Book picks similar to
Thief of Souls by Ann Benson
historical-fiction
mystery
thriller
fiction
After Alice Fell
Kim Taylor Blakemore - 2021
Marion Abbott is summoned to Brawders House asylum to collect the body of her sister, Alice. She’d been found dead after falling four stories from a steep-pitched roof. Officially: an accident. Confidentially: suicide. But Marion believes a third option: murder.Returning to her family home to stay with her brother and his second wife, the recently widowed Marion is expected to quiet her feelings of guilt and grief—to let go of the dead and embrace the living. But that’s not easy in this house full of haunting memories.Just when the search for the truth seems hopeless, a stranger approaches Marion with chilling words: I saw her fall.Now Marion is more determined than ever to find out what happened that night at Brawders, and why. With no one she can trust, Marion may risk her own life to uncover the secrets buried with Alice in the family plot.
Cop Town
Karin Slaughter - 2014
For life is anything but easy in the male-dominated world of the Atlanta Police Department.Kate isn't the only woman on the force who is finding things tough. Maggie Lawson followed her uncle and brother into the ranks to prove her worth in their cynical eyes.When Maggie and Kate become partners, and are sidelined in the search for the city's cop killer, they decide to pursue their own line of investigation. But are they prepared to risk everything as they venture into the city's darkest heart?
Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook
Celia Rees - 2020
The Control Commission hires British civilians to work in Germany, rebuild the shattered nation and prosecute war crimes. Somewhat aimless, bored with her job as a provincial schoolteacher, and unwilling to live with her stuffy genteel parents any longer, twentysomething Edith Graham applies for a job with the Commission—but is instead recruited by the OSS. To them, Edith is perfect spy material…single, ordinary-looking, with a college degree in German. And there’s another thing—the OSS knows that Edith’s brother went to Oxford with one of their most hunted war criminals, Count Kurt von Stabenow, who Edith remembers all too well from before the war.Intrigued by the challenge, Edith heads to Germany armed with a convincing cover story: she’s an unassuming schoolteacher sent to help resurrect German primary schools. To send information back to her OSS handlers in London, Edith has crafted the perfect alter ego, cookbook author Stella Snelling, who writes a popular magazine cookery column that embeds crucial intelligence within the recipes she collects. But occupied Germany is awash with other spies, collaborators, and opportunists, and as she’s pulled into their world, Edith soon discovers that no one is what they seem to be. The closer she gets to uncovering von Stabenow’s whereabouts—and the network of German civilians who still support him—the greater the danger. With a unique, compelling premise, Miss Graham’s Cold War Cookbook is a beautifully crafted and gripping novel about daring, betrayal, and female friendship.
Himself
Jess Kidd - 2017
His arrival causes cheeks to flush and arms to fold in disapproval. No one in the village - living or dead - will tell what happened to the teenage mother who abandoned him as a baby, despite Mahony's certainty that more than one of them has answers. Between Mulderrig’s sly priest, its pitiless nurse and the caustic elderly actress throwing herself into her final village play, this beautiful and darkly comic debut novel creates an unforgettable world of mystery, bloody violence and buried secrets.
When She Returned
Lucinda Berry - 2019
When she shows up at a Montana gas station, clutching an infant and screaming for help, investigators believe she may have been abducted by a cult.Kate’s return flips her family’s world upside down—her husband is remarried, and her daughter barely remembers her. Kate herself doesn’t look or act like she did before.While the family tries to help Kate reintegrate into society, they discover truths they’ve been hiding from each other about their own relationships. But they aren’t the only ones with secrets. As the family unravels what happened to Kate, a series of shocking revelations shows that Kate’s return is more sinister than any of them could have imagined.
The Edge of Lost
Kristina McMorris - 2015
A prison guard’s only daughter—one of the youngest civilians who lives on the island—has gone missing. Tending the warden’s greenhouse, convicted bank robber Tommy Capello waits anxiously. Only he knows the truth about the little girl’s whereabouts, and that both of their lives depend on the search’s outcome.Almost two decades earlier and thousands of miles away, a young boy named Shanley Keagan ekes out a living as an aspiring vaudevillian in Dublin pubs. Talented and shrewd, Shan dreams of shedding his dingy existence and finding his real father in America. The chance finally comes to cross the Atlantic, but when tragedy strikes, Shan must summon all his ingenuity to forge a new life in a volatile and foreign world.Skilfully weaving these two stories, Kristina McMorris delivers a compelling novel that moves from Ireland to New York to San Francisco Bay. As her finely crafted characters discover the true nature of loyalty, sacrifice, and betrayal, they are forced to confront the lies we tell—and believe—in order to survive.
