Here are 100 books that My Summer Darlings fans have personally recommended if you like
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I came of age reading Mary Stewart, Daphne du Maurier, and Phyllis Whitney by flashlight after my school night bedtimes. Their plots mingled romance and murder so elegantly, heightening the already incredible stakes of whether they would physically survive intertwined with the anxiety over the couple’s relationship surviving. All these years later, I still love a good story that makes me wonder how in the world the pair will make it through danger—and if there’ll be a kiss at the end.
I do love a good revenge story, and Dylan—the main character—is all about vengeance. Aided and abetted by her best friend, Daniel, that she’s carrying a torch for, the will-they-or-won’t-they as they try to bring down the bad guy has the propulsive plot exploding in more ways than one. This is set in the Bay Area, so it feels like a little mini-vacation if you’ve never been!
Revenge meets Promising Young Woman in this thrilling debut about a vigilante on a mission to take down predatory men, perfect for fans of Jeneva Rose and Layne Fargo.
Dylan Truman, better known under her alias Lady Justice, is the bane of every grifter, cheater, and bully in the Bay Area. Alongside her best friend and hacktivist, Daniel Haas, she works as a revenge-for-hire vigilante, seeking retribution on behalf of her (predominantly female) clientele. When a prospective client brings up a fraud complaint against pharmaceutical CEO Brent Wilder, Dylan's business becomes personal: Years earlier, Wilder assaulted Dylan’s sister and got…
I came of age reading Mary Stewart, Daphne du Maurier, and Phyllis Whitney by flashlight after my school night bedtimes. Their plots mingled romance and murder so elegantly, heightening the already incredible stakes of whether they would physically survive intertwined with the anxiety over the couple’s relationship surviving. All these years later, I still love a good story that makes me wonder how in the world the pair will make it through danger—and if there’ll be a kiss at the end.
Growing up in rural East Texas, some of my earliest memories center around the fire station where my father was a volunteer firefighter.
Although this book is set in Northern California, it manages to render the small town and its politics familiar enough that I can almost smell the smoke. Lex’s reluctance to return to where everyone else in her immediate family died is tempered by the romance igniting between her and an old flame, but everyone has secrets here—and some can be deadly.
From the author of One of Those Faces comes the haunting story of a young woman's return home to face her tragic past, the fire that killed her family, and what remains in the ashes.
Alexis "Lex" Blake swore she would never return to the town where she'd lost her home and her family in a devastating fire that only she survived and can barely remember. But when her aunt dies, leaving behind a mountain of debt, Lex has no choice but to head back to Northern California to settle her family's estate.
I came of age reading Mary Stewart, Daphne du Maurier, and Phyllis Whitney by flashlight after my school night bedtimes. Their plots mingled romance and murder so elegantly, heightening the already incredible stakes of whether they would physically survive intertwined with the anxiety over the couple’s relationship surviving. All these years later, I still love a good story that makes me wonder how in the world the pair will make it through danger—and if there’ll be a kiss at the end.
Some books may shy away from taboos, but Heather Levy writes fearlessly, dragging topics into the open and spotlighting them, so talking about them is unavoidable.
This isn’t only the story of a woman trying to clear her or her stepbrother’s names after the man who abused her throughout her adolescence turns up murdered; it’s a coming of age as she leans into what she desires and steps into that power.
I love that this is set in rural Oklahoma, a part of the country I feel gets overlooked as far as thrillers and noir go, and the second chance romance and potential that builds between Sam and Eric. This book does feature frank discussions of BDSM/kink and how an abuser exploits it, so please read the content warnings before diving in!
A riveting, dark debut psychological thriller perfect for fans of Gillian Flynn, S.J. Watson, and Megan Abbott
From an early age, Sam Mayfair knew she was different. Like any young girl, she developed infatuations and lust-but her desires were always tinged with darkness. Then, when Sam was sixteen, her life was shattered by an abuser close to her. And she made one shocking decision whose ramifications would reverberate throughout her life.
Now, fifteen years later, Sam learns that her abuser has been murdered. The death of the man who plagued her dreams for years should have put an end to…
I came of age reading Mary Stewart, Daphne du Maurier, and Phyllis Whitney by flashlight after my school night bedtimes. Their plots mingled romance and murder so elegantly, heightening the already incredible stakes of whether they would physically survive intertwined with the anxiety over the couple’s relationship surviving. All these years later, I still love a good story that makes me wonder how in the world the pair will make it through danger—and if there’ll be a kiss at the end.
It’s hard to go home again after you’ve lived outside the state for several years, but coming home knowing everyone thinks you’ve killed a man after his body turns up? Well, that’s a great way to open a book, and it just gets better.
