Anticipation: Summer Releases

 

Every few months, I like to spotlight some upcoming books I’m looking forward to, and this summer has some great ones.

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June 19
The Silkworm, by Robert Galbraith
#2 in the Cormoran Strike series

When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs. Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself for a few days – as he has done before – and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home.

But as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine’s disappearance than his wife realizes. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were to be published, it would ruin lives – meaning that there are a lot of people who might want him silenced.

When Quine is found brutally murdered under bizarre circumstances, it becomes a race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer, a killer unlike any Strike has encountered before…

Mulholland Books / Robert Galbraith

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July 1
Peter Pan Must Die, by John Verdon
#4 in the Dave Gurney series

The daunting task that confronts Gurney, once the NYPD’s top homicide cop: determining the guilt or innocence of a woman already convicted of shooting her charismatic politician husband – who was felled by a rifle bullet to the brain while delivering the eulogy at his own mother’s funeral.

Peeling back the layers, Gurney quickly finds himself waging a dangerous battle of wits with a thoroughly corrupt investigator, a disturbingly cordial mob boss, a gorgeous young temptress, and a bizarre assassin whose child-like appearance has earned him the nickname Peter Pan.

Startling twists and turns occur in rapid-fire sequence, and soon Gurney is locked inside one of the darkest cases of his career – one in which multiple murders are merely the deceptive surface under which rests a scaffolding of pure evil. Beneath the tangle of poisonous lies, Gurney discovers that the truth is more shocking than anyone had imagined.

And the identity of the villain at the mystery’s center turns out to be the biggest shock of all.

Crown Publishing / John Verdon

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August 12
The Sixth Extinction, by James Rollins
#10 in the Sigma Force series

A remote military research station sends out a frantic distress call, ending with a chilling final command: Kill us all! Personnel from the neighboring base rush in to discover everyone already dead – and not just the scientists, but every living thing for fifty square miles is annihilated: every animal, plant, and insect, even bacteria.

The land is entirely sterile – and the blight is spreading.

To halt the inevitable, Commander Gray Pierce and Sigma must unravel a threat that rises out of the distant past, to a time when Antarctica was green and all life on Earth balanced upon the blade of a knife. Following clues from an ancient map rescued from the lost Library of Alexandria, Sigma will discover the truth about an ancient continent, about a new form of death buried under miles of ice.

From millennia-old secrets out of the frozen past to mysteries buried deep in the darkest jungles of today, Sigma will face its greatest challenge to date: stopping the coming extinction of mankind.

But is it already too late?

William Morrow / James Rollins

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I still think it sucks that J.K. Rowling was outed, but I’m selfishly glad, because I want to read everything she writes. John Verdon is one of my favorite thriller writers, with a voice that’s so different from the others out there. And obviously, a new Sigma novel is always worth getting excited about.

What upcoming releases are you looking forward to?