Look Again by Lisa Scottoline & Three Weeks to Say Goodbye by C.J. Box

Here are two books that deal with similar subject matter but in very different ways.
In Look Again, Ellen, a reporter & single mother of an adopted 3 year old finds a card in the mail that shows a missing child identical to her adopted son, Will. She cannot get the picture out of her head & decides to investigate. She will not like what she finds & her world will be turned upside down as she uncovers activities and endures events that will wring her dry. This is an emotional, thrilling and intense read. http://scottoline.com/Site/

The child in Three Weeks to Say Goodbye is 9 month old Angelina who has been adopted by Jack & Melissa. Their world falls apart when they are told the father of the child never gave her up for adoption & he & his father (a powerful judge) want her returned in three weeks. Jack & his friends are pulled into a world of gangs, pedophiles, corruption & evil, as they try to discover why the Judge wants Angelina. And Jack has to ask himself how far he will go to protect his child & family.
http://www.cjbox.net/books/three-weeks-say-goodbye

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Bestseller Scottoline (Lady Killer) scores another bull's-eye with this terrifying thriller about an adoptive parent's worst fear—the threat of an undisclosed illegality overturning an adoption. The age-progressed picture of an abducted Florida boy, Timothy Braverman, on a have you seen this child? flyer looks alarmingly like Philadelphia journalist Ellen Gleeson's three-year-old son, Will, whom she adopted after working on a feature about a pediatric cardiac care unit. Ellen, who jeopardizes her newspaper job by secretly researching the Braverman case, becomes suspicious when she discovers the lawyer who handled her adoption of Will has committed suicide. Meanwhile, Will's supposed birth mother, Amy Martin, dies of a heroin overdose, and Amy's old boyfriend turns out to look like the man who kidnapped Timothy. Scottoline expertly ratchets up the tension as the desperate Ellen flies to Miami to get DNA samples from Timothy's biological parents. More shocks await her back home. Author tour. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Bestseller Box (Blue Heaven) explores an adoptive parents worst nightmare in this compelling stand-alone thriller. Jack McGuane, an employee of Denvers convention and visitors bureau, and his wife suddenly discover that demonic Garrett Morland, the birth father of their dearly loved nine-month-old daughter, Angelina, didnt sign away his parental rights. Garrett and his powerful father, a sitting federal judge, give the McGuanes three weeks to return Angelina. In this bleak scenario, Box eschews facile sentimentality and meticulously builds pitch-perfect characterizations, notably that of McGuane, who grew up with uneducated but hard-working parents on a series of Montana ranches. Boxs equally convincing villains—gangsters, murderers, child pornographers—each provide a different face of evil, and each individual has to decide how best to get at the truth. As usual, Box blessedly reasserts that whatever the cost, such truth exists, and ordinary folk have the strength to find it. Author tour. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Thrillers - Codes and Ciphers

Try these International Thrillers that all have to do with codes and ciphers:

The Venona Cable : a thriller by Brent Ghelfi
"Russian agent and criminal Alexei Volkovoy pays an action-packed visit to theU.S. to uncover secrets of the infamous Venona cables and to attempt to clear his family name."
Nemesis by Bill Napier
The "secret to saving the world is hidden in a 17th Latin century manuscript that has gone mysteriously missing."
The Book of Fate by Brad Meltzer
Trying to figure out what really happened during a failed assassination on the Chief Executive takes an ex-presidential aide back to a decade-old presidential crossword puzzle, mysterious facts buried in Masonic history, and a two-hundred-year-old code invented by Thomas Jefferson.
The Alexander Cipher by Will Adams
"Daniel Knox's first love is archaeology, more specifically Alexander the Great. In this adventure, he competes with rival archaeologists, Egyptian officials, and Macedonian nationalists in the hunt for one of the greatest archaeological prizes in the world."

