Here are 100 books that What Lies in the Woods fans have personally recommended if you like
What Lies in the Woods.
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I love feeling scared in a controlled situation—like on my couch with a soft blanket and a book—so horror thrillers are my jam. I absolutely love it when a female protagonist is so smart and courageous that I genuinely don’t know what I would do differently. This gives me someone to truly root for. Over time, I’ve discovered all the ways scary books help me manage my anxiety. Reading about all my worst fears but knowing I can set the book down if I need to is empowering. (Spoiler alert: I never set the book down.)
When a horror thriller can straddle mystery and true crime and stick the landing like this book does, I’m in.
I was immediately invested in Liz’s journey back to her hometown. I love the reunion trope, but what Liz comes up against is so strange and intriguing that I knew after the opening I wasn’t putting this one down until I devoured this book. Her inner strength and determination to solve the town’s big mystery had me cheering for her every step of the way.
RECOMMENDED BY GILLIAN FLYNN ON THE TODAY SHOW • A young Black girl goes missing in the woods outside her white rust belt town. But she's not the first—and she may not be the last. . . .
“I read this thriller that is Get Out meets The Vanishing Half in one night.”—BuzzFeed
“Extraordinary . . . A terrifying tale of fears and hatreds generated by racism and class inequality.”—Associated Press
EDGAR® AWARD FINALIST • BRAM STOKER® AWARD FINALIST • SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARD NOMINEE • PHENOMENAL BOOK CLUB PICK
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Esquire, Vulture, PopSugar,…
I love feeling scared in a controlled situation—like on my couch with a soft blanket and a book—so horror thrillers are my jam. I absolutely love it when a female protagonist is so smart and courageous that I genuinely don’t know what I would do differently. This gives me someone to truly root for. Over time, I’ve discovered all the ways scary books help me manage my anxiety. Reading about all my worst fears but knowing I can set the book down if I need to is empowering. (Spoiler alert: I never set the book down.)
I could not set this book down for the life of me, and my anxiety was through the roof the entire time. (Clearly, I loved it haha.)
This thriller opens with an explosion of unrivaled suspense. It features some of my favorite tropes: kidnapping, survival, captivity, and creepy men in the woods (Deliverance movie, anyone?). Plus, it’s about Miley, an Olympic biathlete whose survival chops are next level.
A merciless wilderness. A harrowing attack. A desperate escape.
When a tragic accident sidelines Miley's dreams of Olympic gold, she takes a summer job at a mountain guest lodge. The Frank Church Wilderness is remote, but it’s the perfect place to train and recover. Local lore about a staffer who died years ago doesn’t scare her.
But it should.
Miley’s plans take a terrifying detour when she’s abducted during a morning run. Held captive in a desolate off-grid cabin, she’ll have to use her athletic prowess, cunning mind, and courage to survive. But as the nightmare at the cabin escalates,…
I love feeling scared in a controlled situation—like on my couch with a soft blanket and a book—so horror thrillers are my jam. I absolutely love it when a female protagonist is so smart and courageous that I genuinely don’t know what I would do differently. This gives me someone to truly root for. Over time, I’ve discovered all the ways scary books help me manage my anxiety. Reading about all my worst fears but knowing I can set the book down if I need to is empowering. (Spoiler alert: I never set the book down.)
The best thing I can say about this book is that I cried three separate times while reading it. When a horror thriller can pull that level of emotion out of me, it instantly becomes a fave.
Our MC, Brynn, has to decide whether to trust a father who has let her down her whole life while also trying to survive an apocalypse. (This is a fresh take on the apocalypse trope, for sure!)
The pacing is high-octane, Brynn’s emotional journey is compelling, and this book is highly underrated, IMO.
It’s just an average night at the Ink Tank, the tattoo shop in Austin, Texas, where Brynn works as a tattoo artist. After a long shift, all she wants to do is head home, pop a few pills from the fresh bottle of Roxicodone in her jacket pocket, and slip into a nice buzz. Her plans crumble when she’s abducted by her convict father, Alan, and forced into the road trip from hell: a cross-country trek to the Rocky Mountains and the shelter he built years ago to protect his family from the monsters living in his head, the monsters…
I love feeling scared in a controlled situation—like on my couch with a soft blanket and a book—so horror thrillers are my jam. I absolutely love it when a female protagonist is so smart and courageous that I genuinely don’t know what I would do differently. This gives me someone to truly root for. Over time, I’ve discovered all the ways scary books help me manage my anxiety. Reading about all my worst fears but knowing I can set the book down if I need to is empowering. (Spoiler alert: I never set the book down.)
I instantly fell in love with this book's MC, Rowena. She’s just so stinking relatable, and when her world starts to spiral into a dark hell, a la Black Mirror, she has to decide who she is going to believe in order to save herself and her baby girl.
The whole time I read this one, I wondered what I would do. Who would I believe if I were her? I love that feeling of being suspended in dread and the unknown as I read a thriller. This one delivered that for me.
"The best thriller of the year! This book absolutely left me aghast." —Netgalley reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
A new marriage. A perfect home. A machine that says it's all a lie.
Rowena Snyder has the life she's always wanted. So why is everything falling apart?
Moving to the suburbs was supposed to be easy. Instead, Rowena struggles with panic attacks, a husband who wants her on medication, and the isolation of new motherhood. Then a suspicious house fire at her baby’s birthday party threatens to send her over the edge.
When Rowena's husband brings home a product in beta testing at his…
I believe my love of horror and mystery started young. My first favorite book was The Berenstain Bears and the Spooky Old Tree. I started writing my first mystery novel when I was in high school. It wasn’t very good, but I still have it. I have so many stories in my head that it’s hard to keep them straight. I also co-host a True Crime podcast, Nothing Happens in A Small Town.
This is a mystery within a mystery—an end-of-the-world survival story that slowly unfolds how the world's end happened. The mystery of a little girl found dead, but not from anything happening in the world. This book made me think about how I’d react in a similar situation. We all hope we’d be level-headed and survive. But as this book tells, you never know.
This propulsive post-apocalyptic thriller “in which Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None collides with Stephen King’s The Shining” (NPR) follows a group of survivors stranded at a hotel as the world descends into nuclear war and the body of a young girl is discovered in one of the hotel’s water tanks.
Jon thought he had all the time in the world to respond to his wife’s text message: I miss you so much. I feel bad about how we left it. Love you. But as he’s waiting in the lobby of the L’Hotel Sixieme in Switzerland after an academic…
I’ve been writing crime novels and TV shows for years. For TV, I wrote for Law & Order, Pretty Little Liars, CSI: Miami, and several other crime shows. In the book world, I used to write amateur sleuth novels, and now I write thrillers. My favorite form of relaxation is to get a cup of tea, put my feet up, and read a great thriller. They inspire me. As I read, I study how they’re structured. There’s nothing I appreciate more than a twist I didn’t see coming, a morally good character who turns out to be evil, or a flawed character who ultimately turns out to be good.
I enjoyed this novel about a serial killer's daughter. The main character is flawed but very rootable, and the ending took me by surprise.
I especially admired the way all the different strands of the plot came together. The author laid out some good cookie crumbs for the reader to follow, and I missed several of them in a way that was very satisfying when they were revealed to me. I also liked that the main character gets a happy ending that I found very believable.
A twisty psychological thriller from the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Housemaid and The Coworker!
Some doors are locked for a reason…
While eleven-year-old Nora Davis was up in her bedroom doing homework, she had no idea her father was killing women in the basement.
Until the day the police arrived at their front door.
Decades later, Nora's father is spending his life behind bars, and Nora is a successful surgeon with a quiet, solitary existence. Nobody knows about her past, and she'll do anything to keep it that way.
I’ve always had a fascination with crime and human behavior which led me to complete an Honours Degree in Criminology at the University of Ottawa. I studied the minds of criminals and what drives their behavior. It’s truly disturbing that under the right circumstances, people are capable of horrific things. I also studied victims of crime and the impact their suffering has on their lives and the way it can influence their behavior in the future. Naturally with this background, I gravitate towards writing and reading books that explore these topics in depth.
Richard’s novel did a good job of pulling the rug out from beneath the reader as he leads them on a journey to discover who the murderer is in his hometown. Along the way, he does a brilliant job of conveying how murders can impact a whole town and affect human behavior.
The acclaimed New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling novel of small-town evil that “is genuinely chilling and something brand-new and exciting” (Stephen King) and “unforgettable” (Harlan Coben).
