Trials & Tribulations: Readings

Chris Pavone is the New York Times bestselling author of The Expats. In Pavone’s new thriller, The Paris Diversion (Crown), American expat Kate Moore is back to discover that a massive terror attack across Paris is not what it seems—and that it involves her family. At breakneck pace, through 12 hours and multiple voices, Pavone weaves various stories. Kate is thinking on tonight’s dinner party; her husband, in the small fortune he’s going to make via an extremely risky investment. Elsewhere in the city, a high-tech CEO is planning on making a huge fortune, with a major corporate acquisition; and somewhere else, a terrorist elbows his way into the crowded courtyard of the world’s largest museum, sets down his metal briefcase, and removes his windbreaker. He is planning to die today. And he won’t be the only one. Jeffery Deaver, New York Times bestselling author of The Cutting Edge, called it "Thriller writing at its absolute best. With echoes of Graham Greene and John le Carré, Pavone’s novel [is] both a nonstop adventure ride and a smart, stylish and compelling meditation on family, courage, responsibilities, and the relationships we create, for good and bad, throughout our lives."

Scott Turow is the author of eleven bestselling works of fiction, including Identical, Innocent, Presumed Innocent, and The Burden of Proof, and two nonfiction books, including One L, about his experience as a law student. He has also frequently contributed essays and op-ed pieces to publications such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic. From 1978 to 1986, Turow was an Assistant United States Attorney in Chicago, serving as lead prosecutor in several high-profile federal trials investigating corruption in the Illinois judiciary. He currently is a partner in an international law firm. In Testimony (Grand Central Publishing) Turow follows former prosecutor Bill ten Boom as he peels back the many layers in the mystery of a massacre in post-war Bosnia, and no assumption is safe — or entirely correct. In Turow’s The Last Trial (Grand Central Publishing) defense lawyer Sandy Stern, 85, takes one last case. The criminal defendant is an old friend, a former Nobel Prize winner in Medicine, now charged with insider trading, fraud and murder —and the case will question everything Stern thought he knew about his friend.

Susan Isaacs is the author of thirteen novels, including As Husbands Go, Long Time No See, Any Place I Hang My Hat and Compromising Positions. A recipient of the Writers for Writers Award and the John Steinbeck Award, Isaacs serves as chairman of the board of Poets & Writers, and is a past president of Mystery Writers of America. Her latest novel is Takes One to Know One (Atlantic Monthly Press). Just a few years ago, Corie Geller was busting terrorists as an agent for the FBI. But at thirty-five, she traded in her badge for the stability of marriage and motherhood. Between cooking meals and playing chauffeur, Corie scouts Arabic fiction for a few literary agencies and, on Wednesdays, has lunch with her fellow Shorehaven freelancers at a so-so French restaurant. But Corie senses that something's off. Pete Delaney, a milquetoast package designer, always shows up early, sits in the same spot, and keeps one eye on the Jeep he parks in the lot across the street. Corie intuitively feels that Pete is hiding something. But does Pete really have a shady alternate life, or is Corie just imagining things, desperate to add some spark to her humdrum suburban existence? She decides that the only way to find out is to dust off her FBI toolkit and take a deep dive into Pete Delaney’s affairs. Always sassy, smart, and wickedly witty, Susan Isaacs is at her formidable best in a novel that is both bitingly wry and ominously thrilling.