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I Will Ruin You.
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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 became obsessed with the two main characters in this book. You could say good vs. evil, but it’s more than that. For me, this was an existential journey into the tunnels of two people’s minds. I learned everything about the way Captain Delaney’s mind worked and the man he chased, Daniel Blank.
For me, this was the kind of mystery/thriller in which you eventually know more about the characters than they know about themselves. Even more thrilling was how similar they both became in the end. It was like their personalities blended into one man.
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…
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 love the way this story masterfully unfolded! I got to know the quirks of an unorthodox cop as he navigated through the Las Vegas underworld with only one purpose in mind to nail the sleazy sicko who tried to kill him and succeeded in killing three others.
I was entranced with how humor wound around every character and situation without diluting the danger. I absolutely adore how this author uses language in such a compact form to weave his tale with a cynical but honest impact.
After being shot by a mugger, Lt. Vincent Mora is convalescing in Puerto Rico. There he meets Iris, a beautiful young woman who is bored and frustrated, looking for excitement and a new life. Then she is offered a job as a 'hostess' at a casino in Atlantic city by Tommy Donovan. But Vincent figures out there is more to this job than Iris realises and he decides to pay Donovan a visit. To complicate matters, Iris isn't the only one interested in Vincent - he is being stalked by a…
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 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 feel that Freida McFadden is hands down the queen of the gripping psychological thriller. The bottom line rule for a thriller is you feel compelled to turn the page and keep reading! By chapter three, the plot is lined up. I loved how the author kept you guessing who the bad guy was!
The main character comes back to her hometown as a nurse practitioner in a prison to a house she inherited because her parents were killed in an auto accident. She has a ten-year-old son from a mistake teenage pregnancy. The inmate, in this case, is the guy she slept with in high school. He was convicted of a murder she testified he committed. I couldn’t stop reading at this point because the red flags were waving over who really committed the crime. Written in the first person, I was captured by the personal story of someone…
A gripping, twisty thriller from Freida McFadden, the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Housemaid and The Coworker!
The guiltiest people aren't always the ones behind bars...
As a new nurse practitioner at a maximum-security prison, Brooke Sullivan is taught three crucial rules:
Treat all prisoners with respect.
Never reveal any personal information.
Never EVER become too friendly with the inmates.
But nobody knows that Brooke has already broken the rules. Nobody knows about her intimate connection to Shane Nelson, one of the penitentiary's most notorious and dangerous inmates.
They certainly don't know that Shane was Brooke's high school sweetheart-the…
I moved around non-stop as a kid, attending a dozen schools by age
eleven. As a result, once I stayed put long enough to make real
friends, I stuck to them like glitter glue. As a reader and writer, I
can’t get enough stories about female friendships, whether rock-solid or
fraying. My latest novel involves
childhood friends whose loyalty is stretched like a pair of latex gloves
yanked off at a crime scene. The book grew out of a meme I saw on
Facebook, captioned: “Real friends help you hide the bodies”. My first
thought was: who would I help? Straight off, I thought of my oldest
friends.
If you haven’t discovered Joshilyn Jackson, you’re in for a treat. Her Domestic Suspense novels are so sharp, cleverly plotted, and darkly funny.
It’s not old friends but new ones that wreak havoc in Never Have I Ever, as a glamorous “bad girl” newcomer joins the local book club—with ulterior motives.
This is a tale of the secrets people hope will stay hidden, manipulation, and below-the-surface danger, told with wry insights about human nature and crackling humor.
I remember how it was to be an awkward teen, misunderstood, questioning, and having nowhere to turn. I remember living in a violent world where I had to grow up to survive. The world was a scary place for a neurodivergent who lived more in her head than in real life. I want to be able to bring stories to our young people where they might see themselves and not feel so alone because we all are a bit awkward, a bit misunderstood, and filled with stories that deserve to be told.
This is a heartwarming journey of one boy trying to protect the identity of a secret admirer while protecting his own heart. Simon is forced to come out. His parents are supportive, and his sisters are too. There’s a nice family dynamic there.
He really wants to know who his secret admirer is and that ending! This is the book that launched my interest in this genre. I loved it!
Love, Victor is now a major TV series on Dinsey+, set in the world of the hit film Love, Simon
The beloved, award-winning novel is now a major motion picture starring 13 Reasons Why's Katherine Langford and Everything, Everything's Nick Robinson.
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Straight people should have to come out too. And the more awkward it is, the better.
Simon Spier is sixteen and trying to work out who he is - and what he's looking for.
But when one of his emails to the very distracting Blue falls into the wrong hands, things get all kinds of complicated.
I'm a mom of two daughters who is fascinated with reading nonfiction parenting books and listening to parenting-related podcasts. My absolute favorite, though, is when fiction authors take a dense parenting topic and turn it into a relatable and engaging story so that readers can explore the same important issues and challenges in a more enjoyable way.
Somebody’s Daughter is a thought-provoking read for parents on how you might handle an inappropriate video of your child being shared over social media. One of the most intriguing parenting aspects of this book is how the mom and dad dealt with their daughter’s dilemma so differently. Especially since the mom almost viewed the dad’s way of handling it as detrimental. It offered an invaluable gut-check on what I would do if I were put in the same situation.
