Crime Books We’re Anticipating This May

After moving from a small country town to Seattle, Heather Baxter marries Tom, a widowed doctor with a young son and teenage daughter. A working vacation overseas seems like the perfect way to bring the new family together, but once they’re deep in the Australian outback, the jet-lagged and exhausted kids are so over their new mom.
When they discover remote Dutch Island, off-limits to outside visitors, the family talks their way onto the ferry, taking a chance on an adventure far from the reach of iPhones and Instagram.
But as soon as they set foot on the island, which is run by a tightly knit clan of locals, everything feels wrong. Then a shocking accident propels the Baxters from an unsettling situation into an absolute nightmare. 
When Heather and the kids are separated from Tom, they are forced to escape alone, seconds ahead of their pursuers.
Now it’s up to Heather to save herself and the kids, even though they don’t trust her, the harsh bushland is filled with danger, and the locals want her dead.
Heather has been underestimated her entire life, but she knows that only she can bring her family home again and become the mother the children desperately need, even if it means doing the unthinkable to keep them all alive.

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Hanna has barely spoken to her family since the tragedy that rocked their lives fourteen years ago. The tragedy for which they held Hanna responsible.

Then she sees her family home listed as the scene of a horrific crime. Number of victims: three. Date of crime: today. Frantic, Hanna tries to contact her family, only to find they have disappeared.

To find them, Hanna will have to confront what happened all those years ago.

And the person determined to make her pay for it  . . .

It's early summer in Stockholm. Agneta and Stellan Broman have just waved off their daughters and grandchildren when the landline phone rings. The caller says just one word: "Geiger." Agneta hangs up, finds her old pistol, kills her husband of fifty years and then disappears from their home without a trace.
Sara Nowak, a police officer in the prostitution unit, is called by a colleague who is investigating the murder. Stellan was a widely loved former television presenter, and Sara grew up next door to the Bromans, spending much of her childhood in their grand house. Both the victim's daughters and Sara are devastated by the killing, and going against all regulations, Sara gets involved in the investigation. It is the beginning of a dark journey, leading back to the Cold War and fatal ideologies, and the truth about Sara's own childhood.

Related: Why We'll Always Love Nordic Noir

It began four years ago with a worldwide uptick of bacterial infections: meningitis in Frankfurt, cholera in Johannesburg, tuberculosis in New Delhi. Although the outbreaks spread aggressively and proved impervious to our drugs of last resort, public health officials initially dismissed them as unrelated.
They were wrong. Antibiotic resistance soon roiled across the globe. Diseases long thought beaten came surging back. The death toll skyrocketed. Then New York City was ravaged by the most heinous act of bioterror the world had ever seen, perpetrated by a new brand of extremist bent on pushing humanity to extinction.
Detective Jacob Gibson, who lost his wife in the 8/17 attack, is home caring for his sick daughter when his partner summons him to a sprawling shantytown in Central Park, the apparent site of a mass murder. Jake is startled to discover that, despite a life of abject squalor, the victims died in perfect health—and his only hope of finding answers is a twelve-year-old boy on the run from some very dangerous men.

Related: Biological Thrillers: A Proposed Canon from Author Chris Holm

Earl Thomas, a straight-laced taxman with his fair share of police encounters, is the begrudging foreperson in a high-stakes trial in Miami. Laura Hurtado-Perez is a physician whose unassuming manner conceals a private pain. Joseph Cole is the founder of his local neighborhood watch, unduly obsessed with the families around him.
Along with four others, these jurors of varying ages and walks of life whose paths would likely never have otherwise crossed must come together to make one of the most important decisions of their lives.
On the night Melina Mora, a free-spirited woman both proud and kind, was murdered, she was seen with a young man of Gabriel Soto’s description. Two strands of her hair were found in his bedroom. Sandy Grunwald, a young prosecutor whose political ambitions depend on securing a conviction, finds herself pitted against Jordan Whipple, a preening public defender armed with a freshly discovered, dynamite piece of evidence on the eve of the trial—if the Honorable Darla Tackett will admit it.
What Sandy, Jordan, and Judge Tackett all know, however, is that the criminal justice system is complicated, and everyone has a story—especially the jury. And it’s their experiences, biases, and beliefs that will ultimately shape the verdict.

Related: 12 Mysteries & Thrillers by Diverse Authors

A beloved professor of theology and archaeology at Harvard, Cal Donovan has achieved renown–but he drops everything when he is called by his friend Pope Celestine to investigate the potential existence of a mysterious prophecy. And it soon becomes clear that another party is desperate and willing to kill for the same information.
In a race against time that will lead him from Lisbon to Rome and to London and Paris, Donovan will become the only person standing in the way of unspeakable destruction. Now his only hope for survival is to outwit, outrun, and outlast his enemies long enough to get to the truth behind the Fourth Prophecy.