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Thrillers and Suspense November 2025 |
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Love, mom
by Iliana Xander
Mackenzie Casper has always lived in the shadow of her mother, a bestselling author known for writing twisted thrillers. But when her mother dies in a so-called accident, Mackenzie is left with more than grief. She’s left with questions. Then a letter arrives. Inside: pages from her mother’s diary and a chilling message: Want to know a secret? Love, Mom.
As more letters appear, Mackenzie uncovers buried family secrets, and one of them was worth killing for.
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| Crooks by Lou BerneyYou’ve never met a family like the Mercurios. They say the American dream is going farther in life than your parents ever did. But how does that work if your parents are criminals? For Buddy, a low-level mob wise guy, and Lillian, a charming pickpocket, the criminal underworld is the only life they’ve ever known. When they’re forced to flee the glittering Babylon of Las Vegas, they end up opening a club in Oklahoma City, a town that quickly feels like a gold mine of fresh marks and easy new money. Along for the ride are their five children, all of them raised into the family business of crime, until the day comes when they each have a chance to make their own way in the world, even if they can never completely escape the family’s long, dark shadow. Jeremy, the family’s Golden Boy, will throw himself into the glittering excesses of a drug-fueled Hollywood in the roaring 1980s. Tallulah, the daredevil, will find herself in the deadly Wild West of post-communist Moscow. Ray, the dope, the dumb muscle since he was a kid, wants nothing more than to put down his gun, but following orders is all he’s ever known. Alice, the genius who renounced her life of crime long ago, now sees her white-shoe law firm being blackmailed and must tap into old skills to save both the company and her own life. And Piggy, a civilian always on the outside looking in on his crime family, desperate to be part of the gang. |
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Please Don't Lie
by Christina Baker Kline
Two years ago, Hayley Stone lost everything. First, her parents died in a devastating fire. Then, her sister overdosed, leaving Hayley alone and hounded by a media circus that turned her family’s tragedy into tabloid fodder. When her new husband suggests a fresh start in the Adirondacks, the promise of anonymity in an isolated mountain town feels like salvation. But the mountains hold darker secrets than she ever imagined. Her once-loving husband grows distant and volatile. The widow down the road keeps spewing vague accusations. Not even their new friends, a free-spirited couple living on the property, can help Hayley shake the creeping sense that something is off. As winter edges closer, Hayley discovers that her sanctuary is anything but safe. Trapped and isolated, she faces a terrifying truth: in trying to escape her past, she may have run straight into something far more dangerous.
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| Photograph by Brian FreemanShannon Wells is a private investigator who helps women with nowhere else to go. Last year, a woman named Faith Selby came to Shannon with a strange request: Find out who I really am. Shannon soon discovered that Faith was hiding a whole other life, but was unable to penetrate the web of mystery the woman had built around her past. Now Faith is dead. The only clue to who she was and why she was murdered is an old photograph of a little girl in the rain outside a Midwestern motel. The hunt for answers takes Shannon from the hot beaches of Florida to a remote small town in Michigan as she peels away layer after layer of a shocking cold case that has rippled violently into the present. With each secret she uncovers, the danger around her grows, and forces Shannon to confront the demons hiding in her own past. |
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| King Sorrow by Joe HillArthur Oakes is a reader, a dreamer, and a student at Rackham College, Maine, renowned for its frosty winters, exceptional library, and beautiful buildings. But his idyll, and burgeoning romance with Gwen Underfoot is shattered when a local drug dealer and her partner corner him into one of the worst crimes he can imagine: stealing rare books from the college library. Trapped and desperate, Arthur turns to his closest friends for comfort and help. Together they dream up a wild, fantastical scheme to free Arthur from the cruel trap in which he finds himself. Wealthy, irrepressible Colin Wren suggests using the unnerving Crane journal (bound in the skin of its author) to summon a dragon to do their bidding. The others, brave, beautiful Alison Shiner; the battling twins Donna and Donovan McBride; and brainy, bold Gwen, don't hesitate to join Colin in an effort to smash reality and bring a creature of the impossible into our world. But there’s nothing simple about dealing with dragons, and their pact to save Arthur becomes a terrifying bargain in which the six must choose a new sacrifice for King Sorrow every year, or become his next meal. |
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The lake escape
by Jamie Day
Julia, David, and Erika grew up together spending summers at their idyllic Vermont lake homes for as long as they can remember. Now adults, with their own sullen teens, endless mortgages, and low-voltage sex lives, the three friends have amassed secrets over the years. This summer, David is eager to show off his newly renovated home, which now blocks his friends’ cherished lake views, and his much-younger girlfriend. He also, unwittingly, brings a nanny with a hidden agenda. What could possibly go wrong? When David’s girlfriend mysteriously vanishes after a shouting match, Julia and Erika wonder just how well they know their lifelong friend. The lake harbors a harrowing past: two young women, with no known connection, vanished without a trace thirty years ago. Did the lake take another? As a search is mounted, an intricate web of lies, deceits, and betrayals spanning generations starts to surface, and everyone finds themselves in danger of becoming the next victim. Of the lake, or something darker.
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| The Vanishing Place by Zoë RankinA child who ran from the forest. A woman who must return to it. Growing up with her younger siblings in the unforgiving New Zealand bush, Effie believed their parents had cut them off from civilization because they loved Nature. She never suspected that their reasons might be more menacing. After witnessing a terrifying episode of violence, she escaped the wilderness to forge a life for herself halfway across the globe. Now, when she learns the only witness to a murder is a little girl who looks just like her, Effie is compelled to return to the scene of her troubled childhood, where the secrets of her upbringing and the terrors of her past come rushing back to the surface. In order to find out once and for all what became of her family, and possibly help this mysterious girl who could be her younger self, Effie must face her greatest fears once more. |
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We don't talk about Carol : a novel
by Kristen L. Berry
In the wake of her grandmother's passing, Sydney Singleton finds a hidden photograph of a little girl who looks more like Sydney than her own sister or mother. She soon discovers the mystery girl in the photograph is her aunt, Carol, who was one of six North Carolina Black girls to go missing in the 1960s. For the last several decades, not a soul has talked about Carol or what really happened to her. But now, with her grandmother gone and Sydney looking to start a family of her own, she is determined to unravel the truth behind her long-lost aunt’s disappearance, and the sinister silence that surrounds her. Unfortunately, this is familiar territory for Sydney: Years earlier, while she worked the crime beat as a journalist, her obsession with the case of another missing girl led to a psychotic break. And now, in the suffocating grip of fertility treatments and a marriage that's beginning to crumble, Sydney’s relentless pursuit for answers might just lead her down the same path of self-destruction. As she delves deeper into Carol's fate, her own troubled past reemerges, clawing its way to the surface with a vengeance. The web of secrets and lies entangling her family leaves Sydney questioning everything, her fixation on the missing girls, her future as a mom, and her trust in those she knows and loves.
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Contact your librarian for more great books! |
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Albert Lea Public Library
211 E Clark St.
Albert Lea, Minnesota 56007
(507) 377-4350alplonline.org |
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