Thrillers Hot Off the Press

Thriller fans - These are some of the new thrillers ordered and newly acquired by Harford County Public Library for July - just in time for beach reading!
* TRY FEAR by James Scott Bell
* KILL ZONE by Vicki Hinze
* NO MERCY by John Gilstrap
* GREEDY BONES by Carolyn Haines
* MISSING MARK by Julie Kramer
* KILL HER AGAIN by Robert Gregory Browne
* FADE TO BLACK by Leslie Parrish
* HOUSE SECRETS by Mike Lawson
* RED BLOODED MURDER by Laura Caldwell
* THE APOSTLE by Brad Thor
* BREAKPOINT by JoAnn Ross
* OUTCAST by Joan Johnston
* THE BONE FACTORY by Nate Kenyon
* THE ODDS by Kathleen George
* FUGITIVE by Phillip Margolin
* UNDONE by Karin Slaughter
* THE DEVIL'S COMPANY by David Liss
* FREE AGENT by Jeremy Duns
* CRIMINAL KARMA by Steven M. Thomas
* FAN MAIL by P.D. Martin
* THE MISSING INK by Karen E. Olson
* DUST TO DUST by Heather Graham
* EVERYWHERE SHE TURNS by Debra Webb
* DEAD DOCKET by Mitchell Graham

FYI you thriller fans - ThrillerFest 2009 will be held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City July 8 - 11. Read more in the International Thriller Writers newsletter The Big Thrill...

More Readers' Reviews from the Winter Reading Program

Rules of Deception by Christopher Reich Find this book in our catalog

Reader's Review: "Great lead - you're hooked. Unpredictable plot. Just when you think you've figured it out - you haven't. A view into a level of society - most of us are unaware it exists all around us."

Nothing to Lose by Lee Child

Don't be afraid to start the hugely popular Jack Reacher series of thrillers here. Nothing to Lose is number 12, but can be read as a stand-alone. The background details are sketched in for the reader without becoming an intrusive digression to the action - you will be intrigued and will want to find out more about what brought our hero to this point.

When the book opens, Jack Reacher, a retired military policeman is hitch-hiking to San Diego. His rides have brought him to the town of Hope, Colorado. We learn that it is Reacher's deliberate choice to travel as light as possible: just with the clothes he stands up in and with a credit card in his pocket. He is not destitute, he just deliberately rejects most of the trappings of society. We learn that he is a large man, intimidating looking, with huge physical reserves, and an accurate clock in his head. Everything he is was forged by his lifetime as an MP - probably including his highly developed sense of justice, which is the key to this story of revenge and of righting wrongs.

The next town only 12 miles down Reacher's road from Hope is Despair. When he gets there he is arrested, spends a night in the cells and then is expelled from the town under its local vagrancy ordinance. It appears that Despair allows no strangers within its town limits. Reacher returns to Hope. What he should do next is continue his journey by another route, but violence has been done to him and injustice. Already Reacher is compelled to find out about some things that he has noticed are very wrong in Despair.

Nothing to Lose is full of action, fighting, and covert operations. At the same time the plot is complex. Reacher needs to sort out many things that puzzle him. Why does Despair allow no strangers? Why are many workers in Despair apparently weak and sick? Why are young men disappearing in Despair disappearing, while young women wait for them in a motel in Hope? What is the huge industrial complex in Despair behind a high, shiny, white metal wall? Why does a small plane take to the skies every evening and return every daybreak?

In his quest for revenge and to put things right, Reacher teams up with a female deputy sheriff, a consummately professional law officer with secrets of her own. Lee Child is a master at showing a wide range of complex emotion in both his male and female characters and this gives depth and credibility to his book. So does the accurate observation of scenes and the richness of descriptive detail. These touches of reality will keep you grounded as, along with Reacher himself, you slowly come to realize the enormity of just what exactly is going on in Despair.

ThrillerFest 2008

I was reading Suzanne Beecher's Dear Reader column this morning and she mentioned this year's International Thriller Writers' ThrillerFest coming up in July in NYC.

Click on the ITW website for more info on ThrillerFest, the largest event of its kind, a meeting place for authors, readers, budding writers, and publishing industry professionals. This year features two special add-on events, CraftFest and AgentFest, where authors of all levels can meet the professionals.

Thriller fans can also go to the ITW website to sign up for the BIG THRILL email each month. Get news and information on the latest thrillers being published that month along with in-depth stories and interviews.

By the way, Suzanne's column appears in the Harford County Public Library Fiction Book Club. Interested in having this online book club delivered to your e-mail? Go to Readers Place Online Book Clubs, sign up and every day, Monday through Friday, you will receive in your email a five-minute selection from a chapter of a book. By the end of the week, you’ll have read 2-3 chapters. Every Monday we start a new book. Sign up and start reading.