Touched by an Alien

By Gini Koch

Place: Publisher & Year: New York: DAW Books, Inc. 2010

Genres: Science fiction, thriller, romance

Series: Alien; 1

Format: Paperback (mass market)

ISBN: 9780756406004

Audience: Adult

Number of pages: 389

Setting: Pueblo Caliente, AZ, Roswell, NM, & New York City

Time period: Contemporary

Plot summary: As marketing manager, Katherine “Kitty” Katt, is on her way back to work from jury duty, she witnesses a bizarre scene outside of Pueblo Caliente’s courthouse.  Before she has a chance to think twice, she has killed her first alien parasite/ superbeing with the only weapon she had on hand – her pen.  As a result, she now has several good looking Men in Grey trying to recruit her to their agency.  Kitty soon finds herself racing at hyperspeed to save her family (and the world), while discovering intimate secrets about her new colleagues.

Nemesis

By Jo Nesbø; translated by Don Bartlett

Place: Publisher & Year: New York: Harper, c2002, 2012

Genres: Mystery, suspense, thriller, crime thriller, police procedural, Scandinavian noir

Series: Harry Hole; 5

ISBN: 9780062119698

Audience: Adult

Number of pages: 480 (501 including an excerpt from The Devil’s Star)

Setting: Oslo, Norway, D’Ajuda & Porto Seguro, Brazil

Time period: shortly after 9/11 2001

Plot summary: While a bank robber terrorizes Oslo by killing people when he doesn’t get his money fast enough, Detective Harry Hole has more intimate concerns.  He has been seeing an ex-girlfriend while his current lover is out of the country.  The morning after their last date, she is found dead from a gunshot wound to the head and Harry is unable to remember most of the night’s events.

The Leopard

By Jo Nesbø; translated by Don Bartlett

Place: Publisher & Year: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011

Genres: Mystery, suspense,  thriller, crime thriller, police procedural, Scandinavian noir

Series: Harry Hole; 8

ISBN: 9780307595874

Audience: Adult

Number of pages: 513*

Setting: Hong Kong, China, Oslo,  Norway, Kigali, Rwanda & Goma, The Congo

Time period: Contemporary

Plot summary: After working on The Snowman case, Harry’s life takes a turn for the worse and he finds himself indebted to a gangster in Hong Kong.  Meanwhile, another serial killer is on the loose in Oslo and Crime Squad wants Harry on the case.  Unfortunately for the police, Harry doesn’t want to have anything to do with serial killers or the people trying to track them.  The only thing compelling Harry to return to Oslo is family.

The Redbreast

By Jo Nesbø; translated by Don Bartlett

Place: Publisher & Year: New York: Harper, c2000, 2011

Genres: Mystery, suspense, thriller, crime thriller, police procedural, Scandinavian noir, historical fiction

Series: Harry Hole; 3

ISBN: 9780062068422

Audience: Adult

Number of pages: 553 (563 including an excerpt from The Devil’s Star)

Setting: Oslo, Norway, Leningrad, Russia, and Vienna, Austria, & Johannesburg, South Africa

Time period: There are two timelines – one takes place from 1999 – 2000; the other takes place during WWII – from 1942 – 1944.

Plot summary: In the course of duty, Police Officer Harry Hole is required to make a very difficult decision in a few seconds.  As a result, a team member is critically wounded and Harry feels responsible.  Therefore, the last thing he expects is a promotion.  As a new inspector, his job is routine and boring – until one report crosses his desk.  As he follows through with the report, he finds evidence of neo-Nazi involvement in an assignation attempt.

The Keeper of Lost Causes

By Jussi Adler-Olsen; translated by Lisa Hartford

Place: Publisher & Year: New York: Dutton, 2011

Genres: Mystery, police procedural, Scandinavian noir, suspense, thriller, crime thriller

Series: Department Q; 1

ISBN: 9780525952480

Audience: Adult

Number of pages: 396

Setting: Copenhagen, Denmark

Time period: Contemporary

Plot summary: Carl Mørck used to be one of Copenhagen’s best homicide detectives, until two of his team members were shot while he was with them.  Carl never even drew his weapon and now he is ridden with guilt and even more surly than he used to be.  A promotion was the last thing he expected, but it was the easiest way for the department heads to get him out of everyone’s presence.  Hidden in the basement, Carl figures he’ll spend the rest of his career sleeping and surfing the internet, until one of the cold cases he’s now in charge of actually peaks his interest.

