I write thrillers and read thrillers, so naturally, I’m drawn to dark, twisted stories. That said, because I have become adept at spotting plot twists, it takes a really great book to hold my attention. I also love a strong psychological or emotional component that keeps me reading. Give me your damaged, complex, and morally challenged characters and I will follow them anywhere! The books I’ve chosen all have one or more of these qualities and achieved the task of providing a few precious hours of blissful escape from worry over (nothing less than) an ongoing global pandemic!
Andrea Bartz’s twisty tale about two friends (aptly compared to Thelma and Louise), dead bodies piling up around them, and secrets they hold from the past is a fresh backdrop for a genre that has been dominated by domestic set-ups. Delving into the complexities of female friendships and how they can control and define us, I found this to be a thoroughly engaging read. A New York Times Bestseller and Hello Sunshine Book Club pick, you can’t go wrong with We Were Never Here!
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • “This book is every suspense lover’s dream and it kept me up way too late turning pages. . . . A novel with crazy twists and turns that will have you ditching your Friday night plans for more chapters.”—Reese Witherspoon
A backpacking trip has deadly consequences in this “eerie psychological thriller . . . with alluring locales, Hitchcockian tension, and possibly the best pair of female leads since Thelma and Louise” (BookPage), from the bestselling author of The Lost Night and The Herd.
Soon to be a major motion picture, this novel was an instant bestseller and for good cause. First, it takes us away to another place – the marshlands of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Dionne weaves atmosphere into every scene. Second – the set-up is emotionally compelling and fraught with personal and moral dilemmas. A woman who is the product of abduction and rape. A father who escapes from prison twenty years later. And now he’s fled back to the one place he knows how to evade capture - unless his estranged daughter can track him down in the remote wilderness where he raised her to survive. With dilemmas this deep, it is impossible not to become completely immersed. Plus, Dionne is a beautiful writer, and who doesn’t love that?
You'd recognise my mother's name if I told it to you. You'd wonder, briefly, where is she now? And didn't she have a daughter while she was missing?
And whatever happened to the little girl?
Helena's home is like anyone else's. With a husband and two daughters, and a job she enjoys. But no one knows the truth about her childhood.
Born into captivity and brought up in an isolated cabin until she was 12, Helena was raised to be a killer by the man who kept her captive - her own father.…
After solving her first case, private eye Siobhan O’Brien is hired by Phillip Ahn, an octogenarian billionaire with his own personal island in the Pacific Northwest. Ahn, a genius in artificial intelligence, swears that Duke, his youngest child and only son, is an impostor. Is Ahn crazy, or is Duke…
I am a sucker for a twisted first person narration so I knew this was the book for me after three sentences. It’s hard to write about this novel without spoiling the brilliant twist so I will just say that it is one of the finest executions of a psychological thriller twist I have ever read (and I’ve read a lot!). Aside from that, the writing is just flawless. Not one sentence made it to the page that didn’t move the plot along, create a diversion, or draw us further into the mind of our narrator. As a writer, I know how hard this is – deleting words which then requires that better ones be found. This book is meticulous, which probably explains why it was a monstrous bestseller.
"An unforgettable―and Hollywood-bound―new thriller... A mix of Hitchcockian suspense, Agatha Christie plotting, and Greek tragedy." ―Entertainment Weekly
The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband―and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive.
Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five…
Say what you will about highly commercial fiction, but no one – and I mean no one – keeps pages turning better than B.A. Paris. She is the only author whose books become glued to my hand until I know what happened. I have kept reading while making dinner, attempting to fold laundry, answering emails, walking the dog, taking out the garbage. I don’t know what her pages are laced with, but it goes right into my brain and hijacks all decision-making. Do not stop reading! Plus, who doesn’t love a story that goes behind the closed doors of a seemingly perfect marriage and finds something completely twisted?
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLING DEBUT PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER YOU CAN'T MISS!
The perfect marriage? Or the perfect lie?
“A hair-raising debut, both unsettling and addictive...A chilling thriller that will keep you reading long into the night.” ―Mary Kubica, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Good Girl
“This is one readers won’t be able to put down.” ―Booklist (starred review)
"A can’t-put-down psychological thriller.” ―Library Journal (starred review)
“This debut is guaranteed to haunt you...Warning: brace yourself.” ―Bustle (10 New Thrillers to Read This Summer)
It’s 2027. Rory O’Connor is the financial genius who helped create ICARUS, a quantum computer that controls the world’s stock markets with AI and algorithms. But Rory has recently suffered some tough breaks. He’s checked out of high finance and into a luxury Caribbean condo. After a former colleague finds…
This recent phenom took the book world by storm with a premise that mainlines into a secret fear every one of us harbors – the plane going down! Rumor has it, this former flight attendant wrote this story in the jump seat on her flights, imagining what would happen if the pilot was forced with the decision to crash the plane or have his family killed. From there, it was honed and fine-tuned to be nothing short of riveting – each chapter doling out a teaspoon of satisfaction but ending with a new cliffhanger. The perfect recipe for addictive suspense. No wonder this debut landed Newman a seven-figure book deal, with movie option to boot. The perfect escape!
'Amazing . . . Intense suspense, shocks and scares plus chilling insider authenticity make this one very special' LEE CHILD 'FALLING is the best kind of thriller (for me as a reader anyway). Characters you care deeply about. Nonstop, totally authentic suspense' JAMES PATTERSON 'Attention, please: T. J. Newman has written the perfect thriller! GILLIAN FLYNN, #1 bestselling author of Gone Girl
You just boarded a flight to New York.
There are one hundred and forty-three other passengers onboard.
What you don't know is that thirty minutes before the flight your pilot's family was kidnapped.
They called it a “walk away.” The abandoned car. The note found at a nearby hotel. The shattered family. But what really happened to Molly Clarke? When a new lead comes in after the search has ended, Molly’s daughter, Nicole, returns to the small, desolate town where her mother was last seen. As secrets creep from every corner, Nicole comes closer to finding the truth – and to the danger that is all around her.
For Molly, the nightmare began with a violent storm and a ride to town from a kind stranger. But when the doors close, locking shut, Molly suspects she’s made a terrible mistake. Told in a split narration, Don’t Look for Me is an emotional and explosive page-turner.
David Fletcher needs a surgeon, stat! But when he captures a British merchantman in the Caribbean, what he gets is Charley Alcott, an apprentice physician barely old enough to shave. Needs must, and Captain Fletcher takes the prisoner back aboard his ship with orders to do his best or he’ll…
Benghazi: A New History is a look back at the enigmatic 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, its long-tail causes, and devastating (and largely unexamined) consequences for US domestic politics and foreign policy. It contains information not found elsewhere, and is backed up by 40 pages of…
