a chaise longue with her throat cut, Ursula is catapulted into a murder investigation. Billed as Clueless meets Agatha Christie, and sure to be a ton of fun.