No matter the genre, I have always loved surprises in a story. I want characters to do the unexpected and plots to take me to, “Oh, I didn’t see that one coming.” Because that’s how life is, how my own life has been. Due to connections we didn’t understand and secrets people around us have kept (or we didn’t bother to uncover) the unexpected always jumps out in front of us. I also like characters who are either discovering or re-focusing their power in ways that are beneficial to themselves and others. Again, this has been my life’s story and I want my characters to search for that same balance.
It’s a tough life for 18-year-old Betsy Racine, taking care of her disabled grandfather and alcoholic mother. Even worse, over a year ago, her brother disappeared in a snowstorm, and now she learns that he had with him more than three million dollars of someone else’s money. Someone who just got out of prison and will do whatever it takes to get it back. Others join the hunt and they all want Betsy to help them find the cash. But why would she? She doesn’t care about the money and her brother is dead…isn’t he? Just to make sure, she tags along with a group of seekers and finds herself sucked into a world of danger far greater than anything she could have imagined.
Ashley is lost in the woods, an emotional and physical wreck, and she’s got to figure a way out. The two things she has going for her are serious survival skills and a fierce determination to never give up. Some of her challenges border on the unbelievable, but then, so do so many real-life stories we’ve all read about.
The reader gets to know and understand Ashley, with all her flaws exposed, as the worsening events force her to dig deep into who she is and what she’s capable of.The author might push the limit of what qualifies as YA, and as an adult I loved it, but when I was fifteen, I would have loved it even more.
Hatchet meets Wild in this harrowing YA survival story about a teenage girl’s attempt to endure the impossible, from the Edgar Award-winning author of The Female of the Species, Mindy McGinnis.
The world is not tame. Ashley knows this truth deep in her bones, more at home with trees overhead than a roof.
So when she goes hiking in the Smokies with her friends for a night of partying, the falling dark and creaking trees are second nature to her. But people are not tame either. And when Ashley catches her boyfriend with another girl, drunken rage sends her running…
The Hunger Games is considered YA Fantasy but I believe Thriller can added to the descriptors.
Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. Fifty pages in, I had three thoughts: this type of event has happened in the past—think Roman coliseum shows—and will happen again in our future; it’s too believable and making me angry and I should stop reading; no way could I ever put this book down.
We stand by Katniss as she gets everything possible thrown at her and again, never gives up. The best part is that this is only the first in the three-part series.
Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. But Katniss has been close to death before - and survival, for her, is second nature. The Hunger Games is a searing novel set in a future with unsettling parallels to our present. Welcome to the deadliest reality TV show ever...
The primary setting is a hunting club in New York’s Adirondack Mountains that caters to rich and powerful men who secretly call themselves the Lost Boys.
Evie grew up nearby, and now, as an art restorer living in Paris, is remembering traumatic experiences involving club members. She returns to her childhood home to settle the matter and the action begins. The plot is multi-layered and the true nature of the characters is often a mystery, all of which appeals to me.
I also like the accuracy of the Adirondack setting (it’s where I grew up) and how the club itself captures the spirit of the areas Great Camps. But a favorite aspect is the fact that the author, a man like myself, so obviously detests the toxic masculinity of the Lost Boys. I applaud that.
Deep in the Adirondack Mountains lies a speck of a town called Rangeley. There isn't much to this tiny town, but it is at the crossroads of serene fishing streams off the Mink River, pristine hunting grounds in the surrounding mountains and vast estates of the extremely rich. It is also the gateway to the Mohawk Club, which houses the Lost Boys, an exclusive group of wealthy and powerful men with global influence and a taste for depravity.
Raised wild and poor in the shadows of the Mohawk Club, Evie Quimby was a teenager when she first fell victim to…
Claire is seven years old when her college-age sister is found dead at a resort on the Caribbean island of Saint X.
Years later, Claire is living and working in New York City when a brief but fateful encounter brings her together with a man originally suspected of murdering her sister. This book is not your standard Thriller; the cast of characters is large and the plot complex, but the author pulls it off.
It’s also not a book to keep you up all night. Try three or four nights. The writing is brilliant in ways not often seen in the genre and I was forced to slow down and give myself over to the story. It’s one I will never forget.
'Hypnotic, delivering acute social commentary on everything from class and race to familial bonds and community . . . I devoured Saint X in a day.' Oyinkan Braithwaite (author of My Sister, the Serial Killer), New York Times
Claire is only seven years old when her college-age sister Alison vanishes from the luxury resort on the Caribbean island of Saint X on the last night of her family's vacation. Several days later Alison's body is found in a remote spot on a nearby cay, and two local men, employees at the resort, are arrested. But the evidence is slim, the…
This is one of the best-known real-life survival stories out there.
The author accompanied an expedition up Mt. Everest, made it to the top, and then descended into the hell of nature at its most unforgiving. The book spawned at least three others with first-hand accounts of the event, but this one is the original, and I believe, the best.
Personally, I have climbed many mountains in all seasons, camped out in snowstorms, even trekked in Nepal and mingled with climbers on their way to another Himalayan peak. As a kid, I believed my future involved catching views from the planet’s highest summits. I still love the outdoors as much as anything but am content now to only read about these more dangerous adventures.
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The epic account of the storm on the summit of Mt. Everest that claimed five lives and left countless more—including Krakauer's—in guilt-ridden disarray.
"A harrowing tale of the perils of high-altitude climbing, a story of bad luck and worse judgment and of heartbreaking heroism." —PEOPLE
A bank of clouds was assembling on the not-so-distant horizon, but journalist-mountaineer Jon Krakauer, standing on the summit of Mt. Everest, saw nothing that "suggested that a murderous storm was bearing down." He was wrong.
By writing Into Thin Air, Krakauer may have hoped to exorcise some of his own demons…
Meet Tony Valenti. His high-flying corporate law career just cratered. His society marriage blew up in a bitter divorce. He's returned to the Chicago suburbs to lick his wounds and regroup in the haven of the Valenti family home. But time to heal isn't in the cards.
Tony's elderly father inexplicably shoots a sheriff's deputy on their front porch. Nobody knows why, and Papa isn't talking. Then their house becomes an unlikely target for condemnation and expropriation by corrupt local officials and their cronies.
With money and hope dwindling, Tony steps up to defend his father and take to city hall, and quickly finds himself in peril when he unearths sinister connections between the cases. The audacity of the plot against them fuels a gritty determination to get to the bottom of what really happened—regardless of the risks and ultimate cost to himself. To win, Tony must earn his father's trust and outwit his wily opponents.
Meet Tony Valenti. His high-flying corporate law career just cratered. His society marriage blew up in a bitter divorce. He’s returned to the Chicago suburbs to lick his wounds and regroup in the haven of the Valenti family home. But time to heal isn’t in the cards.
Tony’s elderly father inexplicably shoots a sheriff’s deputy on their front porch. Nobody knows why, and Papa isn’t talking. Then their house becomes an unlikely target for condemnation and expropriation by corrupt local officials and their cronies.
With money and hope dwindling, Tony steps up to defend…
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