The line between justice and revenge blurs when a judge takes the law into her own hands. The Honorable Alice D. McKerrity is no stranger to violence. From the bench at Manhattan Supreme, she has seen the most hardened killers pass through her courtroom. But there’s something about this trial—a defendant charged with the murder of a pregnant woman—that affects her as no other case ever has. Her chaotic, stressful home life only adds to her mounting feelings of panic and fear. She’s also harboring a secret that if exposed could have far-reaching ramifications both personally and professionally. And now, unbeknownst to Alice, her daughter has begun a search for her biological father. As the trial progresses, Alice’s life starts to unravel. Nightmares she suffered as a girl return with a vengeance. Phantom sightings torment her. Is she being paranoid? Or are the specters real? Almost at the breaking point, she begins to doubt her own sanity. Then she makes a shocking discovery that sends her on a collision course with her past and a terror-filled night in the woods in Upstate New York. Confronted with the unspeakable, she must face a decades-buried truth as she fights for her survival against a cunning adversary that forces her to question everything she ever believed about herself . . . and tests her limits as a woman, a judge, and a mother. Narrated from the perspectives of three women—Alice, her daughter, and Alice’s girlhood friend—First Victim is a suspenseful tale of guilt, justice, and long-awaited retribution.

Lieutenant Lou Boldt, the Seattle cop who stars in Ridley Pearson's deservedly popular series, is a sharp and touching figure--perhaps the most believable police officer in current fiction. Early in this ninth book about his public and private life, Lou has to put on a bullet-resistant vest to lead a raid against some dangerous criminals. "The vest was not physically heavy, but its presence was," Pearson tells us. It meant battle; it meant risk. For Boldt, a vest was a symbol of youth. It had been well over a year since he had worn one. Ironically, as he approached the hangar's north door at a light run behind his own four heavily armored ERT personnel, he caught himself worrying about his hands, not his life. He didn't want to smash up his piano hands in some close quarters skirmish. . . . Boldt plays jazz piano one night a week in a local bar, and despite his concern for his hands, he takes every opportunity he can to get away from his desk and into the streets. But money pressures, caused by his wife's recent illness, also make him think about the possibility of a better-paying job in the private sector. Meanwhile, some extremely ruthless people are murdering illegal Chinese immigrant women and leaving their bodies buried in newly dug graves. An ambitious local TV journalist named Stevie McNeal and the young Chinese woman she thinks of as her "Little Sister" risk their lives to investigate the killings, while Boldt and his team round up a most unusual array of suspects. This combination of hard-edged realism and softer sentiment has become Pearson's trademark, and once again it works smoothly. --Dick Adler

It's never an easy task matching a dead body to the scores of missing persons reports. Especially when no one seems to be looking for the victim. New Years Day is a time for new beginnings, but Minneapolis homicide detectives Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska are focused on endings: specifically, the tragic end of their latest murder victim, an unidentified young woman. Kovac and Liska are determined to do the girl the small justice of returning her body to her family as they investigate her case, but it is no simple task matching the broken corpse to any of the scores of missing persons reports, especially when no one seems to be looking for her. Meanwhile, recent widow Jeannie Reiser is frantic when she is unable to get in touch with her daughter. And her desperate attempts to get the police to believe her child is in trouble lead her closer and closer to the New Year's Doe, and to an evil even Kovac and Liska may be unable to stop. The story continues in Tami Hoag's THE 9TH GIRL.

Kat Ward was the first victim to speak out about the abuse she suffered at the hands of Jimmy Savile. Her shocking testimony was the catalyst for the uncovering of decades of abuse and cover-ups. Kat Ward's childhood was marked by physical, emotional and sexual abuse. She was eventually taken into local authority care to a children's home in Norfolk, and first encountered Savile whilst on a 'holiday' with the home on Jersey. Later, she was moved to Duncroft Approved School in Surrey, a secure unit. Amazingly, Savile turned up there too; he would regularly drive up in his Rolls-Royce and offer sweets and cigarettes in return for sexual favours. Kat's revelations had already appeared in a memoir she'd placed online using Savile's initials, but she first spoke on camera as part of Newsnight's infamous shelved Savile exposé. However, it was ITV's Exposure: The Other Side of Jimmy Savile (in which Kat did not take part), that led to his unmasking as a serial sex offender and opened the floodgates for hundreds of other victims to come forward, and for many other offenders to be unmasked. Freddie Starr brought a High Court case against her for libel and slander, seeking £300,000 in damages, calling her 'liar' and 'nutter'. It failed spectacularly in July 2015, with costs awarded against him. Although the last few years have been trying, they have ultimately brought Kat vindication after years of being labelled an attention-seeker and liar. Her book, which charts her life from the 1960s to the end of Starr's failed action, is a unique, harrowing and immensely moving perspective on one of the biggest news stories of the last decade.

