Books with category 😰 Thriller / Suspense
Displaying 20 books

The Frozen River

2023

by Ariel Lawhon

A gripping historical mystery inspired by the life and diary of Martha Ballard, a renowned 18th-century midwife who defied the legal system and wrote herself into American history.

Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community. Months earlier, Martha documented the details of an alleged rape committed by two of the town's most respected gentlemen—one of whom has now been found dead in the ice. But when a local physician undermines her conclusion, declaring the death to be an accident, Martha is forced to investigate the shocking murder on her own.

Over the course of one winter, as the trial nears, and whispers and prejudices mount, Martha doggedly pursues the truth. Her diary soon lands at the center of the scandal, implicating those she loves, and compelling Martha to decide where her own loyalties lie.

Clever, layered, and subversive, Ariel Lawhon's newest offering introduces an unsung heroine who refused to accept anything less than justice at a time when women were considered best seen and not heard. The Frozen River is a thrilling, tense, and tender story about a remarkable woman who left an unparalleled legacy yet remains nearly forgotten to this day.

The Future

2023

by Naomi Alderman

Naomi Alderman, the bestselling, award-winning author of The Power, delivers a dazzling tour de force with The Future. This novel is a thrilling tale where a handful of friends plot a daring heist to save the world from the tech giants whose greed threatens life as we know it.

When Martha Einkorn fled her father's isolated compound in Oregon, she never expected to find herself working for a powerful social media mogul hell-bent on controlling everything. Surrounded by mega-rich companies designing private weather, predictive analytics, and covert weaponry, Martha must confront technological prophecies and apocalyptic warnings that once seemed like mere parables.

Meanwhile, across the world, Lai Zhen, an internet-famous survivalist, finds herself fleeing from an assassin in a mall in Singapore. As she's cornered and desperate, a remarkable piece of software appears on her phone, guiding her escape. The origins of this software and its ultimate purpose become the burning questions that could define their very survival.

Martha and Zhen's worlds are on a collision course, setting off an explosive chain of events. While a few billionaires assure their own safety, leading the world to destruction, Martha's relentless drive and Zhen's insatiable curiosity might just lead to something beautiful or the cataclysmic end of civilization.

By turns thrilling, hilarious, tender, and always piercingly brilliant, The Future unfolds at breakneck speed, highlighting the corrupting power of the few and the courage required to stand up to them. The future is coming. The Future is here.

The Possessed

From "a master of verbal burlesque [and] a connoisseur of psychological blackmail" (John Updike), Witold Gombrowicz's harrowing and hilarious pastiche of the Gothic novel, now in a new, authoritative English translation.

Witold Gombrowicz is considered by many to be Poland's greatest modernist, and in The Possessed, he demonstrates his playful brilliance and astonishing range by using the familiar tropes of the Gothic novel to produce a darkly funny and lively subversion of the form.

With dreams of escaping his small-town existence and the limitations of his class, a young tennis coach travels to the heart of the Polish countryside to train Maja Ocholowska, a beautiful and promising player whose bourgeois family has fallen upon difficult circumstances. Yet as Maja and the young man are alternately drawn to and repulsed by the other, they find themselves embroiled in the fantastic happenings taking place at the dilapidated castle nearby, where a mad prince haunts the halls, and bewitched towels, conniving secretaries, famous clairvoyants, and uncanny doubles conspire to determine the fate of the lovers.

Serialized first in Poland in the days preceding the Nazi invasion, and now translated directly into English for the first time by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, The Possessed is a comic jewel, a hair-raising thriller, and a provocative early masterpiece from the acclaimed author of classics like Pornografia and Cosmos.

Vengeance Is Mine

2023

by Marie NDiaye

From the best-selling author of Three Strong Women comes a thrilling novel about a triple homicide that dredges up unsettling memories from a lawyer's childhood.

The heroine of Marie NDiaye's new novel is a quiet middle-aged lawyer, living a modest existence in Bordeaux. She has been so effectively consumed by her job she is known to all simply as MaĂŽtre Susane. But when Gilles Principaux shows up at her office asking her to defend his wife, who is accused of a horrific crime, MaĂŽtre Susane begins to crack.

She seems to remember having been alone with him in her youth for a significant event, one her mind obsesses over but can't quite reconstruct. Who is this Gilles Principaux? And why would he come to her, a run-of-the-mill lawyer, for the most important trial of his life?

