Winter Reads for Stunt Doubles

ready, set, go!

As the world slows down for winter Stunt Doubles may find themselves missing the action packed warmer months. However, just because it's become colder doesn't mean your fun has to end! Rev up those engines and get ready to feel the adrenaline running through your body with these upcoming winter reads!

With our list of the top winter titles for Stunt Doubles you're sure to feel your heart racing with the best action-packed dramas, high-stake thrillers, and fascinating true crime stories that will leave you barely hanging onto the edge of your seat. Get ready to lock in and feel the energy rise with these new releases!

february releases

Grave Empire

by Richard Swan

From critically acclaimed author Richard Swan, Grave Empire begins the epic tale of an empire on the verge of industrial revolution, where sorcery and arcane practices are outlawed - and where an ancient prophecy threatens the coming end of days.

Blood once turned the wheels of empire. Now it is money.

A new age of exploration and innovation has dawned, and the Empire of the Wolf stands to take its place as the foremost power in the known world. Glory and riches await.

But dark days are coming. A mysterious plague has broken out in the pagan kingdoms to the north, while in the south, the Empire's proxy war in the lands of the wolfmen is weeks away from total collapse.

The Dark Mirror

by Samantha Shannon

The highly anticipated fifth novel in the New York Times bestselling Bone Season series-an epic and spellbinding fantasy from the author of The Priory of the Orange Tree.

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2025 By: Goodreads * Barnes & Noble * Screen Rant * The Nerd Daily * Paste Magazine * Book Riot

Everything is about to change.

Paige Mahoney is outside the Republic of Scion for the first time in more than a decade-but she has no idea how she got to the free world. Half a year has been wiped from her memory.

Her journey back to the revolution soon takes her to Venice, where the Domino Programme has uncovered evidence of a secret Scion plan. Before Paige can return to London, she must help the network unravel the sinister Operation Ventriloquist, which threatens to bring Europe to its knees in weeks.

The Ghosts of Rome

by Joseph O'Connor

In the final months of World War II, a clandestine group known as The Choir successfully smuggles thousands of escapees out of Nazi-occupied Rome via a secret route known as the Escape Line. When an unidentified airman falls wounded from the sky, The Choir is plunged into danger and the survival of the Escape Line itself is threatened.

The Escape Line's collapse would leave thousands stranded. Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, its architect and the acknowledged leader of The Choir, broods inside the Vatican, paralyzed by the perils of keeping his Roman underground railroad functioning. Meanwhile, SS Commander Paul Hauptmann has been tasked with destroying the entire operation, and the price of failure is high--his wife and children are under Gestapo lock-and-key in Berlin. Into this deliriously thrilling melee steps Contessa Giovanna Landini, a reckless, audacious, and magnetic member of the Italian Resistance who has the nerve to challenge Hauptmann's authority.

Our Winter Monster

by Dennis Mahoney

Chilling holiday horror about an unhappy couple running from their problems and straight into the maw of a terrifying beast, perfect for fans of Paul Tremblay and Sara Gran

For the last year, Holly and Brian have been out of sync. Neither can forget what happened that one winter evening; neither can forgive what's happened since. Tonight, Holly and Brian race toward Pinebuck, New York, trying to outrun a blizzard on their way to the ski village getaway they hope will save their relationship. But soon they lose control of the car--and then of themselves.

Now Sheriff Kendra Book is getting calls about a couple in trouble--along with reports of a brutal and mysterious creature rampaging through town, leaving a trail of crushed cars, wrecked buildings, and mangled bodies in the snow.

Head Cases

by John McMahon

Head Cases follows an enigmatic group of FBI agents as they hunt down a murderer seeking his own justice in this electrifying--and commercial--series debut.

FBI Agent Gardner Camden is an analytical genius with an affinity for puzzles. He also has a blind spot on the human side of investigations, a blindness that sometimes even includes people in his own life, like his beloved seven-year-old daughter Camila. Gardner and his squad of brilliant yet quirky agents make up the Patterns and Recognition (PAR) unit, the FBI's hidden edge, brought in for cases that no one else can solve.

When DNA links a murder victim to a serial killer long presumed dead, the team springs into action. A second victim establishes a pattern, and the murderer begins leaving a trail of clues and riddles especially for Gardner. And while the PAR team is usually relegated to working cold cases from behind a desk, the investigation puts them on the road and into the public eye, following in the footsteps of a killer.

