Rising Tides

The Innocent is another action-packed thriller from David Baldacci, one of the world’s most popular writers.

HE COULD NO LONGER REMEMBER THE NAMES OF ALL THE PEOPLE WHOSE LIVES HE HAD ENDED.

Master assassin Will Robie is the man the US government call to eliminate their most ruthless enemies at home or abroad. He never questions his orders, and he never misses his mark.

He’s just returned from a covert assignment in Edinburgh to neutralize a growing threat, having drawn upon all his expertise to complete his mission and disappear without a trace. The odds were stacked against him, but that’s never made a difference before.

But now he’s facing the most difficult operation of his career. Dispatched to kill a US government employee, he does the unthinkable when things don’t add up – he refuses to pull the trigger. In doing so, Robie finds himself becoming the target. On the run from his own government and with everything on the line, does he need to change sides to save lives – including his own?

The Innocent is the first novel in David Baldacci’s blockbuster Will Robie series.

On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues.

As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.

In northern Iceland, 1829, Agnes Magnúsdóttir is condemned to death for her part in the brutal murder of her lover.

Agnes is sent to wait out her final months on the farm of district officer Jón Jónsson, his wife and their two daughters. Horrified to have a convicted murderer in their midst, the family avoid contact with Agnes. Only Tóti, the young assistant priest appointed Agnes’s spiritual guardian, is compelled to try to understand her. As the year progresses and the hardships of rural life force the household to work side by side, Agnes’s story begins to emerge and with it the family’s terrible realization that all is not as they had assumed.

Based on actual events, Burial Rites is an astonishing and moving novel about the truths we claim to know and the ways in which we interpret what we’re told. In beautiful, cut-glass prose, Hannah Kent portrays Iceland’s formidable landscape, in which every day is a battle for survival, and asks, how can one woman hope to endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others?

Burial Rites is perfect for fans of Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood and The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan.