Here are 100 books that The Girl Before fans have personally recommended if you like
The Girl Before.
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I’ve been passionate about psychological thrillers since my mind was blown by Gillian Flynn’s 2012 seminal thriller, Gone Girl, and that twist that I never saw coming. I’ve since written six of my own psychological thrillers and I’ve become fascinated to understand why we’re so drawn to ordinary characters propelled into extraordinary worlds. A mash-up of the crime, thriller, and horror genres, psychological and domestic thrillers often feature husband and wife couples in ordinary neighbourhoods where children and adults go missing, serial killers lurk among us, and real evil lurks behind the front door of innocent-looking homes.
One of the most compelling aspects of the psychological or domestic thriller genre is the exploration of the horrors that go on inside the lives of ordinary people and this thriller is no exception.
It’s even called Behind Closed Doors! It’s a great title and perfectly captures the theme of the book – how a seemingly ordinary couple are caught up in a horrifyingly abusive relationship. It’s unsettling from the first chapter and only gets worse.
But like driving past a motorway pile-up, you can’t stop looking, desperately hoping there’s a happy ending in sight.
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLING DEBUT PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER YOU CAN'T MISS!
The perfect marriage? Or the perfect lie?
“A hair-raising debut, both unsettling and addictive...A chilling thriller that will keep you reading long into the night.” ―Mary Kubica, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Good Girl
“This is one readers won’t be able to put down.” ―Booklist (starred review)
"A can’t-put-down psychological thriller.” ―Library Journal (starred review)
“This debut is guaranteed to haunt you...Warning: brace yourself.” ―Bustle (10 New Thrillers to Read This Summer)
I’m an activist, artist, and author of the breakout thriller, Where The Boys Are and The Other Side of the Mirror. I specialize in thrillers that highlight diverse characters (LGBTQ+ and people of color.) I’m a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University and the Hurston/Wright Writers Foundation. As a graphic designer/copywriter/marketer by day and author by night, I can usually be found creating and designing behind the bright neon glow of my laptop. When I’m not writing, I enjoy traveling to new destinations. I live and work out of my home in Las Vegas with “the hubs” and our two yorkies, and I'm currently writing my next novel, The Dark Side of the Mirror.
The mystery of the "mirror twins" in this atmospheric thriller is an exciting one to unravel for those who enjoy a slow-burn crime thriller. Beautifully written and driven by its troubled but relatable protagonist, Cat, the story takes you on a dark journey surrounding the disappearance of Cat’s sister, El, who vanishes after going out on her sailboat. It’s a well-crafted gothic mystery that will keep you guessing. This book is a slow build with a shocking ending and a great payoff.
“Unnerving.” —People “Unsettling...unlocks its mysteries slowly.” —The New York Times Book Review “A dark, twisty, and richly atmospheric exploration of the power of imagination” —Ruth Ware, author of The Woman in Cabin 10
“Beautifully written and told with a watchmaker’s precision” (Stephen King), Mirrorland is a thrilling psychological suspense novel about twin sisters, the man they both love, the house that has always haunted them, and the childhood stories they can’t leave behind.
Cat lives in Los Angeles, far from 36 Westeryk Road, the imposing gothic house in Edinburgh where she and her estranged twin sister, El, grew up. As…
I’m an activist, artist, and author of the breakout thriller, Where The Boys Are and The Other Side of the Mirror. I specialize in thrillers that highlight diverse characters (LGBTQ+ and people of color.) I’m a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University and the Hurston/Wright Writers Foundation. As a graphic designer/copywriter/marketer by day and author by night, I can usually be found creating and designing behind the bright neon glow of my laptop. When I’m not writing, I enjoy traveling to new destinations. I live and work out of my home in Las Vegas with “the hubs” and our two yorkies, and I'm currently writing my next novel, The Dark Side of the Mirror.
Book 1 in the Evelyn Talbort series, this cold-blooded crime-thriller will keep you thinking long after the final page. After surviving a horrific attack by her high school sweetheart who was never caught, psychiatrist Evelyn Talbot has dedicated her life to solving the mysteries of the psychopathic mind. She’s established a revolutionary new facility in the remote town of Hilltop, Alaska, where she studies the worst of the worst – a prison for the country’s most prolific serial killers. What could possibly go wrong, right? Evelyn’s truly a strong protagonist you want to root for as she navigates the inner workings of Hanover House and a mysterious new threat that has followed her to the cold wilderness of Alaska.
Psychiatrist Evelyn Talbot has dedicated her life to solving the mysteries of the antisocial mind. Why do psychopaths act as they do? How do they come to be? Why don’t they feel any remorse for the suffering they cause? And are there better ways of spotting and stopping them?
