First Words:

Chapter

1

I am serving the fifth year of a life sentence for murdering my own child.

Spoiler alert: I didn’t do it.

My son Matthew was three years old at the time of his brutal murder. He was the best thing in my life, and then he was gone, and I’ve been serving a life sentence ever since. Not metaphorically. Or should I say, not just metaphorically. This would be a life sentence no matter what, even if I hadn’t been arrested and tried and convicted.

But in my case, in this case, my life sentence is both metaphorical and literal.

How, you wonder, can I possibly be innocent?

I just am.

But didn’t I fight and protest my innocence with every fiber of my being?

No, not really. This goes back, I guess, to the metaphorical sentence. I didn’t really care that much about being found guilty. I know that sounds shocking, but it’s not. My son is dead. That’s the lede here. That’s the lede and the headline and the all-caps. My son is dead and gone, and that fact would not have changed had the jury forewoman declared me guilty or not guilty. Guilty or not guilty, I had failed my son. Either way. Matthew wouldn’t be less dead had the jury been able to see the truth and freed me. A father’s job is to protect his son. That’s his number-one priority. So even if I didn’t wield the weapon that smashed my son’s beautiful being into the mangled mess I found on that awful night five years ago, I didn’t stop it either. I didn’t do my job as his father. I didn’t protect him.

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The above is the beginning of:

I Will Find You

by Harlan Coben

Grand Central Publishing

Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

David Burroughs was once a devoted father to his three-year-old son Matthew, living a dream life just a short drive away from the working-class suburb where he and his wife, Cheryl, first fell in love–until one fateful night when David woke suddenly to discover Matthew had been murdered while David was asleep just down the hall. 
 
Half a decade later, David’s been wrongly accused and convicted of the murder, left to serve out his time in a maximum-security prison—a fate which, grieving and wracked with guilt, David didn’t have the will to fight. The world has moved on without him. Then Cheryl’s younger sister, Rachel, makes a surprise appearance during visiting hours bearing a strange photograph. It’s a vacation shot of a bustling amusement park a friend shared with her, and in the background, just barely in frame, is a boy bearing an eerie resemblance to David’s son. Even though it can’t be, David just knows: Matthew is still alive.

David plans a harrowing escape, determined to achieve the impossible – save his son, clear his own name, and discover the real story of what happened. But with his life on the line and the FBI following his every move, can David evade capture long enough to reveal the shocking truth?

 

On My Radar:

Goodbye, Earl

by Leesa Cross-Smith

Grand Central Publishing

Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Taking inspiration from the infamous, empowering song, Goodbye Earlfollows four best friends through two unforgettable summers, fifteen years apart.
 
In 2004, Rosemarie, Ada, Caroline, and Kasey are in their final days of high school and on the precipice of all the things teenagers look forward to when anything in life seems possible . . . from falling in love, to finding their dream jobs, to becoming who they were meant to be.
 
In 2019, Kasey has returned to her small Southern hometown of Goldie for the first time since high school—and she still hasn’t told even her closest friends the truth of what really happened that summer after graduation, or what made her leave so abruptly without looking back. Now reunited with her friends in Goldie for a wedding, she’s determined to focus on the simple joy of being together again. But when she notices troubling signs that one of them might be in danger, she is catapulted back to that fateful summer. This time, Kasey refuses to let the worst moments of her past define her; this time, she knows how to protect those she loves at all costs.
 
Uplifting, sharp-edged, and unapologetic, Goodbye Earl is a funeral for all the “Earls” out there—the abusive men who think they can get away with anything, but are wrong—and a celebration of enduring sisterhood.

On My Radar:

The 9th Man

by Steve Berry with Grant Blackwood

Grand Central Publishing

Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Luke Daniels is in London, between assignments with the Magellan Billet, when he receives a frantic call from an old friend.  Jillian Stein is in trouble.  She made a mistake and now her life may be in danger.  She needs Luke’s help.  Immediately.  Racing to Belgium Luke quickly finds that she was right.  A shadow team of highly-trained operatives are there on the hunt.  Intervening, he finds himself embroiled in a war between two determined sides — one seeking the truth, the other trying to escape the past — a war that has already claimed one life and is about to claim more.   

Thomas Rowland is a Washington insider, a kingmaker, problem-solver, but also a man with a past.  For him everything turns with what happened on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas.  What history has recorded is wrong.  There is more to the story, much more, and Thomas Rowland is at the center of that terrible reality.  But forces are working against him, and Rowland will do anything to keep the world from learning what actually happened on that fateful day, including killing Luke, Jillian and anyone else who might be a threat. 

In a race from Belgium, to Luxembourg, to the bayous of Louisiana and the Wyoming wilderness, to a final confrontation in the Bahamas, Luke Daniels confronts a series of shocking truths which not only rewrite history but will forever change his own life — as he comes face to face with the ninth man.