C.C. is living the urban dream—but where is the great guy she always thought she'd meet? C.C. is nearly 40, and apart from her real name—which she hates with a passion usually reserved for men with beards—everything in her life seems wonderful. She has a high-powered job in advertising, a beautiful apartment in Primrose Hill, and a wild bunch of gay friends to spend the weekends with. And yet she feels like the Titanic—slowly, inexorably, and against all expectation, sinking. The truth is, C.C. would rather be digging turnips on a remote farm than convincing the masses to buy a life-changing pair of double-zippered jeans, would rather be snuggling at home with the Missing Boyfriend than playing star fag-hag in London's latest coke-spots. But sightings of straight men that don't have weird fetishes or secret wives are rarer than an original metaphor, and C.C. fears that pursuing the Good Life alone will just leave her feeling even more isolated. Could her best friend's pop-psychology be right—are the horrors of C.C.'s past preventing her from moving on? And if C.C. finally does confront her demons, will she find the Missing Boyfriend, or is it already too late?
Accessible, warm and witty, Barbara Else's fifth novel is her most effervescent. Suzie, a thirty-seven-year-old single mother, is the youngest of three sisters and a stubborn misfit. While Lara is now going for a top job in the Ministry of Customs and Philippa runs the charity organisation 'Suite Three', Suzie is an on-call chef with a bank account at zero, has a fifteen-year-old son in trouble at school and a ballet-crazy seven year old with head lice. Her love life should be great, as she's just won votes from the students across the road as the 'woman they'd most like to sleep with'. But Gifford, her disarming ex-husband, can't be trusted. She still can't talk to her ex-partner, Luke, and she is on the point of dumping her current lover Caine Smith, the ace police detective. The worst week of Suzie's life begins when Caine summons her to the morgue to identify a woman's body. She arrives home, shocked, to find the place has been burgled. Caine insists Suzie and the children spend the night at his place. Suddenly her kids have gone missing and her world is falling apart. Over the next days, Suzie darts around the city driven by her ferocious maternal instinct and a perverse obstinacy that always seems to prevent her taking the most sensible course of action. Will she get to the bottom of the mystery — and how many mysteries are there, past and present? And what's happened to her kitchen?
Serena Stevens is already popular in her new school in the tiny Texas town of Rojo-so popular she has two guys interested in her. Self-assured Lance is a football star, and introverted Cam is an intellectual who gets nervous just working with her on their English project about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In a town with a single-minded obsession with football, Lance is a great catch, but there's something unique about Cam. Between the two of them, Serena has the perfect boyfriend . . . if she can figure out how to keep them apart.Soon there's much more to worry about when two cheerleaders go missing. Serena starts to wonder: could one of the guys be responsible? Appearances might be deceiving . . . and who will Serena end up with when things come to a boil?
Right up until they put him in jail, McKenzie thought the cops were kidding. After all, he did them a favor by stopping a rookie cop from roughing up a distraught woman at a murder scene. But the next thing Mac knows he's in jail, missing an important date with his girlfriend and reliving nightmares he thought he'd finally left behind – and he's vowing payback for all of it. If that means sticking his nose into a crime investigation, well, he's done it before. Only, what appears to be a straightforward case of a cheating boyfriend, his alcoholic girlfriend and an opportune baseball bat proves far more complicated than the police are willing to accept. More disconcerting, as he investigates, Mac finds himself again fighting the influence of a shadowy figure who controls more of what goes on in the Twin Cities than a rational voter would believe. And then there are the unidentified thugs who kill a witness and rough up him and his female lawyer-ally. Soon Mac realizes that the truth of this sordid crime may be as hard to find – and as hard to live with – as the justice he seeks.
From the critically acclaimed author of Invisible City and Conviction, The Missing Hours is a novel about obsession, privilege, and the explosive consequences of one violent act. From a distance, Claudia Castro has it all: a famous family, a trust fund, thousands of Instagram followers, and a spot in NYU’s freshman class. But look closer, and things are messier: her parents are separating, she’s just been humiliated by a sleazy documentary, and her sister is about to have a baby with a man she barely knows. Claudia starts the school year resolved to find a path toward something positive, maybe even meaningful – and then one drunken night everything changes. Reeling, her memory hazy, Claudia cuts herself off from her family, seeking solace in a new friendship. But when the rest of school comes back from spring break, Claudia is missing. Suddenly, the whole city is trying to piece together the hours of that terrible night.
A man tells everyone that his wife has run away with his best friend, who seems to have a strange lack of enthusiasm about the affair. The case leads to murder, and a trial that hinges on multiple sets of footprints.