The Mailman

by Andrew Welsh-Huggins

Mercury Carter is a deliveryman and he takes his job very seriously. When a parcel is under his care, he will stop at nothing to deliver it directly to its intended recipient. Not even, as in the current case, when he finds a crew of violent men at the indicated address that threaten his life and take the woman who lives there hostage. That's because Carter has special skills from his former life as a federal agent with the postal inspection service, skills that make him particularly useful for delivering items in circumstances as dangerous as these.

Paranoia: The Most Beloved Family in Crime Fiction

by James Patterson - James O Born

NYPD Detective Michael Bennett will stop at nothing to protect family: his wife, his kids--and his fellow officers--in the latest psychological thriller from bestselling author James Patterson.

At every death scene, Bennett says a prayer over the victim.
But recently, too many of the departed have been fellow cops.
"I want you to look at these deaths on special assignment," NYPD Inspector Celeste Cantor says. "Report only to me."
Bennett excels as a solo investigator. But he's chasing a killer who feeds on isolation... and paranoia.

The Oligarch's Daughter

by Joseph Finder

"Any new novel by Joseph Finder is a ticket to reading pleasure, and this one is hands down his best ever."--Stephen King

"This is Finder at his finest--a perfect everyman-in-peril story, first building an ominous drumbeat of menace, then exploding in action and intrigue and triumph. As good as it gets."--Lee Child

From the New York Times bestselling author of House on Fire.

Paul Brightman is a man on the run, living under an assumed name in a small New England town with a million-dollar bounty on his head. When his security is breached, Paul is forced to flee into the New Hampshire wilderness to evade Russian operatives who can seemingly predict his every move.

january releases

The Big Empty

by Robert Crais

Elvis Cole and his enigmatic partner, Joe Pike, race to find a terrifying, unidentified killer in this twisting, unpredictable thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Robert Crais.

Traci Beller was thirteen when her father disappeared in the sleepy town of Rancha, not far from Los Angeles. The evidence says Tommy Beller abandoned his family, but Traci never believed it. Now, ten years later, Traci is a high-profile influencer with millions of followers and the money to hire the best detective she can find: Elvis Cole.

Head Cases

by John McMahon

Head Cases follows an enigmatic group of FBI agents as they hunt down a murderer seeking his own justice in this electrifying--and commercial--series debut.

Holmes Is Missing: Patterson's Most-Requested Sequel Ever

by James Patterson - Brian Sitts

"Best-selling author James Patterson populates his murder-mystery novels with cold-blooded killers and smart detectives" (USA Today). In Holmes is Missing, PI Brendan Holmes has committed the perfect crime--he's made himself disappear.

Success has come quickly to Holmes, Marple & Poe Investigations. The New York City agency led by three detectives--Brendan Holmes, "the brain," Margaret Marple, "the eyes," and Auguste Poe, the "muscle"--with famous names and mysterious pasts is one major case away from cementing its professional reputation.

Johnny Careless

by Kevin Wade

"A fast-moving classic crime novel" (John Sandford) crafted by the veteran screenwriter and showrunner for the acclaimed police procedural series Blue Bloods, Johnny Careless is Kevin Wade's razor-sharp debut novel.

Police Chief Jeep Mullane has been bounced back home to Long Island's North Shore by a heartbreaking case that both earned him his NYPD detective's shield and burned him out of the Job. Now heading up a small local police department, he finds himself navigating the same geography he did growing up there as the son of an NYPD cop. Jeep is a "have-not" among the glittering "haves," a sharp-witted, down-to-earth man in a territory defined and ruled by multigenerational wealth and power and the daunting tribal codes and customs that come with it.

Presumed Guilty

by Scott Turow

Read Scott Turow's new "unputdownable" courtroom drama from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Presumed Innocent, the phenomenon that redefined the legal thriller and is the basis for Apple TV+'s most-watched drama series ever.

Rusty is a retired judge attempting a third act in life with a loving soon-to-be wife, Bea, with whom he shares both a restful home on an idyllic lake in the rural Midwest and a plaintive hope that this marriage will be his best, and his last. But the peace that's taken Rusty so long to find evaporates when Bea's young adult son, Aaron, living under their supervision while on probation for drug possession, disappears. If Aaron doesn't return soon, he will be sent back to jail.

Save Our Souls: The True Story of a Castaway Family, Treachery, and Murder

by Matthew Pearl

From the bestselling author of The Taking of Jemima Boone, the unbelievable true story of a real-life Swiss Family Robinson (and their dog) who faced sharks, shipwreck, and betrayal.

On December 10, 1887, a shark fishing boat disappeared. On board the doomed vessel were the Walkers--the ship's captain Frederick, his wife Elizabeth, their three teenage sons, and their dog--along with the ship's crew. The family had spotted a promising fishing location when a terrible storm arose, splitting their vessel in two and leaving those onboard adrift on the perilous sea.

