Fiction Five: Action-packed mysteries & thrillers

Get away from the hustle and bustle with these five tales of suspense and mystery that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Intricately plotted and fast-paced, these December new releases will have you eager to turn pages. As an added bonus, each of these stories involves an author who is either on the run from danger or somehow the cause of it.

Alter Ego by Alex Segura

In the follow-up to Secret Identity, Segura returns to “The Legendary Lynx,” a beloved comic book character nearly forgotten to time.

Annie Bustamante is an acclaimed filmmaker, author and comic book artist known for one of the best superhero comics in recent memory. Due to publishing rights, she’s never been able to tackle her favorite superhero, the Lynx, but that is about to change.

Bert Carlyle is offering to make the right's available, but Annie is skeptical. Bert's father started Triumph Comics, and has long claimed ownership of the Lynx. When Annie starts getting anonymous messages urging her not to trust anyone, her concerns intensify. There is much more going on behind the scenes than longtime fans of the comic ever imagined.

The publication of Alter Ego coincides with the imagined original first issue of The Legendary Lynx.

"The suspense and tension in Alex Segura’s Alter Ego builds slowly, like the best of Hitchcock’s films, and then, with the turn of one more page, all the setups and foreshadowing explode in this finely-tuned plot. Annie and daughter Margot are true gems, steeped in authenticity and visceral emotion. Segura is an excellent writer and he brings his A-game to this rollicking page ripper. Don‘t miss it." — David Baldacci

Buried Road by Katie Tallo

When the love of her life disappeared on a camping trip, Gus Monet was devastated. Her daughter was only 9 at the time, but young Bly still remembers vividly. Howard had been like a father to her. He was a journalist working on a story that took a dangerous turn. The last time they saw him, Howard was going to meet a source he believed could blow the story wide open.

Three years later, shocked to see Howard’s obituary in the paper, Gus and Bly are drawn back to Prince Edward County where he was last seen and where the camper Howard was driving has been found. Sneaking into the camper, mother and daughter find what investigators missed. Hidden behind a secret panel are Howard’s notebook, cell phone and a video message recorded right before he vanished. This is evidence that turns the cold case red hot. Searching for answers, Gus and Bly vow to follow the story Howard was pursuing and to expose whoever went to deadly lengths to stop him from revealing the truth.

"Buried Road is a forget-everything-you’re-doing kind of book that pulls you in from the first page. With a protagonist you’ll cheer on and feel terrified for at the same time, you won’t be able to put it down. Smart, twisted, breathtakingly compelling—it’s everything you want from a fantastic mystery, and Tallo’s storytelling skills mean she’s an auto-read author for me. Hands down one of my favourite books of the year." — Hannah Mary McKinnon, internationally bestselling author

The Close-Up by Pip Drysdale

When Zoe Ann Weiss moves to Los Angeles to pursue her dream of becoming a writer, her future is wide open. Then Zach, the bartender and aspiring actor she’s falling for, ghosts her. Her debut novel, a thriller, fails. And she has writer’s block worse than ever before. Now, three years later, Zach is famous and Zoe is not.

She’s facing her 30th birthday, a dead-end job at a flower shop, and a demanding agent. When she goes to make a flower delivery and Zach is at the address, it’s like no time has passed at all. They start casually dating in secret and her writer’s block disappears. Zoe begins to feel Zach inspired her first novel, so why can’t he inspire her second?

The inevitable happens and photos or Zach with Zoe are leaked to the press. Her first novel goes viral and now everyone seems to know her name. However, the problem with everyone knowing your name is that everyone knows your name including the mysterious stalker obsessed with Zach. A stalker who begins reenacting violent events from Zoe’s book, step by step, against her.

"A writer’s life takes a turn for the meta-fictional in this glossy neo-noir . . . Drysdale’s tale takes the form of an after the fact tell-all written by Zoe, characterized by clever foreshadowing and an intoxicating Hollywood buzz. This offers plenty of frothy fun." — Publishers Weekly

Beneath the Poet's House by Christa Carmen

Unmoored by her husband’s death and suffering from writer’s block, novelist Saoirse White moves to Providence and into the historic home of Sarah Helen Whitman, the 19th-century poet and spiritualist once courted by Edgar Allan Poe. Saoirse’s certain she’ll find inspiration in the quiet rooms, the tucked-away rose garden and forgotten cemetery at the back of the property.

She is immediately welcomed by an effusive trio of transcendentalists obsessed with Whitman, the house and Whitman’s mystic beliefs. Saoirse welcomes the idea of new friends taking her mind off the past even as they hope to summon it. When she meets Emmit Powell, a charismatic and charming prize-winning author, Saoirse thinks she’s finally turned a corner.

Emboldened by new romance, Saoirse begins to write again and rediscover herself. But as old fears return, she finds that nothing about her new life is what it seems and a secret she’s tried so hard to bury may not be the only thing that comes back to haunt her.

"Beneath the Poet’s House is a brilliant, gripping novel filled with secrets and danger. Christa Carmen captures the haunted magic of Providence and introduces one of the most fascinating and singular characters I’ve ever encountered. The novel shimmers with questions of what is real and what is imaginary, helped by the extraordinary setting of a writer’s house with a tragically romantic rose garden, a cemetery, and ghosts in love. Shocking, tender, and wildly compelling, Beneath the Poet’s House will keep you racing through the pages all night long." ― Luanne Rice, New York Times bestselling author of Last Night

Invisible Helix by Keigo Higashino, translated by Giles Murray

The body of a young man is found floating in Tokyo Bay. His death was no accident ― Ryota Uetsuji was shot. He'd been reported missing the week before by his live-in girlfriend Sonoko Shimauchi. When detectives from the homicide squad go to interview her, she is nowhere to be found. When the detectives learn Sonoko was the victim of domestic abuse, they presume she was the killer. But her alibi is airtight ― she was hours away when Ryota disappeared, forcing detectives Kusanagi and Utsumi to restart their investigation.

A thin thread of association leads them to their old consultant, brilliant physicist Manabu Yukawa, known in the department as "Detective Galileo." With Sonoko still missing, the detectives investigate other threads of association ― an eccentric children's book author and an older woman who is owns a hostess club. And how is Sonoko continuing to stay one step ahead of the police searching for her? It's up to Galileo to find the nearly hidden threads of history and coincidence that connect the people around the bloody murder. Surprisingly these threads also connect to his own traumatic past. He must unravel not merely the facts of the crime but the helix that ties them all together.