In the summer of 1988, the mutilated bodies of several missing girls begin to turn up in a small Maryland town. The grisly evidence leads police to the terrifying assumption that a serial killer is on the loose in the quiet suburb. But soon a rumor begins to spread that the evil stalking local teens is not entirely human. Law enforcement, as well as members of the FBI, are certain that the…
I have written nine crime novels, mostly psychological thrillers, but some blend procedural and PI elements and two are gangland stories. I went to the BRIT school in the 90’s and studied Drama and English Literature at University. I always think that my Performing Arts background gave me a great tool kit for ‘getting into character’ which is useful for writing. I also have an MA in journalism but I definitely prefer fiction to fact. I love the immediacy of first person prose and I am a sucker for an unreliable narrator.
This story is told from the perspective of a serial killer's stepdaughter, Sophie, and I swallowed it in two sittings.
Matty Melgren, Sophie’s stepfather, is dying and wants to meet. He’s in prison and his imminent death takes Sophie right back to her childhood. The story is told from Sophie’s perspective as a twelve-year-old observing the breakdown of her mother and Matty’s relationship and as an adult debating how much she wants answers and what they might cost her.
I loved the dual timeline and thought it was a really fresh way to approach a serial killer novel.
'Victoria Selman is an exciting and powerfully fresh voice' Patricia Cornwell
Twelve-year-old Sophie and her mother, Amelia-Rose, move to London from Massachusetts where they meet the charismatic Matty Melgren, who quickly becomes an intrinsic part of their lives. But as the relationship between the two adults fractures, a serial killer begins targeting young women with a striking resemblance to Amelia-Rose.
When Matty is eventually sent down for multiple murder, questions remain as to his guilt -- questions which ultimately destroy both women. Nearly twenty years later, Sophie receives a letter from Battlemouth Prison informing her…
When I decided to write about psychopathic killers, I studied real stories and facts about these people. I also read about 80 novels a year as well as writing crime thriller novels. I’ve won more than a few awards and keep studying my craft. Makes me feel young. I love stories with action that make you think and are a little different and unique. I want to make a reader cry and laugh, which is what I look for in a good novel. So, when I write about serial killers, I try to keep it real. I love it!
Who hasn't heard of Dexter? A serial killer, a psychopath, who only kills bad guys: a great book, a TV series, and an iconic character.
Dexter is funny and carefree. He likes kids, but he's not sure why. He cares for his foster sister. He doesn't kill anyone who's not bad. He doesn't like sex, so that takes an icky part of most serial killers away too.
All of this is the genius of the author. I loved it! And this is just the first book in the series.
Meet Dexter Morgan, a polite wolf in sheep’s clothing. He’s handsome and charming, but something in his past has made him abide by a different set of rules. He’s a serial killer whose one golden rule makes him immensely likeable: he only kills bad people. • The Killer Character That Inspired the Hit Showtime Series Dexter
And his job as a blood splatter expert for the Miami police department puts him in the perfect position to identify his victims. But when a series of brutal murders bearing a striking similarity to his own style start turning up, Dexter is caught…
My new thriller centers around a small, mysterious cult and their shocking demise. For years, I’ve read true crime books on the subject, and I wanted to infuse the reality and truth of real-life events into my fictional novel. In a similar vein, these books represent a range of thrillers inspired by true events, ranging from cults to serial killers to teenage criminals. I hope you find these books as gripping and haunting as I do.
I found this novel to be emotionally gripping and suspenseful. It is a historical thriller rooted in truth. It follows women affected by a serial killer in the seventies.
The killer is a depiction of Ted Bundy, though he’s only referred to as “the defendant”—a purposeful choice on behalf of Knoll, who succeeds in taking away his notoriety while giving a name to the women he affected. I appreciate that by focusing on the victims and survivors, it flips the narrative on its head, veering away from the predictable or sensational.
Knoll's writing is, as always, superb. I applaud Knoll for her fresh take on the true crime genre, for not romanticizing a killer, and for crafting a relatable, moving tribute to victims and survivors.
A Richard & Judy Book Club pick New York Times Bestseller A Goodreads Choice Award Finalist
Bright Young Women is an unflinching thriller based on Ted Bundy's heinous crimes, as two women search for justice in the wake of his brutal murders. From Jessica Knoll, author of the New York Times bestseller and #1 Netflix movie Luckiest Girl Alive.
'A compelling, almost hypnotic read' - Lisa Jewell, bestselling author of None of This is True
'Knoll deconstructs the myth of a criminal mastermind, revealing the women he seeks to destroy as the truly brilliant ones' - Flynn Berry, author of…
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