Welcome to my weekly segment, Waiting on Wednesday, where I look at upcoming books that I am planning to order and review in the next few months and which I think I will really enjoy.  Stay tuned to see reviews of these books when I get a copy of them.  For this latest Waiting on Wednesday post, I check out a fun and awesome upcoming thriller that sounds like a real blast, with Badlands by Doughlas Preston and Lincoln Child.

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Last year I had the very great pleasure of reading Extinction by Douglas Preston.  An outstanding thriller set in a private nature park filled with cloned woolly mammoths and other prehistoric creatures, I was lured in by Extinction’s cool premise but came away deeply thrilled by how crazy and fun things got, as an unlikely group of antagonists caused all manner of over-the-top carnage  I loved every second I spent reading Extinction, and it was one of the more entertaining novels of 2024.  Due to this, I decided to keep an eye out on more books from Preston and was very intrigued by his next release, Badlands, which he has once again written with his long-time collaborator Lincoln Child.

While Preston and Child have both written solo books, they are better known as a highly regarded writing partnership which has produced a mass of exciting and compelling thrillers with supernatural or scientific twists.  The pair’s main body of work is the long-running Agent Pendergast series, which started back in 1995 with Relic, and has since resulted in over 20 associated books.  In addition to the Agent Pendergast books, Preston and Child have also written other series, such as the Gideon Crew books, as well as some cool standalone novels, which all sound very awesome.  Due to the various intriguing narratives contained within this series, the novels of Preston and Child have been on my radar for a while, and I think it is time I make the effort to check them out, especially after having so much fun with Extinction.

As such, the pair’s next book, Badlands, seems like an excellent place to start.  Part of the author’s Nora Kelly series, which follows the titular archaeologist as she becomes involved in a series of dark investigations with historical components to times, Badlands sounds really intriguing, and I love the cool plot behind it.  Based on what I have heard about Preston and Child’s novels, I should be able to start reading Badlands without too much pre-knowledge of the author’s previous books, and hopefully I can just start enjoying the awesome sounding narrative.  Set for release in July 2025, Badlands has a ton of potential, and I cannot wait to unwind Preston and Child’s new elaborate plot.  

Plot Synopsis:

In the New Mexico badlands, the skeleton of a woman is found — and the case is assigned to FBI Agent Corrie Swanson. The victim walked into the desert, shedding clothes as she went, and died in agony of heatstroke and thirst. Two rare artifacts are found clutched in her bony hands–lightning stones used by the ancient Chaco people to summon the gods.

Is it suicide or… sacrifice?

Agent Swanson brings in archaeologist Nora Kelly to investigate. When a second body is found — exactly like the other — the two realize the case runs deeper than they imagined. As Corrie and Nora pursue their investigation into remote canyons, haunted ruins, and long-lost rituals, they find themselves confronting a dark power that, disturbed from its long slumber, threatens to exact an unspeakable price.