While this mystery preoccupies MaĂŽtre Susane, at home she is greeted by Sharon, her faithful but peculiar housekeeper. Sharon arrived from Mauritius with her husband and children, and she lacks legal residency in France. And while MaĂŽtre Susane has generously offered Sharon her professional services, the young maid always finds ways to evade her, claiming the marriage certificate MaĂŽtre Susane requires is being held hostage. Is Sharon being honest with MaĂŽtre Susane, or is something more sinister going on?

Told in a slow seethe recalling the short novels of Elena Ferrante and the psychological richness of Patricia Highsmith's work, Vengeance Is Mine is a dreamlike portrait of a woman afflicted by failing memories, tortured uncertainty, and an unreliability that frightens her.

Bright Young Women

2023

by Jessica Knoll

Bright Young Women is a riveting thriller by Jessica Knoll, author of the bestselling novel Luckiest Girl Alive and the writer behind the Netflix adaption starring Mila Kunis. This novel masterfully blends elements of psychological suspense and true crime, delivering an exhilarating reading experience.

The story opens on a fateful Saturday night in 1978, just hours before a soon-to-be-infamous murderer descends upon a Florida sorority house, resulting in deadly consequences. The narrative follows the lives of those who survive, including sorority president and key witness, Pamela Schumacher, whose life is forever altered by the events of that night.

Meanwhile, across the country, Tina Cannon is certain her missing friend was targeted by the man known as the All-American Sex Killer—and that he has struck again. As she seeks justice, her path intersects with Pamela's, leading them on a relentless pursuit for answers that culminates in a final, shocking confrontation.

Bright Young Women is an unflinching and evocative tale that delves deep into the cultural obsession with serial killers and true crime, offering a sharp critique while also highlighting the dynamic and brilliant women who have the real stories to tell.

The Secret Hours

2023

by Mick Herron

The Secret Hours is a gripping standalone spy thriller from the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of Slow Horses, with a riveting reveal about a disastrous MI5 mission in Cold War Berlin—an absolute must-read for Slough House fans. New from the author of Slow Horses, now an Apple Original series from Apple TV+, starring Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas.

Two years ago, a hostile Prime Minister launched the Monochrome inquiry, investigating "historical over-reaching" by the British Secret Service. Monochrome’s mission was to ferret out any hint of misconduct by any MI5 officer—and allowed Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle, the two civil servants seconded to the project, unfettered access to any and all confidential information in the Service archives in order to do so.

But MI5’s formidable First Desk did not become Britain’s top spy by accident, and she has successfully thwarted the inquiry at every turn. Now the administration that created Monochrome has been ousted, the investigation is a total bust—and Griselda and Malcolm are stuck watching as their career prospects are washed away by the pounding London rain.

Until the eve of Monochrome’s shuttering, when an MI5 case file appears without explanation. It is the buried history of a classified operation in 1994 Berlin—an operation that ended in tragedy and scandal, whose cover-up has rewritten thirty years of Service history.

The Secret Hours is a dazzling entry point into Mick Herron’s body of work, a standalone spy thriller that is at once unnerving, poignant, and laugh-out-loud funny. It is also the breathtaking secret history that Slough House fans have been waiting for.

Holly

2023

by Stephen King

Holly Gibney, one of Stephen King's most compelling and ingeniously resourceful characters, returns in this thrilling novel to solve the gruesome truth behind multiple disappearances in a midwestern town.

"Sometimes the universe throws you a rope." — BILL HODGES

Stephen King's Holly marks the triumphant return of beloved King character Holly Gibney. Readers have witnessed Holly's gradual transformation from a shy (but also brave and ethical) recluse in Mr. Mercedes to Bill Hodges's partner in Finders Keepers to a full-fledged, smart, and occasionally tough private detective in The Outsider. In King's new novel, Holly is on her own, and up against a pair of unimaginably depraved and brilliantly disguised adversaries.

When Penny Dahl calls the Finders Keepers detective agency hoping for help locating her missing daughter, Holly is reluctant to accept the case. Her partner, Pete, has Covid. Her (very complicated) mother has just died. And Holly is meant to be on leave. But something in Penny Dahl's desperate voice makes it impossible for Holly to turn her down.

