Growing up in a snowy, rural mountain town of less than 500 people, I became fascinated with humanity's will to survive the elements at an early age because I often had to do so myself. Add in a mysterious force or an escaped killer wandering through the hills outside a secluded cabin, and you've got my favorite thriller subgenre: Trapped and secluded. It wasn't until my third novel, The Excursion, that I realized my longtime dream of writing a survival thriller influenced by dozens of books and movies. Today, I live in a suburb of Denver, Colorado, but the mountains are close. And so are the secluded cabins.
Charly is a survivor. Abandoned by her parents, she spent her teens looking after her autistic brother on the streets of Denver, Colorado. But things are better now. She has a nice, warm apartment, and with her father’s recent death, she inherited a cabin in the mountains. To relive fond childhood memories, Charly arranges a reunion with her cousins, but when everyone arrives, a hunter greets them, claiming the cabin is his.
Charly’s brother stands by the fireplace with that look in his eye. He’s going to break out and hide in the forest. The hunter goes to the window. Opens the curtains. He says no one can leave. The blizzard rages. He says nothing will stop the hunt. Nothing will stop the excursion.
This book has all the elements I love in a secluded thriller, masterfully done with heart-pounding suspense and a solid backstory.
For me, nothing’s better than a thriller with a single setting and a heroine trapped by the weather who must cleverly unravel a mystery to escape. The author does an excellent job of combining a claustrophobic setting—a snowed-in rest stop in the mountains of Colorado—with a couple of super creepy characters for the heroine to contend with.
In fact, I was most impressed with the depth of this novel because the heroine, Darby, must do more than escape. She must use her cunning and fortitude to rescue someone else. Someone the creepy occupants of the rest stop want to keep hidden at all costs.
“What a box of tricks! This full-throttle thriller, dark and driving, rivals Agatha Christie for sheer ingenuity and James Patterson for flat-out speed. Swift, sharp, and relentless.” — A. J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window
A brilliant, edgy thriller about four strangers, a blizzard, a kidnapped child, and a determined young woman desperate to unmask and outwit a vicious psychopath.
A kidnapped little girl locked in a stranger’s van. No help for miles. What would you do?
On her way to Utah to see her dying mother, college student Darby Thorne gets…
Many of my favorite secluded thriller novels have a high degree of complexity—multiple point-of-view chapters, complex subplots, and morally ambiguous characters. This book had all these elements and a super plus: An immersive and authentic setting in the Scottish Highlands.
I disappeared into the snowbound setting and felt like a part of the group of old friends, caught up in their personal dramas and driven to finish the book to see who did what, when, and why. It was a great escape for me, but not so much for them.
EVERYONE'S INVITED.
EVERYONE'S A SUSPECT.
AND EVERYONE'S TALKING ABOUT IT.
'Ripping, riveting' A. J. Finn 'Clever, twisty and sleek' Daily Mail 'Unputdownable' John Boyne 'Foley is superb' The Times 'Chilling' Adele Parks 'Terrific, riveting' Dinah Jefferies
In a remote hunting lodge, deep in the Scottish wilderness, old friends gather for New Year.
The beautiful one The golden couple The volatile one The new parents The quiet one The city boy The outsider
Harkening back to the well-established trope of inviting several seemingly unrelated guests to a secluded location (I’m thinking of the movie for the board game Clue right now) and wrapping them up in a creepy mystery, Kiersten Modglin has delivered a secluded thriller with originality, delectable darkness, and a series of great twists.
I was enthralled by the constant sense of danger and did not see the ending coming. I’ll admit that as a writer myself, the premise of authors invited to a writing retreat intrigued me from the start, but I was so pulled in by this thriller that I finished reading it in no time. Great work.
You are cordially invited to visit the new Black Hills Manor Writing Retreat.
That’s how it all begins—with a simple invitation.
For five authors, it’s meant to be the start of a restful week, filled with free food, drinks, and likeminded company. But shortly after their arrival, things take an unsettling turn.
Broken property, missing items, and strange noises are just some of the odd occurrences that have each member questioning their companions. As suspicions mount, the authors are pitted against each other.
Whom can they trust in a house full of strangers?
With tensions rising, the writers find themselves…
Riley Sager is one of my favorite authors, and this book is my favorite of all his books.
The secluded location? A speeding car. The main character, Charlie, needs to get home from college and shares a ride with a new acquaintance who may or may not be a serial killer. I loved the tension woven into each chapter, the slow unraveling of Charlie’s past, her suspicious fascination with classic movies, and the relentless, unexpected twists compounding in the end.
This is one of those books that has stuck in my mind and will probably be there forever.
One of New York Times Book Review's "summer reads guaranteed to make your heart thump and your skin crawl"; An Amazon Best of the Month Pick; Named a must-read summer book by The Washington Post, USA Today, Vulture, BuzzFeed, Forbes, Entertainment Weekly, CNN, New York Post, Good Housekeeping, E!, PopSugar, CrimeReads, Thrillist, and BookRiot.
It’s November 1991. Nirvana's in the tape deck, George H. W. Bush is in the White House, and movie-obsessed college student Charlie Jordan is in a car with a man who might be a serial killer.
Oh, boy, do I have a vacation for you. This book by Adrian McKinty took me to a part of Australia I’d never imagined. It was a terrifying, thrilling, and downright despicable place.
A simple family vacation gone horribly wrong. I love this book for all the same reasons I love the movie, The Hills Have Eyes. As the family and I found ourselves on a secluded island, we also found ourselves in the middle of an independent clan of inbred weirdos. The scary kind. With each passing moment, the stakes increased, and our chances of escape decreased.
As someone who loves well-written, secluded thriller novels, this was the best vacation I’d had in a long time.
An entertaining mystery on a 1894 trans-Atlantic steamship with an varied array of suspects, and a detective who must solve his case in six days to prevent international conflict.
Retired from the British Indian army, Captain Jim is taking his wife Diana to Liverpool from New York, when their pleasant cruise turns deadly. Just hours after meeting him, a foreign diplomat is brutally murdered onboard their ship. Captain Jim must find the killer before they dock in six days, or there could be war! Aboard the beleaguered luxury liner are a thousand suspects, but no witnesses to the locked-cabin crime.…
In The Spanish Diplomat's Secret, award-winning author Nev March explores the vivid nineteenth-century world of the transatlantic voyage, one passenger’s secret at a time.
Captain Jim Agnihotri and his wife Lady Diana Framji are embarking to England in the summer of 1894. Jim is hopeful the cruise will help Diana open up to him. Something is troubling her, and Jim is concerned.
On their first evening, Jim meets an intriguing Spaniard, a fellow soldier with whom he finds an instant kinship. But within twenty-four hours, Don Juan Nepomuceno is murdered, his body discovered shortly after he asks rather urgently to…
Interested in
survival,
the Scottish Highlands,
and
murder?
11,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them.
Browse their picks for the best books about
survival,
the Scottish Highlands,
and
murder.