What We’re Reading This May
Discover all the mystery, thriller, true crime, and horror that we’re devouring this month.
Until the morning she finds a corpse in the back bedroom, the pristine walls and floor covered in blood, and flees the house in panic. Fifteen minutes later, the police arrive … and find nothing. No body. No blood. The only thing slightly out of the ordinary is the clock in that back bedroom, which is now running four minutes slow.
With no victim, the police are convinced there was no murder, but Audrey knows better. A man has been killed, and if they won’t do anything about it, she—and her annoying friend Lewis—will. Whodunnit is one thing, but this detective duo must also wrestle with when—and where on earth is the body?
It’s not long since they solved the murder of their neighbor, so they’re not rookie sleuths, and at least this time the case has no connection to their home. Does it?
Lenny Winter is fifteen years-old when she moves with her parents to an aging houseboat off the rugged coast of Washington. She imagines a quiet life spent charting constellations and chasing her dream of becoming an astronomer. Instead, a sudden tragedy shatters her world and catapults her to Blanchard, a renowned boarding school for the Pacific Northwest’s elite, where wealth and tradition rule.
Blanchard is dazzling, insular—and haunted by its own legends. At its heart lurks the Pascalianum Club, a secret society known to shape the school’s greatest and most notorious students, and whose influence stretches far beyond campus walls. Hungry to belong, Lenny is drawn into its orbit, even as she senses that the club feeds on the very vulnerabilities she is desperate to hide.
As privilege collides with grief and loyalty warps into obsession, Lenny’s choices will lead to an unforgettable reckoning—and a murder investigation that will test every story she tells herself about guilt, power, hope, and who she is becoming.
But none of Ophelia’s obsessive scrolling on wedding forums can prepare her for the nightmare of planning her own. Why is her mother-in-law going crazy over every detail? Why is Luke’s family so eager to host the wedding in their vineyard’s ancient chapel? And what exactly will Ophelia have to sacrifice if she and her mother both hope to survive her special day?
As a former Detective Chief Inspector, Smith could have retired by now, and it is clear some of his superiors wish that he would do so. With a new trainee detective in tow, Smith begins to unravel the truth about what happened to Wayne Fletcher. As the investigation proceeds, it becomes obvious that others are involved—some seem determined to prevent it, some seem to be taking too much interest. In the end Smith operates alone, having stepped too far outside standard procedures to ask for support. He knows his own safety might be at risk but he has not calculated on the life of his young assistant also being put in danger.
Patricia Cornwell is best known for her international bestselling thriller series about forensic pathologist Dr. Kay Scarpetta. Every story comes from somewhere, and Scarpetta’s began when Patricia Cornwell embedded herself in a morgue.
In this achingly honest memoir, Cornwell excavates her own life, detailing her traumatic childhood being raised by neglectful parents, her father abandoning the young family on Christmas day, her mother being institutionalized twice, an abusive foster family, and developing a parental relationship with evangelist Billy Graham’s wife Ruth. Cornwell depicts a harrowing hospitalization and near-death car accident. She unflinchingly shares overcoming obstacles that later gave her the ambition to become an award-winning police reporter. From there it was research in a medical examiner’s office that would turn into a full-time job. She would become a forensic expert and worldwide publishing phenomenon. Cornwell leaves no stone unturned in this deeply candid account of her life, offering inspiring insight into what made her into the international sensation she is today.
New in Trade Paperback
Clinton and Patterson are back. And they’re better than ever. The President of the United States is up for reelection. Her husband is on trial for murder.
Is the First Gentleman a killer? A pair of brilliant investigative journalists set out to answer that burning question about the NFL star-turned-political spouse.