Mere blocks from where Bonnie Dahl disappeared live Professors Rodney and Emily Harris. They are the picture of bourgeois respectability: married octogenarians, devoted to each other, and semi-retired lifelong academics. But they are harboring an unholy secret in the basement of their well-kept, book-lined home, one that may be related to Bonnie's disappearance. And it will prove nearly impossible to discover what they are up to: they are savvy, they are patient, and they are ruthless.

Holly must summon all her formidable talents to outthink and outmaneuver the shockingly twisted professors in this chilling new masterwork from Stephen King.

Happiness Falls

2023

by Angie Kim

Happiness Falls is a thrilling page-turner and a deeply moving portrait of a family in crisis. This riveting book about a biracial Korean American family in Virginia is upended when their beloved father and husband goes missing.

Mia, the irreverent, hyperanalytical twenty-year-old daughter, isn't initially concerned when her father and younger brother Eugene don't return from a walk in a nearby park. But as time progresses, it becomes clear that something is terribly wrong. Eugene returns home bloody and alone, with their father nowhere to be found. The only witness to the father's disappearance is Eugene, who has the rare genetic condition Angelman syndrome and cannot speak.

What follows is both a ticking-clock investigation into the father's whereabouts and an emotionally rich exploration of family dynamics. Angie Kim turns the missing-person story into something wholly original, creating an indelible tale of a family who must understand one another to uncover the truth.

A Game of Lies

They say the camera never lies.

But on this show, you can't trust anything you see.

Stranded in the Welsh mountains, seven reality show contestants have no idea what they've signed up for.

Each of these strangers has a secret. If another player can guess the truth, they won't just be eliminated - they'll be exposed live on air. The stakes are higher than they'd ever imagined, and they're trapped.

The disappearance of a contestant wasn't supposed to be part of the drama. Detective Ffion Morgan has to put aside what she's watched on screen, and find out who these people really are - knowing she can't trust any of them.

And when a murderer strikes, Ffion knows every one of her suspects has an alibi . . . and a secret worth killing for.

Ordinary Human Failings

2023

by Megan Nolan

It's 1990 in London, and Tom Hargreaves has it all: a burgeoning career as a reporter, fierce ambition, and a brisk disregard for the 'peasants' - ordinary people, his readers, easy tabloid fodder. His star looks set to rise when he stumbles across a scoop: a dead child on a London estate, grieving parents loved across the neighbourhood, and the finger of suspicion pointing at one reclusive family of Irish immigrants and 'bad apples': the Greens.

At their heart sits Carmel: beautiful, other-worldly, broken, and once destined for a future beyond her circumstances until life - and love - got in her way. Crushed by failure and surrounded by disappointment, there's nowhere for her to go and no chance of escape. Now, with the police closing in on a suspect and the tabloids hunting their monster, she must confront the secrets and silences that have trapped her family for so many generations.

Midnight

2023

by Amy McCulloch

When she's gifted a once-in-a-lifetime Antarctic cruise, Olivia has never been anywhere so spectacular.

Huge cliffs of ice loom up to the sky. The sun never sets over the sparkling sea. And there's a killer on board...

Unable to sleep in the endless eerie daylight, Olivia has no idea who she can trust. And if she can't figure it out soon, she won't make it back alive...

All The Sinners Bleed

2023

by S.A. Cosby

A Black sheriff. A serial killer. A small town ready to combust.

Titus Crown is the first Black sheriff in the history of Charon County, Virginia. In recent decades, Charon has had only two murders. After years of working as an FBI agent, Titus knows better than anyone that while his hometown might seem like a land of moonshine, cornbread, and honeysuckle, secrets always fester under the surface.

Then a year to the day after Titus’s election, a school teacher is killed by a former student and the student is fatally shot by Titus’s deputies. Those festering secrets are now out in the open and ready to tear the town apart.

As Titus investigates the shootings, he unearths terrible crimes and a serial killer who has been hiding in plain sight, haunting the dirt lanes and woodland clearings of Charon. With the killer’s possible connections to a local church and the town’s harrowing history weighing on him, Titus projects confidence about closing the case while concealing a painful secret from his own past. At the same time, he also has to contend with a far-right group that wants to hold a parade in celebration of the town’s Confederate history.