12.21
Dustin Thomason - 2012
. . Deep in the jungles of Central America, an indigenous man discovers a unique and priceless treasure - a beautifully painted codex that has survived for centuries within the ruins of an undiscovered ancient Maya city. Knowing that this rare artifact could be worth millions, the looter smuggles it into the US - but unbeknownst to him, he has brought something far more dangerous across the border . . . In the first week of December 2012, the codex finds its way into the hands of the Antiquities Curator of the Getty Museum, Chel Manu, the world authority on ancient Mayan inscriptions. She is torn between her duty to alert the authorities and this once in a lifetime chance to translate the codex herself.Meanwhile - in an LA hospital, an unidentified man is dying of Fatal Insomnia, a rare and highly infectious neurological disease. The patient speaks only in a garbled Mayan dialect - and Chel Manu is called in to interpret his dying words . . . just as countless others in the city begin to show signs of infection. Within days the world seems to be unravelling, hurtling towards the prophesied apocalypse . . . and deciphering the codex is the only hope for humanity . . .
All Our Darkest Secrets
Martyn Ford - 2021
But what if that meant making the biggest mistake of all?James Casper is one of the good guys. A DEA agent. A loyal husband. With his sights set on the man at the top of the city’s opioid crisis, James is about to make the biggest bust of his career.Then his beloved wife Rosie does something terrible, and James must choose: report it—or help her. He knows how this works, and he tells himself he’s smart enough to get away with murder. But James’s worst enemy knows what they have done—and he won’t hesitate to use it to manipulate him.James is dragged into a dark and dangerous world. As events spiral and loyalties are tested, he realizes there’s only one way out. And that is to be even more ruthless than the people he’s working for.Whatever happens, no matter how far he falls, at least he’ll still have Rosie.Won’t he?
Hide Away
Jason Pinter - 2020
After an unspeakable crime shatters her life, she changes her identity and moves to a small town in Illinois, hoping to spare her children from further trauma…or worse. But crime follows her everywhere.When the former mayor winds up dead, Rachel can’t help but get involved. Where local detectives see suicide, she sees murder. They resent her for butting in—especially since she’s always one step ahead. But her investigative genius may be her undoing: the deeper she digs, the harder it is to keep her own secrets buried.Her persistence makes her the target of both the cops and a killer. Meanwhile, the terrifying truth about her past threatens to come to light, and Rachel learns the hard way that she can’t trust anyone. Surrounded by danger, she must keep her steely resolve, protect her family, and stay one step ahead, or else she may become the next victim.
A Painted House
John Grisham - 2001
It was a Wednesday, early in September 1952. The Cardinals were five games behind the Dodgers with three weeks to go, and the season looked hopeless. The cotton, however, was waist-high to my father, over my head, and he and my grandfather could be heard before supper whispering words that were seldom heard. It could be a "good crop."Thus begins the new novel from John Grisham, a story inspired by his own childhood in rural Arkansas. The narrator is a farm boy named Luke Chandler, age seven, who lives in the cotton fields with his parents and grandparents in a little house that's never been painted. The Chandlers farm eighty acres that they rent, not own, and when the cotton is ready they hire a truckload of Mexicans and a family from the Ozarks to help harvest it.For six weeks they pick cotton, battling the heat, the rain, the fatigue, and sometimes each other. As the weeks pass Luke sees and hears things no seven-year-old could possibly be prepared for, and he finds himself keeping secrets that not only threaten the crop but will change the lives of the Chandlers forever. ©2000, 2001 Belfry Holdings, Inc. (P)2001 Random House, Inc. Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio Publishing, a Division of Random House, Inc.
