I’ve read crime fiction since I was a kid, starting with Nancy Drew and the mystery magazines—Alfred Hitchcock, Mike Shayne, and Ellery Queen. While in elementary school, I wrote mystery short stories, which my sister illustrated, and we sold them on the street corner for 25 cents apiece. In the nineties, I devoured novels by Patricia Highsmith, Ruth Rendell, and P.D. James. The 2000s introduced another generation of favorite authors, including Belinda Bauer, Chris Whitaker, and Tana French. I love too many to name! My current passion is for novels that I can really sink my teeth into, with complex characters hiding dark secrets.
The first line had me hooked: “It would be inaccurate to say that my childhood was normal before they came.”
That one sentence fired up my imagination, and the story kept me turning the pages late into the night. Libby, an adoptee, unexpectedly inherits a once-grand mansion in London’s Chelsea, only to discover it comes with a grim family history that’s nothing like the fanciful one she’d imagined.
I’m particularly drawn to novels like this one, with multiple narrators and intertwining timelines.
'I swear I didn't breathe the whole time I was reading it. Gripping, pacy, brilliantly twisty.' CLARE MACKINTOSH
'Creepy, intricate and utterly immersive: an excellent holiday read.' GUARDIAN
'A twisty and engrossing story of betrayal and redemption.' IAN RANKIN ____________________________
FROM THE #1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THEN SHE WAS GONE
In a large house in London's fashionable Chelsea, a baby is awake in her cot. Well-fed and cared for, she is happily waiting for someone to pick her up.
In the kitchen lie three decomposing corpses. Close to them is a hastily scrawled note.
This is Flynn’s debut novel and my favorite. I liked it even more than Gone Girl. Camille, the protagonist, had me cheering for her at every turn, yet I couldn't shake a persistent sense of dread.
Some scenes are so vivid and disturbing that they’ve stuck with me long after I finished the book—especially the chilling scene at a pig farm. And Camille’s mother, Adora? Let’s just say she isn’t adorable.
NOW AN HBO® LIMITED SERIES STARRING AMY ADAMS, NOMINATED FOR EIGHT EMMY AWARDS, INCLUDING OUTSTANDING LIMITED SERIES
FROM THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF GONE GIRL
Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family's Victorian mansion, Camille finds…
The twists at the end took me by surprise, though I sensed something wasn’t quite right throughout. I just couldn’t put my finger on what exactly. Iris and Gabriel return from a holiday and are surprised to find their friend Laure staying in their home.
What begins as an annoyance escalates to a threat as long-buried secrets start to surface. The tension kept me swiping the pages on my E-reader. It’s my favorite B. A. Paris thriller so far.
New York Times bestselling author B. A. Paris captivated psychological thriller readers everywhere with Behind Closed Doors. Now she invites you into another home full of heart-pounding secrets, in The Guest.
Some secrets never leave.
Iris and Gabriel have just arrived home from a make-or-break holiday. But a shock awaits them. One of their closest friends, Laure, is in their house. The atmosphere quickly becomes tense as she oversteps again and again: sleeping in their bed, wearing Iris' clothes, even rearranging the furniture.
Laure has walked out on her husband―and their good friend―Pierre, over his confession of an affair and…
“No, Hal. Don’t do it,” I kept muttering as I read. After her mother’s sudden death, Hal is alone and in debt to dangerous money lenders. She can barely buy food or keep her flat warm. Just as she hits rock bottom, a letter arrives informing her that her grandmother has passed away, and Hal is a beneficiary under her will. She’s convinced that it’s a case of mistaken identity. But she’s desperate and stakes her claim anyway.
I paused in my reading to puzzle over a seemingly innocent photo Hal found, but the truth remained tantalizingly out of my grasp until the end. This book has that classic mystery vibe that makes me want to crawl under the covers and read it on a cold winter night.
'I read this in two lightning-quick sittings...I absolutely adored it' Lisa Jewell, bestselling author of The Family Upstairs
HAL MUST KEEP GOING OR RISK LOSING EVERYTHING...EVEN HER LIFE.
When Harriet Westaway receives an unexpected letter telling her she's inherited a substantial bequest from her Cornish grandmother, it seems like the answer to her prayers.
There's just one problem - Hal's real grandparents died more than twenty years ago.
Hal desperately needs the cash and makes a choice that will change her life for ever. She knows that her skills as a seaside fortune teller could help her con her way…
There were a lot of juicy secrets to unravel in this gothic thriller. Murder, feral twins, a devastating fire, an abandoned baby, and a ghost child.
Vida Winter, old and ill, has been safeguarding the family’s secrets, but she doesn’t want to take them with her to the grave. She hires biographer Margaret Lea to write her life story. But Vida isn’t the most reliable narrator, forcing Margaret to conduct her own investigation to uncover the truth. Eventually, the secrets are laid bare, but one question remains open at the end...
'Simply brilliant' Kate Mosse, international bestselling author of Labyrinth
***
Everybody has a story...
Angelfield House stands abandoned and forgotten.
It was once home to the March family: fascinating, manipulative Isabelle; brutal, dangerous Charlie; and the wild, untamed twins, Emmeline and Adeline. But the house hides a chilling secret which strikes at the very heart of each of them, tearing their lives apart...
Now Margaret Lea is investigating Angelfield's past, and its mysterious connection to the enigmatic writer Vida Winter. Vida's history is mesmering - a tale of ghosts, governesses, and gothic strangeness. But as Margaret succumbs to the power…
What You Made Me Do is a thriller packed with dark family secrets. Willem Veldkamp has a miserable childhood, thanks to his domineering mother. When she vanishes without a trace, one nightmare ends, but another begins.
Then there’s little Anneliese Bakker, who survives her own troubled childhood. She leaves home as soon as she can, vowing never to return. Fast forward to adulthood. Willem and Anneliese meet, fall head over heels in love and get engaged. Yet they keep silent about the darkness in their pasts. A mistake. Because if there’s one thing about secrets, it’s that they surface at the worst possible moment.
My wife suggested we try scuba diving while on holiday in Grand Cayman. We were already falling in love with the island, and the incredible experience underwater opened a whole new world to us. From that moment on, our yearly travels changed completely. Our destination choices were now based upon diving opportunities. That was twenty years ago. Today, I’m a certified divemaster with dives all over the US (including Hawaii), the Caribbean (including Cuba), Australia, and even Iceland. Throw in my sense of adventure as a former race car driver, motorcycle rider, and outdoor adventurer, and I had plenty of personal experiences to create the AJ Bailey series.
Readers who enjoy police procedurals with an offbeat main character and fascinating locations will love this thriller.
One missing girl. Two lives on the line. Four treacherous challenges.
Nora Sommer's first case for the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service is one she'll never forget... if she survives. When the daughter of a wealthy businessman is taken, Nora is first on the scene and unwittingly 'chosen' by the kidnapper.
With the crime live-streamed across the internet, the eyes of the world are upon her as she faces a sequence of difficult challenges with the life of the kidnapped girl hanging on…
One missing girl. Two lives on the line. Four treacherous challenges.
Nora Sommer's first case for the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service is one she'll never forget - if she survives.
When the daughter of a wealthy businessman is taken, Nora is first on the scene and unwittingly 'chosen' by the kidnapper. With the crime live-streamed across the internet, the eyes of the world are upon her as she faces a sequence of difficult challenges with the life of the kidnapped girl hanging on Nora's success - or failure.
Deadly Sommer is the thrilling first book in the Nora Sommer…