Kelly Ford always paints a nuanced picture of Arkansas, juxtaposing the region’s beauty and potential with the poverty and reality of actually growing up there. The relationship between Janie and her high school love interest, Gloria, builds beautifully with a plot twist I didn’t see coming.
From the author of Cottonmouths, a Los Angeles Review Best Book of 2017, comes an evocative suspense about the cost of keeping secrets and the dangers of coming home.
Beneath the roiling waters of the Arkansas River lie dead men and buried secrets.
When Jane Mooney's violent stepfather, Warren, disappeared, most folks in Maud Bottoms, Arkansas, assumed he got drunk and drowned. After all, the river had claimed its share over the years.
When Jane confessed to his murder, she should have gone to jail. That's what she wanted. But without a body, the police didn't charge her with the…
I am a British crime writer and am the winner of the CWA Debut Dagger and have been longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger. I have been reading crime thrillers for most of my life and while I love reading about cops and detectives, I seem to have a special liking for amateur detectives, criminals with good hearts, and ex-cons. In my own novels, two crime thrillers set in west London, my main character, Zaq Khan, is an ex-con who gets caught up in dangerous situations and, along with his best friend, tries to get out of them alive. The books I’ve recommended have all inspired and influenced what I write.
The first book in the Hap and Leonard series sees unlikely best friends Hap Collins and Leonard Pine mixed up in the hunt for some missing stolen loot.
Set in East Texas, it’s the friendship between the two main characters that is so brilliantly conveyed in this and the subsequent books in the series that make it really stand out.
Their dry humour, constant ribbing, and put-downs of each other ring so true of and really reminded me of my own close friendships.
This book got me to look at my own friendships as inspiration for the characters I write about – and they’re just great reads.
Here comes Trudy back into Hap's life, thirty-six but looking ten years younger, with long blonde hair and legs that begin under her chin, and the kind of walk that'll make a man run his car off the road. Here comes trouble, says Leonard, and he's right. She was always trouble, but she had this laugh when she was happy in bed that could win Hap over every time. Trudy has a proposition: an easy two hundred thousand dollars, tax-free. It's just a simple matter of digging it up ...Hap Collins and Leonard Pine, white and black, straight and gay,…
I've been a lawyer for 30 years, 20 of them as an elected district attorney, and writing relieves stress for me. Real crime is messy and irrational; crime fiction restores order. But literary fiction is too slow—a novel must compel the reader to turn the page. Good thrillers tackle major issues, revealing themes that deepen our understanding of humanity. I've witnessed courage during grief and stress, but I'd never betray that trust by writing nonfiction accounts. I deliberately jumbled character traits and real events and combined them with my understanding of modern police techniques like geofencing and DNA.
This book, by Joe R. Lansdale, tells a coming-of-age story. A world where evil prevails, testing the hero’s Christian faith. His morals are inconsistent with the norms of society.
It presents more of a moral forest far more than the real Big Thicket described in greater detail in my novel.
In The Thicket, award-winning novelist Joe R. Lansdale lets loose like never before, in a rip-roaring adventure set at the dark dawn of the East Texas oil boom, the perfect introduction to an acclaimed writer whose work has been called "as funny and frightening as anything that could have been dreamed up by the Brothers Grimm -- or Mark Twain" (New York Times Book Review)
Jack Parker thought he'd already seen his fair share of tragedy. His grandmother was killed in a farm accident when he was barely five years old. His parents have just succumbed to the smallpox epidemic…
As a child, I received an electronic typewriter as a gift and immediately got to work on a story about a family living on an island. Even at ten, I recognized the power of islands, with their built-in problems of isolation and rich possibilities for metaphors. So it only made sense I’d one day publish a book set on one. If you’re like me and can’t resist books with island settings, you’ll love these book recommendations. Each island in this collection has its own personality that becomes a character of its own, and none of these books could exist in the same way without their unique settings.
I’m a school librarian, so I couldn’t pass up a book about a librarian who works in an island school! This is set on Galveston Island, and the Texas culture there definitely brings its own flavor to the story.
The friendly community feel of the school and town really appealed to me and gave this book a cozy dimension despite its darker themes. A new principal arrives and immediately begins ruining the happy librarian’s life with new rules that she fights at every step—so naturally, the two begin to fall in love. I loved the animals in this book. I couldn’t stop smiling when I finished this one.
Samantha Casey is a school librarian who loves her job, the kids, and her school family with passion and joy for living. But she wasn't always that way. Duncan Carpenter is the new school principal who lives by rules and regulations, guided by the knowledge that bad things can happen. But he wasn't always that way.
