RIght Behind You by Gail Giles

Excellent .

Actually, everything I've read by her has been excellent.

Rage and redemption. Guilt and shame.  When he was nine, Kip McFarland killed someone. He spent  the next 4 years in a mental institute. Now he's got a chance at a new life with his dad and stepmom, with a new name in a new state. But what do you do when the person you fear the most is yourself? (YAC)

Mystery/thrillers

Last Known Victim by Erica Spindler -  Set in post-Katrina New Orleans, the police discover a refrigerator stocked with severed right hands.
A shallow grave might be one of the victims - but it's what's found with the victim that really stirs up the police - a badge belonging to a detective who was murdered in the aftermath of the hurricane.  The hunt for the killer(s) leads to a strip bar and a dancer who's not always truthful, but Captain Patti O'Shay, the detective's widow, bends the rules to find her husband's killer. Really stretches the credibility limits, but the post-Katrina setting is an interesting look at a damaged and struggling city.

Third Degree by Greg Iles - It's a bad day in the Shields household - husband Warren's medical practice is being audited by the IRS, and wife Laurel just got a positive on a EPT - and she's not sure if the child is her husband's or her ex-lover's.  Laurel heads off to her job of teaching handicapped kids and has a confrontation with the ex, the dad of one of her students - and goes home early with a migraine. When she gets home, Warren's still there, not having gone to work. Laurel finds herself being held at gunpoint, while her husband tries to crack her email password to find out who the lover is, while at work, his business partner and office manager conspire to frame him for insurance fraud.  And when the whole thing explodes, bringing in the police and the Feds, the only person Warren trusts to talk to is his former flight instructor - a former military pilot named Danny McDavitt - who is also Laurel's ex-lover. Not as compelling as Iles' usual fare, but still a fast, gripping read.

Power Play by Joseph Finder -  One of the Amazon.com reviews called this "Die Hard at a Corporate Off-site" - a fairly good basic description. Regular guy Jake Landry  must substitute for his boss at a aeronautics company's retreat - an already tense event because of the new CEO - a woman facing lots of hostility from the male department heads. The retreat turns even worse, when, at the first dinner, the group is taken hostage by what seems to be a group of redneck hunters, looking for quick money. But things aren't quite what they seem - and Landry, the good-guy-with-a-past, must save them all. Action packed.

Darkness Falls by Kyle Mills -  Beamon's back - yeah! More of a secondary character in this book though.  Erin Neal, an environmentalist turned recluse, gets pulled back into the world when a engineered bacteria starts eating away at the Saudi oil fields. Neal, formerly known for preventing oil field disasters, is coerced by Beamon, now head of energy security for Homeland Security, into looking into the bacteria. Turns out it's a mutant version of a bacteria Neal created, but never told anyone about - except a deceased former girlfriend. Mills does the doomsday thriller well.

Last Call by James Grippando - Attorney Jack Swyteck's friend and former client Theo is in danger. A convict from Theo's childhood neighborhood escapes from prison - and when his promised help doesn't materialize, he goes to Theo.  Former gang members together, he offers Theo an exchange - help him and he'll tell Theo who murdered his mother twenty-something years ago.  Completely unrealistic, but eminently readable. Others in the series much better.

Third Strike by Philip R. Craig & William G. Tapply -  Craig's JW Jackson (ex-cop now living with his family on Martha's Vineyard) and Tapply's Boston lawyer Brady Coyne get together for the third time when a strike paralyzes the ferries from the Vineyard to the mainland. A striker's death involves Jackson - was the man killed while planting a bomb or was it murder? And a reclusive client of Coyne's calls him to the island to tell him about mysterious men with guns unloading crates in the middle of the night  - a client who is soon murdered. JW and Brady team up to find out the truth. Sadly there will be no more collaborations as Craig died recently, but I'll continue to look forward to new Tapplys. 

(challenges for all above books: 100 books, A to Z)

The Alexandria Link by Steve Berry - Former government agent Cotton Malone finds his frantic ex-wife on his doorstep - their son has been kidnapped. Moments later, his bookstore is attacked. Malone is the only person who knows the location of the Alexandria Link - a man who may have knowledge of how to locate the supposedly destroyed Library of Alexandria. In the Library, an ancient  Biblical document could throw the Middle East into chaos and pit Jews, Muslims and Christians against each other in open warfare. Overblown, but entertaining.
(challenges: 100 books, A to Z, TBR)