Stephen King speaks and the publishing world listens. Last year, Uncle Stevie devoted his entire Entertainment Weekly column to Meg Gardiner's books, claiming that the US publishing world was crazy-out-of-its-mind for not recognizing Gardiner's talent. It was a shame, he wrote, that the gifted American writer could only get published in England. Sniffing a bestseller in the air, Dutton won the ensuing race for rights to Gardiner's new novel, The Dirty Secrets Club, slating it for summer release. Their reliance on Uncle Stevie's taste proved to be smart.

The Dirty Secrets Club, which follows the decimation of San Francisco's Beautiful People by a series of suspicious suicides, is a keep-you-up-all-night read introducing one of the most intriguing heroines to come along in years. When a football superstar leaps to his death off the Golden Gate bridge, forensic psychiatrist Jo Beckett links his death to the murder-suicide of a famed designer and his companion, as well as to the puzzling, high-speed car crash of a rising federal attorney, whose body bore the lipsticked word, "Dirty." What could these disparate suicides have in common? While the action is almost always non-stop, every now and then Beckett slows the pace to insert some King-like dark humor, best put to use in a Halloween party attended by Klingon-costumed nerds, a companion monkey, and a very big earthquake.

As Uncle Stevie advises, don't miss out on The Dirty Secrets Club.

Fans of the cinematic one-two punch of The Prestige and The Illusionist, those feeling nostalgic for the Harry Houdini chapters of Doctorow's Ragtime or simply those who have been waiting impatiently for the sequel to The Last Nightingale, the author's acclaimed previous book in this series, should get a kick out of Anthony Flacco's magical new historical thriller. It's a darkly picaresque romp through 1915 San Francisco, which is still reeling from the catastrophic fire and earthquake of a decade previous, even as it readies itself for the World's Fair.

This sprawling saga has an intriguingly fractious cast, including renowned mesmerist J.D. Duncan, who fears he can no longer control his troubling visions (a by-product of "a magic powder" we now call Ecstasy) and Detective Randall Blackburn, assigned (against his wishes) to protect Duncan, whom he suspects of being a fraud and who may or may not actually be in danger. But it's the battling, make-shift Blackburn clan who truly steal the show: not just the dogged lawman, but also his adopted son and prot?g? Shane Nightingale, an enigmatic young man with occasionally troubling visions of his own; his proto-feminist sister, the mischievous and fearless Vignette; as well as the relentlessly proper Miss Janice Freshell, who has set her romantic hooks into Randall, much to Shane and—especially Vignette's—dismay.

This is a somber and troubling tale but Flacco breathes real life into the era, casting an unblinking spotlight on a society—and a family—caught on the cusp of a turbulent new age, unknowingly tottering toward technological, cultural and sociological upheaval—and world war.

It's said that every one has a double, but it's a rare that anyone actually encounters his or her mirror image. It is this conceit that drives The Likeness, as Detective Cassie Maddox (heroine of French's debut novel, the Edgar-winning In the Woods), is called in to consult on a murder case with an improbable victim, a woman who not only looks like her, but who has hijacked an identity Maddox created for herself when she was part of an undercover unit some years prior. Seeing a rare opportunity, her former superior cajoles her into once again assuming the identity of Lexie Madison, inserting herself into the victim's life to uncover the identity of her slayer.

An implausible scenario, you say? Well, French makes it work, addressing reader's skepticism through that displayed by her heroine, answering each logical objection in turn until achieving her audience's buy in. Once that hurdle is overcome, French delivers an intense, well-constructed novel of suspense, as Cassie once again steps into the shoes of her fictional construct. She finds that she likes the life Lexie has built for herself, and the friends she has made, even though one of them is certainly responsible for her death. Through Carrie's first person narration, French allows readers to experience the tension and duplicity first hand, first making them complicit in Cassie's deception, then making them feel the intensity of her emotions as she grows to admire, and even to love, her new friends and suspects.

After a double murder in the Hamptons--the corpses of two mobsters, their hands severed, are found hanging from the Shinnecock Bridge--ex-boxer Jake "Pay Day" Bechet assumes that someone has crossed his former employers, the Castello crime family, with whom he has forged an uneasy truce. Still, such activity so close to home makes him uneasy. It turns out that that feeling is justified, as he is subsequently accosted by Jorge Castello, who tries to blackmail Bechet into investigating the killings, claiming someone is trying to pin the blame on his organization. Although reluctant to become entangled in Castello business again, Bechet realizes that the only way to keep his past from destroying his present is to uncover the truth. His investigation leads him to form an uneasy alliance with Tommy Miller, a retired PI whose ex-girlfriend Abby figures prominently in their mystery investigation.

