My Thrill Club

          Because of the way that my post office works I’m not sure this box is from what month as usual, but I think that this is the last box which will include a movie if I am not mistaken. I’m actually sad about that, I loved the quirkey selection of the movies. They were all ones I had not seen and are very...B movie-esque 😂

So into the books and movie.

          From Amazon.com: "Operation Valkyrie tells the astonishing true story of a bold German plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler - and the man who risked everything to make it happen. Sebastian Kock (The Lives of Others) stars as Claus von Stauddenberg, a once-idealistic German army colonel whose exposure to wartime atrocities and personal battle injuries move him to conspire to eliminate the power-crazed Führer. The heroic tale remains a fascinating, must-see example of the German resistance to Hitler's oppression.

Date: 2004

Starring: Sebastian Koch, Ulrich Tukur, Hardy Kroger Jr.

Runtime: 1 hour, 35 minutes"

          From Goodreads.com: "From the acclaimed author of Ruin Falls and Cover of Snow comes a breathless new novel of psychological suspense about a dark, twisted turn of events that could shatter a family—a read perfect for fans of Gillian Flynn, Chris Bohjalian, and Nancy Pickard.

Sandy Tremont has always tried to give her family everything. But, as the sky darkens over the Adirondacks and a heavy snowfall looms, an escaped murderer with the power to take it all away draws close.

In her isolated home in the shadowy woods, Sandy prepares dinner after a fight with her daughter, Ivy. Upstairs, the fifteen-year-old—smart, brave, and with every reason to be angry tonight—keeps her distance from her mother. Sandy’s husband, Ben, a wilderness guide, arrives late to find a home simmering with unease.

Nearby, two desperate men on the run make their way through the fading light, bloodstained and determined to leave no loose ends or witnesses. After almost twenty years as prison cellmates, they have become a deadly team: Harlan the muscle, Nick the mind and will. As they approach a secluded house and look through its windows to see a cozy domestic scene, Nick knows that here he will find what he’s looking for . . . before he disappears forever.

Opening the door to the Tremont home, Nick brings not only a legacy of terror but a secret that threatens to drag Sandy with him into the darkness."

          From Goodreads.com: "Rise the dark. These were the last words written in Lauren Novak's notebook before she was murdered in a strange Florida village. They've never meant anything to the police or to her husband, investigator Markus Novak. Now the man he believes killed her is out of prison, and draws Markus to the place he's avoided for so long: the lonely road where his wife was shot to death beneath the cypress trees and Spanish moss in a town called Cassadaga.

In Red Lodge, Montana, a senseless act of vandalism shuts the lights off in the town where Sabrina Baldwin is still trying to adjust to a new home and mourning the loss of her brother, who was a high voltage linesman just like her husband, Jay. As the spring's final snowstorm calls Jay deeper into the mountains, chasing the destruction on the electrical grid, Sabrina is abducted by Garland Webb, the man Markus Novak believes killed his wife. Drawing them all together is a messianic villain who understands that you can never outpace your past. You can only rise against the future. "

**This book is the second in the series though it can be read alone according to reviews, but it will also leave you with a cliffhanger so be warned.

My Thrill Club

          This is a quick look at one of my no fuss no muss just lots of fun subscriptions. As usual the box has one movie and two books. 

          From Wikipedia: "Hide and Seek is a 2005 American-German psychological horror-thriller film starring Robert De Niro and Dakota Fanning. It was directed by John Polson. The film opened in the United States on January 28, 2005.A newly single father discovers his daughter is caught up in a web of evil in this thriller.
          David Callaway (Robert De Niro) has been left to raise his nine-year-old daughter, Emily (Dakota Fanning), on his own after the unexpected death of his wife. David is at first amused to discover that Emily has created an imaginary friend named "Charlie," but it isn't long before "Charlie" develops a sinister and violent side, and as David struggles with his daughter's growing emotional problems, he comes to the frightening realization that "Charlie" isn't just a figment of Emily's imagination. Hide and Seek also stars Famke Janssen, Dylan Baker, and Amy Irving."

Another movie from the great team at My Thrill Club that I have not seen before.

          From Goodreads: "For state prosecutor Bradlee Aames, psychosis is a fact of life, a waking nightmare from which modern medicine’s soulless jargon and mind-numbing meds have offered little relief. Bradlee stays focused by winning trial after trial, even while she’s self-medicating with booze, dope, and midnight surfing sessions at a classic LA point break. But when a thick fog of delusions engulfs her, she blows a case, and her reputation and competence are called into question. To rehabilitate her career, her boss gives her an easy assignment: Dr. Don, a popular TV shrink and former state Medical Board expert, now stands accused of sexually exploiting a vulnerable female patient, yet the broken woman won’t testify. If Bradlee can settle the matter quietly, the board, avoiding further embarrassment, will be pleased. But Bradlee Aames doesn’t do things the easy way—not when a predator like Dr. Don is primed to debase more helpless women. Illusive LA is the gritty, sun-blasted setting for He Said, She Said, a thrilling story of trust, betrayal, truth, and deception. Told from multiple perspectives, it affords the reader a front-row seat to a tense legal battle while exploring the many human consequences of power and corruption."