The Alchemist's Secret
Scott Mariani - 2007
But it soon becomes apparent that others are hunting this most precious of treasures – for far more evil ends. It seems that everyone – from the Nazis of the past to the shadowy modern organisation known as Gladius Domini – wants to uncover the secrets of immortality.Teaming up with attractive American scientist Dr Roberta Ryder, Ben is led on a wild and dangerous trail from Paris to the ancient Cathar strongholds of the Languedoc, where an astonishing secret has lain hidden for centuries…
The Shadow Land
Elizabeth Kostova - 2017
A young American woman, Alexandra Boyd, has traveled to Sofia, Bulgaria, hoping that life abroad will salve the wounds left by the loss of her beloved brother. Soon after arriving in this elegant East European city, however, she helps an elderly couple into a taxi and realizes too late that she has accidentally kept one of their bags. Inside she finds an ornately carved wooden box engraved with a name: Stoyan Lazarov. Raising the hinged lid, she discovers that she is holding an urn filled with human ashes. As Alexandra sets out to locate the family and return this precious item, she will first have to uncover the secrets of a talented musician who was shattered by oppression and she will find out all too quickly that this knowledge is fraught with its own danger. Kostova's new novel is a tale of immense scope that delves into the horrors of a century and traverses the culture and landscape of this mysterious country. Suspenseful and beautifully written, it explores the power of stories, the pull of the past, and the hope and meaning that can sometimes be found in the aftermath of loss.
Lightning Strike
William Kent Krueger - 2021
In the summer of 1963, it is the whole world to 12-year-old Cork O’Connor, its rhythms as familiar as his own heartbeat. But when Cork stumbles upon the body of a man he revered hanging from a tree in an abandoned logging camp, it is the first in a series of events that will cause him to question everything he took for granted about his hometown, his family, and himself.Cork’s father, Liam O’Connor, is Aurora’s sheriff, and it is his job to confirm that the man’s death was the result of suicide, as all the evidence suggests. In the shadow of his father’s official investigation, Cork begins to look for answers on his own. Together, father and son face the ultimate test of choosing between what their heads tell them is true and what their hearts know is right.In this masterful story of a young man and a town on the cusp of change, beloved novelist William Kent Krueger shows that some mysteries can be solved even as others surpass our understanding.
The Sacred Bones
Michael Byrnes - 2007
. .So begins The Sacred Bones by Michael Byrnes, a page-turning novel from a new voice on the thriller scene. With the violent theft leaving thirteen Israeli soldiers and policemen dead, and the Palestinians up in arms over the desecration of sacred grounds, the tension between the two groups is dangerously high. Jerusalem is a stick of dynamite and the fuse has been lit. . . .Across the Mediterranean in Italy, American forensic scientist Charlotte Hennesey has been hired by the Vatican to examine the contents of a newly discovered archeological treasure: a two-thousand-year-old ossuary containing the bones of an unidentified, crucified man—the first complete skeleton of a crucifixion victim ever found. Together with Italian anthropologist Giovanni Bersei, Charlotte makes startling forensic and genetic discoveries that lead her to wonder—could these be the bones of Jesus Christ?With the situation in Jerusalem veering out of control and the malevolent eye of Vatican security expert Salvatore Conte watching her every step, Charlotte puts two and two together. She knows that if the mortal remains of Christ are indeed in the burial box, the implications—for history and science, for religion and the Church—are frighteningly vast. And even more immediate is the question of whether the Vatican will allow the information—and Charlotte—to see the light of day.Fast-paced and intelligent, blending historical fact with persuasive fiction, The Sacred Bones reads like a CSI episode penned by The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown. From a conspiracy stretching back to the days of the Templar Knights to the shifting alliances of contemporary Middle Eastern politics, The Sacred Bones is an addictively compelling thriller that calls into question many of modern religion's deepest-held beliefs about Judaism, Jesus Christ and early Christianity, and Islam . . . with stunning results.
Thick as Thieves
Sandra Brown - 2020
But by daybreak, their plan had been shot to hell. One of them was in the hospital. One was in jail. One was dead. And one got away with it.Arden Maxwell, the daughter of the man who disappeared all those years ago -- presumably with the money, after murdering his accomplice -- has never reconciled with her father's abandonment of her and her sister. After countless personal setbacks she decides to return to her family home near mysterious Caddo Lake, and finally get answers to the many questions that torment her. Little does she know, two of her father's co-conspirators -- a war hero and a corrupt district attorney -- are watching her every move.Ledge Burnet, a rebellious teen at the time of the heist, evaded his jail sentence by enlisting in the army. Now he's back in town to care for his ailing father -- and to keep his eye on the county's corrupt district attorney, whom he suspects was the real murderer. Although the two are bound to silence because of the crime they committed together, each has spent years waiting and hoping that the other will make a fatal misstep. But the arrival of their elusive accomplice's daughter, Arden, who may know more about the missing money than she's telling, sets them both on red alert. She ignites Ledge's determination to expose the D.A.'s treachery . . . and sparks a desire he wishes to deny.