Here are 100 books that Force of Nature fans have personally recommended if you like
Force of Nature.
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For years, I have been a voracious reader of dark psychological thrillers and psychological horror. I read several books every week, and I’m always overjoyed to be knocked sideways by an ingenious twist in a book. As a doctor, I am captivated by people and fascinated by the depths of the human mind. For me, humans are the scariest monsters of them all. In 2020, I decided to have a pop at writing a jaw-dropper myself, and my book was born. I only hope you don’t see that twist coming!
I am partial to a soupçon of the paranormal in my psychological thriller, which I know isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. I was gripped the whole time reading, but although I knew something shocking was coming, I had absolutely no idea what was going on until the final chapters.
The reveal at the end genuinely left me shaking. It is probably my favorite twist of all time. Outstanding.
Don't Trust This Book
Don't Trust These People
Don't Trust Yourself
And whatever you do, DON'T give away that ending...
Louise
Since her husband walked out, Louise has made her son her world, supporting them both with her part-time job. But all that changes when she meets...
David
Young, successful and charming - Louise cannot believe a man like him would look at her twice let alone be attracted to her. But that all comes to a grinding halt when she meets his wife...
Adele
Beautiful, elegant and sweet - Louise's new friend seems perfect in every way. As she…
When I was a child, my mother offered daycare at our house. The kids, the regulars, had moms who worked outside their homes. I’ve been listening to the personal, social, and economic worries of adult women since I was in kindergarten. I hope my stories portray their vulnerability, resilience, kindness, and capacity for violence. I set women centerstage as a sign of respect and to make the full range of women as people—our personhood—visible and undeniable. I’m drawn to stories of women who lash out and commit terrible acts. To be counted, I think we must be perceived as human and therefore fallible, potentially dangerous, capable of anything.
I recommend this book as often as I can. Edgier and more disturbing than the film adaptation, Heller’s novel offers not one but two women doing terrible things.
Sheba is the art instructor hiding her illicit meetings with a student and running around like a teenager in what must be one of recent literature’s more reprehensible midlife crises. Barbara is the cynical older woman, the veteran teacher with a busy schedule and a barren personal life.
Sheba appeals to Barbara as a friend, to keep her secret. Barbara responds with feigned concern, then with affection, desire, jealousy, and a malicious desire to control Sheba, to jerk her chain and watch her dance. For sheer emotional power dynamics between two women, this book is hard to beat.
Film tie-in edition of Zoe Heller's darkly compelling Booker shortlisted novel. The film of Notes on a Scandal received four Oscar nominations and stars Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench.
From the first day that the beguiling Sheba Hart joins the staff of St George's history teacher Barbara Covett is convinced she has found a kindred spirit. Barbara's loyalty to her new friend is passionate and unstinting and when Sheba is discovered having an illicit affair with one of her pupils, Barbara quickly elects herself as Sheba's chief defender. But all is not as it first seems in this dark story…
Before becoming a writer I was a divorce lawyer, so I have plenty of personal experience about the dark side of relationships and I admit to a slight obsession with the human psyche, what goes on behind closed doors and beneath people’s façades! Consequently I love to tell stories about relatable characters who get caught up in extraordinary situations, relationships, pressures, dilemmas or crime. I also enjoy performing a literary sleight of hand in my novels and hopefully surprising my readers!
The book starts with a wife asking her husband who else he would sleep with, if he could. I loved this hook which any one of us might ask in a casual way, anticipating our partner to say ‘only you, darling!’ When the husband doesn’t give the expected reply, it unsurprisingly opens a can of worms which kept me turning the pages. This compulsive, sexy, roller coaster of a story didn’t disappoint me.
'Thrilling, unputdownable, a fabulous rollercoaster of a read - I was obsessed by this book' B A PARIS, bestselling author of BEHIND CLOSED DOORS
'Compulsive reading with characters you will love to hate and an ending that will make your jaw drop.' JENNY BLACKHURST
One evening, a wife asks her husband a question: who else would you go for, if you could? It is a simple question - a little game - that will destroy her life.
Carly and Rob are a happy couple. They share happy lives with their children and their close friends Craig…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
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.
I’m a backpacker at heart, a high school English teacher, and a bestselling author with an eye on what’s really happening under the surface and what people are really thinking. My mum taught me early to "watch the quiet ones," and I’ve always been fascinated by the way people can promote a very public self while maintaining something totally different on the inside. Perhaps that’s why I love a good twist! I also think that in the current climate of extremely savvy thriller readers, it’s impressive to wrongfoot readers and stay true to the clues hidden in the pages.
