Bethanne Patrick

Nina Sadowsky's day job is high-level Hollywood producer, and it shows in the cinematic drive of her new thriller. But the book's nonstop action leaves little time for details of place and character.

Graeme Macrae Burnet's stylish, atmospheric mystery can be read just as a dark little detective story — but it's worth paying attention to the novel's playful found-manuscript framing device.

With The Pictures, British author Guy Bolton kicks off a mystery series set in classic-era Hollywood. He's clearly done his research on 1930s America, but sometimes all that detail obscures the story.

Kathleen Barber's debut novel is an on-trend mashup of murder, social media and Serial-style true-crime podcasting, but though well paced, it suffers from thin characters and a lack of context.

The title of Owen Egerton's new novel refers — mostly — to the old fable that the earth is hollow. But there's nothing hollow about this suspenseful tale of a religion professor's fall and rise.

Fiona Barton's latest — a followup to last year's hit The Widow — picks up with journalist Kate Waters as she digs into another cold case, this one an infant skeleton found at a building site.

French novelist Delphine De Vigan follows up her tell-all 2012 memoir with a creepy tale of a blocked novelist — also named Delphine — who falls under the sway of an elegant, menacing ghostwriter.

Elizabeth Kostova's deep love for her adopted homeland grounds this story of a young American woman in Sofia, who finds a mysterious urn full of ashes and has to piece together the lives behind it.

Dan Chaon's latest novel suggests that even people who seem kind can lead you down dangerous paths, whether they realize it or not.

In Kelly Luce's new novel, a woman who calls her heart "the black organ" must return to the home she left long ago and the father she no longer speaks to, in order to confront her troubled past.