The Sinners All Bow: Two Authors, One Murder, and the Real Hester Prynne

by Kate Winkler Dawson

Acclaimed journalist, podcaster, and true-crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson tells the true story of the scandalous murder investigation that became the inspiration for both Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and the first true-crime book published in America.

On a cold winter day in 1832, Sarah Maria Cornell was found dead in a quiet farmyard in a small New England town. When her troubled past and a secret correspondence with charismatic Methodist minister Reverend Ephraim Avery was uncovered, more questions emerged. Was Sarah's death a suicide...or something much darker? Determined to uncover the real story, Victorian writer Catharine Read Arnold Williams threw herself into the investigation as the trial was unfolding and wrote what many claim to be the first American true-crime narrative, Fall River. The murder divided the country and inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter--but the reverend was not convicted, and questions linger to this day about what really led to Sarah Cornell's death. Until now.

Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

by Clay McLeod Chapman

From master of horror Clay McLeod Chapman, a relentless social horror novel about a family on the run from a demonic possession epidemic that spreads through media.

Noah has been losing his polite Southern parents to far-right cable news for years, so when his mother leaves him a voicemail warning him that the "Great Reawakening" is here, he assumes it's related to one of her many conspiracy theories. But when his phone calls go unanswered, Noah makes the drive from Brooklyn to Richmond, Virginia. There, he discovers his childhood home in shambles and his parents locked in a terrifying trancelike state in front of the TV. Panicked, Noah attempts to snap them out of it.

Then Noah's mother brutally attacks him.

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls

by Grady Hendrix

There's power in a book...

They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they're sent to Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, to give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.

Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There's Rose, a hippie who insists she's going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who plans to marry her baby's father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.

December releases

Bellevue

by Robin Cook

From the bestselling author and "master of the medical thriller" (The New York Times), Robin Cook, comes a new tale of suspense-horror about a first-year resident whose life-shattering visions reveal the truth behind some of the greatest medical advances in the history of medicine.

Twenty-three-year-old Michael "Mitt" Fuller starts his surgical residency with great anticipation at the nearly three-hundred-year-old, iconic Bellevue Hospital, following in the footsteps of four previous, celebrated Fuller generations. The pressure is on for this newly minted doctor, and to his advantage he's always had a secret sixth sense, a sensitivity to the nonphysical. But quickly one patient after another assigned to his care begin to die from mysterious causes. As he tries to juggle these inexplicable deaths with the demands of being a first-year resident, things rapidly spiral out of control.

The Turnglass

by Gareth Rubin

This beautifully written, immersive, and unique crime story is a tête-bêche novel--two intertwined stories printed back-to-back. Open the book and the first novella begins. It ends in the middle of the book. Flip the book over, head to tail, and read the second story in the opposite direction. At the book's core are two separate mysteries running across two different timelines, which are inextricably, forever linked.

1880s, Essex, England: Idealistic young doctor Simeon Lee is called from London to treat his ailing relative Parson Oliver Hawes, who lives in Turnglass House on a bleak island off the coast. Hawes believes he's being poisoned by his sister-in-law, Florence, who was declared mad years ago after killing the parson's brother in a jealous rage. Hawes keeps her locked in a glass-walled apartment in the Turnglass library; the secret to how she came to be there is found in his tête-bêche journal, where one side tells a very different story from the other.

Locked in: A Department Q Novel

by Jussi Adler-Olsen - Caroline Waight

The New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling Department Q series comes to a thrilling conclusion when the team must turn inward to solve the cold case that has put their own leader behind bars, a place where his enemies are plentiful and time is quickly running out.

On the day after Christmas, head of Department Q, Detective Carl Mørck, finds himself handcuffed in a police car headed for Copenhagen's Vestre prison. After fifteen years, a violent case from his past has caught up with him. Charges of drug trafficking and murder threaten to destroy his life and career. But he is being framed. Someone has a million-dollar bounty on his head to make sure he doesn't talk, putting him in grave danger among the prison's incarcerated criminals and corrupt officers. The question that remains is, Why?

Deadbeat

by Adam Hamdy

The author of the "moving head-spinner of a novel" (John Connolly) The Other Side of Night returns with a taut thriller following a desperate single father as he searches for the anonymous employer who hired him as a hitman.

