Recommendations based on "Headhunter"

Why would a man serving a long prison sentence escape the day before he's due to be released? Audie Palmer has spent ten years in a Texas prison after pleading guilty to a robbery in which four people died and seven million dollars went missing. During that time he has suffered repeated beatings, stabbings and threats by inmates and guards, all desperate to answer the same question: where's the money? On the day before Audie is due to be released, he suddenly vanishes. Now everybody is searching for him -- the police, FBI, gangsters and other powerful figures -- but Audie isn't running to save his own life. Instead, he's trying to save someone else's. Michael Robotham has created the ultimate underdog hero, an honorable criminal shrouded in mystery and ready to lead readers on a remarkable chase.

The bestselling author of The Surgeon returns—and so does that chilling novel’s diabolical villain. Though held behind bars, Warren Hoyt still haunts a helpless city, seeming to bequeath his evil legacy to a student all-too-diligent . . . and all-too-deadly.THE APPRENTICEIt is a boiling hot Boston summer. Adding to the city’s woes is a series of shocking crimes, in which wealthy men are made to watch while their wives are brutalized. A sadistic demand that ends in abduction and death.The pattern suggests one man: serial killer Warren Hoyt, recently removed from the city’s streets. Police can only assume an acolyte is at large, a maniac basing his attacks on the twisted medical techniques of the madman he so admires. At least that’s what Detective Jane Rizzoli thinks. Forced again to confront the killer who scarred her—literally and figuratively—she is determined to finally end Hoyt’s awful influence . . . even if it means receiving more resistance from her all-male homicide squad.But Rizzoli isn’t counting on the U.S. government’s sudden interest. Or on meeting Special Agent Gabriel Dean, who knows more than he will tell. Most of all, she isn’t counting on becoming a target herself, once Hoyt is suddenly free, joining his mysterious blood brother in a vicious vendetta. . . .Filled with superbly created characters—and the medical and police procedural details that are her trademark—The Apprentice is Tess Gerritsen at her brilliant best. Set in a stunning world where evil is easy to learn and hard to end, this is a thriller by a master who could teach other authors a thing or two.From the Hardcover edition.

Leon is a small time crook who's ridden his luck for three decades. When he starts splashing big money around, the cops are desperate to know where it came from.James' latest mission looks routine: make friends with Leon's kids, infiltrate his home and dig up some leads.But the plot James begins to unravel isn't what anyone expected. And the only person who might know the truth is an eighteen-year-old boy.There's just one problem. The boy fell to his death thirteen months earlier.

A poor art student living in New York stumbles on a bag of diamonds . . . but they come at a price in this unforgettable novel from "America's #1 storyteller" (Forbes).Matthew Bannon, a poor art student living in New York City, finds a duffel bag filled with diamonds during a chaotic attack at Grand Central Station. Plans for a worry-free life with his stunning girlfriend Katherine fill his thoughts - until he realizes that he is being hunted, and that whoever is after him won't stop until they have reclaimed the diamonds and exacted their revenge.Trailing him is the Ghost, the world's greatest assassin, who has just pulled off his most high-profile hit: killing Walter Zelvas, a top member of the international Diamond Syndicate. There's only one small problem: the diamonds he was supposed to retrieve from Zelvas are missing. Now, the Ghost is on Bannon's trail but so is a rival assassin who would like nothing more than to make the Ghost disappear forever.From the world's #1 writer comes a high-speed thrill ride of adrenaline-fueled suspense you'll never forget.

The author of The Winter of Frankie Machine (“another instant classic”—Lee Child) is back with a razor-sharp novel as cool and unbridled as its California surfer heroes, as heart-stopping as a wave none of them sees coming.Boone Daniels lives to surf. Every morning he’s out in the break off Pacific Beach with the other members of The Dawn Patrol: four men and one woman as single-minded about surfing as he is. Or nearly. They have “real j-o-b-s”; Boone works as a PI just enough to keep himself in fish tacos and wet suits—and in the water whenever the waves are “epic macking crunchy.”But Boone is also obsessed with the unsolved case of a young girl named Rain who was abducted back when he was on the San Diego police force. He blames himself—just as almost everyone in the department does—for not being able to save her. Now, when he can’t say no to a gorgeous, bossy lawyer who wants his help investigating an insurance scam, he’s unexpectedly staring at a chance to make some amends—and take some revenge—for Rain’s disappearance. It might mean missing the most colossal waves he’s liable to encounter (not to mention putting The Dawn Patrol in serious harm’s way as he tangles with the local thuggery), but this investigation is about to give him a wilder ride than any he’s ever imagined.Harrowing and funny, righteous and outrageous, The Dawn Patrol is epic macking crunchy from start to finish.

