From “America’s best novelist” (The Denver Post): A sprawling thriller drenched with atmosphere and intrigue that takes a young boy from a chance encounter with Bonnie and Clyde to the trenches of World War II and the oil fields along the Texas-Louisiana coast.

It is 1934 and the Depression is bearing down when sixteen-year-old Weldon Avery Holland happens upon infamous criminals Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow after one of their notorious armed robberies. A confrontation with the outlaws ends as Weldon puts a bullet through the rear window of Clyde’s stolen automobile.

Ten years later, Second Lieutenant Weldon Holland and his sergeant, Hershel Pine, escape certain death in the Battle of the Bulge and encounter a beautiful young woman named Rosita Lowenstein hiding in a deserted extermination camp. Eventually, Weldon and Rosita fall in love and marry and, with Hershel, return to Texas to seek their fortunes.

There, they enter the domain of jackals known as the oil business. They meet Roy Wiseheart—a former Marine aviator haunted with guilt for deserting his squadron leader over the South Pacific—and Roy’s wife Clara, a vicious anti-Semite who is determined to make Weldon and Rosita’s life a nightmare. It will be the frontier justice upheld by Weldon’s grandfather, Texas lawman Hackberry Holland, and the legendary antics of Bonnie and Clyde that shape Weldon’s plans for saving his family from the evil forces that lurk in peacetime America and threaten to destroy them all.

Want a copy? Enter by leaving a comment answering this question: If you could go back in time, with whom would you like to have a chance encounter?

Giveaway ends next Tuesday, July 8, at 9 p.m. PST. US addresses only. Winners will have 48 hours after being notified to claim the prize before alternate winners are chosen.

South African author Sarah Lotz’s The Three begins on January 12 in 2012—later known as Black Thursday—when four airplanes crash in four different parts of the world, leaving only one child alive from each flight, except for the one that crashes in Africa. The survivors are dubbed The Three in the media, which goes wild with conspiracy theories about how these children survived such devastation.

In the aftermath, the questions become more about how and why they survived and then what they are, for relatives of the children notice they’re not quite the same as they were before the crash. Unexplainable things start happening around them—some good things, some benign, and some creeeepy. Are these children miracles, harbingers of End Times, aliens, or simply traumatized innocents being hounded by the media and gullible masses?

The story is presented as a book within a book, a journalist’s nonfiction tome called Black Thursday: From Crash to Conspiracy that includes interviews and conversations with people connected to the crashes. Lotz writes convincingly in the different voices of the interviewees, men and women of different ethnicities, regions, and walks of life. The sense of dread builds as characters’ paranoia mounts, and some plot twists are shocking. The coincidence of this novel coming so soon after the real-life disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 only adds to the eeriness. The ending may be frustratingly ambiguous for some, but this epic tale shouldn’t be missed. Just don’t read it on a plane.

Nerd verdict: Engrossing Three

Read also my interview with Sarah Lotz here.

Giveaway: The good people at Little, Brown are allowing me to give away one copy of this book to a PCN reader. To enter, leave a comment answering this question: What was the last unexplainable thing that happened to you? As usual, lies are accepted. Got to keep entries interesting, right? US/Canada only.

Giveaway ends next Tuesday, June 3, at 9 p.m. PST. Winner will be randomly selected and have 48 hours to claim prize. Good luck!

But some really interesting books are being released in the next few weeks and I want to help put them in your hands. For some reason, my e-mail subscription function isn’t working so you’ll have to keep checking back here or follow me on Facebook, Twitter, or via Bloglovin. (No, this isn’t a ploy to get more followers. Just letting you know the e-mail subscription service has stopped working.)

Anyway, on to Suspicion. Here’s the official description:

Single father Danny Goodman would do anything—anything—to protect his teenaged daughter, Abby, from more unhappiness after her mother’s death. Struggling to keep her at the private school she loves, he accepts a favor from an unexpected benefactor: Thomas Galvin, father of Abby’s best friend and one of the wealthiest men in Boston. Galvin offers Danny a loan that would be enough to pay Abby’s tuition and relieve some of Danny’s other financial pressures, and Danny can’t help but be charmed by Galvin’s generosity and kindness.

Danny’s new friend, however, turns out to have some dangerous enemies—including some Federal investigators who think Danny’s in a perfect position to collect evidence against Galvin. The moment Galvin’s loan hits Danny’s account, Danny finds himself trapped into a dangerous undercover assignment that will put both his life and his daughter’s at risk. Danny tells one lie after another to hide more and more secrets, weaving a net that will ultimately require a desperate plan of action.