The Snowman

By Jo Nesbø; translated by Don Bartlett

Place: Publisher & Year: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011

Genres: Mystery, suspense, thriller, crime thriller, police procedural, Scandinavian noir

Series: Harry Hole; 7

ISBN: 9780307595867

Audience: Adult

Number of pages: 384

Setting: Oslo, Norway

Time period: Most of the story takes place in November 2004, but some scenes are from 1980 and 1992.

Plot summary: When a mother disappears in the middle of the night from her home, a snowman is found in the yard outside wearing the mothers favorite scarf.  When a second mother disappears, Detective Harry Hole makes a gruesome discovery.  He soon find himself tracking a serial killer, but at the same time, senses that someone is tracking him.

The Informationist: A Thriller

By Taylor Stevens

Place: Publisher & Year: New York: Crown Publishers, 2011

Genres: Thriller, adventure, suspense

Series: Vanessa Michael Munroe; 1

ISBN: 9780307717092

Audience: Adult

Number of pages: 307

Setting: Mainly set in Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon, Africa.  Also set in Houston, Texas and Frankfurt, Germany, with brief stints in Ankara, Turkey and Paris, France.

Time period: Contemporary

Plot summary: When a Texas oil man’s daughter goes missing in Africa, he attempts to find her but discovers nothing.  Four years later, he hires Vanessa “Michael” Munroe to try to learn what happened to her.  This is outside of Munroe’s usual line of work, which is gathering expensive information for both corporations and governments.  However, Munroe is quite familiar with much of Africa, and agrees to accept the assignment.  Munroe soon discovers that there is more to this assignment than she was led to believe.

Catching Fire

By Suzanne Collins

Place: Publisher & Year: New York: Scholastic Press, 2009

Genres: Science fiction, adventure, dystopian, thriller

Series: The Hunger Games; 2

ISBN: 9780439023498

Audience: Young adult

Number of pages: 391

Setting: Panem – mainly District 12 & the Capitol

Time period: Sometime in the future

Plot summary: When Katniss returns to District 12 after surviving the Capitol’s Hunger Games, all she wants is for her life to be as it was prior to the games.  Unfortunately, this can never be.  As victors, she and Peeta must live as such.  And while the Capitol’s audience was quite convinced by Katniss and Peeta’s undying love for one another throughout the games, President Snow was not.  He tells Katniss this personally just prior to her and Peeta’s Victory Tour through the districts.  He also mentions that some of the districts have had uprisings and threatens to harm Katniss’s family if she doesn’t comply with his wishes.

The Hunger Games

By Suzanne Collins

Place: Publisher & Year: New York: Scholastic Inc., c2008, 2009

Genres: Science fiction, adventure, dystopian, thriller

Series: The Hunger Games; 1

ISBN: 9780439023528

Intended audience: Young adult

Number of pages: 374

Setting: District 12 & the Capitol, Panem

Time period: Sometime in the future – after “the Dark Days, the uprising of the districts against the Capitol” (p. 18).

Plot summary: When Katniss Everdeen’s younger sister, Prim, is selected as a tribute for District 12 in the Capitol’s televised Hunger Games, Katniss volunteers to go instead.  With her hunting skills, Katniss has a better chance of surviving the games than her twelve year old sister.  In spite of this, it will take all of Katniss’s wits and a good amount of luck, to make it through the games alive.

The Shimmer

By David Morrell

Place: Publisher & Year: New York: Vanguard Press, 2009

Genres: Adventure, suspense, thriller, paranormal

ISBN: 9781593155803

Intended audience: Adult

Number of pages: 423 (including Afterword, Acknowledgements, and About the Author)

Setting: Rostov, TX

Time period: Contemporary

Plot summary: When Santa Fe police officer, Dan Page, returns home one day he discovers that his wife, Tori, has suddenly left him.  As he tries to figure out why she left  and where she is, he learns that she stopped in the small West Texas town of Rostov while driving to visit her mother in San Antonio, Texas.  While few people have ever heard of Rostov, the few that have know that the town is infamous for the inexplicable lights which appear at night outside of town.  Even though the government has been secretly studying the lights and their effects for years, nobody knows what cause the lights and not everyone can see them.

As Dan attempts to understand Tori’s fascination with the lights, a crazed gunman starts shooting at a busload of people who were viewing the lights.  It turns out that this is not the first time that someone has responded violently to the effects of the lights; however, this is the first time that the violence is mentioned in conjunction with the lights on national news.  As curiosity draws even more people to the town of Rostov, events become even crazier from the unexplained phenomena.