Best debuts

8. “The Late Show” by Michael Connelly and “Two Kinds of Truth” by Michael Connelly (Mullholland Books)

A year with two Michael Connelly novels is cause for celebration. “The Late Show” launches a new series about Det. Renée Ballard, a tenacious investigator assigned to the midnight shift as punishment for filing sexual harassment charges against her former boss. Harry Bosch is back in “Two Kinds of Truth.” The now retired L.A.P.D. detective, who works as a volunteer with the tiny San Fernando Police Department, juggles two cases. An execution murder pulls Harry and the department into the world of a crime syndicate that specializes in prescription opioids. A new DNA test from a case Harry investigated 30 years ago seems to reveal that evidence was planted to convict a man now on death row.

9. “Blame” by Jeff Abbott (Grand Central)

Teenager Jane Norton lost her memory and her boyfriend because of a car crash in which she was driving. Now someone is targeting those connected to the accident.

10. “The Fallen” by Ace Atkins (Putnam)

Atkins’ seventh novel looks at recent veterans returning home as Mississippi sheriff Quinn Colson grapples with a series of bank robberies and the disappearance of two teenage girls no one cares about.

11. “Y Is for Yesterday” by Sue Grafton (Putnam)

Just one more novel to go in Grafton’s series about private detective Kinsey Millhone. This series is not fading into the background but going out with even deeper plots and more intense characterizations than when Kinsey first came on the scene 35 years ago.

12. “The Good Daughter” by Karin Slaughter (Morrow)

The aftermath of their mother’s murder 28 years ago resurfaces for two estranged sisters when a shooting occurs in their former middle school.

13. “The Roanoke Girls” by Amy Engel (Crown)

Everyone in a small Kansas town envies those Roanoke girls, spoiled by their grandparents who are benefactors to the town. But that rambling house hides myriad secrets.

14. “Vicious Circle” by C.J. Box (Putnam) and (alphabetical order) “The Last Mrs. Parrish” by Liv Constantine (Harper)

An amoral woman’s manipulations to become the next Mrs. Parrish lead to a deliciously twisty tale that never slows.

“Little Deaths” by Emma Flint (Hachette)

Misogyny and gossip swirl in a 1965 workingclass neighborhood when a single mother’s children go missing.

“The Driver” by Hart Hanson (Dutton)

A nimbly plotted tale about a Los Angeles limousine driver who hires wounded veterans, who, like him, are trying to adjust to civilian life.

“The Freedom Broker” by K.J. Howe (Quercus)

A top kidnap and rescue expert’s global investigation into a high-profile kidnapping leads to an unresolved crime in her own family.

“The Lost Ones” by Sheena Kamal (William Morrow)

Set in Vancouver, the