I Am Pilgrim: A Thriller

Terry Hayes

Atria Books

GEOFFREY'S THRILLER PICK OF THE SUMMER!

This astonishing debut espionage thriller depicts the collision course between two geniuses, one a tortured hero and one a determined terrorist, in a breakneck story reminiscent of John le Carre and Robert Ludlum at their finest. PILGRIM is the code name for a world class and legendary secret agent. His adversary is a man known only to the reader as the Saracen. As a young boy, the Saracen barely sees his dissident father beheaded in a Saudi Arabian public square. But the event marks him for life and creates a burning desire to destroy the special relationship between the US and the Kingdom. Everything in the Saracen's life from this moment forward will be in service to jihad. At the novel's opening, we find ourselves in a seedy hotel near Ground Zero. A woman lies face down in a pool of acid, features melted off her face, teeth missing, fingerprints gone. The room has been sprayed down with DNA-eradicating antiseptic spray. All the techniques are pulled directly from Pilgrim's book, a cult classic of forensic science written under a pen name. In offering the NYPD some casual assistance with the case, Pilgrim gets pulled back into the intelligence underground. What follows is a thriller that jockeys between astonishingly detailed character study and breakneck globetrotting. The author shifts effortlessly from Pilgrim's hidden life of leisure in Paris to the Saracen's squalid warrior life in Afghanistan, from the hallways of an exclusive Swiss bank to the laboratories of a nefarious biotech facility in Syria. The inevitable encounter between Pilgrim and the Saracen will come in Turkey, around the murder of a wealthy American, in a thrilling, twisting, beautifully orchestrated finale.

Red or Dead

David Peace

Melville House

From the bestselling author of The Damned Utd and The Red Riding Quartet comes a major new novel The place where the swinging sixties started - Liverpool, England, birthplace of the Beatles - wasn't so swinging. Amid industrial blight and a bad economy, the port town's shipping industry was going bust and there was widespread unemployment, with no assistance from a government tightening its belt. Even the Beatles moved to London. Into these hard times walked Bill Shankly, a former Scottish coal miner who took over the city's perpetually last-place soccer team. He had a straightforward work ethic and a favorite song - a silly pop song done by a local band, "You'll Never Walk Alone." Soon he would have entire stadiums singing along, tens of thousands of people all dressed in the team color red . . . as Liverpool began to win . . . And soon, too, there was something else those thousands of people would chant as one: Shank-lee, Shank-lee . . . In Red or Dead, the acclaimed writer David Peace tells the stirring story of the real-life working-class hero who lifted the spirits of an entire city in turbulent times. But Red or Dead is more than a fictional biography of a real man, and more than a thrilling novel about sports. It is an epic novel that transcends those categories, until there's nothing left to call it but - as many of the world's leading newspapers already have - a masterpiece.

The Vacationers

Emma Straub

Riverhead Hardcover

An irresistible, deftly observed novel about the secrets, joys, and jealousies that rise to the surface over the course of an American family's two-week stay in Mallorca. For the Posts, a two-week trip to the Balearic island of Mallorca with their extended family and friends is a celebration: Franny and Jim are observing their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, and their daughter, Sylvia, has graduated from high school. The sunlit island, its mountains and beaches, its tapas and tennis courts, also promise an escape from the tensions simmering at home in Manhattan. But all does not go according to plan: over the course of the vacation, secrets come to light, old and new humiliations are experienced, childhood rivalries resurface, and ancient wounds are exacerbated. This is a story of the sides of ourselves that we choose to show and those we try to conceal, of the ways we tear each other down and build each other up again, and the bonds that ultimately hold us together. With wry humor and tremendous heart, Emma Straub delivers a richly satisfying story of a family in the midst of a maelstrom of change, emerging irrevocably altered yet whole.

The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair

Joel Dicker

Penguin Books

THE INTERNATIONAL PHENOMENON ARRIVES IN THE US!

August 30, 1975: the day fifteen-year-old Nola Kellergan is glimpsed fleeing through the woods, never to be heard from again; the day Somerset, New Hampshire, lost its innocence. Thirty-three years later, Marcus Goldman, a successful young novelist, visits Somerset to see his mentor, Harry Quebert, one of the country's most respected writers, and to find a cure for his writer's block as his publisher's deadline looms. But Marcus's plans are violently upended when Harry is suddenly and sensationally implicated in the cold-case murder of Nola Kellergan-whom, he admits, he had an affair with. As the national media convicts Harry, Marcus launches his own investigation, following a trail of clues through his mentor's books, the backwoods and isolated beaches of New Hampshire, and the hidden history of Somerset's citizens and the man they hold most dear. To save Harry, his own writing career, and eventually even himself, Marcus must answer three questions, all of which are mysteriously connected: Who killed Nola Kellergan? What happened one misty morning in Somerset in the summer of 1975? And how do you write a book to save someone's life?