Suspicion is everything readers expect from a Joseph Finder thriller, and more.

Because this giveaway is in conjunction with Riffle and Dutton Books, the instructions are a little different this time. Click on the link below and fill out the form for your chance to win one of three finished copies. Giveaway ends May 27, when the book will be available in bookstores everywhere. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Here’s the description from the author’s website:

The eighth psychological suspense novel by international bestselling author Brian Freeman brings the long-awaited return of Lieutenant Jonathan Stride to the bitter cold of Duluth, Minnesota.

“My mother told me that if there was ever a time in my life when I needed protection, and no one was around for me, I should go to you. Find Mr. Stride, she told me. She said you’d help me.”

As Jonathan Stride returns home to his cottage on the shore of Lake Superior after midnight, he finds a teenage girl hiding in his bedroom. She’s pretty, scared, and soaked to the bone…and she says that someone is trying to kill her. The girl isn’t a stranger to Stride. She’s the daughter of a woman he tried—and failed—to protect from an abusive, murderous ex-husband years earlier.

With the guilt of that failure still hanging over his head, Stride is determined to protect this young girl, Cat Mateo, from a shadowy predator. However, Cat seems to have secrets of her own. She’s led a tough life on the streets; she doesn’t always tell the truth; and she has an unhealthy obsession with knives. Stride’s partner Maggie is convinced that the girl can’t be trusted, and she’s afraid that Stride may be putting himself in danger by letting Cat inside his house.

Wherever Cat goes, death seems to follow. A journalist who interviewed the girl has disappeared. Two more women are found murdered. Stride feels as if he is always one step behind a brutal killer who has Cat in his sights, and as the investigation races ahead, he finds himself on a collision course with another detective—a woman who shared his bed for years: Serena Dial. With all of their fragile relationships hanging in the balance, Stride, Serena, and Maggie must find out why this young girl has been targeted for death – and why a decade-old crime is coming back to life.

Sound good to you? Enter by answering the following question in the comments: What/who is the strangest thing/person you’ve ever found in your bedroom? As usual, lies are accepted. All entries without an answer will be disqualified. If you don’t even want to read all of this post for the instructions, you probably don’t want to read the book that much.

Giveaway ends next Wednesday, April 30, at 9 p.m. PST. Winners will have 48 hours after being notified to claim the prize before alternate winners are chosen.

Good luck! Let me know what funkiness you’ve found in your bedroom!

In case anyone noticed, I have been away for a while, not just from this blog but from home. I spent the last 6 weeks of 2013 on the East Coast visiting different family members, eating extremely well (my daddy can cook!), but also freezing my buns off, which counteracted any weight gain from aforementioned delicious food.

While traveling, I stayed away from blogging and almost all social media activity, and found myself not missing it at all. I loved the real life that was happening: face-to-face conversations, laughter over late-night coffee in my parents’ kitchen, birthday celebrations, actual hugs, and snuggling with my cute-beyond-words niece/goddaughter. But I can’t mooch free food off relatives forever, and my toes threatened to fall off due to frostbite, so it’s back home and back to business.

I’m starting off the year with a giveaway of one of my favorite books from last year, Suspect by Robert Crais. The paperback was released this past Tuesday, and the kind folks at Berkley are allowing me to give away two copies of the paperback to PCN readers. Enter by leaving a comment below, telling me something you suspect will happen for you this year. As usual, lies are accepted; this rule is simply to make comments/entries interesting.

Giveaway ends Friday, January 17, 9 p.m. PST. Winners will be randomly selected and have 48 hours to claim prize before alternate winners are chosen. US addresses only, please. Good luck!

• Luanne

Congrats! Luanne, please use this contact form to let me know where the publisher should send it.

If you didn’t win this time, I have another giveaway going on you might want to check out. Good luck!

• Tom Piccirilli
• Sarah RH

Congrats! Please fill out this contact form with the address where you’d like the publicist to ship your book.

If you’re a regular reader here, you know I don’t do a lot of giveaways, but I’ve been offered some really good titles to give to PCN readers this month. Next is Jussi Adler-Olsen’s The Absent One, the second installment in his Department Q series featuring detective Carl Mørck and his trusty assistant, Assad. The first book, The Keeper of Lost Causes, was one of my top three reads last year. This time, Mørck and Assad reinvestigate a twenty-year-old double homicide that appears to have been solved, and their actions lead to devastating discoveries. My review of this for Shelf Awareness for Readers won’t run until close to the book’s August 21 pub date, but thanks to Dutton, I get to give away two galleys right now.

