What’s next from bestselling author of the Housemaid?: THE INTRUDER by Freida
The Intruder is available now
THE INTRUDER by Freida McFadden (Poisoned Pen Press £9.99, 336pp)
CASEY, a young woman with a mysterious past, has taken refuge in a cabin in the woods of a wilderness when a hurricane strikes. The roof shakes, an elderly tree is swaying dangerously and the wind is howling.
Then there is a knock at the door. An even younger woman is standing there, covered in blood and brandishing a knife. For a time she refuses to say a word, but gradually it emerges that the girl, called Ella, has a horrifying story to tell of an abusive childhood – and the two women may have more in common than either of them realise.
Intense and gripping.
SHARP FORCE by Patricia Cornwell (Sphere £22, 400pp)
BEST-SELLING Cornwell has become an international star since her first story about medical examiner Kay Scarpetta in 1990. This is her 29th featuring the obsessive, sometimes fussy doctor. It is the early hours of Christmas morning when she discovers that the Phantom Slasher, a serial killer who has been terrorising Northern Virginia for months, has struck again.
He stalks his female victims with ghostly holograms that appear by magic, paralysing them with fear, before murdering them in their beds. Then Scarpetta is summoned to a local psychiatric hospital where two patients have been brutalised.
Things get worse when the doctor herself sees a hologram. Brilliant, scary storytelling.
CRY HAVOC by Jack Carr (Simon & Schuster £9.99, 560pp)
JAMES Reece, the hero of Carr’s previous books including The Terminal List, which became a hit TV series starring Chris Pratt, was a navy veteran who took on the world. This is the story of his father Tom, who guided his son’s life as a justice fighter.
The year is 1968 and Tom is a US navy SEAL attached to a shadowy undercover group charged with operating behind enemy lines across the border from Vietnam in Laos. Tom’s group is compromised – someone has sold them out – but can he survive and discover who?
Add in an ambitious adviser in the Kremlin anxious to rock the White House with a plan with consequences that stretch far beyond SouthEast Asia and you have all the ingredients of a first-rate geopolitical thriller with a real hero at its heart.