From USA Today bestselling author Rochelle B. Weinstein comes an emotional novel for mothers, daughters, and anyone who has ever felt imperfect.
Emma and Bobby Ross enjoy a charmed life on the shores of Miami Beach. They are a model family with a successful business, an uncomplicated marriage, and two blessedly typical twin daughters, Zoe and Lily. They are established members of a tight-knit community.
Then, on the night of the girls' fifteenth birthday party, they learn of Zoe's heartbreaking mistake-a private and humiliating indiscretion that goes viral and thrusts her and her family into the center of a shocking…
I love books where the setting is just as big and alive as the characters. It doesn’t matter to me if it’s a familiar place or someplace new: if a vivid setting is a key element of the story, I’m in. I think it’s because I grew up in one of those small towns in the beautiful middle of nowhere where if someone asks where you’re from, it’s just easier to say someplace else. I wanted to see the world, and books let me do that. I also wanted validation in reading—and writing—about the small places I knew, and books let me do that, too.
This is another book I love that doesn’t take place any old somewhere—its very heart and soul is the setting, and it’s a whole lot of fun, wild, creepy (ghost hunting!), and moving heart and soul.
As weird things start happening in Howler’s Hollow, or at least as far as Tennie can see and feel, she discovers how deeply all those weird things are personal and particular to her, her family, and the land.
Bonus points for exceptional, natural dialogue and authentic kid vibes.
A laugh-out-loud, ghostly Southern mystery that's perfect for fans of Cassie Beasley and Natalie Lloyd.
Tennessee Lancaster has a hidden gift. She can pry into folks' memories with just a touch of their belongings. It's something she's always kept hidden -- especially from her big, chaotic family. Their lives are already chock-full of worries about Daddy's job and Mama's blues without Tennie rocking the boat.
But when the Lancasters move to the mountains for a fresh start, Tennie's gift does something new. Instead of just memories, her touch releases a ghost with a terrifying message: Trouble is coming. Tennie wants…
I was drawn to writing family drama because complex family dynamics are endlessly fascinating to me. I’m an adopted person whose parents went on to divorce and remarry. I have two teenagers of my own and I’ve found that there are a multitude of choices we have to make as parents, and sometimes dilemmas don’t have a clear answer. If we get it wrong, the effects on the people we love can be devastating. Love within families can be tricky. The gap between what we want and what we need can be vast. There’s so much to explore in family dramas!
Secrets and lies always keep me turning the pages and this book has those in spades.
I love that Fisher writes about the kind of women we all know. Her characters are truly relatable and the dilemma of whether Maggie should expose her husband’s lies or protect the people she loves is an agonising one.
There’s so much humour in Fisher’s writing. I love a book that brings out laughter and tears.
In this heart-wrenching, emotionally gripping USA Today bestseller, a woman with a seemingly perfect life finds a mysterious letter that reveals dark secrets from the past that threaten to destroy her family.
Lara's life looks perfect on the surface -- gorgeous doting husband, Massimo; sweet little son, Sandro; and the perfect home. But Lara knows something about Massimo. Something she can't tell anyone else, or everything he has worked so hard for will be destroyed: his job, their reputation, their son. This secret is keeping Lara a prisoner in her marriage.
Maggie is married to Massimo's brother, Nico, and lives…
Liveaboard sailor Cass Lynch thinks her big break has finally arrived when she blags her way into skippering a Viking longship for a Hollywood film. However, this means returning to the Shetland Islands, the place she fled as a teenager. When a corpse unexpectedly appears onboard the longship, she can…
My fascination with things that go bump in the night probably stems from having read too many scary books in my younger years, when I devoured anything that made me want to hide under the blankets. My love of reading followed me into college, where I earned a B.A. in English from the University of Michigan and later a law degree from DePaul University in Chicago. My passion for reading—and, later, writing—psychological thrillers remained. Today, I write full-time and have five psychological thriller and suspense novels published with Bookouture–Hachette UK, including several that have made it into the Top 100 Books in the Amazon US, UK, and AU Kindle stores!
Little Secrets is both brilliantly written and terrifying, making it one of my all-time favorite psychological thrillers. Eighteen months after Marin’s young son, Sebastian, was kidnapped as she shopped with him at a crowded Seattle market, both Marin and her marriage are hanging on by a thread. Desperate for answers, she hires a PI to help locate additional clues as to what happened to her son. As the secrets begin unraveling, the twists reveal themselves. Jennifer Hillier’s clean writing style and relatable characters drew me in, but the high tension and off-the-charts creep-factor kept me tearing through the pages all the way until the shocking ending.
"Unflinching and unforgettable. Little Secrets has everything you want in a thriller" —Riley Sager, New York Times bestselling author of Lock Every Door
Overwhelmed by tragedy, a woman desperately tries to save her marriage in award-winning author Jennifer Hillier's Little Secrets, a riveting novel of psychological suspense.
All it takes to unravel a life is one little secret...
Marin had the perfect life. Married to her college sweetheart, she owns a chain of upscale hair salons, and Derek runs his own company. They're admired in their community and are a loving family—until their world falls apart the day…
