psychological thriller

I Killed Zoe Spanos is a thrilling book by Kit Frick that leaves you on the edge of your seat with an intricate plot.  In this book, our main character, Anna Cicconi, takes a summer nanny job in a wealthy neighborhood. Little does she know, Anna looks eerily similar to Zoe Spanos, who has disappeared since New Year’s Eve. As she gets sucked into the mystery, Anna is convinced she is somehow related to Zoe Spanos. Three months into the job, Anna turns herself in after Zoe’s body is found. But many people aren’t convinced, and the evidence doesn’t match up with the statement. This book switches

The Wives should come with a warning. Settle in, silence your phone, and have some snacks handy. Because once you get into this story, you won't want to stop reading.

By all accounts, Thursday has a great life. A job she loves, a gorgeous apartment, and a loving, devoted husband. There's only one catch - she only sees her husband one day a week because she shares him with two other wives. Her husband is a polygamist, having been raised in an ultra conservative Mormon family. Thursday knew this when she married him, of course, but lately it seems to be bothering her more and more. None of

The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware

Ruth Ware, a well established mystery author, created a captivating novel with The Woman in Cabin 10. I am not overly familiar with Ware’s writing style, as I have only read two (this one included) of her mysteries. The formula of this particular book reminded me of an Agatha Christie novel, as it followed the same “trapped with a group of people, one of whom is a murderer” formula as many of Christie’s own books. Lo Blacklock, a travel writer, is given the chance to report on a luxury cruise with a select few passengers, when she hears a splash in the

Small town.  Urban Legends.  A gruesome stabbing.

Before She Was Found definitely felt like it could be the ripped from the headlines fictionalized retelling of the Slender Man stabbing.  For those unfamiliar, in 2014 two 12 year old girls lured their 12 year old friend into the woods and proceeded to stab her 19 times to appease the entity known as 'Slender Man'.  For the first couple of chapters I was worried that this book was going to be nothing more than a retelling of true events with the names changed.  Though the plot does concern the aftermath of a brutal stabbing involving three

I See You is a psychological thriller about Zoe Walker, who, while commuting to work on the train, sees a picture of herself in a classified ad in a newspaper. Knowing she did not place the ad, Zoe becomes paranoid and hyper-vigilant on her way to and from work. After noticing her own picture, Zoe begins looking at the ads more closely, and believes there is a connection between the women featured and the same women being victims of recent crimes. Fearing that she will come to the same fate as the strangers whose faces she now finds so familiar, Zoe begins to view everyone she encounters as a

This intriguing and disturbing book tells the story of Suzette, Alex and their 7 year old daughter, Hannah, who has quite literally become a threat to their existence. Baby Teeth is told in alternating chapters between Suzette and Hannah and you quickly realize that not all is right with their world. Hannah is mute and nothing Suzette has done, including numerous schools and eventually homeschooling, has helped Hannah learn to talk. Hannah's thoughts in the first chapter about speaking are: "Words, ever unreliable, were no one's friend. But if she was being honest, there was another reason --

As and initial suspense thriller from this author, The French Girl is pretty well done. It follows the typical plot points used by many others: there's been a murder and our main character can't remember exactly what happened. Or she thinks she might remember, but she is constantly questioning herself and her memories based on what other 'friends' tell her and say. 

Back when Kate was a student at Oxford, she and five friends spent a week at a French farmhouse. The neighbor, Severine, had gone missing, but Kate didn't dwell much on the news. Now, ten years later, it turns out that Severine

Aiden was six when he went missing during a bad rainstorm which flooded the banks of the river that runs through their village. His family and police believed he had been swept away by the river and drowned, having only found his jacket floating in the river and no body. Ten years later his mom is married and in her last month of pregnancy when she gets the incredible news that Aiden is alive. Told from the viewpoint of Aiden's mom, Emma, the Silent Child is a psychological thriller that will engulf you in the chaos of Emma's intense emotions as she tries to figure out who took Aiden.

What

In the trailer for Nocturnal Animals, Amy Adams's character (Susan Morrow) says, "my ex-husband use to call me a nocturnal animal . . . recently he sent me this book that he has written. It's violent and it's sad and he dedicated it to me . . . ." That line holds some creepy possibilities, but what plays out on screen is unexpected, with themes of loss, regret and revenge. Directed by Tom Ford and based on the book Tony and Susan, it's a stylized, uncomfortable, tense and foreboding neo noir.

A manuscript arrives for Susan just as she is at a low point in her life -- she is in a loveless

At first glance, Anne and Marco Conti live a charmed life. They have an adored baby girl, a comfortable home, friends next door, and the support of Anne’s wealthy parents. This illusion is peeled away piece by piece as the story unfolds. While Anne and Marco are at their neighbor’s dinner party, their daughter disappears from her crib. Who is responsible for the kidnapping? Why did they leave their baby alone? Is the couple next door involved?

Anne and Marco seem devastated and guilt-ridden. The detective in charge is determined to find out what happened, and it is evident that Anne and

I picked up Behind Her Eyes simply because Stephen King said it was "bloody brilliant." He said you'll never see the ending coming. I decided if he couldn't figure it out, then it must be good. Even if some of his books are too terrifying to read, I think King is a genius.

The opening scene in this book is a man walking out of the woods with dirt under his nails after having killed someone. You will spend the rest of the book trying to figure out his identity. Behind Her Eyes is a psychological thriller about the deeply troubled marriage of Adele and David. At the beginning of the book

Flynn Berry's Under the Harrow is a murder mystery turned inside-out, where "Whodunnit?" is overshadowed by "How do you process tragedy and loss?" It's a dark, haunting ride, with a few twists you may not see coming. (I didn't.)

When Nora goes to an English village to visit her sister, only to find her brutally murdered, she immediately decides to investigate the murder herself, despite the police doing everything they can to solve the murder. What Nora doesn't realize, but what quickly becomes apparent to the reader, is she's in no psychological state to do this. The book flashes back and

A coworker turned me on to this 1953 Edgar Award-winning suspense novel, and I'm glad he did. Otherwise, this gem may never have crossed my path, as I do not habitually read suspense novels and tend to pick up recent publications. A Kiss Before Dying is fabulously twisted. Author, Ira Levin, offers a look inside the mind of a psychopathic college student hell-bent on marrying into a wealthy family and he will stop at nothing to achieve his goal. I could see his odd idiosyncrasies and his malicious, self-serving plotting and I wanted to scream “Run!” to his unknowing victims. With many well

Ten strangers have come together on a remote English island under false pretenses. Each one bears a dark secret that they have hidden from the world. Stranded on the island and as the guests begin to die one by one, they discover that someone in the company has uncovered those secrets and is willing to make them pay.

Before this classic plot became prominent in both literature and film, it was brought to the forefront by Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. Previously titled Ten Little Indians (changed and edited to make it more PC), it is not like any of the other Agatha Christie