Here are 100 books that Unraveling Oliver fans have personally recommended if you like
Unraveling Oliver.
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I love to take destination thrillers with me on vacation. It’s like a double whammy of travel. I also love to write destination thrillers and have written quite a few, including my first book, set in a charming lakefront community on Lake Erie, Ohio. My other destination thrillers include Beneath the Surface, set on a luxurious super yacht on a trip to Catalina Island from Newport Beach, California, and my latest, Under the Palms, set at a fabulous Laguna Beach luxury resort. I love to write about grown-ups behaving badly. Dropping the characters into a beautiful resort or vacation setting increases the suspense.
This island mystery is set on a chilly resort off the coast of Ireland, so you won’t need sunscreen here, but you will need stamina as you’re once again trapped.
I loved this cast of characters attending the wedding of a glamorous and famous bride and groom. Media celebrities are so much fun to read about. But the real star of the show is the hostile setting and the menacing characters who are all there for something, some cleverly hiding their true motives until the very end.
*The brand new thriller from Lucy Foley - THE PARIS APARTMENT - is available to pre-order now*
The No.1 Sunday Times bestseller
*Over 1 million copies sold worldwide*
*One of The Times and Sunday Times Crime Books of the Year*
*Goodreads Choice Awards winner for Crime & Mystery 2020*
A gripping, twisty murder mystery thriller from the No.1 bestselling author of The Hunting Party.
'Lucy Foley is really very clever' Anthony Horowitz 'Thrilling' The Times 'A classic whodunnit' Kate Mosse 'Sharp and atmospheric and addictive' Louise Candlish 'A furiously twisty thriller' Clare Mackintosh
I came to writing crime late after reading a P.D. James novel on my honeymoon. Previously a travel and ghostwriter, I became fascinated by the challenge of creating a whodunnit plot that fools the reader while simultaneously playing fair by giving them plenty of juicy clues. Agatha Christie said you should get to the end of your book and then choose the least likely person as the murderer. Quite often, I don’t know who the killer is myself until the end. If I’m kept guessing, hopefully my readers are too. I love the fact that whodunnits are a way of writing about all sorts of worlds within a compelling structure.
This book is not strictly a whodunnit, as Highsmith follows the murderer closely, and we see not only the murder but experience all its ghastly ramifications.
This was her first novel, and it set the template for the rest of her oeuvre, in which a relatively ordinary person is dragged into a horrific situation by a chance meeting with a personable weirdo. It could have been you on that train; that’s the shocking thing. And soon our hero is caught in a trap from which it seems there is to be no escape.
This is a gripping read and will set you up, if you’re compulsive like me, to read all her other books, which, though often quite dark, always have the most compelling plots.
The classic thriller behind the Hitchcock film, and Highsmith's first novel - soon to be remade by David Fincher, director of Gone Girl, with a screenplay by Gillian Flynn.
By the bestselling author of The Talented Mr Ripley and Carol
The psychologists would call it folie a deux . . .
'Bruno slammed his palms together. "Hey! Cheeses, what an idea! I kill your wife and you kill my father! We meet on a train, see, and nobody knows we know each other! Perfect alibis! Catch?'''
From this moment, almost against his conscious will, Guy Haines is trapped in a…
I wanted to write my book (below) because I often wonder, “What if?” about many things in my life. What if I’d stayed in-state for college? What if I’d never moved to California? What if I’d stayed together with my high school boyfriend? This book answered those questions for me, and I know that reading any of the books below will not only do that for you but also bring lots of reading joy.
Wow! Wowie! To be honest, I am not someone who ever knows the ending of a thriller. I guess whatever part of the brain decides if you'll be good at solving mysteries, I don't have it! And every time I thought I knew where Gillian was leading me, the reader, I was always very wrong.
I really loved the powerful message of the strength of mothers throughout this book. I liked that this was time travel, but not so complicated that I couldn't follow it. I loved how this book explored the idea of "what if" and second chances in a really unique and compelling way. It was absorbing and fast-paced, and it definitely went down easy for me.
'Perfection, every word, every moment. One of the best books I've ever read' LISA JEWELL 'Ingenious. A book to blow your mind and break your heart' ERIN KELLY 'Extraordinary' HARRIET TYCE 'I am totally in awe. This is one story I will not forget' HEIDI PERKS 'Genre-bending and totally original. A tour de force!' CLAIRE DOUGLAS
PRE-ORDER THE BOOK EVERYONE HAS BEEN TALKING ABOUT _________
It's every parent's nightmare.
Your happy, funny, innocent son commits a terrible crime: murdering a complete stranger.
My previous job was as a counsellor, so I’m fascinated with why people make the decisions that they do. When a writer can craft a great story, that also explores a character’s motivations, I’m always a fan. As someone who writes, and teaches creative writing to others, the ability to set up a great twist with realistic characters that both surprises me and also leaves me with the: “Of course! Why didn’t I see that coming?” impresses me.
