The Ultimate Summer Read List: Crime Edition

As Chicago PD’s special-ops leader, Detective Billy Harney knows well that money is not the only valuable currency. The filthy rich man he’s investigating is down to his last twenty million. He’s also being held in jail.
For now.
Billy’s unit is called in when an escape plan results in officers down and inmates vanished.
In an empty lot, Billy spots two Kevlar vests. Two helmets. Two assault rifles. And a handwritten note:
Hi, Billy
Are you having fun yet?

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Sandra Brown comes a riveting thriller out just in time for all your summer reading lists. Zach Bridger is a former Super Bowl MVP quarterback who hasn’t seen his ex-wife Rebecca Pratt since their marriage fell apart. So when he receives the news that Rebecca has been placed on life support following a violent assault, he’s shocked that he’s the one forced to make the choice to keep her on life support or take her off of it. Now, only four years later, Rebecca's attacker, Eban, is released from prison. Rebecca has remained on life support all these years, but now, if she were to die, Eban could be retried for murder.

Perhaps an escapist thriller that will take you on a journey across the globe is more your speed for a thrilling summer read. In the second novel in Denise Mina’s Anna and Fin series, Anna and Fin find themselves at the center of an Internet frenzy to find Lisa Lee, who has vanished from a small Scottish town. But Lisa is not the innocent victim she first appears to be. Anna and Fin uncover Lisa’s YouTube channel, which shows her breaking into an abandoned French Chateau and nabbing a Roman silver casket. Is it a mere coincidence that one day after Lisa’s disappearance the casket is listed for auction in Paris?

In Traitor’s Dance, undercover agent Sam Capra is working for Section K—America's most secret espionage agency—all while also being a good dad to his thirteen-year-old son Daniel. Then Sam is approached by a fellow spy who has some revelatory news. Markus Bolt, the last American traitor, is missing. Now the Americans need to find him before the Russians do, and it’s all up to Sam.

In this upcoming summer release from bestselling thriller author Cate Holahan, psychiatrist Imani Banks and her restauranteur husband Philip are living in a posh townhouse in Brooklyn Heights. Meanwhile, Tonya Sayre moved to Manhattan with dreams of becoming a Broadway star, but instead, she’s working in a restaurant, struggling to support her teen daughter Layla. After Philip’s restaurant closes due to the pandemic lockdown, he and Imani decide to let Tonya and Layla rent their extra rooms. But Tonya begins skipping payments, and Imani becomes concerned that Tonya may be responsible for the death of their neighbors. But evicting someone during a lockdown is tricky, even when you think that person might be a murderer.

Bram Stoker, Anthony, and Locus award-nominated author Gabino Iglesias’ latest novel is a genre-bending thriller about Mario, a father buried in debt due to his daughter’s illness. Desperate to make money, Mario reluctantly takes a job as a hitman and discovers he has a real knack for it. Now Mario has agreed to one final job before quitting the business for good. After this mission which requires him to hijack a cartel’s cash shipment before it reaches Mexico, Mario will either walk away with $200,000 or he’ll end up dead. 

Here’s a summer must-read bestselling thriller author David Baldacci. Travis Devine is a man with a routine. Every day, he boards the 6:20 commuter train to Manhattan where he works as an entry-level analyst at an investment firm. But everything changes one morning when Devine receives a shocking anonymous email that reads: She is dead. Devine’s coworker and former girlfriend Sara has been found dead, and he might just be the killer’s next target.

The 14^th book in James Patterson’s Michael Bennett series sees Detective Michael Bennett returning home from his honeymoon only to discover FBI agent Emily Parker is missing. Now, to track her down, Michael will have to follow his former partner's investigation through Los Angeles, New York and Washington DC, tracking an anarchist group. But after everything they’ve been through together, Michael will stop at nothing to find her.

When police in Rexburg, Idaho perform a wellness check on seven J.J. Vallow and his sister, sixteen-year-old Tylee Ryan, both children are nowhere to be found. Their mother, Lori Vallow, gives a phony explanation, and when officers return the following day with a search warrant, she, too, is gone. As the police begin to close in, a larger web of mystery, murder, fanaticism and deceit begins to unravel.
Vallow’s case is sinuously complex. As investigators prod further, they find the accused Black Widow has an unusual number of bodies piling up around her.