Powerful and unforgettable, All the Sinners Bleed confirms S. A. Cosby as “one of the most muscular, distinctive, grab-you-by-both-ears voices in American crime fiction”.

Yellowface

2023

by R.F. Kuang

Yellowface has been described as 'A riot' by PANDORA SYKES, 'Razor-sharp' by TIME, 'A wild ride' by STYLIST, 'Darkly comic' by GQ, and 'Satirical and humorous' by COSMOPOLITAN. It introduces us to Athena Liu, a literary darling, and June Hayward, literally nobody.

When Athena dies in a freak accident, June steals her unpublished manuscript and publishes it as her own under the ambiguous name Juniper Song. With a blend of dark humour, as evidence threatens June's stolen success, she will discover exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves, leading to deadly consequences. What happens next is entirely everyone else's fault.

The Day of the Jackal

The Day of the Jackal is a classic thriller that stands as a benchmark in the genre, earning its place among other notable works such as The Manchurian Candidate and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. It is often compared to the mysteries of the Hardy Boys for its depth and complexity.

The narrative centers around the Jackal, a mysterious and professional assassin. Described as a tall, blond Englishman with opaque, gray eyes, he is at the top of his profession. Unknown to any secret service in the world, he is tasked with a contract to kill the world's most heavily guarded man.

Armed with just a rifle, the Jackal has the power to change the course of history. His mission is so secretive that not even his employers know his name. As the minutes tick down to the final act of execution, it becomes apparent that no power on earth can stop the Jackal.

Small Mercies

2023

by Dennis Lehane

Small Mercies, a compelling novel by Dennis Lehane, unfolds against the backdrop of a sweltering Boston summer in 1974. Mary Pat Fennessy is caught in a relentless struggle to fend off the bill collectors, living a life steeped in the traditions of Southie, the Irish American neighborhood that prides itself on its heritage and independence.

As the city simmers under a heatwave, Mary Pat's world is upended when her teenage daughter Jules fails to return home one evening. Concurrently, the mysterious death of a young Black man on the subway tracks appears to be a separate tragedy. Yet, as Mary Pat delves deeper into her search for Jules, she unwittingly stirs the pot of a brewing storm—posing questions that draw the ire of Marty Butler, the local Irish mob boss, and his henchmen who are quick to silence any disturbance to their operations.

Set against the explosive period of school desegregation in Boston, which ignites violence in the streets, Small Mercies is not just a thriller; it's a stark portrayal of criminality, the abuse of power, and a raw examination of America's persistent racial divide. Lehane delivers a narrative that is as enthralling as it is unsettling—a testament to his prowess as one of the finest novelists of our time.

The Wager

2023

by David Grann

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon, The Wager is a riveting story of shipwreck, survival, and the wild extremes of human behavior. David Grann delivers a narrative with the suspense of a thriller, revealing the profound implications of the events aboard the Wager, and challenging the very notion of empire.

On January 28, 1742, a makeshift vessel stumbled upon the coast of Brazil with thirty severely weakened men. These survivors of the British ship, the Wager, recounted an incredible ordeal. Dispatched from England in 1740 during a war with Spain, the Wager was in pursuit of a Spanish galleon laden with treasure when disaster struck off the Patagonian coast.

Marooned and facing death, the crew constructed a crude boat and embarked on an extraordinary 2500-mile voyage across tempestuous waters, only to be branded as heroes upon their return. However, a subsequent arrival of three castaways in Chile unveiled a starkly contrasting narrative of mutiny and betrayal. As the Admiralty held a court martial to uncover the truth, the account of anarchy, conflict, and murder emerged, leading to a verdict that could mean the gallows for the accused.

Grann's masterful recounting of this historical saga echoes the literary achievements of Patrick O’Brian and the gripping survival tales akin to The Endurance. The Wager is a testament to the extremes of human conduct in the face of adversity, crafted by one of today's most exceptional nonfiction storytellers.

Birnam Wood

2023

by Eleanor Catton

Birnam Wood is Shakespearean in its drama, Austenian in its wit, and, like both influences, fascinated by what makes us who we are. It is an unflinching look at the surprising consequences of even our most well-intended actions, and an enthralling consideration of the human impulse to ensure our own survival.