Robyn Harding’s secret skill is peeling back the layers of a family to expose both the love and the possible darkness hiding inside. When a “perfect” suburban family begins to be harassed by a mysterious stranger they first chalk it up to random vandals, until they begin to suspect that it’s being done for a very particular reason.
The trick that Harding does is to give each family member a reason to be the target. She unravels the myth of perfection and kept me turning pages to determine the motivation behind the crime. I am always much more interested in the why of a mystery novel than the who—and this book delivers exactly that.
The bestselling author of the The Swap explores what happens when a seemingly perfect family is pushed to the edge... and beyond in this "propulsive, constantly surprising" (Laurie Elizabeth Flynn, author of The Girls Are All So Nice Here) thriller.
Thomas and Viv Adler are the envy of their neighbors: attractive, successful, with well-mannered children and a beautifully restored home.
Until one morning, when they wake up to find their porch has been pelted with eggs. It's a prank, Thomas insists; the work of a few out-of-control kids. But when a smoke bomb is tossed on their front lawn, and…
As many of my novels are set in Japan, I try to read as many Japanese authors as I can. Firstly, they offer great insight into the Japanese psyche and Japanese culture, and secondly, they are extremely enjoyable reads. My main series is the Reiko Watanabe/Inspector Aizawa novels, crime thrillers set in 1930s Japan, and while only one of these books takes place during that era, I feel they all provide a great springboard into Japanese crime fiction, a genre that hopefully gains more notoriety in the West.
One of the best Japanese crime novels, this is the story of four women trapped in suburban hell, seeking to escape their empty lives. When one of them murders her husband in a fit of rage, they collude to dispose of his body, gradually sinking into a criminal netherworld.
I loved it for its crisp and taut prose, solid and relatable characters, dense and fast-paced plot, and heavy themes of urban isolation and aimlessness.
Winner of Japan's Grand Prix for Crime Fiction • Edgar Award Finalist • Nothing in Japanese literature prepares us for the stark, tension-filled, plot-driven realism of Natsuo Kirino’s award-winning literary mystery Out.
This mesmerizing novel tells the story of a brutal murder in the staid Tokyo suburbs, as a young mother who works the night shift making boxed lunches strangles her abusive husband and then seeks the help of her coworkers to dispose of the body and cover up her crime. The coolly intelligent Masako emerges as the plot’s ringleader, but quickly discovers that this killing is merely the beginning,…
I've been a researcher, educator, and practitioner of domestic violence services for over 15 years, and am extremely passionate about this topic. After having worked in the domestic violence field, I then pursued my PhD to study this problem, which I now continue to research and teach about as an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Moravian University. In our ever-globalizing world, I believe it's especially important for us to consider domestic violence from a cross-cultural perspective, and having studied this issue in Latin America and among Latina women in the U.S., I hope to spread that knowledge even further. More than ever, it is important for everyone to gain knowledge on this worldwide problem.
For a global perspective on domestic violence, Parson provides a comprehensive look at issues around domestic violence in Chile. She specifically follows the stories of several women and how they navigate through services and systems, facing further violence through the relentless barriers they find themselves up against.
Parson and I both graduated from the Rutgers Anthropology doctoral program and worked under the same advisors—albeit many years apart—and I am grateful to have had her excellent scholarship as a reference for my own.
The end of the Pinochet regime in Chile saw the emergence of an organised feminist movement that influenced legal and social responses to gender-based violence, and with it new laws and avenues for reporting violence that never before existed. What emerged were grassroots women's rights organisations, challenging and engaging the government and NGOs to confront long-ignored problems in responding to marginalised victims.
In Traumatic States, anthropologist Nia Parson explores the development of methods of care and recovery from domestic violence. She interviews and contextualises the lives of numerous individuals who have confronted these acts, as victims, authorities, and activists. Ultimately,…
As someone who’s had a lifelong interest in psychology, especially abnormal psychology, I’ve always been fascinated the small destructions some people inflict on others – sometimes even on themselves. For me the greatest crime is not to kill someone but to reduce them by making their life uncomfortable or unwelcome. The ability to do this is what I would call a “negative skill.” It’s not easy, but some people do it uncannily well, and without caring. Perhaps because this is so alien to me, I remain riveted by stories that portray it, and some cases attempt to explain it. These are a few of those stories.
Vera and Eden are devoted sisters. One of them has an illegitimate baby.
The book is allegedly devoted to telling the story of how Vera came to kill Eden, but in telling this story it also attempts to determine which one of them is the baby’s mother.
In doing both of these, however, it also details the ways in which people, even people who seem to be devoted to each other, can make each other’s lives miserable, and can choose to make their own lives miserable.
Vine (aka. Ruth Rendell) is, of course the mistress of psychological suspense, and for me this is the best book she ever wrote.