“[A] fantastically hopped-up thriller . . . a wrong-man plot worthy of Hitchcock.”—Entertainment Weekly (Editor’s Choice)In development as a major motion picture!It’s three thousand miles from the green fields of glory, where Henry “call me Hank” Thompson once played California baseball, to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where the tenements are old, the rents are high, and the drunks are dirty. But now Hank is here, working as a bartender and taking care of a cat named Bud who is surely going to get him killed.It begins when Hank’s neighbor, Russ, has to leave town in a rush and hands over Bud in a carrier. But it isn’t until two Russians in tracksuits drag Hank over the bar at the joint where he works and beat him to a pulp that he starts to get the idea: Someone wants something from him. He just doesn’t know what it is, where it is, or how to make them understand he doesn’t have it.Within twenty-four hours Hank is running over rooftops, swinging his old aluminum bat for the sweet spot of a guy’s head, playing hide and seek with the NYPD, riding the subway with a dead man at his side, and counting a whole lot of cash on a concrete floor.All because of two cowboys, two Russian mafia men, and some of the weirdest goons ever assembled in one place. All because of Bud. All because once, in another life, in another world, the only thing Hank wanted was to take third base—without getting caught.

In Lee Child’s astonishing new thriller, ex–military cop Reacher sees more than most people would...and because of that, he’s thrust into an explosive situation that’s about to blow up in his face. For the only way to find the truth—and save two innocent lives—is to do it the way Jack Reacher does it best: the hard way….Jack Reacher was alone, the way he liked it, soaking up the hot, electric New York City night, watching a man cross the street to a parked Mercedes and drive it away. The car contained one million dollars in ransom money. And Edward Lane, the man who paid it, will pay even more to get his family back. Lane runs a highly illegal soldiers-for-hire operation. He will use any amount of money and any tool to find his beautiful wife and child. And then he’ll turn Jack Reacher loose with a vengeance—because Reacher is the best man hunter in the world.On the trail of a vicious kidnapper, Reacher is learning the chilling secrets of his employer’s past…and of a horrific drama in the heart of a nasty little war. He’s beginning to realize that Edward Lane is hiding something. Something dirty. Something big. But Reacher also knows this: he’s already in way too deep to stop now.

“ONE OF THE BEST THRILLERS TO COME ALONG IN YEARS.”   —MICHAEL CONNELLYTo save America from a catastrophic betrayal, an FBI agent must stop a Russian molein the White House...No one is more surprised than FBI Agent Peter Sutherland when he’s tapped to work in the White House Situation Room. When Peter was a boy, his father was suspected of selling secrets to the Russians—a breach that cost him his career, his reputation, and eventually his life. Now Peter’s job is monitoring an emergency line for a call that has not—and might never—come.Until tonight.At 1:05 a.m. the phone rings. A terrified young woman named Rose tells Peter that two people have just been murdered and that the killer might still be in the house with her. One of the victims gave her this phone number with urgent instructions: “Tell them OSPREY was right. It’s happening...” The call thrusts Peter into the heart of a conspiracy years in the making, involving a Russian mole at the highest levels of the U.S. government. Anyone in the White House could be the traitor. Anyone could be corrupted. To save the nation, Peter must take the rules into his own hands, question everything, and trust no one. “Matthew Quirk moves into David Baldacci and John Grisham territory with The Night Agent.”   —JOSEPH FINDER 

In Dead in the Water, Stone has barely arrived in St. Marks, a lovely Caribbean island nation, on a sailing vacation when something very strange happens: A beautiful young woman sails into the harbor, entirely alone on a large yacht. Before long she is under the intense scrutiny of local authorities in the very considerable person of Sir Winston Sutherland, the minister of Justice. The problem is, though she arrived alone, she had departed the other side of the Atlantic in the company of her husband, a well-known writer, who is no longer in evidence. Evidence is what fascinates Stone Barrington, and before many pages have been turned, he is all that stands between the apparently innocent Allison Manning and the patently evil intent of Sir Winston, whose motives are unclear. What is clear is that the St. Marks' system of justice bears little resemblance to the American courts to which Stone is accustomed and that his smallest error could prove fatal to his client.

Carly Chase is still traumatized ten days after being in a fatal traffic accident that kills a teenage American student from Brighton University. Then she receives news that turns her entire world into a living nightmare. The drivers of the other two vehicles involved have been found tortured and murdered. Now Detective Superintendent Roy Grace of the Sussex Police Force issues a stark and urgent warning to Carly: She could be next.  The student had deadly connections. Connections that stretch across the Atlantic to America and an organized crime group. Someone has sworn revenge and won't rest until the final person involved in that fateful accident is dead. The police advise Carly her only option is to go into hiding and change her identity. The terrified woman disagrees. She knows these people have ways of hunting you down anywhere. If the police are unable to stop them, she has to find a way to do it herself. But already the killer is one step ahead of her, watching, waiting, and ready.Peter James' Dead Man's Grip is a chilling psychological thriller.