Leisure Reading: Mysteries

Even for Private Investigations, the world's top detective agency, it's tough to find a man who doesn't exist . . . Craig Gisto has promised Eliza Moss that his elite team at Private Sydney will investigate the disappearance of her father. After all, as CEO of a high-profile research company, Eric Moss shouldn't be difficult to find. Except it's not just the man who's gone missing. Despite the most advanced technology at their disposal, the Sydney investigators find every trace of him has vanished too. And they aren't the only ones on the hunt. Powerful figures want Moss to stay "lost," while others just as ruthlessly want him found. Meanwhile, a routine background check becomes a frantic race to find a stolen baby and catch a brutal killer - a killer Private may well have sent straight to the victim's door . . .

Named one of the best books of 2017 by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and Literary Hub. Winner of the Best Japanese Crime Fiction of the Year Award. One of Vulture's 10 Best Thriller Books of 2017. "Already a bestseller in Japan and the U.K., this cinematic crime novel suffused with fascinating cultural details follows a police department reinvestigating a chilling kidnapping that stumped them 14 years earlier." --Entertainment Weekly, The Must List THE NIGHTMARE NO PARENT COULD ENDURE. THE CASE NO DETECTIVE COULD SOLVE. THE TWIST NO READER COULD PREDICT. For five days, the parents of a seven-year-old Japanese schoolgirl sat and listened to the demands of their daughter's kidnapper. They would never learn his identity. And they would never see their daughter alive again. Fourteen years later, the mystery remains unsolved. The police department's press officer--Yoshinobu Mikami, a former detective who was involved in the original case and who is now himself the father of a missing daughter--is forced to revisit the botched investigation. The stigma of the case known as "Six Four" has never faded; the police's failure remains a profound source of shame and an unending collective responsibility. Mikami does not aspire to solve the crime. He has worked in the department for his entire career, and while he has his own ambitions and loyalties, he is hoping simply to reach out to the victim's family and to help finally put the notorious case to rest. But when he spots an anomaly in the files, he uncovers secrets he never could have imagined. He would never have even looked if he'd known what he would find. An award-winning phenomenon in its native Japan--more than a million copies sold, and the winner of the Best Japanese Crime Fiction of the Year award--and already a critically celebrated top-ten bestseller in the U.K., Hideo Yokoyama's Six Four is an unforgettable novel by a literary master at the top of his form. It is a dark and riveting plunge into a crime, an investigation, and a culture like no other.

National Bestseller * A Finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize * A Finalist for the Goldsmiths Prize * Longlisted for the International DUBLIN Literary Award * One of Time Magazine's Top 10 Fiction Books of the Year A New York Times Book Review Notable Book * Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, The Guardian, BOMB Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Commonweal, Southern Living, NOW Magazine, The Washington Independent Review of Books, Book Depository, The Globe and Mail, and The National Post (Canada) The stunning second novel of a trilogy that began with Outline, one of The New York Times Book Review's ten best books of 2015 In the wake of her family's collapse, a writer and her two young sons move to London. The process of this upheaval is the catalyst for a number of transitions--personal, moral, artistic, and practical--as she endeavors to construct a new reality for herself and her children. In the city, she is made to confront aspects of living that she has, until now, avoided, and to consider questions of vulnerability and power, death and renewal, in what becomes her struggle to reattach herself to, and believe in, life. Filtered through the impersonal gaze of its keenly intelligent protagonist, Transit sees Rachel Cusk delve deeper into the themes first raised in her critically acclaimed novel Outline and offers up a penetrating and moving reflection on childhood and fate, the value of suffering, the moral problems of personal responsibility, and the mystery of change. In this second book of a precise, short, yet epic cycle, Cusk describes the most elemental experiences, the liminal qualities of life. She captures with unsettling restraint and honesty the longing to both inhabit and flee one's life, and the wrenching ambivalence animating our desire to feel real.

Five women go on a hike. Only four return. Jane Harper, theNew York Times bestselling author ofThe Dry,asks: How well do you really know the people you work with? When five colleagues are forced to go on a corporate retreat in the wilderness, they reluctantly pick up their backpacks and start walking down the muddy path. But one of the women doesn't come out of the woods. And each of her companions tells a slightly different story about what happened. Federal Police Agent Aaron Falk has a keen interest in the whereabouts of the missing hiker. In an investigation that takes him deep into isolated forest, Falk discovers secrets lurking in the mountains, and a tangled web of personal and professional friendship, suspicion, and betrayal among the hikers. But did that lead to murder? "Force of Nature bristles with wit; it crackles with suspense; it radiates atmosphere. An astonishing book from an astonishing writer." --A.J. Finn, author ofThe Woman in the Window Select praise forThe Dry: "One of the most stunning debuts I've ever read. Every word is near perfect. Read it!" --David Baldacci, #1New York Times bestselling author "A breathless page-turner ... Ms. Harper has made her own major mark." --The New York Times

White Tears is a ghost story, a terrifying murder mystery, a timely meditation on race, and a love letter to all the forgotten geniuses of American music and Delta Mississippi Blues. "An incisive meditation on race, privilege and music. Spanning decades, this novel brings alive the history of old-time blues and America's racial conscience."--Rabeea Saleem, Chicago Review of Books  Two twenty-something New Yorkers. Seth is awkward and shy. Carter is the glamorous heir to one of America's great fortunes. They have one thing in common: an obsession with music. Seth is desperate to reach for the future. Carter is slipping back into the past. When Seth accidentally records an unknown singer in a park, Carter sends it out over the Internet, claiming it's a long lost 1920s blues recording by a musician called Charlie Shaw. When an old collector contacts them to say that their fake record and their fake bluesman are actually real, the two young white men, accompanied by Carter's troubled sister Leonie, spiral down into the heart of the nation's darkness, encountering a suppressed history of greed, envy, revenge, and exploitation.