"Dazzling...writing at her formidable best, Barbara Vine taps the poetry as well as the pain of her characters' clamorous declarations of their need for love." -New York Times Book Review
"When the best mystery writer in the English-speaking world launched a second byline, she actually stepped up her writing a level." -TIME
Faith Severn has grown up with the dark cloud of murder looming over her family. Her aunt Vera Hillyard, a rigidly respectable woman, was convicted and hanged for the crime, but the reason for her desperate deed died with her. Thirty years later, a probing journalist pushes Faith…
The two people I love most, my husband and my son, manage obsessive-compulsive disorder. Their struggles constantly inspire me and illustrate the courage it takes to navigate everyday life with an invisible disability. We don’t talk enough about that courage. Instead, society passes judgment and shares OCD jokes. There’s nothing funny about a chronic, potentially fatal illness that demands lifelong management. After all, we don’t laugh at diabetics, and people aren’t defined by their disabilities. (Think of Helen Keller’s achievements!) My passion is to create characters who chip away at the stigma, shame, and stereotypes of mental illness. They also prove the mantra, “You are not your disorder.” Amen.
This love story is unique. Zee is a hot-tempered drug dealer with a damaged leg. Sir Gentry is a sweet guy on the autism spectrum who hears voices, thinks he’s her Medieval champion, and talks only in Middle English. But lack of judgment, understanding, and compassion make them equals in love.
A new provocative love story from the New York Times bestselling author of All the Ugly and Wonderful Things.
“The story of Zee and Gentry is the reason we read.” —Brunonia Barry
Their journey will break them—or save them.
A moving and complicated love story for our time, The Reckless Oath We Made redefines what it means to be heroic. Zee has never admitted to needing anybody. But she needs Gentry. Her tough exterior shelters a heart that’s loyal to the point of self-destruction, while autistic Gentry wears his heart on his sleeve, including his desire to protect Zee at…
I grew up in Brooklyn, NY, and am the middle daughter of three. My sisters and I were close in age, and, of course, our home was girl-centered. The three of us attended the same all-girls Catholic high school, though we each had our own friends. Because of my childhood, I love books that explore how women make friends and keep them, how we let them go, and why. The genesis of friendships interests me, whether childhood, high school, college or motherhood. I love to read books by women where girlfriendships are not an afterthought or window dressing but central to the characters’ inner lives and the story being told.
I loved this book for its innovative approach to time travel. It’s not concerned with altering history but about time travel on a granular level. Alice travels back to her 16th birthday, which her 40-year-old self knows was a pivotal night.
In the present day, Alice has remained friends with her high school best friend, Sam. I suspect many authors would have had them lose touch as adults and I loved that the novel is not predictably about Alice revisiting their high school friendship.
I also appreciated how Alice is entranced, at first, by the freedom of being a teenager again, but she’s soon caught up in the same struggles. Sam is her through-line, her confidant, helping her decide what in her life should change and what should not.
“The pages brim with tenderness and an appreciation for what we had and who we were. I could not have loved it more."—Ann Patchett
“The kind of book that will make you laugh, make you cry, and make you call the people you love. Exceptional."—Emily Henry
"Delightful"—Boston Globe
"Poignant"—New York Times
What if you could take a vacation to your past?
With her celebrated humor, insight, and heart, beloved New York Times bestseller Emma Straub offers her own twist on traditional time travel tropes, and a different kind of love story.
As a horror writer, the evil kid subgenre holds great appeal to me. I’ve written about them a few times, most notably in my novella Sour Candy, which remains the most popular thing I’ve written, perhaps because, like in the books mentioned above, we don’t expect our children to be evil monsters, and when they are, we’re ill-prepared to deal with the threat. They’re still children, after all, and we’re supposed to love and protect them. The emotional quandaries this situation presents are fascinating to write about.
Stage’s wonderfully sinister novel documents the early years of a child who seems to have been born bad. The thrill in this one is the ever-escalating war between a precocious and seemingly sweet child and her anguished mother, who knows she’s being manipulated by her daughter, while the father remains oblivious to the horror. It’s unusual, and fun, to read a book in which we get to see things from the child’s perspective as she tries to drive her mother insane.
“Unnerving and unputdownable, Baby Teeth will get under your skin and keep you trapped in its chilling grip until the shocking conclusion.”―New York Times bestselling author Lisa Scottoline
One of Entertainment Weekly’s Must-Read Books for July | People Magazine's Book of the Week | One of Bustle's "Fifteen Books With Chilling Protagonists That Will Keep You Guessing" | One of PopSugar's "25 Must-Read Books That Will Make July Fly By!" | One of the "Biggest Thrillers of the Summer"―SheReads | "New & Noteworthy" ―USA Today | "Summer 2018 Must-Read"―Bookish | "One of 11 Crime Novels You Should Read in July"―Crime…
