Recommendations based on "Jelly's Gold A McKenzie Novel"

Missouri native Allen Eskens' "stunning small-town mystery" (New York Times Book Review) is "a coming-of-age book to rival some of the best, such as Ordinary Grace." (Library Journal, starred review)A LIBRARY JOURNAL Mystery Pick of the MonthIn a small Southern town where loyalty to family and to "your people" carries the weight of a sacred oath, defying those unspoken rules can be a deadly proposition. After fifteen years of growing up in the Ozark hills with his widowed mother, high-school freshman Boady Sanden is beyond ready to move on. He dreams of glass towers and cityscapes, driven by his desire to be anywhere other than Jessup, Missouri. The new kid at St. Ignatius High School, if he isn't being pushed around, he is being completely ignored. Even his beloved woods, his playground as a child and his sanctuary as he grew older, seem to be closing in on him, suffocating him.Then Thomas Elgin moves in across the road, and Boady's life begins to twist and turn. Coming to know the Elgins -- a black family settling into a community where notions of "us" and "them" carry the weight of history -- forces Boady to rethink his understanding of the world he's taken for granted. Secrets hidden in plain sight begin to unfold: the mother who wraps herself in the loss of her husband, the neighbor who carries the wounds of a mysterious past that he holds close, the quiet boss who is fighting his own hidden battle.But the biggest secret of all is the disappearance of Lida Poe, the African-American woman who keeps the books at the local plastics factory. Word has it that Ms. Poe left town, along with a hundred thousand dollars of company money. Although Boady has never met the missing woman, he discovers that the threads of her life are woven into the deepest fabric of his world. As the mystery of her fate plays out, Boady begins to see the stark lines of race and class that both bind and divide this small town -- and he will be forced to choose sides.

The toughest cases hit closest to home. Alex Cross left his hometown, and some awful family tragedies, for a better life with Nana Mama in Washington, DC. He hasn't looked back. Now his cousin Stefan has been accused of a horrible, unthinkable murder, and Cross drives south with Bree, Nana Mama, Jannie, and Ali to Starksville, North Carolina, for the first time in thirty-five years. Back home, he discovers a once proud community down on its luck, and local residents who don't welcome him with open arms. As Cross steps into his family home, the horrors of his childhood flood back--and he learns that they're not really over. He brings all his skill to finding out the truth about his cousin's case. But truth is hard to come by in a town where no one feels safe to speak.Chasing his ghosts takes Cross all the way down to the sugarcane fields of Florida, where he gets pulled into a case that has local cops needing his kind of expertise: a string of socialite murders with ever more grisly settings. He's chasing too many loose ends--a brutal killer, the truth about his own past, and justice for his cousin--and any one of the answers might be fatal.In Cross Justice, Alex Cross confronts the deadliest--and most personal--case of his career. It's a propulsive, edge-of-your-seat thrill ride that proves you can go home again--but it just might kill you.

When Dennis Milne--now living under an assumed identity in the Philippines--hears that his old friend and colleague Malik has been gunned down in a restaurant, he decides to go back to the violent city he once called home and bring the murderer to justice. Milne arrives in a pre-Christmas London that is cold and hostile. But he is no longer a policeman; no longer charged with keeping the peace and upholding the law. Although his old friends at the King's Cross station do not know that Milne is back in town, it soon becomes clear that his arrival has been expected by men who are after his blood. Hungry for revenge and determined to uphold his own very rough brand of justice, Milne searches for the person behind his friend's demise--and leaves a trail of death and destruction more wide-reaching than even he could have expected.

In the summer of 1990, Dr. Bill Brockton—a bright, ambitious young forensic scientist—is hired by the University of Tennessee to head, and to raise the profile of, the school's small Anthropology Department. Six months later, the ink on his contract barely dry, Brockton is called to a gruesome crime scene in a rural area to identify a corpse and determine how the woman died. But the case—one of Brockton's first murder investigations in Tennessee—could also prove to be his last when he runs afoul of both the county sheriff and an angry mob intent on administering their own swift, rough brand of "justice." With his back to the wall, Brockton is forced to think fast, talk faster, and hope for a miracle.

Miami attorney Jack Swyteck is involved in the most explosive criminal trial of his career -- a case that starts with a murder on a military base and concludes with a shocking surprise that will change Jack's life forever. A beautiful woman comes to see Jack and begs him to represent her. She says she's about to be arrested for the murder of her husband, an officer stationed at Guantanamo Bay. Having no expertise in military law and sensing that the woman isn't telling him the entire truth, Jack turns her down. Then she drops a bombshell: She claims she's the adoptive mother of Jack's biological son -- a child he's never met. Either Jack must represent her or he'll never see the boy. So Jack agrees, but with great foreboding. He has an unreliable client -- a blackmailer who just might be a murderer -- and he has to travel to Gitmo and on to Havana to tussle with people who clearly have a lot to hide. This is a case with as many twists and turns as it has unanswered questions, and the personal toll on Jack won't end until he's forced to confront the ultimate surprise witness in a trial that rocks the city of Miami. In signature Grippando style, Hear No Evil is an intricate, fast-paced, and captivating thriller that will keep you guessing until the very end.

The mutilated body of a young woman. The town doctor lying comatose in the road. A hundred and fifty tablets of Canadian OxyContin. This is the havoc that a merciless killer has wreaked on a sleepy Maine seaport. As detectives Maggie Savage and Michael McCabe investigate, they realize the man they are after does not exist. Nobody knows his real name. Nobody has seen his face. But everybody fears his blade. The only one who may know the murderer's true identity is an eleven-year-old girl—who has vanished into thin air. Taut, twisting, and starring two unforgettable heroes, Darkness First will thrill fans of John Sandford and C. J. Box.