This book took my breath away. I thought I had it all figured out and how wrong I was. Gillian McAllister is the queen of the smart, well-threaded twist, and she layers her plot with moral dilemmas that make her lead characters so relatable.
The plot centres around a policewoman and a terrible choice she must make, but for almost half of the book, I had no idea how tricked I was, and I feel like that’s hard to pull off in the thriller genre.
THE HEART-STOPPING NOVEL OF A MISSING PERSON'S CASE WITH A TWIST FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR
'A cleverly crafted, emotional and thought-provoking thriller with one of the best twists I've read. Superb' CLAIRE DOUGLAS
'Extraordinary...a plot that takes the breath away' DAILY MAIL
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OLIVIA. 22 years old. Last seen on CCTV, entering a dead-end alley. And not coming back out again. Missing for one day and counting . . .
Julia is the detective heading up the case. She knows what to expect. A desperate family, a ticking clock, and long hours away from her husband and daughter.…
I love delving into a world unlike my own and navigating along with a young hero of a story. Sometimes rooting and sometimes cringing at the decisions they make. A story that challenges a young boy resonates with me, and what makes the coming-of-age description in a book is having the young hero deal with grown-up problems, often before he is prepared. All decisions have consequences, and all problems, no matter how seemingly trivial, have significance to the user. I enjoy stories that capture just this type of world and ones that do it in a manner where it is not forced.
I was riveted in a world of young boys searching for more than just a body. So much of coming-of-age stories delve deep into the minds of these kids as they navigate both the familiar and unfamiliar. I was lifted to a time and place that resonates with my desire for nostalgia.
#1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King’s timeless novella “The Body”—originally published in his 1982 short story collection Different Seasons, and adapted into the 1986 film classic Stand by Me—is now available as a stand-alone publication.
It’s 1960 in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine. Ray Brower, a boy from a nearby town, has disappeared, and twelve-year-old Gordie Lachance and his three friends set out on a quest to find his body along the railroad tracks. During the course of their journey, Gordie, Chris Chambers, Teddy Duchamp, and Vern…
Riley Masterson has moved to Greenbrier, SC, anxious to escape the chaos that has overwhelmed her life.
Questioned in a murder in Alabama, she has spent eighteen months under suspicion by a sheriff’s office, unable to make an arrest. But things in gentrifying Greenbrier are not as they seem. As…
I have always loved crime fiction, especially those where justice is served. I love crime stories where ordinary people doing their jobs triumph over evil. But so many crime stories are riddled with profanity, sex, and gratuitous violence. Over the last few years, I’ve searched for books that satisfy my need to read about justice but do it cleanly and in such a way that the story is not compromised. Oh, by the way, I’m also a writer of crime fiction and try to stay true to both justice over evil and telling stories in a clean but realistic way.
I love complex, multi-threaded mysteries that keep me guessing, and this book is one of those that was hard to put down.
This mystery kept me enthralled from beginning to end. And I did not figure it out until Ms. Clark wanted me to. Ms. Clark paints fascinating characters caught up in difficult circumstances. There are several twists, the biggest being at the end, which I immensely appreciated.
I usually have things figured out halfway or three-quarters of the way through. Not this one.
From the “Queen of Suspense” Mary Higgins Clark, a gripping and twisting mystery featuring a television news reporter who finds herself drawn into a terrifying web of treachery, where nothing is as it seems and the truth may be too devastating to pursue...
The murdered woman could have been her double. When reporter Meghan Collins sees the sheet-wrapped corpse in a New York City hospital, she feels as if she's staring into her own face. And Meghan has troubles enough already without this bizarre experience. Nine months ago, her much-loved father's car spun off a New York bridge. Now, investigators…
My writing motto is life & love in between the margins of a page. I believe that every character has a story that matters, so I write fully realized protagonists with real-life issues and life-defining relationships. I want my readers to see parts of themselves in my stories, and while I can’t write everybody, I can recommend the following character-driven books. Subversive means ‘seeking to undermine the power and authority of an established system.’ All these titles have characters that break the mold. They are unapologetically fat or queer. They are criminals and lore. They are trope-twisters and game-changers and everything you want in a well-written and satisfying tale.