          From Goodreads: "On India's frontier with Tibet, peace is just a façade and security a myth.

The sleepy Himalayan hill station of Mussoorie, near India's border with Tibet, is home to an eclectic mix of residents including Tibetan refugees and former guerrilla fighters, foreign missionaries, Indian military, tourists, and spies. Here, in a top-secret facility facing the snow-clad Himalayas, India’s legendary spymaster, Colonel Imtiaz Afridi, keeps a watchful eye on sensitive high-altitude borders. Having been a mountaineer in his youth, Afridi once climbed many of these peaks, including Rataban, a mountain with a treacherous history.

When an American agent is shot dead in Mussoorie, both the CIA and India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), dispatch undercover agents to investigate. The American's death is quickly linked to the slayings of two Indo-Tibetan Border Police guards, suggesting possible Chinese infiltration. Working with Afridi is the brilliant junior analyst, Annapurna “Anna” Tagore, who helps him unravel these clues and other disturbing signs that something dangerous is brewing. When more violent acts shatter Mussoorie's calm, the CIA and RAW have no choice but to team up. Soon Afridi and the young Indian and American agents are piecing together a bloody conspiracy of revenge and murder that could shake the very foundations of world peace."

I have a long list of To Be Read books but these seem like they might go up the list order.

My Thrill Club Box

My no fuss no muss subscription to My Trill Club. This box has a mix of mystery and horror. 

Product details from Amazon.com:
Actors: Jeri Ryan, Peyton List, Kay Panabaker, Marianne Jean-Baptiste
Directors: Christopher Leitch
Producers: Michael G. Larkin, Michael R. Goldstein
Format: Multiple Formats, AC-3, Color, Dolby, NTSC, Widescreen
Language: English
Rated: NR Not Rated
Studio: Vivendi Entertainment
DVD Release Date: September 20, 2011
Run Time: 86 minutes

Synopsis: Single mom Rachel Easton and her two daughters move from their cramped Detroit apartment to the suburbs when Rachel gets an irresistible deal on her dream house. But with the night comes scratching from within the walls, distant cries, and a figure of a young woman in the shifting shadows of the basement. As the haunting intensifies, Rachel and her friend must uncover the horrifying secret of what happened in the house years ago to save her family.

Book information from Goodreads.com:

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 304
Published: April 22nd 2014 by Tor Books
ISBN: 0765336928 (ISBN13: 9780765336927)
Genre: Horror  

Synopsis: It begins in Toronto, in the years after the smart drug revolution. Any high school student with a chemjet and internet connection can download recipes and print drugs, or invent them. A seventeen-year-old street girl finds God through a new brain-altering drug called Numinous, used as a sacrament by a new Church that preys on the underclass. But she is arrested and put into detention, and without the drug, commits suicide.

Lyda Rose, another patient in that detention facility, has a dark secret: she was one of the original scientists who developed the drug. With the help of an ex-government agent and an imaginary, drug-induced doctor, Lyda sets out to find the other three survivors of the five who made the Numinous in a quest to set things right.

A mind-bending and violent chase across Canada and the US, Daryl Gregory's Afterparty is a marvelous mix of William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Philip K. Dick’s Ubik, and perhaps a bit of Peter Watts’s Starfish: a last chance to save civilization, or die trying.

Book information from Goodreads.com:

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 336
Published: September 10th 2013 by Little, Brown and Company
ISBN: 0316243914 (ISBN13: 9780316243919)
Genre: Mystery

Synopsis: A brilliant literary debut, inspired by a true story: the final days of a young woman accused of murder in Iceland in 1829.

Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.

Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family at first avoids Agnes. Only Tóti, a priest Agnes has mysteriously chosen to be her spiritual guardian, seeks to understand her. But as Agnes's death looms, the farmer's wife and their daughters learn there is another side to the sensational story they've heard.

Riveting and rich with lyricism, Burial Rites evokes a dramatic existence in a distant time and place, and asks the question, how can one woman hope to endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others?

My Thrill Club Box

           I like My Thrill Club because it is a no fuss subscription with no bells and whistles but feed two of my habits, books and movies. So let's get down to it. In this box as usual there are two books and one movie, I'm going to start with the movie. So far all the movies that they have sent me are ones that I've never seen or heard of before and this month is no different. 

