When homesteader Dell Reddick Sr. decides to purchase a headstone for the son he lost 17 years ago, painful memories among his family members set into motion a series of events he could never have predicted. Swept up in the family ordeal is Deputy Sheriff Harley Jensen, who may be the only one who can restore the peace—if his own passions for one of the family don’t get in the way. Chris Harding Thornton unravels the intrigue and suspense in meticulously detailed fashion in her solid debut novel, Pickard County Atlas.

Set in 1978, the story takes place in the titular rural Nebraska county, where large tracts of farmland have been named after the people who lived there. Homesteads—many of which have folded or been abandoned—stretch over hundreds of acres, a detail which Thornton cannily uses to evoke the isolation and lonely frustration that bears down upon the remaining residents.

Harley is initially called to investigate a series of unusual thefts of clothing and other items from the homes of the recently deceased, as well as evidence of trespassing at other abandoned homes. One such excursion brings him in contact with Paul Reddick, the younger brother of Dell Jr., whose body was never found after he was killed in 1960 by Korean War veteran Rollie Asher.

Paul is no stranger to the law, as he has been in and out of jail on drug-related charges. Harley tries to go easy on him, knowing the trauma that Paul and his family have experienced. But when it becomes clear that both Paul and Harley are attracted to Paul’s older brother Rick’s wife, Pam, events build toward a confrontation for which neither is prepared.

Pickard County Atlas takes its time; there is no real sense of urgency or high stakes confronting Harley or any of the other characters. The closest thing to a central mystery is the weird series of thefts and break-ins. But Thornton, herself a seventh-generation Nebraskan, describes the landscape and interactions of the characters in such starkly realistic detail, you cannot help but get wrapped up in the novel’s noirish atmosphere and slow-burning mystery.

Riley Wolfe excels at what he does: elaborate, improbable, dangerous, lucrative art heists. He knows he’s the best, and he gets a substantial thrill out of accomplishing the seemingly impossible with flair and rough justice. As he explains in Jeff Lindsay’s Fool Me Twice, “It’s what I live for—grabbing stuff from people too rich and privileged to deserve it.”

Of course, Riley’s illicit activities make him very wealthy, which is quite helpful for establishing secret hideaways, paying subcontractors to assist him in his schemes and ensuring his beloved mother (who is in a persistent vegetative state) is well cared for. All of these elements come into play in Lindsay’s second Riley Wolfe novel (the first is 2019’s Just Watch Me), as a dizzying chain of betrayals, threats, double-crosses and misdirections add up to a wild international caper that’s at once nerve-wracking and fascinating in its extreme peril and layered complexity.

Riley’s newest boss, Patrick Boniface, is an arms dealer known for his ruthlessness—which pales compared to what his sidekick, torture aficionado Bernadette, likes to do for fun. Boniface informs Riley that he can either be Bernadette’s ill-fated plaything, or steal Raphael’s "The Liberation of St. Peter" . . . which is, unfortunately, a fresco that is part of a wall at the Vatican. It gets worse: A rival crime boss tells Riley that, if he doesn’t double-cross Boniface, Monique (the world’s best art forger and Riley’s quasi-romantic interest) will come to great harm. And, as is not uncommon with world-famous art thieves, there’s also an FBI agent determined to capture him once and for all.

At first, Riley is completely nonplussed; stealing a wall doesn’t happen to be within his expertise. But inspiration does strike, and Lindsay does an excellent job of building toward the solution via masterful feats of planning, costuming, social engineering and a well-placed felony (or several). Readers travel to various spots around the globe as Riley races to complete the job, protect his loved ones and live to steal another day. This frequently funny, always inventive, often quite dark thriller will delight fans of Lindsay’s bestselling Dexter series and the hit TV show it inspired.

With nationwide calls for police reform and defunding, literary giant John Grisham’s novel A Time for Mercy is undoubtedly timely, as it explores the ways that violence committed by or against law enforcement officials can complicate the pursuit of justice.

Jake Brigance—the hero of Grisham’s 1989 debut, A Time to Kill—is court-appointed to represent 16-year-old Drew Gamble in the shooting death of his mother’s boyfriend, deputy sheriff Stu Kofer. There’s no question that Drew pulled the trigger, but Jake faces an ethical challenge over whether the shooting was justified. Drew contends that he shot Stu in self-defense after believing Stu had killed his mother. Drew, his younger sister and their mother lived in constant fear of beatings by Stu, who often returned home in a drunken stupor.

Jake only wants to handle preliminary matters for the Gamble case until a permanent public defender can be appointed. But deep down, he realizes he’s the best chance the Gamble family has. With public sentiment and fellow police officers standing behind Stu and his family, Jake’s efforts to keep Drew from being tried as an adult and facing possible execution put him at odds with the community.

While there are lulls during some of the legal procedural bits, Grisham’s mastery of the courtroom thriller is never in question. As usual, he presents as smooth a read as you’ll ever experience. The dialogue is sharp and pointed, layered with genuine emotions that make the characters pop off the pages of this morally complex story.

Brilliant hacker-turned-MI6-agent Brigitte Sharp (she goes by “Bridge”) feels torn between opposing forces. She’s a member of the British intelligence agency’s elite cyber threat analytics unit and an excellent field agent, but she’s reluctant to leave desk duty since a failed mission three years ago. She’s close to her sister and friends but has become weary of lying to them to protect her cover. And her drive to seek justice has been tamped down by PTSD-fueled fear that she’ll harm someone because of her perceived incompetence.

Now, as Antony Johnston’s The Exphoria Code opens, Bridge’s life has come to a crisis point: Her boss and therapist are insisting she get back to fieldwork just as she learns her online friend Tenebrae_Z has been found dead—perhaps as a result of their attempts to decrypt mysterious ASCII (an electronic character encoding standard) art that the two came across online.

Bridge “had always thought of the truth as a mountain peak. . . . To reach it, you might have to negotiate tricky paths, shifting scree, falling boulders. But if you were persistent enough . . . you could eventually reach the summit and the truth would be revealed.” She comes up against a veritable mountain range of obstacles as she investigates Ten’s murder. For starters, the ASCII posts are related to a top-secret Anglo-French project involving military drones—a project that’s got a mole in its ranks, as well as plenty of dangerous people invested in keeping Bridge from finding out who the mole is or what nefariousness he or she is up to.

Johnston, perhaps best known for his graphic novel The Coldest City (which served as the source for the film Atomic Blonde), has once again created a heroine who’s as smart and savvy as she is badass. He lays a complex trail of clues, hazards and betrayals as Bridge goes undercover to track down the mole and ends up in tense interrogations, edge-of-your-seat chases and action-packed fights to the possible death. Can she unearth the mole before something terrible happens? Readers will thrill to the chase in this kickoff to a techno-thriller series that has at its center a hacker with a heart of gold—and nerves of steel.