Reading Ahead: August 2019, part 1

Various flavors of suspense are on the menu for next month. Which will be your favorite?


The Last Widow, by Karin Slaughter. Readers haven't seen GBI special agent Will Trent since 2016's The Kept Woman, but the wait is finally over. Here he and Sara Linton, GBI medical examiner and Will's fiancee, must do battle with a group of radical homegrown terrorists bent on wreaking catastrophe on the state's capitol...just for starters. Slaughter is one of my favorites--this new title cannot get here quickly enough!

Outfox, by Sandra Brown. FBI special agent Drex Easton, hero of 2018 bestseller Tailspin, returns on the trail of a serial killer who has been preying on wealthy single women for decades. The quarry is cunning, leaving no clues, just a string of missing women and emptied bank accounts. He follows a lead and goes undercover, only to find himself falling for the suspected killer's next victim. If you like your suspense with a healthy dose of heat, Brown has you covered.

A Dangerous Man, by Robert Crais. Crais's latest picks up with investigators Elvis Cole and Joe Pike, following 2017's The Wanted. Pike rescues a young bank teller from two abductors, and then things get complicated. The abductors wind up dead, the teller vanishes, and Elvis does some digging to try and find out why the woman was targeted in the first place. Then things start to get really interesting...

The Turn of the Key, by Ruth Ware. Ware has a beautiful touch when it comes to modern gothic, and this updated retelling of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw is the perfect combination of classic elements and modern creepiness. Rowan Caine describes, in a series of letters to a lawyer from where she sits in prison, how she took a nanny position with the Elincourts because it solved both her job and living situation woes in one easy step. But the well-behaved girls were less so once their parents left, and the house's smart control system was no longer working as intended. High on the creeping dread factor, this is guaranteed to keep you up past your bedtime.