by Karin Fossum (2010)
A chilling tale about the danger of good intentions - from the acclaimed author of the Inspector Sejer seriesA woman wakes one night to find that a strange man has walked into her bedroom. She lies there in terrified silence unable to move. The woman is an author and the man one of her prospective characters. So desperate is he to have his story told that he has resorted to breaking in to her house to make her tell it.She creates Alvar Eide, forty-two years old, single, who works in an art gallery. He lives a quiet, dutiful life, carefully designed to avoid surprise. One winter's day all this begins to change, when an emaciated young heroin addict walks into the gallery. A kind man, Alvar gives her a cup of coffee to warm her up. She returns some weeks later to his place of work, and then one day appears on his doorstep demanding to be let in.Interspersed with the chapters of Alvar's story are his encounters with its author - the frantic attempts of a fictional man trying to control his own destiny. Broken is a gripping novel about the boundary between fact and fiction from the renowned author of the Inspector Sejer mysteries.
Rick Harsch
"This final volume of Rick Harsch's Driftless trilogy opens with a dead man floating face down in a municipal swimming pool, a bullet in his head, his hat and narrative still in place. The victim is a writer named Rick Harsh. Spleen, a newspaperman, twin brother of the hero of The Driftless Zone and a friend of the dead writer, arrives on the scene determined to solve the murder."--Page 4 of cover.
Arthur Reid
Aspiring writer Steven experiences an unexpected stroke of luck that launches him into the ranks of best-selling authors before a dark secret threatens both his career and his family.
Susan Choi
From an acclaimed novelist, an emotionally complex and riveting story of suspicion, innocence, and regretWhen a mail bomb explodes in the campus office next door, Lee, an Asian American math professor at a second-tier university in the Midwest, comes under suspicion. The authorities believe he may be the infamous "brain bomber," an elusive terrorist whose primary targets are prominent scientists and mathematicians.In the midst of campus tumult and grief over the star computer scientist who was killed by the bomb, Lee receives a disturbing letter from a figure in his past. Certain he is being targeted for revenge, he begins confronting key events in his life. Misunderstood by the people around him, Lee is not conscious that his behavior has begun to heighten suspicion in the minds of his colleagues, students, and neighbors, leading the FBI to designate him "a person of interest" and pushing his life and reputation to the verge of ruin.Intricately plotted and engrossing, A Person of Interest asks how far one man can run from his past, and explores the impact of scrutiny and suspicion in an age of terror. With its propulsive drive and vividly realized characters, Susan Choi's latest novel is as thrilling as it is lyrical, and confirms her place as one of the most important young novelists chronicling the American experience.
Kathleen Kaska
In 1952, reporter Sydney Lockhart checks into the historic Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs Arkansas and discovers the murdered body of the hotel's bookkeeper. Sydney becomes a suspect and is determined to clear her name and prove herself a reporter deserving more than just travel assignments. She soon becomes embroiled in the underworld of gangsters and gamblers and in the fight for the truth.