To enter, leave a comment telling me about something you thought was true for a long time, but then found out it was not. As usual, lies are accepted. Giveaway ends next Tuesday, August 14, 9 p.m. PST. US residents only, no P.O. boxes. Winners will be randomly chosen and have 48 hours to claim the prizes.

Have fun!

Fans of Karin Slaughter’s Will Trent series know that his boss at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Amanda Wagner, is a ball buster. In this sixth installment, the author goes back in time to show why Amanda is so hard on Will, and how she used to be quite a different person.

The story alternates between the mid-1970s, when several prostitutes disappear and are feared dead, and the present, when something similar occurs. Amanda was a rookie Atlanta PD cop investigating the original crimes and fears the original perpetrator is back, but she keeps Will away from the case, much to his frustration. Turns out she has very good reasons, because discovering the truth could destroy him.

Faithful series readers might at first lament that this book doesn’t focus on Will and his budding relationship with Dr. Sara Linton, the heroine of many of Slaughter’s previous novels. They should soon, however, appreciate the author’s decision to give Amanda a fleshed-out history that will change preconceived notions about a character who’s often been seen as unpleasant. One of only two females in the police department in 1975, twenty-five-year old Amanda was far from the confident woman she is today, at times too meek in her reaction to maddeningly sexist colleagues. But this makes her arc realistic, as she eventually finds her footing when she realizes she’s good at her job.

While Will is somewhat on the peripheral, the story is ultimately about him. We know his childhood in foster homes was tough, but the additional details Slaughter reveals here about his origins are even more shattering.

Thanks to the nice people at Authors on the Web, I can give away TWO copies of this book. To enter, leave a comment telling me a lie you once told someone because you wanted to protect that person from the truth. It could be a small, harmless lie, or you could just lie to me and make up something right now.

The giveaway is open until next Monday, August 6, 9 p.m. PST. US/Canada addresses only. Winners will be randomly selected, and have 48 hours to claim the books.

Ready, get set, lie your teeth off!

A sophisticated page-turner about a wealthy New York family embroiled in a financial scandal with cataclysmic consequences.

Now that he’s married to Merrill Darling, daughter of billionaire financier Carter Darling, attorney Paul Ross has grown accustomed to New York society and all of its luxuries: a Park Avenue apartment, weekends in the Hamptons, bespoke suits. When Paul loses his job, Carter offers him the chance to head the legal team at his hedge fund. Thrilled with his good fortune in the midst of the worst financial downturn since the Great Depression, Paul accepts the position.

But Paul’s luck is about to shift: a tragic event catapults the Darling family into the media spotlight, a regulatory investigation, and a red-hot scandal with enormous implications for everyone involved. Suddenly, Paul must decide where his loyalties lie—will he save himself while betraying his wife and in-laws or protect the family business at all costs?

Cristina Alger’s glittering debut novel interweaves the narratives of the Darling family, two eager SEC attorneys, and a team of journalists all racing to uncover—or cover up—the truth. With echoes of a fictional Too Big to Fail and the novels of Dominick Dunne, The Darlings offers an irresistible glimpse into the highest echelons of New York society—a world seldom seen by outsiders—and a fast-paced thriller of epic proportions.

The book has received positive reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal, among other publications. For more info on Alger, visit her website, where you can also read an excerpt.

If the novel sounds like it’s right up your alley, enter for a chance to win it by leaving a comment about a fake scandal from your past. Or it could be real—I won’t know. Just make it juicy!

Giveaway is open to US/Canada residents only, and ends next Tuesday, February 28, at 5 p.m. PST. One winner will be randomly chosen and have 48 hours to claim the book. Now let’s have you “leak” some scandalous details!

I’ll post a review later but wanted to give you the chance to win these two copies now. If that gorgeous cover alone doesn’t entice you, here’s the description from the publisher’s website:

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus per formers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart.

Intrigued? Enter by leaving a comment about the coolest magic trick or circus act you’ve ever seen. Giveaway ends next Tuesday, October 25 at 5 p.m. PST. US/Canada only, per publisher’s request. Two winners will be randomly selected and have 48 hours to claim the prize before alternate names are chosen.

Let’s hear your magical stories!