Genre: Suspense
Rating: R
Actors: Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Michael Pitt, Brady Corbet
Director: Michael Haneke
Writer: Michael Haneke

Synopsis: From Amazon.com "Michael Haneke is a modern master, which his spellbinding films Cache and The Piano Teacher proved to an international audience. When it came time for a Hollywood remake of his ultra-disturbing 1997 picture Funny Games, who better than Haneke himself to helm the new version? And indeed, the second Funny Games bears the impeccable sense of control and technique that the Austrian version had: it is a horrifyingly precise account of a family terrorized by two psychopathic young thugs at a vacation home. For anyone who's already seen the '97 film, this new one--a nearly shot-by-shot transcription of the original--will seem superfluous, no matter how impressive the performances of Naomi Watts and Tim Roth are. (Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet are suitably creepy as their menacers, too.) For newbies, the movie might be as infuriating and thought-provoking as Haneke intends it to be. That's because Funny Games is an intellectual game itself, a direct rebuke to the audience that gobbles up gratuitous violence and cynical manipulation. Haneke sets up our expectations, and then refuses to provide the conventional catharsis… or the conventional anything. All of this was pretty bracing in the first go-round, but feels like gamesmanship in the remake. Even if you dig what Haneke's up to, this is a brutal movie-watching experience. --Robert Horton"


Next up is book number one: Eternal Sonata by Jamie Metzl

Synopsis from GoodReads: A few dead bodies are a small price to pay in the quest for immortality.

In 2025 America, it’s hardly news when a renowned octogenarian scientist dying of cancer disappears from a local hospice, but when Kansas City Star reporter Rich Azadian begins to dig, he discovers that other elderly scientists around the world have also vanished recently—all terminally ill and receiving the same experimental treatment from a global health company. His investigation leads him to the reclusive Noam Heller, a brilliant researcher exploring new technologies to reverse-age cancer and other cells. Using revolutionary stem cell treatments and snippets of DNA from rare, immortal Arctic jellyfish, his breakthrough promises the genetic equivalent of the fountain of youth.

But when Heller is murdered and his lab destroyed, Rich and his girlfriend Antonia become targets themselves. With the local police and federal authorities failing to see the big picture, he realizes he must take matters into his own hands to survive and stop the killing. His only hope is to mobilize his network of brilliant misfits and infiltrate the vast and lethal race—among cutthroat corporations, national intelligence services, rogue scientists, and a mysterious international organization—to control the new technologies and perhaps the secret of life itself.


Finally, Dolphin Drone by James Grundvig.

Synopsis from GoodReads:

A taught, high-concept thriller that humanizes the men and women behind military espionage.

James Grundvig’s Dolphin Drone takes us into the complex underworld of global terrorism with razor-sharp plot twists, remarkable characters, and fascinating insight into the technological advancements of the US Navy.

Using dolphin sonar-tracking technology, Ex-Navy SEAL Merk Toten stumbles of freshly laid Iranian sea mines while conducting surveillance on two US ships that were hijacked by Somali pirates on the Strait of Hormuz. This discovery occurs on the same day that a fake intelligence report draws three US drones away from the Persian Gulf. Toten investigates the parallel events to uncover a new super-terrorist group made up of a network of Somali warlords, Islamic assailants, Yemen-based terrorists, and ISIS sympathizers.

When Merk Toten and the beautiful CIA Operative Jenny Myung King discover a plot by this new terrorist organization to bomb New York Harbor, the duo must race against the clock to stop the devastating attack.

Dolphin Drone is a tense thriller that combines cutting-edge marine technology, high-stakes undercover operations, and complex and frightening political underpinnings.

My Thrill Club

          My Thrill Club subscription always theills me with their selections. I got two books and a movie. So let us get into them. 

          I have not seen this movie before and I love creepy crawly vibe I am getting from it. 

From GoodReads: “In the spring of 1936, horror writer H.P. Lovecraft is broke, living alone in a creaky old house and deathly ill. At the edge of a nervous breakdown, he hires a personal assistant, Arthor Crandle. As the novel opens, Crandle arrives at Lovecraft’s home with no knowledge of the writer or his work but is soon drawn into his distinctly unnerving world: the malevolent presence that hovers on the landing; the ever-shining light from Lovecraft’s study, invisible from the street; and visions in the night of a white-clad girl in the walled garden. Add to this the arrival of a beautiful woman who may not be exactly what she seems, and Crandle is pulled deeper into the strange world of the horror writer (a man known to Crandle only through letters, signed “Ech-Pi”), until Crandle begins to unravel the dark secret at its heart. A brilliantly written, compelling and deeply creepy novel, The Broken Hours is an irresistible literary ghost story.”

