53 books like The Cliff House

Mystery and crime novels have always been my favorite genre. I love the suspense and intrigue, the intricate storylines, and the clever plot twists. In middle school, while my friends were reading more age-appropriate books, I was reading The Godfather and The Spy Who Came In from the Cold. Is it any wonder then that Siena Ricci, the main character of my debut novel Gullible, is a shrewd and cunning female con artist? I had so much fun developing Siena’s story arc and creating the criminal world she inhabits that I decided to continue her narrative in a sequel, with plans for a third novel to round out the trilogy. 

I love writing about the dark side of human nature, and the devastating secrets and resentments that can simmer beneath the surface between friends before reaching boiling point in the most dramatic and sinister way.  It’s a theme pivotal to my latest thriller, which sees friends reuniting in a beautiful yet isolated location for the seemingly perfect celebration, but where things go horribly wrong. I enjoy exploring this topic through multiple characters, all with their own dubious backstories that stir suspicion in readers’ minds and keeps them guessing, while the settings I use play a key role in enhancing that sense of unease and tension conducive to the classic whodunnit.

I love writing about the dark side of human nature, and the devastating secrets and resentments that can simmer beneath the surface between friends before reaching boiling point in the most dramatic and sinister way.  It’s a theme pivotal to my latest thriller, which sees friends reuniting in a beautiful yet isolated location for the seemingly perfect celebration, but where things go horribly wrong. I enjoy exploring this topic through multiple characters, all with their own dubious backstories that stir suspicion in readers’ minds and keeps them guessing, while the settings I use play a key role in enhancing that sense of unease and tension conducive to the classic whodunnit.

I love writing about the dark side of human nature, and the devastating secrets and resentments that can simmer beneath the surface between friends before reaching boiling point in the most dramatic and sinister way.  It’s a theme pivotal to my latest thriller, which sees friends reuniting in a beautiful yet isolated location for the seemingly perfect celebration, but where things go horribly wrong. I enjoy exploring this topic through multiple characters, all with their own dubious backstories that stir suspicion in readers’ minds and keeps them guessing, while the settings I use play a key role in enhancing that sense of unease and tension conducive to the classic whodunnit.

I am a writer of psychological thrillers. I have a keen interest in psychology and how events and experiences in our childhood shape who we become. When I work on a new book, I always build a detailed profile of my characters’ childhoods – and as I write thrillers, these are often challenging ones with issues like narcissistic parents or siblings, coping with grief, mental illness, or bullying. My plot will always be at least partly driven by the secrets my characters form in their childhood or early life, and so I also really value this depth in the psychological thrillers I read.

I worked as long-haul cabin crew for many years and I love travelling. I’ve really missed being able to travel (as many have too) and I dream of the places I’ll be able to visit again soon. The Ex-Husband was the book I wrote in lockdown so I loved being able to ‘escape’ to the sunny Caribbean. I had fond memories of a trip to Barbados, so the book is mostly set there. I also travelled a lot as a child and one of my first memories is of being on a plane.

I’m the author of 17 twisty psychological thrillers, many of which are Amazon bestsellers. Most of them are set in southern England where I live. My life was tipped upside down in 2015 when I was diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma, a rare bone cancer. Although I have a masters in writing and was traditionally published for non-fiction, I hadn’t been brave enough to put my fiction out in the world. Cancer changed that. I’m now a full-time author, writing about scary things that happen to ordinary people. I’m also an avid reader of thrillers and enjoy nothing more than reading a book with an ending that makes me gasp!

In middle school, I wrote my first novel called Children of the House. It pulled inspiration from the likes of Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, William Shakespeare, and Leo Tolstoy. I was attempting to explore family dynamics while also describing bloody stains on the hallway carpet that would never quite go away. When I read, I would travel from literary fiction to horror with ease until I began to realize the distinction was unimportant. Horror reflects the struggles of the every day in a heightened fashion. Books of this genre often have more freedom to explore the deepest issues that plague us and to do so in a way that will reach a wider audience.

I am a sociologist with a longstanding interest in the social aspects of medicine and public health. I started with research on HIV/AIDS. Since then, I have written many books and conducted a multitude of studies on how people understand and experience health and illness and how they seek help when they are sick or feel at risk from disease. When COVID-19 hit the world in early 2020, it was not long before I started to think about what my research training and expertise could offer to understanding the social impacts of this new pandemic. I started to write about COVID and research on people’s everyday experiences.

I’ve always had a longstanding interest in space, and particularly in aliens. In researching my breakthrough novel Not Alone, I extensively read as much nonfiction content on the topic as I could find, including governmental-backed scenario analyses of how things might actually play out in a contact or invasion scenario. Naturally, I have also read widely in the sci-fi genre for my own pleasure, with most of my interest in this specific topic.