A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand’s South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster has created an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. For years, the group has struggled to break even. Then Mira, Birnam Wood’s founder, stumbles on an answer: occupying the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last.

But Mira is not the only one interested in Thorndike. The enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker, or so he tells Mira when he catches her on the property. Intrigued by Mira and Birnam Wood, he makes them an offer that would set them up for the long term. But can they trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust one another?

I Have Some Questions for You

2023

by Rebecca Makkai

A successful film professor and podcaster, Bodie Kane, is content to forget her past—the family tragedy that marred her adolescence, her four largely miserable years at a New Hampshire boarding school, and the murder of her former roommate, Thalia Keith, in the spring of their senior year. Though the circumstances surrounding Thalia's death and the conviction of the school's athletic trainer, Omar Evans, are hotly debated online, Bodie prefers—needs—to let sleeping dogs lie.

But when the Granby School invites her back to teach a course, Bodie is inexorably drawn to the case and its increasingly apparent flaws. In their rush to convict Omar, did the school and the police overlook other suspects? Is the real killer still out there? As she falls down the very rabbit hole she was so determined to avoid, Bodie begins to wonder if she wasn't as much of an outsider at Granby as she'd thought—if, perhaps, back in 1995, she knew something that might have held the key to solving the case.

In I Have Some Questions for You, award-winning author Rebecca Makkai has crafted her most irresistible novel yet: a stirring investigation into collective memory and a deeply felt examination of one woman's reckoning with her past, with a transfixing mystery at its heart. Timely, hypnotic, and populated with a cast of unforgettable characters, I Have Some Questions for You is at once a compulsive page-turner and a literary triumph.

Bel Canto

2023

by Ann Patchett

In an unnamed South American country, a world-renowned soprano sings at a birthday party in honor of a visiting Japanese industrial titan. Alas, in the opening sequence, a ragtag band of 18 terrorists enters the vice-presidential mansion through the air conditioning ducts. Their quarry is the president, who has unfortunately stayed home to watch a favorite soap opera. And thus, from the beginning, things go awry.

Among the hostages are Russian, Italian, and French diplomatic types. Swiss Red Cross negotiator Joachim Messner comes and goes, wrangling over terms and demands. Days stretch into weeks, the weeks into months. Joined by no common language except music, the 58 international hostages and their captors forge unexpected bonds. Time stands still, priorities rearrange themselves. Ultimately, of course, something has to give.

Hearing opera sung live for the first time, a young priest reflects: 'Never had he thought, never once, that such a woman existed, one who stood so close to God that God's own voice poured from her. How far she must have gone inside herself to call up that voice. It was as if the voice came from the center part of the earth and by the sheer effort and diligence of her will she had pulled it up through the dirt and rock and through the floorboards of the house, up into her feet, where it pulled through her, reaching, lifting, warmed by her, and then out of the white lily of her throat and straight to God in heaven.'

Age of Vice

2023

by Deepti Kapoor

This is the age of vice, where money, pleasure, and power are everything, and the family ties that bind can also kill.

New Delhi, 3 a.m. A speeding Mercedes jumps the curb and in the blink of an eye, five people are dead. It's a rich man's car, but when the dust settles there is no rich man at all, just a shell-shocked servant who cannot explain the strange series of events that led to this crime. Nor can he foresee the dark drama that is about to unfold.

Deftly shifting through time and perspective in contemporary India, Age of Vice is an epic, action-packed story propelled by the seductive wealth, startling corruption, and bloodthirsty violence of the Wadia family — loved by some, loathed by others, feared by all.

In the shadow of lavish estates, extravagant parties, predatory business deals and calculated political influence, three lives become dangerously intertwined: Ajay is the watchful servant, born into poverty, who rises through the family's ranks. Sunny is the playboy heir who dreams of outshining his father, whatever the cost. And Neda is the curious journalist caught between morality and desire. Against a sweeping plot fueled by loss, pleasure, greed, yearning, violence and revenge, will these characters' connections become a path to escape, or a trigger of further destruction?

Equal parts crime thriller and family saga, transporting readers from the dusty villages of Uttar Pradesh to the urban energy of New Delhi, Age of Vice is an intoxicating novel of gangsters and lovers, false friendships, forbidden romance, and the consequences of corruption. It is binge-worthy entertainment at its literary best.

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