In When Justice Sleeps, Abrams takes a break from her considerable political responsibilities to craft a legal thriller featuring Avery Keene, who clerks for Supreme Court Justice Wynn and takes over the background investigation of a key case when he falls into a coma. In Hairpin Bridge, Adams's No Exit follow-up, Lena Nguyen doesn't believe that estranged twin sister Cambry committed suicide; otherwise, she likely wouldn't have called 911 16 times before her death (100,000-copy first printing). In Hummel's Lesson in Red, follow-up to the Reese's Book Club x Hello Sunshine pick Still Lives, Maggie Richter faces another artworld mystery. In Edgar-nominated, New York Times best-selling author McCreight's Friends Like These, a bachelor party in the Catskills is a cover for a staged intervention to help one of the guests, but someone ends up dead (75,000-copy first printing). Abducted from her found-religion parents' isolated Arkansas homestead and returned unharmed yet still treated as damaged, teenage Sarabeth gladly makes her exit, but in International Thriller Writer Award winner McHugh's What's Done in Darkness, she gets called back five years later to help with a copycat crime. Following Mangin's nationally best-selling Tangerine, Palace of the Drowned stars flailing British novelist Frankie Croy, who is staying in a friend's vacant Venice palazzo in 1966 while struggling to regain her early writing promise and doesn't quite trust a fan who comes her way (200,000-copy first printing). Having had a huge international best seller with The Silent Patient, Michaelides aims for another winner in his Untitled new work (one-million-copy first printing). Following the New York Times best-selling, Reese Witherspoon-optioned Something in the Water, Steadman returns with The Disappearing Act, about a British actress who realizes that she's the only witness to the disappearance of a woman she auditioned with during Hollywood's harried pilot season.

The day that London actor Mia Eliot, the narrator of this entertaining psychological thriller from Thriller Award finalist Steadman (Mr. Nobody), learns she's on the shortlist for the prestigious BAFTA award, she also discovers her live-in actor boyfriend has accepted a role in a major film and is leaving her for his nubile young costar. Mia's agent quickly arranges a trip for her to Los Angeles to "drum up some studio interest." In an audition waiting room in L.A., Mia hits it off with the woman sitting next to her, Emily Bryant. When Emily asks Mia to feed her parking meter so she doesn't miss her turn, Mia agrees. Mia returns to the room to find Emily gone. The sordid tale of murder and blackmail that follows builds to a climactic battle atop the iconic Hollywood sign. The authentic movie business details and nicely developed characters more than compensate for some confused plotting and Mia's at times breathtakingly naive behavior. This tale of Hollywood glamour, cruelty, and myth is sure to win Steadman new fans. Agent: Camilla Bolton, Darley Anderson Literary, TV and Film Agency (U.K.). (June)