title: First Thrills: High-Octane Stories from the Hottest Thriller Authors
author:  Lee Child 
description: Child, the creator of the Jack Reacher series (<i>Gone Tomorrow</i>, etc.), offers a mixed bag in this anthology of 25 original stories by members of ITW (International Thriller Writers), divided between fledgling authors and established names such as Gregg Hurwitz, Stephen Coonts, and Heather Graham. Daniel James Palmer and Michael Palmer's The Dead Club, in which a greedy doctor joins a betting club that gambles on when unidentified patients will expire, does the best job at making the genre work in short form. Child, by contrast, misses the mark with the less than gripping The Bodyguard, an account of how the narrator became an ex-bodyguard. Of the newcomers, Rip Gerber's Last Supper, about a grieving widower's plot for revenge, is well-paced and compelling, while Ryan Brown's supernaturally tinged Suspended isn't. Other contributors include Ken Bruen, John Lescroart, and Karin Slaughter. Steve Berry, ITW's current president, provides an afterword. <i>(June)</i> <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: **Praise for**
  
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  ‘From CJ Carver, a new take on the thriller with enough subtle twists, tension
  and cliffhangers to keep the most die-hard fan happy, but that never lets you
  forget about the characters at the heart of the story’
  
   **LUKE MCCALLIN, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF** _ **THE MAN FROM BERLIN**_
  
  ‘Hard, fast and real – a solid gold A-grade thriller’
  
   **LEE CHILD**
  
  ‘A terrific page-turner. Heart-stopping action and a heroine with guile as
  well as guts’
  
   **HARLAN COBEN**
  
  ‘Action-packed, high-stakes suspense, brilliant characters – impossible to put
  down’
  
   **MASON CROSS**
  
  ‘A top-notch thriller writer’
  
   **SIMON KERNICK**
  
  ‘An adrenaline rush of a novel with plenty of heart . . . a page-turning
  thrill’
  
   **MICK HERRON**
  
  ‘A gripping thriller, perfect for fans of Lee Child and Mason Cross’
  
   _ **GUARDIAN**_
  
  ‘CJ Carver gives us everything: high-octane action, vivid characters, and
  thought-provoking mystery. Read it!’
  
   **MEG GARDINER, AUTHOR OF** _ **THE 