 

          From GoodReads: “Those who live in silence hear them best . . . Dominic Lancaster hoped to prove himself to his family by excelling in the Navy during World War II. Instead he is wounded while serving as a gunner, and loses his leg. Still recovering from his wounds and the trauma of his amputation when the Blitz begins, Dominic finds himself shuffled off to the countryside by his family, along with his partially deaf sister, Octavia. The crumbling family estate on the shores of Ullswater is an old, much-neglected place that doesn’t seem to promise much in the way of happiness or recovery. 

          Something more than a friendship begins to flourish between Dominic and his nurse Rose in the late autumn of that English countryside, as he struggles to come to terms with his new life as an amputee. Another thing that seems to be flourishing is Octavia’s hearing. 

          As winter descends, sinister forces seem to be materializing around Octavia, who is hearing voices of children. After seeing things that no one else can see and hearing things that no one else can hear, Octavia is afflicted with a sickness that cannot be explained. With Octavia’s help, Dominic sets out to find the truth behind the voices that have haunted his sister. In doing so, he uncovers an even older, darker evil that threatens not only Octavia, but Rose and himself. 

          Jonathan Aycliffe delivers a disturbingly tense ghost story set in the middle of World War II during England’s darkest hour, demonstrating that some fears are timeless . . .” I really can’t wait to read these books as I have been on a horror kick lately.

My Thrill Club

          This is a new subscription box for me from CrateJoy. My Thrill Club delivers the best in Crime & Mystery, Thriller & Espionage, and Horror. Pick a category then each month you receive 2 books and a movie for $14.99 OR 2 Movies and a Book, your choice! Thrillers, Mystery, Horror, Spy Books and Movies. My chooce was 2 books and a movie. So let us get into the box.

          Like I previously said and can been seen in the picture I got two books and a movie. 

          I’ve never seen this movie before so I’m super excited to watch it. From the description on the back of the box this is about a good boy who comes out of a mafia family only to go back in as a request from the FBI.

          The first book is called The Ambassador’s Wife. From GoodReads: “When bohemian artist Miranda falls in love with Finn, the British ambassador to an Arab country, she finds herself thrust into a life for which she has no preparation. The couple and their toddler daughter live in a stately mansion with a staff to meet their every need, but for Miranda even this luxury comes at a price: the loss of freedom. Trailed everywhere by bodyguards to protect her from the dangers of a country wracked by civil war and forced to give up work she loves, she finds her world shattered when she is taken hostage, an act of terror with wide-reaching consequences.

Diplomatic life is a far cry from Miranda’s first years in Mazrooq, which were spent painting and mentoring a group of young Muslim women, teaching them to draw in ways forbidden in their culture. As the novel weaves together past and present, we come to see how Finn and Miranda’s idealism and secrets they have each sought to hide have placed them and those who trust them in peril. And when Miranda grows close to a child who shares her captivity, it is not clear that even being set free would restore the simple happiness that once was hers and Finn’s. Suspenseful and moving, The Ambassador’s Wife is a story of love, marriage, and friendship tested by impossible choices.”

          The second book is called Dominion. From GoodReads: “1952. Twelve years have passed since Churchill lost to the appeasers and Britain surrendered to Nazi  The global economy strains against the weight of the long German war against Russia still raging in the east. The British people find themselves under increasingly authoritarian rule--the press, radio, and television tightly controlled, the British Jews facing ever greater constraints.

But Churchill's Resistance soldiers on. As defiance grows, whispers circulate of a secret that could forever alter the balance of the global struggle. The keeper of that secret? Scientist Frank Muncaster, who languishes in a Birmingham mental hospital.

Civil Servant David Fitzgerald, a spy for the Resistance and University friend of Frank's, is given the mission to rescue Frank and get him out of the country. Hard on his heels is Gestapo agent Gunther Hoth, a brilliant, implacable hunter of men, who soon has Frank and David's innocent wife, Sarah, directly in his sights.

C.J. Sansom's literary thriller Winter in Madrid earned Sansom comparisons to Graham Greene, Sebastian Faulks, and Ernest Hemingway. Now, in his first alternative history epic, Sansom doesn't just recreate the past--he reinvents it. In a spellbinding tale of suspense, oppression and poignant love, DOMINION dares to explore how, in moments of crisis, history can turn on the decisions of a few brave men and women--the secrets they choose to keep and the bonds they share.”

          Both books sound really interesting and I can't wait to get into them! I think I'm going to like this book subscription box as my no fuss no muss book/movie subscription.