This is my first ever Quozy, a sub-genre Rob Osler defines as a queer cozy mystery. For decades, cozy mysteries have brought to mind curious little old ladies or deeply thoughtful straight men with droopy mustaches. Devil’s Chew Toy spins that trope, giving us Hayden McCall, a guy who isn’t as interested in solving a mystery as he is in finding the dude he almost had a perfect date with. As for the strait-laced assistant…that person doesn’t exist here. Hayden teams up with the missing man’s dog plus his larger-larger-than-life lesbian BFFs, making the book hilarious, heart-warming, and profoundly satisfying. This is one of the finest-written books I’ve ever read, and it provides a bonus tour of Seattle’s greatest neighborhoods. I can’t wait for more Hayden and company.
A POPSUGAR BEST MYSTERY OF 2022 A BOOKRIOT BEST MYSTERY OF 2022
Perfect for fans of T.J. Klune, Becky Abertalli, and David Levithan, this hilarious, big-hearted LGBTQ+ mystery follows an unlucky in love—and life—gay relationship blogger who teams up with a take-charge lesbian and a fiesty bull terrier to find a missing go-go boy and bring down an international crime ring.
Seattle teacher and part-time blogger Hayden McCall wakes sporting one hell of a shiner, with the police knocking at his door. It seems that his new crush, dancer Camilo Rodriguez, has gone missing and they suspect foul play. What…
I love the thrill of the chase and have always been passionate about the dramatic. In school, I was always the evil sorceress in plays. Later, as a professional actress, I sought dramatic roles or outrageously funny characters. Psychological thrillers fulfill the need to make my world more dramatic than it actually is. I call good thrillers “fudge reading.” Because having them in my life is like pigging out on the best fudge you can find, now, as a writer of psychological thrillers, I try and give my readers a roller coaster ride on daring topics just the way these five writers have inspired me to do.
I never realized before that a horror novel could also be a spellbinding thriller. Early on, I learned about the awful things this supposedly respectable couple was doing in their basement and the ghastly purpose they had done it for. But pit it against the naivete of the bumbling private detective who stumbles into the disaster, and for me, the story was thrilling and horrible at the same time.
Again, the author’s prose just took my breath away. I found myself holding my breath while turning the page and then letting it out when the chapter finished. This is one hell of a story!
Holly Gibney, one of Stephen King’s most compelling and ingeniously resourceful characters, returns in this thrilling novel to solve the gruesome truth behind multiple disappearances in a midwestern town.
“Sometimes the universe throws you a rope.” —BILL HODGES
Stephen King’s Holly marks the triumphant return of beloved King character Holly Gibney. Readers have witnessed Holly’s gradual transformation from a shy (but also brave and ethical) recluse in Mr. Mercedes to Bill Hodges’s partner in Finders Keepers to a full-fledged, smart, and occasionally tough private detective in The Outsider. In King’s new novel, Holly is on her own, and up against…
Willem and Jurriaan have a miserable childhood thanks to their cruel, controlling mother—Louisa Veldkamp, a world-renowned pianist. Dad turns a blind eye. One day, Louisa vanishes without a trace during a family vacation.
Adoptee Anneliese Bakker survives a toxic childhood and leaves home, vowing never to return. While searching for…
As a lifelong Sherlockian, I have always enjoyed writing and reading about Sherlock Holmes. My favorite pastiches are the ones that are most faithful to the characters of Holmes and Watson, even if the story borders on the fantastic. I adore Sherlock Holmes and am a member of the Sound of the Baskervilles, The Sherlock Holmes Society of London, The Crew of the Barque Lone Star, The Beacon Society, The ACD Society, and The John H. Watson Society. I’ve written over 20 published stories about the Great Detective and plan to write many more.
Christian Klaver is a relatively new writer on my Sherlock Holmes radar, but his book Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula is an entertaining one.
The style of this book is fascinating, as it’s less a novel and more a collection of interconnected short stories. As I said, I’m a big fan of Holmes and Horror, so the promise of Count Dracula was too difficult to resist. And I wasn’t disappointed.
The stories are a fun imagining of a meeting between the Great Detective and the Count and there’s even a little H.P. Lovecraft thrown in for good measure.
Told through four interlinked cases, this Gothic horror mystery sees Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula join forces to banish a terrible enemy
1902. Sherlock Holmes's latest case begins with a severed finger. With no signs of decomposition and an adverse reaction to silver, it is the most perplexing mystery yet - one that relates to their next client - and the moment Sherlock's and Watson's lives are irrevocably changed.
A Transylvanian nobleman called Count Dracula arrives at Baker Street seeking Sherlock's help, for his beloved wife Mina has been kidnapped. But Dracula is a client like no other and Sherlock…