After having been kidnapped, tortured and left for dead when she was just a teenager—by her high school boyfriend—she’s determined to understand how someone she trusted so much could turn on her. So she’s established a revolutionary new medical health center in the remote town of Hilltop,…
I’m an activist, artist, and author of the breakout thriller, Where The Boys Are and The Other Side of the Mirror. I specialize in thrillers that highlight diverse characters (LGBTQ+ and people of color.) I’m a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University and the Hurston/Wright Writers Foundation. As a graphic designer/copywriter/marketer by day and author by night, I can usually be found creating and designing behind the bright neon glow of my laptop. When I’m not writing, I enjoy traveling to new destinations. I live and work out of my home in Las Vegas with “the hubs” and our two yorkies, and I'm currently writing my next novel, The Dark Side of the Mirror.
Here’s a great suspense read from the UK that does everything right. Inspector Alan Banks and his team investigate the theft of a tractor from an area farm—an investigation that leads into a deeper mystery involving a murder, and the disappearance of a young man. Where some detective series tend to peter out and lose steam toward the end of the book, this page-turner keeps up the pace and delivers a very satisfying twist ending.
Published in the United Kingdom and Canada as Abattoir Blues
Louise Penny calls In the Dark Places "brilliant." Tess Gerritsen says it's "thrilling." And Michael Connelly describes Peter Robinson as "amazing." One of the world's greatest suspense writers returns with this sensational new novel featuring Inspector Alan Banks, hailed by Michael Connelly as "a man for all seasons."
It's a double mystery: Two young men have vanished, and the investigation leads to two troubling clues in two different locations.
As Banks and his team scramble for answers, the inquiry takes an even darker turn when a truck careens off an…
I taught myself to code back in 1994 while working the graveyard shift as a geologist in the environmental industry. My job consisted of sitting in a chair during the dark hours of the night in a shopping center in Stockton, CA, watching another geologist take samples from wells in the parking lot. A friend of mine suggested I learn to code because I liked computers. I don’t mean to make this out to be a “it’s so simple anyone can do it!” You need to have a relentless drive to learn, which is why I wrote my book, The Imposter’s Handbook - as an active step to learning what I didn’t know I didn’t know.
This book is extremely cringy, but that’s the entire point.
The author has studied powerful figures from the past and examined the things they did to wield enormous power and “play the game”. Reading through this book takes a particular focus, and for me it was trying to understand what other peoplewere up to - specifically my coworkers.
Humans are a competitive bunch - it’s the simple truth - and the key to getting ahead at work is to see how you’re being manipulated to another’s advantage. If you plan on moving up in your career you’re going to need to be armed with a basic understanding of the Human Chess Game because it’s everywhere.
The Bad Bosses and Crappy Coworkers of the world are reading this book and using it as a guide to get ahead - but that becomes meaningless if you can spot their tricks and…
Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control – from the author of The Laws of Human Nature.
In the book that People magazine proclaimed “beguiling” and “fascinating,” Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum.
Women’s empowerment is my passion and my purpose, which is why I founded Women Connect4Good, Inc., a 501(c)3 foundation to help support other organizations that work to advance women and girls. Our name says it, and our work proves it. Women make phenomenal leaders, and while I can do a lot through my foundation to promote women’s leadership, we can all do something in our day-to-day lives to help women lead. Every day we can do something to support another woman, or partner with another woman, like the women who’ve written the books I’ve reviewed here – friends, colleagues, and fierce advocates for equality on every level. We are all lifting as we rise.
Imagine your ideal leadership role where you – and the you who you’ve always known you were meant to be – can fully thrive. Well, imagine no more…Gloria Feldt’s No Excuses can show you the way. This book opened my eyes to how women think about power. We're used to being subjected to power over us and don't want any part of it. But when we change how we view power as the "power to," we can transform our careers and lives to one where we fully thrive beyond what we might have imagined. No Excuses turns power into nine very specific, female-oriented tactics to help women channel their inner strength and power to advance where ever they want—even the c-suite, where we need hundreds more phenomenal women leaders.
An invaluable guidebook, which contends that the most vexing problems facing women today isn't that doors of opportunity aren't open but that not enough women are walking through them
Feminist icon Gloria Feldt pulls no punches in this new book, which argues that the most confounding problem facing women today isn't that doors of opportunity aren't open, but that not enough women are walking through them. From the boardroom to the bedroom, public office to personal relationships, she asserts that nobody is keeping women from parity-except themselves. Feldt puts women's power into an historical context, showing the ways in which…
I’m a systems thinker (Senior Fellow at an environmental think tank, author of 14 books and hundreds of essays) who’s addicted to trying to understand the world. After a few decades, the following is my state of understanding. Power is everywhere and determines everything in our lives. Whether due to the physical power of energy channeled through technology, or the social power of organizations and money, we’re enabled or disabled daily. During the last century, fossil-fueled humanity has overpowered planetary systems, as evidenced by climate change, species extinctions, and resource depletion. Few think critically about power. Unless we start doing so, we may be inviting the ultimate disempowerment—extinction.
