Bad Tourists (2024) – Caro Carver

Simon & Schuster delivers the perfect beach read for your summer enjoyment. Bad Tourists by Caro Carver is a compulsive page-turner whose last third is a non-stop rush, and whose first two-thirds are filled with twists, turns and keeps you guessing the whole way through. Darcy, Kate and Camilla are close friends, united by a…

Hide (2022) – Kiersten White

I loved Kiersten White’s Mister Magic so I had to hunt down another novel by her, Hide. Once again, she delivers a tale that is very easy to curl up in and explore. It’s fast-paced, and White is wonderfully skilled at bringing her characters to life, but despite the promise of twists and turns, there…

The Return of Ellie Black (2024) – Emiko Jean

To call The Return of Ellie Black a jaw-dropping page-turner doesn’t do the book, the story, or the author, Emiko Jean, justice. It was nothing short of a compulsive read, one that I stayed up late to finish, something that doesn’t happen often for me. I had to know how the story played out, I…

Zero Cool (1969) – Micheal Crichton

Zero Cool is a a rapid-fire thriller from Micheal Crichton written under his pen-name of John Lange while he was in med-school. A riff on the ordinary man caught up in extraordinary circumstances that seems to have shades of North by Northwest to it, the tale follows Dr. Pete Ross, a radiologist on his first…

No Way Out (1987) – Roger Donaldson

It had been a while since I originally watched this Kevin Costner thriller, but the ending remained with me, so I was able to revisit the film for the first time in decades knowing how things play out and watch the performances and the clues that lead things to play out the way they do….

The Arrival (1996) – David Twohy

David Twohy wrote and directed this sci-fi thriller starring Charlie Sheen which was lost in the summer of ’96 when Independence Day shook the world. Obviously a bit of a smaller film than Fox’s big-budget alien attack film, it doesn’t quite boast as big a cast, but has some great names, Richard Schiff, Lindsay Crouse,…

47 Meters Down (2017) – Johannes Roberts

Mandy Moore and Claire Holt star in 47 Meters Down a fairly well-realized white-knuckle thriller from Johannes Roberts. Whatever you think of the concept of the story, a pair of sisters stuck 47 meters down in shark-infested waters, Roberts is able to tap into some very primal fears, add in some solid visual effects work…

U.S. Marshals (1998) – Stuart Baird

Director Stuart Baird delivers a semi-sequel to 1993’s The Fugitive with this film that sees the return of Tommy Lee Jones as U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard, a role he won an Oscar for in the Harrison Ford thriller. This time around, even though he’s accompanied by a score by Jerry Goldsmith, the film doesn’t have…

Scratch One (1967) – Micheal Crichton

Michael Crichton’s second novel, which he wrote under his pseudonym of John Lange, is a fast-paced thriller that plays on the familiar trope of mistaken identity. This time out an American lawyer, Roger Carr, finds himself mistaken for a high-profile hitman and finds himself stuck between opposing sides in an arms deal which has its…