And Sam knows it. Because she knew him before - at another school, in a different life. Back then, she loved him - but she was invisible. To him. To everyone. Even to herself. She escaped to a new school, a new job, a…
I am the author of 30 books. I live and teach in Mexico. I became interested in the St. Patrick's Battalion story when I moved here in 1990. The only book at the time was Shamrock and Sword, and while I enjoyed the book, I was dismayed that there were no Mexican or Irish sources. I did intensive research in the military archives of both countries and visited every battle site. Spurred on by the fact that one of my ancestors fought in the war, it became a passion. Later, I wrote my book and was a consultant for the film One Man's Hero. The rest, as they say, is history.
This author tells the story of the Irish Battalion and the Mexican War from the perspective of a female nurse who treated soldiers on both sides. It provides an element of compassion as the day-to-day conflicts unfold within and without.
I could sympathize with the plight of women, whether camp followers on the Mexican side or washerwomen and cooks on the American side. I especially liked the fact that she does not shy away from women of loose morals while at the same time showing the dignity and courage of those who helped heal and comfort the wounded.
2023 International Latino Book Award Winner Finalist for the Texas Institute of Letters’s Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Fiction
A Long Petal of the Sea meets Cold Mountain in this “epic and exquisitely wrought” (Patricia Engel, New York Times bestselling author) saga following a Mexican army nurse and an Irish soldier who must fight, at first for their survival and then for their love, amidst the atrocity of the Mexican-American War—from the author of The Distance Between Us.
A forgotten war. An unforgettable romance.
The year is 1846. After the controversial annexation of Texas, the US Army marches south…
Because I grew up in the 1950s and ’60s, my supply of heroes was liberally doled out by the 130+ Western series that dominated nighttime television in those decades. My parents allowed me one program per week. It was a Western. I was soon interested in history, to know what really did happen in the American West, and so I came to understand the great discrepancies between fact and TV. The truth, for me, is so much more interesting than the myth. As a Western historian, I've done my share of historical research, but I still gravitate toward fiction as a writer. I love the freedom to engage my characters’ thoughts and emotions.
The dialogue and immersion into Southwestern culture is so immediate and authentic, one might as well have signed up for a secret journey into the heart of the borderlands.
Every paragraph reads like a masterpiece of literature, and taken together they comprise the kind of story that the reader wants never to end. McCarthy has the rare ability to entertain and edify at the same time.
John Grady Cole is the last bewildered survivor of long generations of Texas ranchers. Finding himself cut off from the only life he has ever wanted, he sets out for Mexico with his friend Lacey Rawlins. Befriending a third boy on the way, they find a country beyond their imagining: barren and beautiful, rugged yet cruelly civilized; a place where dreams are paid for in blood.
The first volume in McCarthy's legendary Border Trilogy, All The Pretty Horses is an acknowledged masterpiece and a grand love story: a novel about the passing of childhood, of innocence and a vanished American…
For the last 19 years, I have worked narcotics K-9s for a private company called Sherlock Hounds Detection Canines. I recently retired from the K-9 work, but over the years, I loved seeing how dogs solve crimes in real life. Not only do they help us solve crimes, but dogs have a way of reaching people and changing lives. Dogs are quite literally “man’s (or woman’s) best friend,” and because of that, they become the best partners for many characters in books. There’s nothing better than discovering a new K-9 series that depicts the real-life love and bond between K-9 and handler.
I love the Timber Creek K-9 Mystery series and Mizushima’s latest book was one of my favorites. As a retired K-9 handler, sometimes books with working dogs get facts wrong. I could tell that Mizushima put a lot of research time into each of her books. I love the fictional K-9, Robo, and Mizushima’s accurate portrayal of the bond between handler and dog.
Mattie Cobb, the main character, is intriguing and makes the reader cheer for her. The dashing veterinarian, Cole Walker, adds a little romance to the storyline. I would recommend starting with the first book, Killing Trail. While each book stands on its own, reading about the mystery of Mattie’s family makes the conclusion of Standing Dead even more thrilling.
From critically acclaimed, master thriller author Margaret Mizushima, comes the eighth installment of the award-winning Timber Creek K-9 mysteries.
“Tense and satisfying,” (JA Jance) Standing Dead is the perfect read for fans of CJ Box and Longmire.
Deputy Mattie Cobb and her sister, Julia, travel to Mexico to visit their mother, but when they arrive, they discover that she and her husband have vanished without a trace. Back in Timber Creek, Mattie finds a chilling note on her front door telling her to look for “him” among the standing dead up in the high country.
