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Thrillers and Suspense December 2020
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| Only Truth by Julie CameronWhat it's about: Londoner Izzy Dryland-Weir agrees to leave the city for the suburbs after her husband suggests it might help with the lingering trauma and anxiety that plagues her after an assault. But while renovating their new home they come across evidence that it may have a dark past that could make Izzy's problems much, much worse.
Reviewers say: "A deep plunge into a haunted psyche slowly stretched to the breaking point" (Kirkus Reviews). |
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| She Lies Close by Sharon DoeringThe premise: Recently divorced insomniac Grace Wright has just moved with her two young children to Saint's Crossing, a neighborhood that seems like the perfect place for a fresh start.
The problem: Grace learns that a neighbor was once the primary suspect in the case of a missing girl and she is (understandably) curious about what happened. The mix of insomnia and obsession lead to strange gaps in her memory, and Grace grows increasingly paranoid about what people -- including herself -- are capable of. |
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| They Never Learn by Layne FargoStarring: esteemed English professor Scarlett Clark, whose respectable image is the perfect cover for her primary extracurricular activity -- vigilante justice.
They had it coming? Each victim Scarlett chooses is a man who got away with sexual assault, whose deaths she stages as suicides. She's been at it for years, which is why she isn't prepared when questions about the demise of her latest victim (a popular college athlete) refuse to die down. |
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| These Violent Delights by Micah NemereverWhat it's about: the thrilling, toxic relationship between two college students in 1970s Pittsburgh -- insecure, working class Paul and blithe, wealthy Julian.
What goes wrong: fueled by their families' efforts to keep them apart, the two grow increasingly obsessed with each other and with removing every obstacle standing between them and a life together, with potentially fatal consequences for everyone involved. |
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They're gone : a novel
by E. A. Barres
A northern Virginia freelance editor and a Baltimore bartender search for answers and scramble to protect their surviving loved ones on a night when the seemingly unrelated deaths of their husbands expose devastating secrets.
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Snake Island : a novel
by Ben Hobson
"In an isolated town on the coast of southern Australia, Vernon Moore and his wife, Penelope, live in retirement, haunted by an unspeakable act of violence that sent their son, Caleb, to serve time in prison and has driven the couple apart. Ashamed, theyrefuse to talk about him or visit, but when a close friend warns Vernon that Caleb has been savagely beaten, he has no choice but to act to protect their only child. The perpetrator of the beating is a local thug from a crime family whose patriarch holdssway over the town, with the police in his pay. Everyone knows they trade in drugs. When Vernon maneuvers to negotiate a deal with the father, he makes a critical error. His mistake unleashes a cycle of violence that escalates to engulf the whole town, taking lives with it, revealing what has been hiding in plain sight in this picturesque rural community and threatening to overtake his son"
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The Push
by Claire McGowan
The party should have been perfect: six couples from the same baby group, six newborns, a luxurious house. But not everything has gone to plan, and while some are here to celebrate, others have sorrows to drown. When someone falls from the balcony of the house, the secrets and conflicts within the group begin to spill out ...DS Alison Hegarty, herself struggling with infertility, is called in to investigate. She's convinced the fall was not an accident, and finds the new parents have a lot to hide. Wealthy Ed and Monica show off their newborn while their teenage daughter is kept under virtual house arrest. Hazel and Cathy conceived their longed-for baby via an anonymous sperm donor--or so Hazel thinks. Anita and Jeremy planned to adopt from America, but there's no sign of the child. Kelly, whose violent boyfriend disrupted previous group sessions, came to the party even though she lost her baby. And then there's Jax, who's been experiencing strange incidents for months--almost like someone's out to get her. Is it just a difficult pregnancy? Or could it be payback for something she did in the past? It's a nightmare of a case, and as events get even darker it begins to look impossible. Only one thing is clear: they all have something to hide. And for one of them, it's murder.
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The land
by Thomas James Maltman
Searching for his missing lover in the Minnesota wilderness, a hobbyist programmer recovering from an accident uncovers a white supremacist church where zealot members are preparing for the apocalypse amid bizarre phenomena. By the award-winning author of Little Wolves.
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| The Secrets We Kept by Lara PrescottWhat it is: a sweeping, richly detailed story about censorship and Cold War women inspired by inspired by the true story behind the publication of Boris Pasternak's classic novel Doctor Zhivago:
The key players: Russian-American CIA agent Irina Drozdova, who gets in over her head in more ways than one after taking the assignment; Olga Vsevolodovna, Pasternak's long-time partner who risks the gulag rather than betray the details of his emerging masterpiece to Soviet authorities. |
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| A Good Enough Mother by Bev ThomasWhat it's about: Psychotherapist Ruth Hartland finds her professional ethics tested by a deeply troubled new patient, a young man who bears a striking resemblance to her own long-missing son.
Read it for: the authentic portrayal of Ruth's professional life; the delicate balance between the intricate plotting of the story and its deeply moving tone.
You might also like: The Liars Room by Simon Lelic or The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides, which also focus on therapists whose lives are upended by new patients. |
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| Theme Music by T. Marie VandellyWhat it is: a compelling, horror-tinged thriller that ponders the questions of trauma, memory, and whether or not you can ever really go home again.
Starring: Dixie Wheeler, the sole survivor of the massacre of her family who has decided that she wants to buy (and try to rehabilitate) the scene of the crime, her family home.
Try this next: Joseph Schreiber's No Doors, No Windows, which features a protagonist revisiting his own childhood trauma when he decided to complete his deceased father's unfinished horror novel. |
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| Three-Fifths by John VercherWhat it's about: the untenable position that Bobby Saraceno, a mixed-race man who has been passing for white, finds himself in after one of his friends commits a hate crime.
Read it for: the multifaceted characters, including Bobby's white alcoholic mother and long-absent Black father; the heightened tension as the story unfolds against the ever-present backdrop of the O.J. Simpson trial. |
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| American Spy by Lauren WilkinsonWhat it is: a stylistically complex novel, inspired by the true story of an African American FBI agent who accepts a CIA "honeypot" assignment targeting Thomas Sankara, communist revolutionary and eventual president of Burkina Faso.
Mixed emotions: Although agent Marie Mitchell is an experienced intelligence professional, the longer her African assignment goes on the more she comes to admire Sankara, both as a politician and as a man. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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