September’s Best Thrillers

Juror #3, by James Patterson and Nancy Allen
Paterson, perhaps the world’s most successful and prolific thriller writer, teams up with Allen, a former attorney, to tell the story of Ruby Bozarth. Ruby is new to the Mississippi bar and the town of Rosedale, but she’s barely got time to find her bearings before she’s assigned to a sensational case: a rich girl is dead and a college football star stands accused. The prosecutor and judge think Ruby’s inexperience will help them ram through a quick conviction, but Ruby’s determined to prove them wrong. With a little help from a fellow attorney and a short order cook with a lot of secrets, she mounts a defense—and begins to suspect the biggest obstacle to justice might just be the jurors on the case, who have secrets of their own.

Shadow Tyrants, by Clive Cussler and Boyd Morrison
Cussler teams up with engineer and author Morrison for the 13th Oregon Files adventure, which finds a mysterious group known as the Nine Unknown seeking to use ancient technology to take control of the world for purportedly benevolent reasons. One member of the Nine, Romir Malik, dissents, convinced that the project—code-named Colossus—will destroy humanity instead of saving it. It’s up to the Corporation and the crew of the Oregon to put the deceptively-weathered high-tech ship on the front lines in order to save the world… again.

Lies, by T.M. Logan
Logan’s debut begins with an innocent impulse: Joe Lynch and his son William are driving in North London when William sees his mother’s car and insists they surprise her. Joe follows his wife to a hotel, where he watches her argue with her best friend’s husband, the wealthy Ben Delaney. Before he can confront her, she drives off, so Joe confronts Ben instead, getting into a fight that ends with his phone missing and Ben unconscious. Joe leaves; when he comes back for his phone everything is gone. His wife, Melissa, denies an affair, but a murder reveals a different story, and Joe finds himself framed for a crimes he knows never happened—because he is sure Ben is still alive. Behind that mystery lies the real question: how long has Melissa been lying to him—and why?

Cross Her Heart, by Sarah Pinborough
Pinborough’s tense new book stars Lisa, a tightly-wound overprotective mother whose daughter Ava is a champion athlete and tired of being protected, choosing to sneak around with her boyfriend behind Lisa’s back and chat up a mysterious man online. Marilyn, Lisa’s bestie, is pushing her to “get back out there,” but Lisa has secrets that have taught her to be careful. When she drops her guard and lets her photo be taken after Ava is hailed in the press, those secrets come for her, threatening her safety and her relationship with her daughter. Lisa and Marilyn have to push through their problems and join forces in order to save Ava from the past that has come with a vengeance.

The Labyrinth of the Spirits, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Beloved bestseller Zafón delivers the fourth and final entry in his Cemetery of Forgotten Books series, catching up with the characters from The Shadow of the Wind as they make their way under the repressive rule of Spain’s Francisco Franco. The focus is on Alicia Gris, who survives a bombing as a little girl and carries the scars into adulthood as she works for the secret police. Her final case involves the disappearance of the country’s minister of culture, Mauricio Valls. A rare book is her first clue in an investigation that begins to reveal the depth of cruelty and violence Franco’s regime has inflicted on the country—a truth so dangerous to the powers that be, Alicia soon faces a choice: risk her life by pursuing the justice, or allow herself to be silenced.

When the Lights Go Out, by Mary Kubica
Jessie Sloane is 17 when her mother, Eden, passes away. Grieving and suffering from insomnia, Jessie decides to sell the house and move on to community college. But she discovers that 17 years earlier, someone filed a death certificate in her name, leaving her with no official identity. As Jessie’s sleepless nights melt into a timeless nightmare, Eden’s heartbreaking story comes to the fore: before Jessie’s birth, she and Aaron were in love and desperately wanted children, but couldn’t conceive. Eden’s obsession with having a child slowly transforms into a frightening compulsion, driving Aaron away. Separated by decades, a mother and a daughter both go down dark paths, as two tense storylines hurtle toward a shocking convergence.

Leave No Trace, by Mindy Mejia
Two fascinating characters collide in Mejia’s newest thriller. Maya Stark is a young speech therapist pushed by her former psychiatrist to take on a challenging case she doesn’t feel prepared to tackle. Lucas Blackthorn is a violent, mute man presumed dead for years after his father took him into the vast wilderness of Boundary Waters—until he was arrested after a botched robbery. Now, Lucas wants nothing more than to escape back to the wilderness and tend to his father, and Maya finds herself being drawn to his perspective so strongly, she makes decisions that are more than just ethically dubious—they might be extremely dangerous as well.

The Ancient Nine, by Ian K. Smith
Smith’s followup to his debut The Blackbird Papers is a behind-the-scenes glimpse at Harvard’s tony secret clubs, and it positively drips with tension and bulges with secrets. In 1988, Spenser Collins is a champion African-American swimmer who receives an invitation to join Harvard’s prestigious Delphic Club. Intrigued by the idea of connecting with the elite, he begins to investigate the club’s history, and uncovers not only the mysterious disappearance of a student named Erasmus Abbott, who broke into the club in 1927 and was never seen again, but also the existence of a secret club-within-the club, known as the Ancient Nine. As Collins digs deeper, he learns more about the secretive, powerful group—and its dangerous secret agenda.

Nomad, by James Swallow
In Swallow’s newest surefire bestseller, Marc Dane is an MI6 field agent happily working the computers, far from the grisly action. When his entire team is wiped out and he’s framed for their deaths, he has little choice but to head directly into danger. Labeled a traitor, Dane makes contact with the Rubicon Group and their agent Lucy Keyes, ex-U.S. Army and exactly the sort of skilled ally Dane needs to help him clear his name. Their investigation reveals a historic terrorist plot that could result in the worst attack ever—and none of the world’s intelligence agencies are looking at the right information to stop it.