Thrillers, fantasy and science fiction

The Affair

A Reacher Novel

Lee Child

Delacorte Press, $28

Knuckle-busting crime-solver Jack Reacher returns with a story from his early years involving a murder near a military base and how he became a maverick hero.

After the Apocalypse

Stories

Maureen F. McHugh

Small Beer Press, $16, paper

McHugh pins down the wildest of disasters—the devastation of plague, zombies, the end of the world—by using a subdued, matter-of-fact narrative voice that makes these scenarios seem eerily real.

Aloha from Hell

A Sandman Slim Novel

Richard Kadrey

Harper Voyager, $23.99

Think of an occult worshipper possessed by Raymond Chandler and you’ll get the idea about this series, whose hero escaped Hell to avenge his own murder and now, in the third installment, is hellbound once again.

The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares

Joyce Carol Oates

Mysterious Press, $24

Tales of darkness and horror, including the title story about an innocent girl involved in a cruel ceremony requiring a human sacrifice.

A Dance With Dragons

A Song of Ice and Fire, Book Five

George R.R. Martin

Bantam, $35

The Seven Kingdoms are again under threat in Martin’s epic saga that began with “A Game of Thrones.”

A Dark and Lonely Place

A Novel

Edna Buchanan

Simon & Schuster, $26

When a murder brings together a Miami homicide detective and a femme fatale, the pair mirrors an outlaw couple pillaging frontier Miami more than a century earlier.

The Drop

Michael Connelly

Little, Brown, $27.99

The clock is ticking on Harry Bosch’s LAPD retirement as he investigates a Chateau Marmont death and another case involving DNA that means the killer would have been 8 years old at the time of the crime.

The Exorcist

40th Anniversary Edition

William Peter Blatty

Harper, $25.99

The author has polished and introduced new material into his chilling story of demonic possession, first published in 1971.

The Forgotten Affairs of Youth

An Isabel Dalhousie Novel

Alexander McCall Smith

Pantheon, $24.95

A professor arrives in Edinburgh looking for her father, who gave her away at birth. What else can sweet, thoughtful Isabel do but try to help her?

The Leopard

A Novel

Jo Nesbo

Alfred A. Knopf, $26.95

The news that a serial killer is operating in Oslo draws inspector Harry Hole back to Norway from Hong Kong’s opium dens, where he’s been trying to forget the trauma of a previous case.

The Litigators

A Novel

John Grisham

Doubleday, $26.99

A down-and-out law firm welcomes a new associate, a young burned-out lawyer, and becomes involved in a wildly lucrative case that seems far too easy.

Locked On

A Novel

Tom Clancy with Mark Greaney

Putnam, $28.95

Jack Ryan Sr. faces political misdeeds and character assassination as he runs for president while the rest of the Campus investigates the unclear ties between terrorists and a Pakistani military officer.

Micro

Michael Crichton and Richard Preston

Harper, $28.99

Scientists thrust into a paradise-like landscape confront all kinds of biological horror in this thriller finished by the author of the bestselling “The Hot Zone.”

Reamde

A Novel

Neal Stephenson

William Morrow, $35

A techno-thriller in which a former marijuana smuggler, who used his money to create a wildly popular online game, is at the center of a dangerous plot involving a hacker.

Red Mist

A Scarpetta Novel

Patricia Cornwell

Putnam, $27.95

Forensic expert Kay Scarpetta wants to know who murdered a former protégé, and the answer may rest with a longtime inmate in the Georgia Prison for Women.

The Scottish Prisoner

Diana Gabaldon

Delacorte, $28

In this companion series to her bestselling “Outlander” series, Diana Gabaldon follows Lord John Grey and his unwilling companion, Jaime Fraser, as they set off for Ireland to confront a deadly mystery.

Stolen Souls

Stuart Neville

Soho Crime, $25

A sex slave on the run in Belfast finds anything but safety with a Christian pastor, and a haunted detective may be the only one who can save her.

The Talk Show Murders

A Billy Blessing Novel

Al Roker and Dick Lochte

Delacorte, $26

New York TV host-turned-sleuth Billy Blessing faces his long-hidden past — and an unexpected string of murders — during a visit to Chicago.

An Uncertain Place

A Commissaire Adamsberg Mystery

Fred Vargas

Penguin, $15

Is there a connection between a gruesome murder and an equally gruesome scene — a collection of shoes containing severed feet at London’s Highgate Cemetery?

V Is for Vengeance

Sue Grafton

G.P. Putnam, $27.95

When the death of a department store shoplifter is called a suicide, Kinsey Millhone doesn’t accept the verdict and heads out in her blue Mustang to find out what really happened.

Vigilante

A Shane Scully Novel

Stephen J. Cannell

St. Martin’s, $25.99

Scully and his partner fear that there’s a murderer in the LAPD after a high-profile critic of the department is found dead in her home. The last Scully novel by the author, who died last year.