The Water's Edge is an atmospheric masterpiece, teeming with melancholy, longing, and sudden, shocking violence. Although Bechet and Miller are fascinating leading men, perhaps the most important character is Abby, who Judson never brings on stage, instead presenting her to the audience through remembrances, and appearances on videotape. That readers experience the presence of this enigmatic character so powerfully is a tribute to Judson's writing ability--readers come to trust his characters' perceptions as if they were dealing with one of their own intimate, flesh and blood, acquaintances.

To the Death is the concluding novel of the post-Bush espionage thrillers starring the wily and cantankerous Admiral Arnold Morgan, personal advisor to the United States' President. It has what all first-rate international thrillers have: multiple characters (three pages worth), globe-hopping action, and overlapping story lines.

This time the Commander in Chief of Hamas, General Ravi Rashida, and his Palestinian wife, Shakira, plan to assassinate Admiral Arnold Morgan in retaliation for their foiled attacks in the US, and for a failed assassination attempt on their lives. It all begins at Boston's Logan airport when two local cops discover a bomb and manage to dispose of it before it injures too many passengers. Then a wayward Canadian airliner is shot down from a flight path aimed directly at the Capitol. Meanwhile reporter Henry Brady of the Washington Post works to expose a military cover-up involving the destruction of a civilian aircraft and the secrets of the US intelligence apparatus.

As the action ricochets around the world from the Middle East to the United States, London, Ireland, and Scotland, Robinson cranks up the tension and keeps the plot on the boil right up to its breakneck conclusion.

Faith Zanetti, a foul-mouthed, hard-drinking British journalist, makes her American debut in Anna Blundy's remarkable Vodka Neat, which describes a contemporary Russia which appears much less safe than under Soviet rule. This is a topsy-turvy world where a neighborhood filled with Mercedes is a neighborhood where only gangsters reside. Faith should know: 15 years earlier, she married one of them.

Back in Russia after a long absence spent covering various wars and enduring various breakdowns, Faith discovers that her estranged husband has been locked up after confessing to a grisly double homicide. Guilt-ridden because of her own half-remembered involvement in the crime, she visits him in his ghastly prison, but the secret she uncovers in his cell is even more shocking than the murders.

Blundy, a former Moscow Bureau Chief for the London Times, is peerless in her depiction of modern Moscow, with its soot-colored snow, ersatz-Western nightlife, and depressed British ex-pats slugging back vodka with their Russian gangster friends. When she takes us to Vorkuta, a nightmarish settlement deep inside the Arctic Circle, she makes us shiver in the sub-zero temperatures and feel the despair of forgotten families who can only dream of the warmer comforts of Moscow.

Vodka Neat is astonishing in its bleak beauty, uncompromising in its depiction of a deeply-flawed woman in pursuit of her long-vanished innocence. Yet for all its grimness, this is a hugely funny book, containing wit on every page. For, as Faith tells us, the harder life gets in Russia, the more its citizens laugh.

New York police detective Ellie Hatcher is back after her debut in Dead Connection. This time she is investigating the murder of an adventurous college student from the Midwest who has become the victim of her own sense of youthful invulnerability. After leaving a club in the early hours before dawn, the best night of her life turns out to be her last.

Ellie has risen fast through the ranks, but has a lot to prove before being accepted by her colleagues. Fortunately, she is partnered with a man who recognizes her potential and has the good sense to back her up as she handles a hot potato of a case--even when she sticks her neck out, pursuing connections to cold cases, racing to prevent the next murder.

Though billed as a thriller and burdened with standard-issue chapters written from the point of view of a serial killer--a convention that should have been retired to the Museum of Crime Fiction Cliches long ago--the real strength of the book is in its procedural elements, which are authentic and engaging.

The body of a nearly naked teenage girl is found straddling the border between North and South Ireland known as the Borderlands. Since she was from the south, the case goes to Inspector Ben Devlin of the Irish Republic's An Garda Siochana, i.e., An Garda or The Guards, and thus begins the debut novel of an exciting new police procedural series, one that is sure to draw raves in the States as it has in England.

The only clues Devlin and his team have is a photograph and a ring far more costly than the victim could ever afford. Suspicion shifts among some local thugs, a prominent politician and even to members of An Garda itself, and Devlin must sort through the deception and lies to find the killer. It becomes a challenge to separate the present from the past and the good from the bad.

Devlin is a rare type of fictional cop: happily married with small children, no major hang-ups, decent. He is distracted by the overtures of an old girl friend (now the wife of the town's leading citizen and Garda critic), by the slaughter of a neighbor's sheep which might be the work of his own pet dog, and by threats against his family, but he stays focused. Readers familiar with Ken Bruen's Jack Taylor books will be interested in the more favorable treatment given An Garda by the talented Brian McGilloway. Those who love a great story combined with superb writing are urged to get in on the ground floor of this new series. You'll thank yourself for it.