sophie simpson

A thirty-four-year-old American woman—a secret agent—is sent to do dirty work in France. “Sadie Smith” is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the reader. Sadie has met her love, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by “cold bump”—making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone Sadie targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her “contacts”—shadowy figures in business and government—instruct.

A wisecracking former LAPD Detective has his life shattered, his wife murdered, narrowing escaping the wrath of a ruthless gangster. What started off as mistaken identity becomes personal, when Colin Graves sets a plan into motion; a quest for vengeance. Fueled by booze, painkillers, acerbic wit, Colin teams up with his brother to take down the man that took away everything. It’s like John Wick meets Beaches with a twist of Taken 3 and a splash of Deadpool.

The second novel by Donna Tartt, best-selling author of The Goldfinch (winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize), The Little Friend is a grandly ambitious and utterly riveting novel of childhood, innocence, and evil. The setting is Alexandria, Mississippi, where one Mother’s Day a little boy named Robin Cleve Dufresnes was found hanging from a tree in his parents’ yard. Twelve years later Robin’s murder is still unsolved. So Robin’s sister Harriet - unnervingly bright and insufferably determined - sets out to unmask his killer.