Peyton Collard was a good man once, but his life changed after a horrific car accident. Divorced, drunk, and severely damaged, Peyton is offered a life-changing sum of money to kill an evil man. But as he goes on a vigilante journey that leaves a trail of bodies across California, Peyton wonders about the identity of his anonymous patron. Soon, his questions become an obsession, and he embarks on a tense and potentially deadly investigation to discover the truth about the murders he's committed.

The House of Cross: Meet the Hero of the New Prime Series Cross--The Greatest Detective of All Time

by James Patterson

Supreme Court candidates are being murdered--and only Alex Cross and John Sampson can take the case in The House of Cross.

"[Alex Cross's] innate nature is to protect people...If he has a weakness, it's his family, especially his children. They're the chink in his armor. But aside from that, it's tough to get at him."
-Aldis Hodge, star of Cross on Prime Video

In Washington, DC, the president-elect is planning her inauguration.

The list of Supreme Court candidates is highly confidential--until it becomes evidence in Detective Alex Cross's toughest investigation.

One candidate is gunned down. A second is stabbed. A third is murdered near midnight on a city street.

Cross is the FBI's top expert in criminal behavior. For the sake of his family, his city, and his country, he must put himself in the most dangerous place there is: inside the mind of a diabolical killer.

Gabriel's Moon

by William Boyd

From the internationally bestselling author beloved by readers everywhere, William Boyd offers his most exhilarating novel yet, following a reluctant spy drawn into the shadows of espionage and obsession

Gabriel Dax is a young man haunted by the memories of a fire that took his mother's life. Every night, when sleep finally comes, he dreams about his childhood home in flames. His days are spent on the move as an acclaimed travel writer, capturing the changing landscapes of Europe in the grip of the Cold War. When he is offered the chance to interview Patrice Lumumba, newly elected president of the People's Republic of the Congo, he finds himself drawn into a web of duplicities and betrayals.

Tom Clancy Defense Protocol

by Brian Andrews - Jeffrey Wilson

The stakes are sky-high when a power-mad Chinese president threatens Taiwan in the #1 New York Times bestselling Jack Ryan series.

For decades, Taiwan has been a thorn in the side of the Chinese government. An independent nation to the rest of the world, it is considered a rogue province by the PRC. Previous governments have tried to conquer the island using economic force and diplomatic pressure, but new Chinese President Li Jian Jun is done fooling around. He's devised a secret military operation to take the island. Only one man knows how to stop Li's mad and bloody plan for reunification and that's Minister of Defense Qin Haiyu. Fearing for his life and the safety of his family, Qin covertly makes contact with the CIA in Beijing and signals his desire to defect to the West.

Raised by a Serial Killer: Discovering the Truth about My Father

by April Balascio

The untold story behind the hit true crime podcast The Clearing, this unforgettable memoir traces one daughter's moving quest to understand her larger-than-life childhood as she searches for the truth about her father, the serial killer Edward Wayne Edwards.

One evening in 2009, April Balascio was searching online, as she had been every night, for unsolved murders in the towns her family had lived growing up, when she stumbled across the latest investigations into the "Sweetheart Murders" cold case. All at once, the buried memories of her father's dark history were awakened, and she knew she had to take action. She picked up the phone to call a detective and the rest is infamous true crime history.

In her unflinching memoir, Balascio bravely reveals an astonishing tale of a lifetime of manipulation, unexplained upheavals, and silent fear. Some part of her had always known what her father was capable of, but the full truth of how she came to these revelations is as riveting as it is quietly terrifying. Through searing storytelling, dedicated research, and intimate insight, Raised by a Serial Killer is a gripping, courageous memoir unlike any other.

Postmortem: What Survives the John Wayne Gacy Murders

by Courtney Lund O'Neil

In the vein of the bestselling I'll Be Gone in the Dark, this compelling work of true crime explores the aftershocks of "Killer Clown" John Wayne Gacy's crimes with a uniquely intimate slant, as the daughter of a key witness probes her mother's personal experiences and the legacy of murder within a family, a community, and the American psyche.

"A beautifully written memoir about the haunting impact of a sensational crime. I'm still thinking about it." --Gregg Olsen, #1 New York Times bestselling author

On a December night in 1978, Courtney Lund O'Neil's mother, teenaged Kim Byers, saw her friend Rob Piest alive for the last time. At the end of his shift at the pharmacy where they both worked, fifteen-year-old Rob went outside to speak to a contractor named John Wayne Gacy about a possible job.

That night Rob became Gacy's final victim; his body was later found in the Des Plaines River. Kim's testimony, along with a receipt belonging to her found in Gacy's house, proving that Rob had been there, would be pivotal in convicting the serial killer who assaulted and killed over thirty young men and boys.

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