I write for a living. Have done it all my life—in daily newspapers, magazines, for TV news, as a law clerk to a NYS Supreme Court judge, and as a traditionally published author.
I’ve also been an avid reader of page-turning thrillers for decades. It’s why I write in that genre, and why I’ve become familiar with the jaw-dropping twist that turns a story on its head just when you think you know where it’s heading. It’s what I aimed for in my latest thriller, Fool Her Once.
It’s just a sheer delight when it’s done well—as it is in the five books I’ve chosen here.
Set against the backdrop of a New York couple’s failing marriage, wife Amy Dunne disappears. Every clue points to her abduction and possible murder. The finger of suspicion points to husband Nick—especially after Amy’s diary is found. In it, she has detailed her relationship with Nick from its rosy beginnings to the point where she fears for her safety at his hands.
It was obvious to me where this mystery was heading—until I turned the page about halfway through the book. The brilliant switch in POV and the realization that Nick might possibly become a victim of a miscarriage of justice was a solid punch in the gut—and the inspiration for me to write my third novel.
THE ADDICTIVE No.1 BESTSELLER AND INTERNATIONAL PHENOMENON OVER 20 MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE THE BOOK THAT DEFINES PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER
Who are you? What have we done to each other?
These are the questions Nick Dunne finds himself asking on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they weren't made by him. And then there are the persistent calls on…
I’ve read many thrillers in my genre touted for their mind-blowing twists, but which haveleft me disappointed. The Boys lives up to its hype. Totally.
Ethan is a husband who has an extreme fear of parenting. To help him overcome his fears, his wife Barb arranges for them to foster two brothers. Ethan takes to his parenting role so diligently that Barb has to take a breather from the marriage while Ethan takes the boys on a biking trip to Italy.
It is here—a little more than halfway through the novel—that the reader learns theshocking truth about the boys. Nothing prepared me for this twist. At all. Or, for the revelations and resolution that followed—all of which made the twist totally plausible and comprehensible.
"Hafner's taut and utterly delightful debut is a novel of multitudes.... What a wonder of storytelling." -Weike Wang, New York Times
New York Times Editors' Pick | Most Anticipated | GMA Summer Reads
A delicious summer read filled with humor and surprise for readers of Anne Tyler and Kevin Wilson.
When introverted Ethan Fawcett marries fun-loving Barb, so comfortable in the world, he has every reason to believe he will be delivered from a lifetime of solitude. She fills his world with a sense of adventure, expanding his horizons beyond his comfortable routine. To ease Ethan's fears of becoming a…
The action opens in 1954 with Teddy Daniels, one of two US marshals heading for a criminally insane facility on the remote Shutter Island. Their assignment? To search for a female inmate who has escaped. But the hunters become the hunted when they appear tostumble onto secret mind-altering experiments being conducted on the inmates. WhenTeddy is caught trying to leave the island, the doctor in charge reveals what is really going on. It’s a mind-blowing twist that had me turning back the pages to see how Lehane had pulled it off.
The basis for the blockbuster motion picture directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Shutter Island by New York Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane is a gripping and atmospheric psychological thriller where nothing is quite what it seems. The New York Times calls Shutter Island, “Startlingly original.” The Washington Post raves, “Brilliantly conceived and executed.” A masterwork of suspense and surprise from the author of Mystic River and Gone, Baby, Gone, Shutter Island carries the reader into a nightmare world of madness, mind control, and CIA Cold War paranoia andis unlike anything you’ve ever read before.
Slaughter is one of the best storytellers I’ve read in the last ten years, and Pretty Girls is her gold standard. The thriller, which is a complex tale about the unsolved disappearances of teenage/college girls, opens with the author’s trademark: a brutal, graphically-written scene. Here, it is the fatal stabbing in a back alley of Paul, a brilliant, rich architect. The murder is witnessed by his wife, protagonist, Claire.
After the funeral, Claire is faced with a series of mystifying discoveries on Paul’s computer which suggest that her loving, perfect husband was involved in making snuff videos for a torture porn ring which is protected by local cops. Slaughter’s skillful plotting and set-up to the midway point render the twist gasp-inducing rather than preposterous.
'One of the boldest thriller writers working today' TESS GERRITSEN 'Her characters, plot, and pacing are unrivalled' MICHAEL CONNELLY _________________________________________ AS RECOMMENDED ON HIT CRIME PODCAST MY FAVOURITE MURDER A heart-racing thriller from the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author
Sisters. Strangers. Survivors.
More than twenty years ago, Claire and Lydia's teenage sister Julia vanished without a trace. The two women have not spoken since, and now their lives could not be more different. Claire is the glamorous trophy wife of an Atlanta millionaire. Lydia, a single mother, dates an ex-con and struggles to make ends meet. But neither has…
This 2003 novel is ostensibly the story of a mass school shooting perpetrated by teenager, Kevin. But it is really the story of a marriage and motherhood where Kevin’s mother, Eva, always suspected there was something wrong with her son whereas Kevin’s father, Franklin, never saw that side of his son.
It’s a conflict that apparently led to their eventual estrangement since it is told in the form of letters written by Eva to Franklin. In the letters, Eva struggles for understanding: Is she to blame for Kevin’s mass murder of his schoolmates, or was Kevin born bad?
The sickening twist that occurs in Eva’s recollection of the actual day of the shootings answers that question even as it reveals exactly why Eva and Franklin could no longer stay together.
Eva never really wanted to be a mother; certainly not the mother of a boy named Kevin who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher who had tried to befriend him. Now, two years after her son's horrific rampage, Eva comes to terms with her role as Kevin's mother in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her absent husband Franklyn about their son's upbringing. Fearing that her own shortcomings may have shaped what her son has become, she confesses to…
A psychological thriller in which investigative reporter, Jenna Sinclair, must track down Denny Dennison the man whose life she ruined by outing him—twenty years before—asthe secret son of an executed serial killer. She suspects Denny has inherited his father’spsychopathic gene and is responsible for assaulting her former boss and lover, and that heis now coming to harm her daughter out of revenge. As she follows his trail, a switch in POV exposes Denny and the devastating truth about his life since Jenna’s scoop.
I once saw a play at the renowned Oregon Shakespeare Theatre. A play about Sor Juana. It was a good play, but it felt like something was missing like jalapenos left out of enchiladas. The play kept nudging me to look further to find Sor Juana, and so for the next five years, I did so. I read and read more. I listened for her voice, and that is where I heard her life come alive. This isn’t the only possibility for Sor Juana’s life; it is just the one I heard.
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, this brilliant 17th century nun flew through Mexico City on the breeze of poetry and philosophy. She met with princes of the Church, and with the royalty of Spain and Mexico. Then she met a stunning, powerful woman with lavender eyes, la Vicereine Maria Louisa, and her life changed forever. As her fame grew, she dared to challenge the diabolical Archbishop once too often, and he threw her in front of the Inquisition, where she stood, alone.
Sor Juana's work is studied still today, and justifiably so. Scholars study her months on end; mystics…
This astonishingly brilliant 17th century poet and dramatist, this nun, flew through Mexico City on wings of inspiration. Having no dowry, she chose the life of a nun so that she might learn, so that she might write, so that she might meet the most fascinating people of the western world. She accomplished all of that, and more.
One day a woman with violet eyes, eyes the color of passion flowers, entered her life. It was the new Vicereine, Maria Luisa. As the two most powerful women in Mexico City, the bond between them crossed politics and wound them in…
