The most recommended books about lying

I love novels that delve into family relationships, and Modglin did that in spades. The first few chapters led me, unsuspecting, into the lives of the most unusual husband and wife I’ve ever met on the page. If I hadn’t read the description, I might have thought I was reading a relationship book by Elizabeth Berg or Anne Tyler. 

Was I in for a shock! The more I read, the more twisted the relationship became. This book literally took my breath away. I couldn’t turn pages fast enough! This novel is fascinating, fast-paced, and shockingly different–all the things that made me hurry to snatch up the two sequels, which are equally as good as the first. I highly recommend this book.

The life of a homeless teen is pretty dark. But for Paul Reid, his life is nothing compared to his death. After being taken out by an untimely accident, Paul finds himself caught in a war between the forces of light and dark. Unfortunately, the forces of darkness are winning, and light doesn't seem to care.

This is a horrifying vision of an afterlife run by a faceless bureaucracy, where a newly dead young man will have to defeat all the forces of evil, just for a chance to rest in peace.

This novel is about a PH.D. candidate, Olive, who fake-dates a professor to make her best friend feel better about falling in love with her ex-boyfriend. It’s a wild premise, but I love suspending my own beliefs and falling into a romance novel.

This is another one of those single point-of-view books where the main character is incredibly dense, and we KNOW her fake boyfriend, Adam, is so in love with her.

There are also hints of sexism in the STEM field, which is very realistic, and this story touches on it exactly how a romance novel should, with a few moments of despair and a happy ending. 

I am biased toward any writer who features amateur sleuths. Lori Rader-Day not only plunges readers into a compelling story with a delightfully twisty ending, she also pays tribute to the volunteers who slave away on real-life sites such as The Doe Network. When the protagonist comes across a picture of a missing person, she realizes it’s someone from her past and resolves, for complicated reasons, to track him down. 

I met Marlon James at the Cliveden Literary Festival. He was so compelling as a speaker and charming as a person that I thought I’d read his latest book. I had never read him before. Well, I was in for a treat.

I have never read anything quite like it in my life. He is unique, powerful, with an imagination that is so dark, so extraordinary, that I found myself being sucked into the narrative and unable to pull myself away. The book is a mixture of African mythology, history, and fantasy.

It’s the second in a soon-to-be trilogy, but he said it was fine to read this one first. I will definitely read the first and eagerly await the third. I think he’s a genius.

What happens when a client turns on a therapist? I hope I never find out.

I picked up Helene Flood's novel out of curiosity. As a writer, I wanted to know how Flood turns two people sitting in a room quietly talking into a plot that will hold readers' attention. I don’t want to give anything away, except to say her book deftly and accurately shows a clinician using her training to solve a terrible crime and save herself.

It was easy for me to identify with both the protagonist and the author. Flood and I are both practicing psychologists specializing in trauma. I’m grateful for a good read and a reminder to screen potential clients carefully.

Secrets and lies always keep me turning the pages and this book has those in spades.

I love that Fisher writes about the kind of women we all know. Her characters are truly relatable and the dilemma of whether Maggie should expose her husband’s lies or protect the people she loves is an agonising one.

There’s so much humour in Fisher’s writing. I love a book that brings out laughter and tears.

Before I read Dorothy L. Sayers’ books, I’d only heard of Strong Poison and Gaudy Night, but as I read through the Lord Peter Wimsey series, I found a favorite 1920s mystery for me, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. Wimsey is a veteran of the Great War with an unusual hobby: dead bodies. It might sound creepy, but it isn’t. He’s called on to fix the time of death of elderly General Fentiman, who “pegged it” on Armistice Day. I loved Lord Peter’s droll and self-deprecating attitude. People underestimate him because of his foppish exterior, but he sees what others miss. The investigation touches on PTSD—called shellshock then—in a way that feels timely to me, even after nearly a century. I loved the tour through aristocratic London with Lord Peter.

Meyer is an exceptional writer who knows exactly how to twist a beloved fairy tale, making it its own story but keeping threads of the original tale that readers love.

Rumpelstiltskin isn’t a commonly retold fairy tale, which is one of the main reasons I loved the first book and needed Cursed as soon as it came out.

Once I started reading, it was impossible to put the book down. Meyer had me on the edge of my seat until the last page – I needed to know how Serilda and Gild’s story ended! 

By the early twentieth century, violent crime was the number one political issue in America. In response, Congress passed the Swift and Sure Anti-Crime Bill, which gave a previously convicted violent criminal one fair trail, one quick appeal, then immediate execution. But to prevent abuse of the law, it was necessary to create a machine that could detect lies with one-hundred percent accuracy. It was clear that such a Truth Machine would change the world. But the race to perfect the Truth Machine forces one man to commit a shocking act of treachery. Now he must conceal the truth from his own creation---or face execution.

The conflict here is truth versus justice, as is often the case in human affairs. I was extremely interested in seeing how the author would balance these two seemingly irreconcilable factors. The book does a startingly job in resolving this conflict, in the process creating… show more.