Macbeth is an honorable Scottish lord who serves an ignoble king. When Malcolm finally goes too far, Macbeth and his wife convince themselves that Malcolm must die. (Encounters with a trio of strange women also swayed their minds.) Macbeth himself becomes king but guilt and paranoia start eating away at him and his wife.

Hartley and Hewson retell Shake­speare's classic play as a novel, providing psy­cho­log­i­cal motivation for Macbeth's usurpation and downfall. Their Lady Macbeth is more sym­pa­thet­ic and less nakedly ambitious than she is usually …continue.

The charmingly amoral David Rathbone leads a small group of Palm Beach conmen. A task force of police and federal agents are trying to take them down, and Rita Sullivan goes undercover and flirts her way into David's bed. Sullivan and some of the other undercover cops start losing their per­spec­tive and get a little too close to their targets.

Jake Geismar is an American war cor­re­spon­dent who lived in Berlin before the war. He returns there in July 1945, ostensibly to cover the Potsdam Conference, but actually to find his lover, Lena. Before he finds Lena, he finds the body of a murdered American officer at Potsdam, which—s­trange­ly—no-one is interested in. Then he gets caught up in the race between the Americans and the Russians to take possession of Lena's estranged husband, a rocket scientist.

The war is barely over but already the Russians and Americans …continue.

In a world where the "Others"—w­ere­wolves, vampires, elementals, and more—have the upper hand and live in proximity to humans, they have need for some human staff to interact with their neighbors. Meg Corbyn takes the job, but she has a secret. She is a Blood Prophet on the run from those who have controlled her all her life.

Bishop provides an in­ter­est­ing­ly different spin on werewolves and vampires that I found en­ter­tain­ing.

Twenty years after her dis­ap­pear­ance, the body of teenager Sarah Crosswhite is found. Her older sister Tracy, now a Seattle detective, believes that the man convicted of Sarah's abduction was framed, and sets out to overturn his conviction. But some people in her hometown are not happy about this.

Dugoni is an en­ter­tain­ing sto­ry­teller. The plot moves along briskly, with enough twists and turns to keep one on the hook. However, the story was pre­dictable and not par­tic­u­lar­ly original.

Fourteen years ago, Sam Bowden testified against Max Cady. Now Cady is out of prison and waging a war of terror against Sam and Carol and their children. Cady is cunning and ruthless and sooner or later he's going to start killing them. Bowden has always been a strong believer in the law, but until there's proof, there's little the law can do about Cady. Sam and Carol have to dig deeper to unearth their primal survival instincts.

Four long novellas about Dalziel and Pascoe: "Fat Andy" Dalziel, the crude and wily Yorkshire su­per­in­ten­dent, and Peter Pascoe, the university-educated, much politer detective inspector. The stories include their first meeting and their last case, set in the future of 2010, in­ves­ti­gat­ing a murder on the moon. The stories are en­ter­tain­ing, combining decent plotting with good char­ac­ter­i­za­tion.

The Arctic convoys, which took much needed supplies from North America and Britain to their besieged Russian ally in World War II, were brutally dangerous. Between the Arctic weather, the cold seas, and the German U-boats and bombers, many ships were lost. As HMS Ulysses opens, the crew are mutinous, having endured more than a year of such relentless conditions with far too little rest. They have to put to sea again, to escort one more convoy. This will be the worst trip of all, as bad weather, ill …continue.

The Netflix series House of Cards is based on a BBC series made in the early 1990s, which in turn are based on three novels—House of Cards, To Play the King, and The Final Cut—by Dobbs. In the first book, Francis Urquhart, tired of being overlooked for a Cabinet position, schemes and murders his way to becoming Prime Minister. In the second, the new PM feuds with the idealistic new king. In the final book, after ten years in office, Urquhart wants to …continue.

Chris Flynn was an out-of-control teenager who spent time in a youth prison, but he's kept his nose clean since then. He's laying carpet one day when he finds $50,000 in cash under some floor­boards. He knows it's trouble and leaves it there–but someone else takes it. Then the original owners reappear and kill one of Chris's friends.

Pelecanos is known for both characters and plot, and examining how cir­cum­stances can lead flawed people to make decisions that cause events to spiral out of control. Chris and his …continue.