Social power is the ability to change the thoughts and behavior of other people. Power affects many people like a drug: they become addicted to wielding power or serving the powerful. We’re all embedded in webs of hierarchy and rank that often make us literally crazy. This rather obscure book does a good job of summarizing an enormous trove of research by clinical psychologists on the pathologies of power.
Addressing an issue of central concern in social life, this authoritative book examines how having or lacking power influences the way individuals and groups think, feel, and act. Leading international experts comprehensively review classic and contemporary research with an eye toward bridging gaps across theories and levels of analysis. Compelling topics include the evolutionary bases of power; its effects on physiological processes, cognitive abilities, and health; what sorts of people are given power; when, how, and whom power corrupts; and power dynamics in gender, social class, and ethnic relations. The integrative concluding chapter presents a cogent agenda for future research.
I chose this topic because I learned a lot of self-defense mechanisms in childhood that did not continue to serve me well as an adult. This behavior carried into my romantic relationships more than anywhere else, and for a long time, my "picker" was broken, meaning I kept picking unhealthy people to be in relationships. Reading books like the ones I’ve recommended on this list helped change that for me over time. My heart breaks for other women and men whose pickers are also broken. It doesn’t have to stay that way. Get yourself these books.
This is another great book that allows you to recognize toxic behavior. Per the book’s description: "A co-worker may quietly undermine your efforts while professing to be helpful, or your boss may prey on your weaknesses. Manipulative people have two goals: to win and to look good doing it. Often those they abuse are only vaguely aware of what is happening to them."
This book is helpful in teaching how to recognize and respond to manipulative people. It made me realize that not all toxic people act the way they do as a defense mechanism, but some are truly acting on the offensive, rather than defensive and are fully aware of their toxic behavior. This was a real eye-opener.
Dr. George Simon knows how people push your buttons. Your children--especially teens--are expert at it, as is your mate. A co-worker may quietly undermine your efforts while professing to be helpful, or your boss may prey on your weaknesses. Manipulative people have two goals: to win and to look good doing it. Often those they abuse are only vaguely aware of what is happening to them. In this eye-opening book, you'll also discover...
* 4 reasons why victims have a hard time leaving abusive relationships
* Power tactics manipulators use to push their own agendas and justify their behavior
Edward Castronova is a gamer who also has a PhD in Economics and a lifetime of research on games, technology, and society. In this book he applies everything he has learned to the burning questions at the heart of every person’s life: What am I doing here? How am I supposed to live? When Castronova faced those questions himself, the answer was clear: I have been thrown into a game called “Life” and, being a gamer, I should figure out the rules to this game and try to beat it.
Cernovich is famous for not giving a shit about what people think. He made his own reputation with his own journalism and gives gloriously hard-nosed advice for being an independent thinker and an emotionally strong actor in a world that tells everyone to whine whenever something goes wrong. I really admire people who can be independent, who make their own way and stir up hornet’s nests. Like comics, they poke society and make us all think harder. Cernovich makes me examine where I’m being a cowardly conformist. Gorillas walk head first into situations, says Cernovich, and so should you.
Gorilla Mindset is a worldwide best seller. People from all walks of life have made millions of dollars, improved their health, and radically altered their relationships for the better. Gorilla Mindset is a complete guide to life with structure and actionable steps you can take to bring your life to the next level, or even get yourself motivated for change.
I'm Dr. Chloe Carmichael, clinical psychologist and USA Today bestselling author of Nervous Energy: Harness the Power of Your Anxiety(endorsed by Deepak Chopra). As a clinical psychologist, a lot of people ask me how to get rid of their anxiety. They're often surprised to learn that actually, we don't always want to get rid of anxiety—because the truth is that anxiety actually brings many benefits, if we know how to unlock them. Anxiety’s healthy function is actually to stimulate preparation behaviors. In this book, I share nine tried and tested tools with step-by-step instructions and real life examples to help readers harness the healthy power of anxiety.
As a clinical psychologist, I can say that Overcoming Passive Aggression is a must-read book! A lot of people who are anxious become passive-aggressive because they’re very afraid of even the most minor confrontations in life. People tend to resort to passive aggression when they don’t feel they have the skills or the confidence to handle conflict directly. Realizing this is an important first step—an essential next step is to start building the skills and confidence to handle things differently.
Hidden anger that comes out indirectly can undermine relationships between friends, family, and colleagues. When people feel compelled to conceal their true beliefs and emotions, there can be serious physical and psychological results for everyone involved. Dr. Tim Murphy and Loriann Oberlin offer a clear definition of passive-aggression and show readers not only how to end the behaviour but also how to avoid falling victim to other people's hidden anger. This revised and updated edition offers essential guidance for dealing with problems in the workplace and at school avoiding the pitfalls of social media, texting, and online communication and when…
