What are the top book recommendations for 'crisp and fresh'?

The electrifying first installment of the Harry Hole series.

Inspector Harry Hole of the Oslo Crime Squad is dispatched to Sydney to observe a murder case. Harry is free to offer assistance, but he has firm instructions to stay out of trouble. The vi... Read more about The Bat

“I’m fine,” Harry Hole had lied. It was more than thirty hours since he had taken off from Oslo via London, and after the change of planes in Bahrain he had sat in the same bloody seat by the emergenc...

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A mindbending, relentlessly surprising thriller from the author of the bestselling Wayward Pines trilogy.

"Are you happy with your life?"

Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious.

Before he awake... Read more about Dark Matter

No one tells you it’s all about to change, to be taken away. There’s no proximity alert, no indication that you’re standing on the precipice. And maybe that’s what makes tragedy so tragic. Not just wh...

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A compelling debut novel asks what happens when children develop inexplicable abilities-and the government sees them as a threat.

They're known as Firestarters. Boomers. Skychangers. The government calls them Illegals - children with inexplicable ab... Read more about The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf

I’d known they were going to start the interrogation today as soon as a smiling Dr. Wentworth had pronounced me “much better.” She’d sounded pleased. Proud of her work, I guessed. I suppose she had a ...

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By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks

Now a major motion picture

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize

Includes a new Afterword by David Mitchell... Read more about Cloud Atlas

Beyond the Indian hamlet, upon a forlorn strand, I happened on a trail of recent footprints. Through rotting kelp, sea cocoa-nuts & bamboo, the tracks led me to their maker, a White man, his trowzers ...

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It's the year 2044 and the real world has become an ugly place.

Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes this depressing reality by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia when you can be anything you want to be, ... Read more about Ready Player One

Gunfire wasn’t uncommon in the stacks, but it still shook me up. I knew I probably wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep, so I decided to kill the remaining hours until dawn by brushing up on a few coi...

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Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when ... Read more about The Secret History

Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this:...

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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Annie Proulx's The Shipping News is a vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary North American family.

Quoyle, a third-rate newspaper hack, with a "head shaped like a crenshaw, no neck, re... Read more about The Shipping News

Hive-spangled, gut roaring with gas and cramp, he survived childhood; at the state university, hand clapped over his chin, he camouflaged torment with smiles and silence. Stumbled through his twenties...

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A coolly glittering gem of detective fiction that has haunted three generations of readers, from one of the greatest mystery writers of all time.

A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shopworn private eye with his own solitary code of ... Read more about The Maltese Falcon

Samuel Spade’s jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v mot...

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Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. Despite their differences, Achilles befriends the shamed prince, and as they grow into young men skilled in the... Read more about The Song of Achilles

MY FATHER WAS A KING AND THE SON OF KINGS. HE was a short man, as most of us were, and built like a bull, all shoulders. He married my mother when she was fourteen and sworn by the priestess to be fru...

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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's first novel-and the origin story of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson-is reimagined in the first unabridged, fully illustrated version since its debut, by acclaimed and bestselling illustrator Gris Grimly.

The year is 1881. Th... Read more about A Study in Scarlet

In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the army. Having completed my studies t...

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