Say Nothing - Brad Parks

"Their first move against us was so small, such an infinitesimal blip against the blaring background noises of life, I didn't register it as anything significant."

That's the opening line of Brad Parks's new thriller Say Nothing.

And then it becomes real significant, real fast. Someone has kidnapped Judge Scott Sampson and his wife Allison's twins. Why his family? What do they want? Money? No, it's something else....

Parks has crafted an addicting read. There's a nice mixture of suspense, family dynamics and some legal scenes along with the tension filled race to try and get the children back. Who can they trust? And who could be doing this to them?

"That was like the first thing they said to me and the last thing: Say Nothing. Say Nothing."

Parks manipulates the reader with some red herrings and alternate paths along the way to the final pages. Chapters from the kidnappers are interspersed throughout the book. So, the reader knows the danger the children are in even as Scott tries to fulfill the kidnapper's demands and not involve law enforcement.  I have to say, Parks caught me off guard a few times with some of the turns his story took - most notably in the final pages. I like unpredictable. There were a few plot points that I thought were perhaps a bit far-fetched, but I didn't think too hard about them - instead I just kept turning pages.

Say Nothing was an entertaining read that was hard to put down. And it raises the question - what would you do to protect your family? I'm looking forward to the next book from Parks. Read an excerpt of Say Nothing. Fans of Linwood Barclay and Harlan Coben will enjoy Say Nothing.

You can connect with Brad Parks on his website, like him on Facebook and follow him on Twitter.

The Hatching - Ezekiel Boone

I wanted to share this great bookmail package I received yesterday...........

Here's the envelope, with a wonderfully intriguing sticker.... "There's a reason you're afraid of spiders." #theywantout

And here's the book... The Hatching by Ezekiel Boone. Yes, it arrived covered in spider webs and spiders! Clever, clever marketing Penguin Random House Canada!

From the publisher:

"An astonishingly inventive and terrifying debut horror novel about the emergence of an ancient race of carnivorous spiders, dormant for ten thousand years but now very much awake. There's a reason we're afraid of spiders...

A local guide is leading wealthy tourists through a forest in Peru when a strange, black, skittering mass engulfs him and most of the party. FBI Agent Mike Rich is on a routine stakeout in Minneapolis when he's suddenly called by the director himself to investigate a mysterious plane crash. A scientist studying earthquakes in India registers an unprecedented pattern in local seismic readings. The US president, her defence and national security advisers and her chief of staff are dumped into crisis mode when China "accidentally" drops a nuclear bomb on a desolate region of its own country. As such unsettling occurrences mount, the president's old friend (and her chief of staff's ex-wife), spider expert Melanie Guyer, receives a box at her lab at American University that contains an ancient egg unearthed at a South American dig.

So begins The Hatching, the hair-raising saga of a single week in which an ancient, frighteningly predatory species of spider re-emerges in force. When the unusual egg in Melanie Guyer's lab begins to vibrate and crack, she finds herself at the epicentre of this apocalyptic natural disaster. Working closely with her ex-husband and his very powerful boss, she has to find some way to stem the brutal tide of man-eating arachnids." Releases July 5, 2016. Watch for my review!