This column was submitted by Evangeline Cessna, Local History Librarian at the Warren County-Vicksburg Public Library.

This week’s column features thriller/suspense titles from our New Adult Fiction collection.

If you like stories full of world-building mixed with political intrigue, then you may like Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi. The di Regulai family are merchant bankers who have gained a vast empire over the generations. Their influence reaches to the farthest parts of the known world. Though they claim not to be political, their wealth and influence has bought cities and toppled kingdoms. Davico di Regulai is set to take the reigns of power from his father. He will have to demonstrate h knows who to trust and who to doubt, and how to read what lies beneath hidden smiles. Davico feels that the family’s talisman—a fossilized dragon’s eye—is summoning him to be tested to his limits. His fate will be up to the dragon relic and on what is buried in the heart of his adopted sister, Celia Di Balcosi, whose birth family was destroyed by the twisted politics practiced in Navola.

Deborah E. Harkness continues the story of Oxford scholar and witch Diana Bishop and her love vampire geneticist Matthew de Clairmont in her latest The Black Bird Oracle. Diana and Matthew have fallen in love, traveled to Elizabethan England, dissolved the Covenant between their species. Now, they have received a formal demand from the Congregation: They must test the magic of their seven-year-old twins. Diana is desperate to avoid having to spellbind her children the way her own parents had to. She decides to answer the message of a unknown great aunt whose invitation reads: It’s time to come home, Diana. Ravenswood is the hallowed ground of the Proctor family. Here, Diana begins a new era under her more powerful great aunt. Will she be able to let go of her family’s dark past and her own desire for greater power—and conquer her fear of wielding it.

All the Colors of the Dark is by Chris Whitaker. It’s 1975 and a time of change in America. The Vietnam War is ending, and Mohammed Ali is fighting Joe Frazier. And in a small town in Missouri, girls are disappearing. The daughter of a wealthy family becomes a target, but a local boy named Patch saves her. In doing so, the one-eyed youth leaves heartache in his wake. Patch and his loved ones soon learn that the line between victory and tragedy is a fine one and their search for answers will lead to them losing one another. This story is a missing person mystery, a serial killer thriller, and a love story rolled into one with a unique twist on each.

House of Glass by Sarah Pekkanen tells the story of a seemingly golden family’s perfect life that is built on a lie. Nine-year-old Rose Barclay witnessed the possible murder of her nanny and immediately stopped speaking. Her parents are in the midst of a bitter divorce. Stella Hudson is the attorney appointed to serve as counsel for children in custody cases. She doesn’t take the cases of children under the age of thirteen due to her own traumatic childhood, but Stella’s mentor believes she is the only one who can help Rose. The moment Stella drives through the iron security gate at the Barclay house she realizes that the case is even more twisted and the family more troubled than she feared. There’s also something creepy about the house itself: it’s a plastic house with no glass in it whatsoever. As Stella gets closer to the truth danger creeps up on her and her past is set to collide with the present. Everyone is a suspect in the nanny’s murder—the mother, the father, the grandmother, the nanny’s boyfriend—even Rose.

The latest novel by Linda Castillo featuring Police chief Kate Burkholder is called The Burning.  Newlywed Chief of Police Kate Burkholder is awakened by an urgent late-night call to a suspicious fire in the woods. When she arrived, there is a charred body that is identified as an Amish man named Milan Swanz. He was chained to a stake and burned alive. By all accounts he was an upstanding husband and father. Kate knows that the Amish prefer to handle their problems themselves without outside interference, and no one will speak about the murdered man. Kate finally figures out that Swanz led a troubled life and had recently been excommunicated. To uncover the truth, Kate must dive deep into the Anabaptist culture and looking into the dark corners of history of the Amish that shatters everything she knows about her own roots.

The latest from author T. Jefferson Parker is called Desperation Reef. Jen Stonebreaker hasn’t entered a big-wave surfing competition since witnessing the tragic death of her husband twenty-five year ago. Jen is ready to tackle those waves with her twin sons Casey and Brock, who have become competitive surfers in the dangerous sport. When Casey is not riding waves, modeling for surfing magazines, or posting viral content for his fans, he spends his days helping with the family restaurant. Casey’s love of the ocean and his willingness to expose illegal poachers on his platforms sets him on a collision course with a local crime syndicate. Brock is the founder of Breath of Life, a church and rescue mission that assists with natural disasters that others ignore. He has lived an adventurous and sometimes violent life. Not everyone appreciates his work with the mission and its accomplishments and threats to the mission and his family have been made. As the surfing contest gets closer, a huge, late fall swell is headed toward the coastline. Jen’s anxiety is ratcheted up—fear for herself, for her sons, for what the competition will mean for the rest of her life.