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A page-turning mystery that brings to life a complex and strong-willed detective assigned to a high-risk missing persons case NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • NAMED ONE OF THE 10 BEST MYSTERIES OF THE YEAR BY THE WALL STREET JOURNAL “An extraordinarily assured police procedural in the tradition of Ruth Rendell and Elizabeth George.”—Joseph Finder, author of The Fixer “Surprise-filled . . . one of the most ambitious police procedurals of the year. Detective Bradshaw’s biting wit is a bonus.”—The Wall Street Journal “Missing, Presumed has future BBC miniseries written all over it.”—Redbook “A highly charismatic and engaging story.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “This combination of police procedural and an unfolding family drama that continuously twists and turns will work well for fans of Kate Atkinson and Tana French.”—Booklist At thirty-nine, Manon Bradshaw is a devoted and respected member of the Cambridgeshire police force, and though she loves her job, what she longs for is a personal life. Single and distant from her family, she wants a husband and children of her own. One night, after yet another disastrous Internet date, she turns on her police radio to help herself fall asleep—and receives an alert that sends her to a puzzling crime scene. Edith Hind—a beautiful graduate student at Cambridge University and daughter of the surgeon to the Royal Family—has been missing for nearly twenty-four hours. Her home offers few clues: a smattering of blood in the kitchen, her keys and phone left behind, the front door ajar but showing no signs of forced entry. Manon instantly knows that this case will be big—and that every second is crucial to finding Edith alive. The investigation starts with Edith’s loved ones: her attentive boyfriend, her reserved best friend, her patrician parents. As the search widens and press coverage reaches a frenzied pitch, secrets begin to emerge about Edith’s tangled love life and her erratic behavior leading up to her disappearance. With no clear leads, Manon summons every last bit of her skill and intuition to close the case, and what she discovers will have shocking consequences not just for Edith’s family but for Manon herself. Suspenseful and keenly observed, Missing, Presumed is a brilliantly twisting novel of how we seek connection, grant forgiveness, and reveal the truth about who we are. Praise for Missing, Presumed “Smart, stylish . . . Manon is portrayed with an irresistible blend of sympathy and snark. By the time she hits bottom, professionally and privately, we’re entirely caught up in her story.”—The New York Times Book Review “Nuanced suspense that’s perfect for Kate Atkinson fans.”—People “Drenched in character and setting, with pinpoint detail that breathes life and color into every sentence.”—The News & Observer “You might come to Missing, Presumed for the police procedural; you’ll stay for the layered, authentic characters that Steiner brings to life.”—Bethanne Patrick, NPR “Where [Susie] Steiner excels is in the depth and clarity with which she depicts her characters. . . . It all adds up to a world that feels much bigger than the novel in which it is contained.”—The Guardian
From breakout author Monica Murphy comes the exhilarating conclusion to Drew and Fable’s story—the star-crossed young romance that began in One Week Girlfriend. Lost. Everything in my life can be summed up by that one sickening word. My football coach blames me for our season-ending losses. So does the rest of the team. I wasted two whole months drowning in my own despair, like a complete loser. And I lost my girlfriend—Fable Maguire, the only girl who ever mattered—because I was afraid that being with me would only hurt her. But now I realize that I’m the one who’s truly lost without her. And even though she acts like she’s moved on and everything’s fine, I know she still thinks about me just as much as I think about her. I know her too well. She’s so damn vulnerable, all I want to do is be there to help her . . . to hold her . . . to love her. I just need her to give me one more chance. We may be lost without each other, but together, we’re destined to find a love that lasts forever. BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Monica Murphy's Three Broken Promises.
In After Etan, author Lisa Cohen draws on hundreds of interviews and nearly twenty years of research—including access to the personal files of the Patz family—to reveal, for the first time, the entire dramatic tale of Etan's disappearance: "A masterful combination of deep human interest and detailed criminal investigation into a parent's worst nightmare" (Kirkus Reviews, Starred). On the morning of May 25, 1979, six-year-old Etan Patz left his apartment to go to his school bus stop. It was the first time he had ever walked the two short blocks on his own. But he never made it to school that day. He vanished somewhere between his home and the bus stop, and was never seen again. The search for Etan quickly consumed the downtown Manhattan neighborhood where his family lived. Soon afterward, "Missing" posters with Etan's smiling face blanketed the city, followed by media coverage that turned Etan's disappearance into a national story-one that would change our cultural landscape forever. Thirty years later, in Etan's honor, May 25 is recognized as National Missing Children's Day. But despite the overwhelming publicity his case received, the public knows only a fraction of what happened. That's because the story of Etan Patz is more than a heartbreaking mystery. It is also the story of the men, women, and children who were touched by his life in the months and years after he vanished. It's the story of the agonies and triumphs of the Patz family, as well as the story of the extraordinary twists and turns of federal prosecutor Stuart GraBois's relentless pursuit of his prime suspect. From GraBois's creative "outside the box" tactics, to the veteran cop who made his first pedophile bust on a dark Times Square rooftop, to the FBI rookie who cut her teeth chasing the case through the dark recesses of a child molester's mind, this is the story of all the heroic investigators who, to this day, continue to seek justice for Etan.
When she spots her ex-fiancé's photo on an online dating site, NYPD Detective Kat Donovan reaches out to him, hoping to rekindle the past, but her hope turns to suspicion and then terror as an unspeakable conspiracy is revealed.