It's sweltering summer in New York City, and Asa Leventhal is alone. His co-workers ignore or condescend to him, his wife is away with her mother, and his estranged brother has run off, abandoning his wife and two sons. One night, Leventhal is confronted by a stranger--'one of those guys who want you to think they can see to the bottom of your soul'--who reveals himself to be a marginal figure from his distant past. Leventhal, accused of ruining the man's life, becomes shocked and dismissive, vehemently denying any part in the man's unhappy lot. But as time passes, he is increasingly unable to separate his own good fortune from the bad luck of this down-and-out stranger, who will not leave him be. A brief, haunting rumination on the vagaries of fate and responsibility, The Victim is, in the words of Norman Rush, Saul Bellow's "purest creation."

"Seconds passed; minutes. She could hear movement now in the waiting room she had just left...it was the metal magazine rack she was sure, that crashed to the tile floor. Then quiet. She strained to hear in the darkness. Nothing more, and then... The air moved in the room and she knew. He was here." As a young psychology student, Hailey Dean's world explodes when Will, her fianc, is murdered just weeks before their wedding. Reeling, she fights back the only way she knows how: In court, prosecuting violent crime . . . putting away the bad guys one rapist, doper, and killer at a time. But dedicating her life to justice takes a toll after years of courtroom battles and the endless tide of victims calling out from crime scene photos and autopsy tables. Just as she grows truly weary, a serial killer unlike any other she's encountered begins to stalk the city of Atlanta, targeting young prostitutes, each horrific murder bearing his own unique mark. This courtroom battle will be her last. Hailey heads for Manhattan to pick up the pieces of the life she had before Will's murder, training as a therapist. In a vibrant new world, she finally leaves her ghosts behind. But then her own clients are brutally murdered one by one by a copycat using the same M.O. as the Atlanta killer she hunted down years before. As the body count rises across Manhattan, Hailey is forced to match wits not only against a killer, but the famed NYPD. Unless she returns to her former life and solves the case, still more innocent people will die at the hands of a killer who plans to get her, before she can get him!

From New York Times bestselling author Allison Brennan comes a gripping new thriller. A lethal attack with no clear motive…and a killer dead-set on keeping the truth buried. A bomb explodes on a sunset charter cruise out of Friday Harbor at the height of tourist season and kills everyone on board. Now this fishing and boating community is in shock and asking who would commit such a heinous crime—the largest act of mass murder in the history of the San Juan Islands. Was the explosion an act of domestic terrorism, or was one of the dead the primary target? That is the first question Special Agent Matt Costa, Detective Kara Quinn and the rest of the FBI team need to answer, but they have few clues and no witnesses. Accused of putting profits before people after leaking fuel endangered an environmentally sensitive preserve, the West End Charter company may itself have been the target. As Matt and his team get closer to answers, they find one of their own caught in the crosshairs of a determined killer. Don’t miss THE MISSING WITNESS, the brand-new page-turning thriller from New York Times bestselling author Allison Brennan! A Quinn & Costa Thriller Book 1: The Third to Die Book 2: Tell No Lies Book 3: The Wrong Victim Book 4: Seven Girls Gone Book 5: The Missing Witness

Detailing the domestic violence suffered by the first author during her 16 year marriage, this moving volume details the background and events leading up to and immediately following Beth Sipe's tragic act of desperation: ending the life of the perpetrator. Encouraged to publish her story by her therapist and co-author, Evelyn Hall, Sipe relates how her case was mishandled by the police, the military, a mental health professional and the welfare system, illustrating how women like herself are further victimized and neglected by the very systems that are expected to provide assistance. Her story is followed by seven commentaries by experts in the field. They discuss the causes and process of spousal abuse, reasons why battered women stay, and the dynamic consequences of domestic violence.

In 2092, the world's ecology is in ruins, drought and famine are widespread and survival is a never-ending challenge. Harold Erdman leaves his dying community with one goal, to make his way to Esmeralda, an island paradise run by the Huntworld Corporation which has turned public murder, among willing competitors, into a thriving and lucrative business. Can he survive the journey and then the many rounds of deadly competition on his way to the Big Payoff. His neighbours' lives, as well as his own, hang in the balance.

The New York Times bestselling author of Woke Inc. and a 2024 presidential candidate makes the case that the essence of true American identity is to pursue excellence unapologetically and reject victimhood culture. Hardship is now equated with victimhood. Outward displays of vulnerability in defeat are celebrated over winning unabashedly. The pursuit of excellence and exceptionalism are at the heart of American identity, and the disappearance of these ideals in our country leaves a deep moral and cultural vacuum in its wake. But the solution isn’t to simply complain about it. It’s to revive a new cultural movement in America that puts excellence first again. Leaders have called Ramaswamy “the most compelling conservative voice in the country” and “one of the towering intellects in America,” and this book reveals why: he spares neither left nor right in this scathing indictment of the victimhood culture at the heart of America’s national decline. In this national bestseller, Ramaswamy explains that we’re a nation of victims now. It’s one of the few things we still have left in common—across black victims, white victims, liberal victims, and conservative victims. Victims of each other, and ultimately, of ourselves. This fearless, provocative book is for readers who dare to look in the mirror and question their most sacred assumptions about who we are and how we got here. Intricately tracing history from the fall of Rome to the rise of America, weaving Western philosophy with Eastern theology in ways that moved Jefferson and Adams centuries ago, this book describes the rise and the fall of the American experiment itself—and hopefully its reincarnation.