More Thrilling December Bestsellers

Worth Dying For by Lee Child

Publishers Weekly –

In Child's exciting 15th thriller featuring one-man army Jack Reacher (after 61 Hours), Reacher happens into a situation tailor-made for his blend of morality and against-the-odds heroics. While passing through an isolated Nebraska town, the ex-military cop persuades the alcoholic local doctor to treat Eleanor Duncan, who's married to the abusive Seth, for a "nosebleed." Reacher later breaking Seth's nose prompts members of the Duncan clan, who are involved in an illegal trafficking scheme, to seek revenge. Reacher, who easily disposes of two hit men sent to get him, winds up trying to solve a decades-old case concerning a missing eight-year-old girl. While Child convincingly depicts his hero's superhuman abilities, he throws in a few lucky breaks to enable the outnumbered Reacher to survive. Crisp, efficient prose and well-rounded characterizations (at least of the guys in the white hats) raise this beyond other attempts to translate the pulse-pounding feel of the Die Hard films into prose.

American Assassin by Vince Flynn

From Barnes & Noble –

This is Vince Flynn's eleventh Mitch Rapp thriller, but it's set at the very beginning of Rapp's death-defying career. It places him in the aftermath of the event that forever changed his life: the 1988 Lockerbie Pan Am Flight 103 bombing that killed 270 people, including the one woman he loved. Joining the CIA, Rapp is placed in an intense, fast track training program and then assigned to a clandestine group of covert ops assigned to permanently neutralize the terrorists. His fearless search for vengeance leads him into the very dens of the Middle East conspirators. An adrenaline-fueled, action-packed thriller about an accelerated apprenticeship.

Hell's Corner by David Baldacci

Library Journal –

Hell hath no fury like a retired CIA assassin in pursuit of a terrorist. Baldacci's fifth book in the "Camel Club" series (after Divine Justice) opens with Oliver Stone as a wounded victim of a bombing. The terrorist attack takes place in Lafayette Park in front of what should be the most secure of all American buildings, the White House. The British prime minister was supposed to have visited the park that night, so a debate sparks about who the intended target was. Stone, already pulled back into service by the President, is assigned to work with a British agent, Mary Chapman, to find the terrorist. But as that pair and the rest of the Camel Club delve deeper into the mystery, they find this attack may be only the beginning of a much more insidious and deadly plot. The mastermind behind the attack always seems one step ahead, and it'll take all of Stone's cunning to ferret out the truth from the lies. VERDICT Camel Club fans and thriller aficionados will rejoice at having a new action-packed, conspiracy-laden, politically intriguing mystery to solve.