Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “[A] hold-on-to-your-hat, nail-biting story.”—The Washington Post “Slaughter’s best yet, by far.”—Lee Child Will Trent is a brilliant agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Newly in love, he is beginning to put a difficult past behind him. Then a local college student goes missing, and Will is inexplicably kept off the case by his supervisor and mentor, deputy director Amanda Wagner. Will cannot fathom Amanda’s motivation until the two of them literally collide in an abandoned orphanage they have both been drawn to for different reasons. Decades before, when his father was imprisoned for murder, this was Will’s home. It appears that the case that launched Amanda’s career forty years ago has suddenly come back to life—and it involves the long-held mystery of Will’s birth and parentage. Now these two dauntless investigators will each need to face down demons from the past if they are to prevent an even greater terror from being unleashed. Includes Karin Slaughter’s short story “Snatched” and a preview of the Will Trent novel Unseen “With every page of this story the tension mounts. . . . If you have a hunger for a rich and fulfilling novel then you owe it to yourself to pick up Criminal.”—Huffington Post “A masterpiece of character, atmosphere and riveting suspense, Criminal is the most powerful and moving novel yet from one of the most gifted storytellers at work today.”—Chicago Daily Herald