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For those Kindle readers who, like me, read for entertainment, scanning the book reviews in People magazine is good way to check out new people-related books - celebrity bios, popular novels, absorbing nonfiction - just hitting bookstore shelves. Featured in the August 15th issue of People:

The Nightmare Thief, by Meg Gardiner. Dutton, 2011. Print Length: 368 p. THRILLER. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (1 review). People's slant: "...even loopy plot twists can't hold back Thief's tidal wave of adrenaline." Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $15.63. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Autumn Reiniger expects something special for her twenty-first birthday. Daddy's already bought her the sports car, the apartment, and admission to the private college... Now she wants excitement, and she's going to get it. Her father signs up Autumn and five friends for an 'ultimate urban reality' game: a simulated drug deal, manhunt, and jailbreak. It's a high-priced version of cops and robbers, played with fake guns and fast cars on the streets of San Francisco. Edge Adventures alerts the SFPD ahead of time that a 'crime situation' is underway, so the authorities can ignore the squealing tires and desperate cries for help. Which is convenient for the gang of real kidnappers zeroing in on their target and a mammoth payday...Working on a case nearby is forensic psychiatrist Jo Beckett and her partner, Gabe Quintana. When the pair encounters a suspicious group of men carting six sullen college kids to the woods for a supposed wilderness adventure, alarm bells ring." - Publisher.

The Rules of the Tunnel: A Brief Period of Madness, by Ned Zeman. Gotham Books, 2011. Print Length: 320 p. MEMOIR. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (6 reviews). People's slant: "...sobering, laugh-out-loud memoir..." Kindle edition $12.99; $14.94. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Thirty-five million Americans suffer from clinical depression. But Ned Zeman never thought he'd be one of them... Then, at age thirty-two, anxiety and depression gripped Zeman with increasing violence and consequences. He experimented with therapist after therapist, medication after medication, hospital after hospital... Zeman eventually went further, by trying electroconvulsive therapy, aka shock treatment... By the time it was over, Zeman had lost nearly two years' worth of memory. He was a reporter with amnesia. He had no choice but to start from scratch, to reassemble the pieces of a life he didn't remember and, increasingly, didn't want to. His girlfriend was gone; friends weren't speaking to him. His life lay in ruins. And the biggest question remained, 'What the hell did I do?' By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, profane and hopeful, The Rules of the Tunnel is a blistering account of Zeman's twisted ride to hell and back... It's a guttural shout of a book, one that defies conventional notions about those with mood disorders, unlocks mysteries within mysteries, and proves that sometimes everything you're looking for is right in front of you." - Publisher.
Zeman is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and has also written for Newsweek, Spy, GQ, Outside, and Sports Illustrated.

This Beautiful Life, by Helen Schulman. Harper, 2011. Print Length: 240 p. NOVEL. Amazon customer rating: 3 1/2 stars (48 reviews). People's slant: "...topical, unsettling new novel, set in Manhattan's world of private-school privilege but chillingly relatable for parents anywhere." Kindle edition $11.99; Hardcover $15.77. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"When the Bergamots move from a comfortable upstate college town to New York City, they’re not quite sure how they’ll adapt - or what to make of the strange new world of well-to-do Manhattan. Soon, though, Richard is consumed by his executive role at a large New York university, and Liz, who has traded in her academic career to oversee the lives of their children, is hectically ferrying young Coco around town. Fifteen-year-old Jake is gratefully taken into the fold by a group of friends at Wildwood, an elite private school. But the upper-class cocoon in which they have enveloped themselves is ripped apart when Jake wakes up one morning after an unchaperoned party and finds an email in his in-box from an eighth-grade admirer. Attached is a sexually explicit video she has made for him. Shocked, stunned, maybe a little proud, and scared - a jumble of adolescent emotion - he forwards the video to a friend, who then forwards it to a friend. Within hours, it’s gone viral, all over the school, the city, the world..." - Publisher.

Briefly Mentioned: Thrillers for Vacation Reading

Back of Beyond, by C. J. Box. Minotaur Books, 2011. Print Length: 400 p. THRILLER. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (31 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $17.15. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Cody Hoyt, while a brilliant cop, is an alcoholic struggling with two months of sobriety when his mentor and AA sponsor Hank Winters is found burned to death in a remote mountain cabin. At first it looks like the suicide of a man who’s fallen off the wagon, but Cody knows Hank better than that. Sober for fourteen years, Hank took pride in his hard-won sobriety and never hesitated to drop whatever he was doing to talk Cody off a ledge. When Cody takes a closer look at the scene of his friend’s death, it becomes apparent that foul play is at hand... When clues found at the scene link the murderer to an outfitter leading tourists on a multi-day wilderness horseback trip into the remote corners of Yellowstone National Park - a pack trip that includes his son Justin - Cody is desperate to get on their trail and stop the killer before the group heads into the wild..." - Publisher.

The Woodcutter, by Reginald Hill. Harper, 2011. Print Length: 528 p. THRILLER. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (46 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $17.15. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Wolf Hadda’s life has been a fairy tale. From his humble origins as a Cumbrian woodcutter’s son, he has risen to become a hugely successful entrepreneur, happily married to the woman of his dreams. A knock on the door one morning ends it all. Universally reviled, thrown into prison while protesting his innocence, abandoned by friends and family, Wolf retreats into silence. Seven years later, prison psychiatrist Alva Ozigbo makes a breakthrough. Wolf begins to talk, and under her guidance he is paroled, returning to his family home in rural Cumbria. But there was a mysterious period in Wolf’s youth when he disappeared from home and was known to his employers as the Woodcutter. And now the Woodcutter is back, looking for the truth - and revenge." - Publisher.

Full Black, by Brad Thor. Atria Books, 2011. Print Length: 400 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (96 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $14.48. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.

"Born in the shadows and kept from heads of state, there are some missions so deadly, so sensitive, that they simply don’t exist. When one such mission goes horribly wrong, a wave of dramatic terrorist attacks is set in motion. Their goal: the complete and total collapse of the United States. With the CIA’s intelligence abilities hobbled, former Navy SEAL Team 6 member turned covert counterterrorism operative Scot Harvath launches an audacious plan to infiltrate the terrorists’ network and prevent one of the biggest threats the United States has ever faced. As the plots rocket to their pulse-pounding conclusion and the identities of the perpetrators are laid stunningly bare, Harvath will be left with only one means to save America. Unable to trust anyone, he will be forced to go Full Black." - Amazon.
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Note to readers: The book prices quoted here are the Amazon.com prices in effect at the time of the blog posting. Please follow the links to the individual book to check the current price.