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.
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  PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF GERALD A. BROWNE
  
  
  11 Harrowhouse
  
  
  “Vivid, sophisticated, action-filled.” —Los Angeles Times
  
  
  “As imaginative, well-plotted, and well-written a thriller as you’ll ever find
  … A remarkable book.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch
  
  
  Green Ice
  
  
  “A cliff-hanger … Sparkling … Entertaining suspense!” —Cosmopolitan
  
  
  19 Purchase Street
  
  
  “A kind of console of our contemporary nightmares at which the author fingers
  every sinister key … Superb.” —The New York Times
  
  
  Stone 588
  
  
  “No ordinary thriller this, but a story as scintillating as the octahedron
  crystal on which it focuses.… A tingle for the spine on every page.”
  —Publishers Weekly “Entertaining suspense … Heart-stopping … Browne details
  both the glitter and grime of the diamond market, high society and the
  underworld … A gem of a thriller.” —Orlando Sentinel
  
  
  Hot Siberian
  
  
  “Beautifully written … Will keep you entranced.” —The New York Times Book
  Review
  
  
  West 47th
  
  
  “Immensely entertaining.” —The 