I’ve been a fan of thrillers since I first read Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot back in, well, you know. A long time ago. I was an investigative journalist for many years before I tried my hand at writing books, but I always knew what my genre would be. Books that make your heart thump with characters you can’t easily forget. Militia Men is my third suspense novel set in the Pacific Northwest. I hope you like it – and the books on this list!
This is a superb suspense novel about a writer who steals the plot for a book with a killer twist at the end in hopes of reviving his flagging career.
Mirroring that storyline, Jean Hanff Korelitz’s novel has a killer twist of its own.
Delving deep into the brains of insecure and egotistical writers, The Plot starts slowly and builds into a stunning page-turner as the novelist enjoys the stardom he so desperately sought only to be haunted by his larceny. The ending quite literally took my breath away, which seldom happens.
** NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! ** The Tonight Show Summer Reads Winner ** A New York Times Notable Book of 2021 **
"Insanely readable." ―Stephen King
Hailed as "breathtakingly suspenseful," Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Plot is a propulsive read about a story too good not to steal, and the writer who steals it.
Jacob Finch Bonner was once a promising young novelist with a respectably published first book. Today, he’s teaching in a third-rate MFA program and struggling to maintain what’s left of his self-respect; he hasn’t written―let alone published―anything decent in years. When Evan Parker, his most arrogant student,…
This slender novel marks the debut of California author Jason DeWitt and it’s a stunner.
The Patient is a creepy, clever horror story that I lost sleep over because I couldn’t put it down. It’s the tale of a young psychiatrist at a dreary asylum in New England, who, against everyone’s urgent advice, decides to take a crack at curing an “incurable” patient.
What he learns about that patient – and the shocking climax that results – may give you nightmares, but it’s well worth the ride.
In a series of online posts, Parker H., a young psychiatrist, chronicles the harrowing account of his time working at a dreary mental hospital in New England. Through this internet message board, Parker hopes to communicate with the world his effort to cure one bewildering patient.
We learn, as Parker did on his first day at the hospital, of the facility's most difficult, profoundly dangerous case - a forty-year-old man who was originally admitted to the hospital at age six. This patient has no known diagnosis. His symptoms seem to evolve over time. Every person who has attempted to treat…
Justin Cronin’s silky prose, captivating characters, and eye for detail elevates this post-apocalyptic literary thriller, making it a thoroughly engrossing read.
The novel opens with the shocking suicide of a woman who lives in Prospera, a paradise island. But all is not as it seems in this lack-for-nothing dream world, and soon we learn that a rebellion of the underclass is brewing. When the protagonist discovers that all is not as it seems, he quickly finds himself a hunted man.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Next to impossible to put down . . . exciting, mysterious, and totally satisfying.”—STEPHEN KING
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Passage comes a riveting standalone novel about a group of survivors on a hidden island utopia—where the truth isn't what it seems.
Founded by the mysterious genius known as the Designer, the archipelago of Prospera lies hidden from the horrors of a deteriorating outside world. In this island paradise, Prospera’s lucky citizens enjoy long, fulfilling lives until the monitors embedded in their forearms, meant to measure their physical health and psychological…
This book is on the list because it affected me. Rather deeply.
The story is impossible to label – part thriller, part mystery, part dark comedy – but I recommend taking the journey. It’s the tale of two long unsolved crimes, a brutal armed robbery and the disappearance of a teenage girl, and a quest to find the truth.
Lou Berney is a gifted storyteller. I hope you enjoy him too!
WINNER OF THE EDGAR AWARD, THE MACAVITY AWARD, THE ANTHONY AWARD, AND THE BARRY AWARD FOR BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL NOMINATED FOR THE 2015 LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE With the compelling narrative tension and psychological complexity of the works of Laura Lippman, Dennis Lehane, Kate Atkinson, and Michael Connelly, Edgar Award-nominee Lou Berney's The Long and Faraway Gone is a smart, fiercely compassionate crime story that explores the mysteries of memory and the impact of violence on survivors-and the lengths they will go to find the painful truth of the events that scarred their lives. In the summer of 1986, two…
You may have heard of this one. (Wait for groans and laughter to subside).
I’m recommending it because I recently read it again, many years after consuming it for a required middle school book report. I didn’t fully appreciate it back then, but I sure do now.
Across the world, autocracies are taking root, curtailing freedoms. Here in the United States, we’ve experienced the shock of a sitting president so intent on preserving his immense power that he orchestrated an insurrection. When I re-read 1984, the horrors Orwell describes no longer seemed so distant, so implausible.
1984 is the year in which it happens. The world is divided into three superstates. In Oceania, the Party's power is absolute. Every action, word, gesture and thought is monitored under the watchful eye of Big Brother and the Thought Police. In the Ministry of Truth, the Party's department for propaganda, Winston Smith's job is to edit the past. Over time, the impulse to escape the machine and live independently takes hold of him and he embarks on a secret and forbidden love affair. As he writes the words 'DOWN WITH BIG…
Militia Men tells the gripping story of a young man who joins an Oregon militia to protect his best friend, only to find himself embroiled in a plot to kidnap a U.S. senator accused of treason.
The suspense novel takes readers on a journey into the dark world of violent extremism, as told through three first-person narrators whose lives converge dramatically in the end.
Growing up in New England, my mother had a set of books that she kept in the living room, more for display than anything else. It was The Works of Edgar Allen Poe. I read them and instantly became hooked on horror. In the seventh grade, I entertained my friends at a sleepover by telling them the mysterious clanking noise (created by the baseboard heater) was the ghost of a woman who had once lived in the farmhouse, forced to cannibalize her ten children during a particularly bad winter. And I’ve been enjoying scaring people ever since.
In 1939, on a remote Pacific island, botanical researcher Irene Greer plunged off a waterfall to her death, leaving behind a legacy shrouded in secrets. Her great-niece Julia, a struggling journalist recovering from a divorce, seeks answers decades later.
Tasked with retrieving Dr. Greer’s discovery–a flower that could have world-changing properties–Julia unearths a story rife with hidden agendas and a missionary community unwilling to share the truth. As she confronts the eerie legends and a fellow traveler with his own motives, Julia finds that the longer she stays, the thinner the line between reality and the fantastical becomes until she…
From the award-winning author of Dead Souls and Poe comes an all-new bone-chilling novel where a mysterious island holds the terrifying answers to a woman's past and future.
In 1939, on a remote Pacific island, botanical researcher Irene Greer plunges off a waterfall to her death, convinced the spirits of her dead husband and daughter had joined the nightmarchers-ghosts of ancient warriors that rise from their burial sites on moonless nights. But was it suicide, or did a strange young missionary girl, Agnes, play a role in Irene's deteriorating state of mind?