The maestro of pulse-pounding suspense delivers an explosive new white-knuckle thriller featuring deputy U.S. Marshal Tim Rackley -- a lawman driven by honor, morality, and a thirst for justice. The leader of one of the country's most violent biker gangs, Den Laurey should have been behind bars. But thanks to a daring escape on an L.A. freeway, several deputy marshals are dead and Laurey is riding free. Rackley, back on the Service's warrant squad, is in hot pursuit of the outlaw and his ruthless gang -- with a media whirlwind and the entire Los Angeles law-enforcement community driving him.Just when Laurey is within his grasp, circumstances force Rackley to let him go -- with devastating results. A few miles up the road, a sheriff's deputy is attacked: Tim's pregnant wife, Dray. Driven by guilt, Tim vows to hunt Laurey down -- a search that will lead him into a dark world of deception and lies, a world of criminals and undercover cops, drugs and mutilation. And the key to the violent puzzle lies in the discarded corpses of women -- women for whom Tim must seek justice when no one else will. With the stakes rising, Tim must unravel a horrifying secret and confront a deadly terror that reaches from the back alleys of Mexico to the poppy fields of Afghanistan ... and threatens to explode on the dark streets of L.A.

An emerging master of the thriller pits brooding hero Phil Broker against the legendary Witness Protection Program, which has unwittingly hidden his ex-wife's killer. In The Big Law, Logan unfurls a sublime premise--The Fugitive in reverse--and graces it with ingenious plotting and fascinating explorations of the forces that drive men both to selfless heroism and murderous greed. The Big Law's intricate mechanics are set in motion by one fatal choice: Broker's naive ex-wife Caren decides to blow the whistle on her feckless husband, Keith Angland, a St. Paul cop who's moonlighting as an informant for the Chicago mob. Unwisely for her, she confides in Tom James, a disaffected reporter nursing dreams of the perfect crime. Seeing a way out of his dead-end life and into his dreams, Tom cajoles Caren into entrusting him with the suitcase full of greenbacks the mob has paid her informant husband. When Caren is killed, Tom frames Angland, absconds with the suitcase, runs to the FBI (known to its employees as the Big Law), and wangles himself a berth in the Witness Protection Program. Only Broker senses something amiss in Tom's testimony, and he sets out to find the truth. But to do that, he must find Tom, who has the Big Law and a big suitcase full of cash on his side. Logan probes the inner workings of the Witness Protection Program. as no novelist has before. He also brings to this tale an unsurpassed knack for combining white-knuckle action with subtle characterizations and direct, lyrical prose. The Big Law proves how thoroughly he deserved to be called "one of the best of the new thriller breed." (Publishers Weekly)

Late one April evening, retired Department of Defense research analyst Lewis Cole notices a disturbance in the state park across an inlet from his beachfront home in Tyler Beach, New Hampshire. Curious, Cole walks over and finds a solitary man who has been shot to death in the empty wildlife preserve's parking lot. Having a dead body turn up nearly on his doorstep doesn't happen every night, but since Cole writes magazine articles, not newspaper stories, he decides to let the matter drop.Other people have other ideas. A day after the man's death, Cole is visited by a team of Federal Agents, claiming to be from the Drug Enforcement Agency. They tell him that the murdered man was a drug courier sent to meet someone from Cole's neighborhood and the Feds want his help. Cole, who has bitter memories of dealing with the government, initially refuses, but is forced to comply when they take away his job, his savings, and even his home. He quickly learns, however, that the agents have another agenda, one that doesn't involve drug dealers at all.As Cole looks for answers, all he is able to find are more questions. Just where exactly was the man from? South America or the Middle East? Why was he interested in an old World War II tale involving German U-boats interned at a naval shipyard up the coast? Cole soon realizes that these mysteries are more dangerous than he ever imagined. They are leading him back into his secretive past, one that cost him many friends and now threatens his own life.

On the heels of the New York Times bestselling Dead Shot comes the most thrilling installment of the Kyle Swanson series yet, in which an attempt at a new peace in the Middle East is shattered by an unknown attacker, and only Swanson can find out who’s responsibleAt a 15th Century castle outside Edinburgh, Scotland, Sir Geoffrey Cornwell is brokering an unprecedented agreement. Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and the Israeli Foreign Minister are scheduled to sign an historic peace treaty—that is, until their meeting is violently interrupted by a missile strike that leaves the Foreign Minister of Israel dead and Cornwell and the Prince injured.Gunnery Sergeant Kyle Swanson is running covert missions in the mountains of Pakistan when he’s called away from duty. He leaves for the U.K., where he thwarts another attempt on the prince of Saudi Arabia’s life. The attackers are Middle Eastern, but they aren’t working for Al Qaeda—they’re employed by foreign operatives opposed to the peace agreement and determined to claim Saudi oil reserves for themselves by whatever means necessary. Meanwhile, out of hiding and back from the dead comes Juba, one of the deadliest terrorists in the world and Kyle Swanson’s nemesis, who is determined to exact revenge on the man who nearly took his life.With scenes of tremendous suspense that span the globe, Clean Kill puts Swanson in the sights of a group whose greed and vengeance know no limits. But their deadly ambitions also bring them into his sights, which is the wrong place to be.