The gist is that a 2002 crime, the High School Beauty Murder, remains unsolved for 17 years. The latest Korean writer to make a worldwide splash is Kwon Yeo-Sun, a respected and popular author whose English-language debut, Lemon, is so taut and compelling I can only hope the translators are hard at work on her backlist. Mattson uses this setting as a way to ruminate about each of the contestants and the choices they made, one of which must be connected to the killer. The twist is that they have to move through the tricks and traps that Quigley is famous for without shouting the safe word: “reprieve.” But something is not right: before the group can even get started, one of them is murdered by a man who penetrates their cell. Only four contestants get to the final room of the full-contact Quigley House, the most ghoulish and clever escape room in London.

When a new mother moves in she gravitates toward the impossibly cellulite-free and Botox-filled Ivy Five and finds out they have a much longer and more nefarious agenda than an apple with a razor blade, In Mother, Laskowski has created a clique of mean women-the Ivy Five-who run the much-lauded Halloween block party which they have raised to the heights of a Puff Daddy white party. Ivy Woods Drive-sounds classy, doesn’t it? A lush cul-de-sac in a fancy suburb where the women all wear athleisure and plan parties and the men spend their time at work or on the golf course. Let’s see what the writers are up to in October. And the book is terribly hard to find, and quite expensive. This is known as the First Law of Exploitation in the Official Crime Writers Handbook, which is like the DSM-IV with a body count. When Ruth and Hal discover that Cally and their daughter are gone, a whole series of doubts and secrets is revealed, and the difference between right and wrong is no longer clear.Hello, readers of the thriller! If life isn’t rough enough for you here are some books that will make you think, Hell, she’s got it worse than I do. The arrangement seems perfect for everyone.īut within a day of the baby’s birth, Cally has a change of heart-and engineers a harrowing escape from the hospital with the newborn. Their hope rests with Cally, a nineteen-year- old who wants to go to college-but doesn’t have the cash. Ruth is a no-nonsense fortysomething journalist from the Midwest, desperate for a child with her new husband, Hal.

I loved it!”-Patry Francis, bestselling author of All the Children Are Home With a collection of vividly rendered characters, this twisty tale will leave you thinking about the true meaning of motherhood long after you turn the last page. “ The Surrogate is a thrilling, high-stakes debut centering on a vulnerable newborn and two women who will do almost anything to claim her as their daughter.

The surrogate toni halleen