THOUGHTS ON THIS 'n THAT

  THE DATING GAME (Berkley) by Ally Zetterberg is a clever and surprising thriller about the perils of modern dating and  female rage. It inspires, a board game designer to start playing by her own rules, and losers won’t be tolerated. The friendship game. The dating game. The end game. For board game designer Tilda Smith they’re all necessary steps on the path to finding happiness. And by structuring her life according to a set of rules, just like in the games that she loves to create at her job, Tilda can finally win. The only problem? The other players don’t know they’re playing by Tilda’s rules. She’s fair. Very fair, in fact. But then one night her date pushes her too far and she gets just a bit carried away. Any player who disappoints must face consequences, right? But as Tilda finds herself transporting a body in a laundry bag, she has to question how to make the punishment fit the crime.  And now someone is watching Tilda and playing a game of their own. Will they...

  In this juicy psychological thriller, home organizer Emily is invited to vacation at her beautiful and wealthy new client's summer home—but once inside, Emily doesn’t want to leave. Every one of my home organizing clients is a fabulous liar. They tell themselves they need to keep clutter in their lives for rainy days or just-in-cases. They hold onto things too tightly. Most people don't know how to cut to the heart of what's important and purge everything that's not. That's where I come in. I can look into my clients lives and see exactly what's weighing them down, and I get rid of it for them. It sounds easy, but I’ll let you in on a secret: I have trouble letting go of things, too. When Cap slides into my life with her neon signs and velvet hair bows and magnetic energy, I know I can't just let her walk away. Because one of the first rules of home organizing is that like belongs with like. And Cap and me? We're destined to be together. She may not kn...

  A charming second-chance romance about a young woman determined to finally embrace vulnerability—a love letter to anyone who’s ever felt their body is a barrier to their happiness. In THIGHS WIDE SHUT (PenguinRandomHouse), Emma thought her late twenties couldn’t get any more complicated. But then she quit her teaching job and moved across the country—only to find herself living right below the man she tried for years to avoid. Emma hasn’t seen Harrison since an explosive fight ended their college friendship and crushed the possibility of anything more ever happening between them. Now that his apartment is right above hers, Emma is privy to every detail of his active (and noisy) dating life. She knows she has only herself to blame for their estrangement: her inability to be honest with Harrison drove him away. It’s clear he’s moved on; why can’t she? Presented with an opportunity to reignite the long-smoldering flames of their relationship, Emma realizes that to seize the moment, ...

It’s October 2025 and Hamilton, Ontario is a city on edge—job insecurity, rising rents, and polarization combine in dangerous ways. When a series of abductions plunges the city into chaos, an unsuspecting hero arises: a young steelworker struggling to find his place in the world.      At twenty-six years old, Danny Clarke’s greatest concerns are: the Blue Jays World Series run, maintaining a friendship with his ex-girlfriend (and definitely not vying to win her back), and becoming a good man—or at the very least, figuring out what that means. In other words, he mostly cares about himself.      On a crisp October evening, during his break at the plant, Danny witnesses the abduction of Braden Steel CFO Jonathan Lean, his hands and feet bound as he’s dragged out of the office by three masked kidnappers. Capitalizing on the existing social tension in the city, the criminals begin terrorizing Hamilton, abducting one person per day in a twiste...

  From  New York Times  bestselling author Tess Gerritsen comes a harrowing and emotional thriller where ghosts of the Cold War return with a vengeance—and cannot be outrun. When a renowned disease expert and Russian defector dies mysteriously during a global affairs conference in Purity, Maine, the tight-knit band of former spies in the Martini Club once again sees their quiet coastal retirement interrupted by international intrigue. And when a waitress at the conference hotel is found murdered, Ingrid Slocum sees chilling links to a disastrous mission that nearly killed her three decades ago. Desperate to uncover the truth, Ingrid’s drawn back into the game by a magnetic ex-CIA colleague—and former lover—who was with her on the long-ago doomed mission. He convinces her to join him, and together they head to Amsterdam to track down her would-be killer. Ingrid’s frantic husband Lloyd and Maggie Bird are close behind, but a clandestine network of assassins is intent on sto...

  Ten years ago, aspiring singer-actress Scout Sage lost the only thing that mattered: her sister, Georgia. Ever since Georgia’s mysterious death at a Hollywood party, Scout’s done her best to honor her memory, clawing her way through the industry and collecting a network of climbers along the way, fellow hot girls in stilettos with cutthroat ambition, a new Hollywood order. But when a slew of targeted murders makes headlines across LA, all pointing to Scout as the killer, she turns overnight from a mid-tier pop star into the world’s most famous (alleged) murderer. Now everything she’s worked to build—including the justice she wants for Georgia—will fall apart unless Scout can prove she’s not guilty. Meanwhile, the young and unusual detective assigned to her case, herself no stranger to tragedy, begins to unearth secrets not even Scout knows, let alone her millions of new fans. Particularly about the ways Georgia’s death connects to an even older pattern of crimes long hushed over ...