Andrew Gross's list

This week at The Week magazine, Andrew Gross, co-author with James Patterson of five No. 1 best-selling thrillers as well as his solo debut thriller, The Blue Zone, named "The List."

One of his titles:

Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth

A tossup with Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon for the most seminal thriller ever. Both should be taught as texts in Thriller 101. Your heart will pound and you may even switch allegiances out of respect for its canny, dogged assassin. Sets the page-turning bar high for all of us after. A classic. Cannot be put down.

Read more about Gross's list.

About Andrew Gross's The Blue Zone:

Everything in Kate Raab’s life seems perfect. She has an amazing family, an invigorating job straight out of college, and a boyfriend she adores. Then a phone call changes everything. Her father, a successful businessman, a man she has always trusted and admired, is in trouble with the law. He’s innocent, he insists to his family, but the only way out, is this: his testimony against his accomplices and the immediate placement of his family deep inside the Witness Protection Program. He accepts, and everyone prepares to go into hiding — until one of them suddenly gets cold feet. In a flash, Kate’s perfect life is gone.

Now, a year later, her worst fears have happened. Kate’s father suddenly disappears — into what the WITSEC agency calls the Blue Zone — and someone very important to him is found brutally murdered. As Kate digs into her father’s life, the shocking truth she finds sets in motion a decades-old vendetta. With her family under watch, with the FBI untrustworthy, and her father’s menacing "friends" circling her with increasing intensity, Kate alone must set off on the life and death journey to find her father, and uncover the secrets someone will kill to keep buried.

Visit the author's website to read the first three chapters of The Blue Zone.

--Marshal Zeringue