The Directive

Matthew Quirk

Little, Brown and Company

Two brothers, millions of dollars--and the heist of a lifetime After escaping the corrupt back rooms of Washington, DC, Mike Ford is again playing a dangerous game--this time the stakes are even higher. Mike's brother is in over his head in a powerful conspiracy to steal a secret worth billions of dollars from the little-known but unbelievably influential trading desk at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In an effort to help, Mike soon finds himself trapped by the dangerous men in charge--and forced to call on all the skills of his criminal past in order to escape. In this sharp, pulse-pounding sequel to THE 500, Mike Ford again stars as the cunning and courageous ex-con man with a big heart, and Matthew Quirk confirms that he is one of the most exciting thriller writers at work today.

Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life

Tom Robbins

Ecco Press

Internationally bestselling novelist and American icon Tom Robbins delivers the long awaited tale of his wild life and times, both at home and around the globe. Tom Robbins' warm, wise, and wonderfully weird novels--including Still Life With Woodpecker, Jitterbug Perfume, and Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates--provide an entryway into the frontier of his singular imagination. Madcap but sincere, pulsating with strong social and philosophical undercurrents, his irreverent classics have introduced countless readers to natural born hitchhiking cowgirls, born-again monkeys, a philosophizing can of beans, exiled royalty, and problematic redheads. In Tibetan Peach Pie, Robbins turns that unparalleled literary sensibility inward, stitching together stories of his unconventional life, from his Appalachian childhood to his globetrotting adventures --told in his unique voice that combines the sweet and sly, the spiritual and earthy. The grandchild of Baptist preachers, Robbins would become over the course of half a century a poet-interruptus, an air force weatherman, a radio dj, an art-critic-turned-psychedelic-journeyman, a world-famous novelist, and a counter-culture hero, leading a life as unlikely, magical, and bizarre as those of his quixotic characters. Robbins offers intimate snapshots of Appalachia during the Great Depression, the West Coast during the Sixties psychedelic revolution, international roving before homeland security monitored our travels, and New York publishing when it still relied on trees. Written with the big-hearted comedy and mesmerizing linguistic invention for which he is known, Tibetan Peach Pie is an invitation into the private world of a literary legend.

The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark

Meryl Gordon

Grand Central Publishing

Born in 1906, Huguette Clark grew up in her family's 121-room Beaux Arts mansion in New York and was one of the leading celebrities of her day. Her father William Andrews Clark, was a copper magnate, the second richest man in American, and not above bribing his way into the Senate. Huguette attended the coronation of King George V. And at twenty-two with a personal fortune of $50 million to her name, she married a Princeton man and childhood friend William MacDonald Gower. Two-years later the couple divorced. After a series of failed romances, Huguette began to withdraw from society--first living with her mother in a kind of Grey Gardens isolation then as a modern-day Miss Havisham, spending her days in a vast apartment overlooking Central Park, eating crackers and watching The Flintstones with only servants for company. All her money and all her real estate could not protect her in her later life from being manipulated by shady hangers-on and hospitals that were only too happy to admit (and bill) a healthy woman. But what happened to Huguette that turned a vivacious, young socialite into a recluse? And what was her life like inside that gilded, copper cage?

The World According to Bob: The Further Adventures of One Man and His Streetwise Cat

James Bowen

Thomas Dunne Books

Bob Fever has swept the globe, with A Street Cat Named Bob vaulting its way to #7 on The New York Times bestseller list in its first week on sale. With rights sold to 27 countries around the globe and a top spot on the British bestseller list for more than a year, this book has been a smashing success around the world. Now, James Bowen and Bob are back in The World According to Bob-a touching and true sequel about one man and the cat that changed his life. As James struggles to adjust to his transformation from street musician to international celebrity, Bob is at his side, providing moments of intelligence, bravery, and humor and opening his human friend's eyes to important truths about friendship, loyalty, trust - and the meaning of happiness. In the continuing tale of their life together, James shows the many ways in which Bob has been his protector and guardian angel through times of illness, hardship, even life-threatening danger. As they high-five together for their crowds of admirers, James knows that the tricks he's taught Bob are nothing compared to the lessons he's learnt from his street-wise cat. Readers who fell in love with Dewey and Marley, as well as the many fans who read A Street Cat Named Bob, will be eager to read the next chapters in the life of James and Bob.

Naughty Kitty!

Adam Stower

Orchard Books

When Lily is finally allowed to have her very own kitten, strange things are afoot. Lily's brand new, teeny-tiny Kitty shouldn't be any trouble at all, but as soon as Lily leaves Kitty alone, hilarious hijinks are always around the corner. Kitty ruins the kitchen, Kitty ruins the den. And we won't talk about what Kitty did to the rug. (Ugg ) Could it be that someone or something else is to blame for Kitty's wild behavior? A loveable story that will have kids laughing out loud, NAUGHTY KITTY is a classic tale of mistaken cat-tastophies that makes for a roaringly purr-fect read