Book picks similar to
Whispering Bodies: A Roy Belkin Disaster by Jesse Michaels
fiction
book-club
contemporary
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Ill Will
Dan Chaon - 2017
“We are always telling a story to ourselves, about ourselves,” Dustin Tillman likes to say. It’s one of the little mantras he shares with his patients, and it’s meant to be reassuring. But what if that story is a lie?A psychologist in suburban Cleveland, Dustin is drifting through his forties when he hears the news: His adopted brother, Rusty, is being released from prison. Thirty years ago, Rusty received a life sentence for the massacre of Dustin’s parents, aunt, and uncle. The trial came to symbolize the 1980s hysteria over Satanic cults; despite the lack of physical evidence, the jury believed the outlandish accusations Dustin and his cousin made against Rusty. Now, after DNA analysis has overturned the conviction, Dustin braces for a reckoning.Meanwhile, one of Dustin’s patients gets him deeply engaged in a string of drowning deaths involving drunk college boys. At first Dustin dismisses talk of a serial killer as paranoid thinking, but as he gets wrapped up in their amateur investigation, Dustin starts to believe that there’s more to the deaths than coincidence. Soon he becomes obsessed, crossing all professional boundaries—and putting his own family in harm’s way.From one of today’s most renowned practitioners of literary suspense, Ill Will is an intimate thriller about the failures of memory and the perils of self-deception. In Dan Chaon’s nimble, chilling prose, the past looms over the present, turning each into a haunted place.
The Execution of Noa P. Singleton
Elizabeth L. Silver - 2013
Singleton never spoke a word in her own defense throughout a brief trial that ended with a jury finding her guilty of first-degree murder. Ten years later, having accepted her fate, she sits on death row in a maximum-security penitentiary, just six months away from her execution date. Seemingly out of the blue, she is visited by Marlene Dixon, a high-powered Philadelphia attorney who is also the mother of the woman Noa was imprisoned for killing. Marlene tells Noa that she has changed her mind about the death penalty and Noa’s sentence, and will do everything in her considerable power to convince the governor to commute the sentence to life in prison, in return for the one thing Noa is unwilling to trade: her story. Marlene desperately wants Noa to reveal the events that led to her daughter’s death—events that Noa has never shared with a soul. With death looming, Marlene believes that Noa may finally give her the answers she needs, though Noa is far from convinced that Marlene deserves the salvation she alone can deliver. Inextricably linked by murder but with very different goals, Noa and Marlene wrestle with the sentences life itself can impose while they confront the best and worst of what makes us human in this haunting tale of love, anguish, and deception.
The Silent Sister
Diane Chamberlain - 2014
Now, over twenty years later, her father has passed away and she's in New Bern, North Carolina cleaning out his house when she finds evidence to the contrary. Lisa is alive. Alive and living under a new identity. But why exactly was she on the run all those years ago, and what secrets are being kept now? As Riley works to uncover the truth, her discoveries will put into question everything she thought she knew about her family. Riley must decide what the past means for her present, and what she will do with her newfound reality, in this engrossing New York Times bestselling mystery from Diane Chamberlain.
The Never List
Koethi Zan - 2013
But one night, against their best instincts, they accept a cab ride with grave, everlasting consequences. For the next three years, they are held captive with two other girls in a dungeon-like cellar by a connoisseur of sadism.Ten years later, at thirty-one, Sarah is still struggling to resume a normal life, living as a virtual recluse under a new name, unable to come to grips with the fact that Jennifer didn’t make it out of that cellar. Now, her abductor is up for parole and Sarah can no longer ignore the twisted letters he sends from jail.Finally, Sarah decides to confront her phobias and the other survivors—who hold their own deep grudges against her. When she goes on a cross-country chase that takes her into the perverse world of BDSM, secret cults, and the arcane study of torture, she begins unraveling a mystery more horrifying than even she could have imagined.A shocking, blazingly fast read, Koethi Zan’s debut is a must for fans of Karin Slaughter, Laura Lippman, and S.J. Watson.
The Invisible Ones
Stef Penney - 2011
It has been seven years since she disappeared, and nobody said a word. Now, following the death of his wife, her father Leon feels compelled to find her. Rumour had it she ran off when her baby boy was born with the family's genetic disorder. Leon is not so sure. He wants to know the truth and he hires a private investigator to discover it - Ray Lovell. Ray starts to delve deeper, but his investigation is hampered by the very people who ought to be helping him - the Jankos. He cannot understand their reluctance to help. Why don't they want to find Rose Janko?
Complicit
Stephanie Kuehn - 2014
Morris Award--winning author of Charm & Strange.Two years ago, sixteen-year-old Jamie Henry breathed a sigh of relief when a judge sentenced his older sister to juvenile detention for burning down their neighbor's fancy horse barn. The whole town did. Because Crazy Cate Henry used to be a nice girl. Until she did a lot of bad things. Like drinking. And stealing. And lying. Like playing weird mind games in the woods with other children. Like making sure she always got her way. Or else. But today Cate got out. And now she's coming back for Jamie. Because more than anything, Cate Henry needs her little brother to know this one simple truth: She's not the crazy one and never has been. When reading Complicit, trust nothing and no one as you race toward the explosive conclusion of this gripping psychological thriller from the William C. Morris Award - winning author of Charm & Strange.
Bye Baby Bunting
Tannis Laidlaw - 2012
A kidnapping. Escape.... University student Jemma Howell's life has turned upside down: she's pregnant and her boyfriend has just died. A lawyer has Jemma sign away the child to her dead boyfriend's parents, the wealthy Winchesters. Some six months after giving birth, Jemma is still obsessed with her baby's welfare. A chance opportunity occurs. She makes a split-second decision. She is now a kidnapper and on the run. Detective Constable Tim Findlay is assigned to the Winchester kidnapping, his first big case. In the course of the investigation, he and his partner uncover deeply hidden secrets of the Winchester family. For Tim, the difference between right and wrong becomes blurred. BYE BABY BUNTING is a page-turning psychological thriller that explores society's attitudes to single parenting and adoption and the laws that apply to birth-mother, child and adoptive parents. The story takes place in Auckland, New Zealand, Hawaii and Winnipeg, Canada between 1963 and the present.
Robbers
Christopher Cook - 2000
Now, with a pack of cigarettes, a stolen Caddy, and no plan, the two must think fast-and move faster, in this novel with "a lyric voice that sings itself raw."(New York Times Book Review) "My kind of book." (James Ellroy) "Cook's plot tumbles from scene to scene with jarring brilliance, the pathos of his characters lending his otherwise brutal world a certain beauty." (Publishers Weekly) "Elmore Leonard's laconic flair with the dumb and dangerous [and] James Lee Burke's lyric feel for the dark hearts in a New South-Robbers ranges wild and wide, deep through the heart of Texas." (Michael Malone, author of Time's Witness) "Cook clearly has the suspense-building gene...The nerve-jangling plot tick-tick-ticks toward its explosive end." (Texas Monthly) "High-octane...Cook takes the noir chase novel on some remarkable detours." (Booklist, starred review) "This is a terrific book. I haven't enjoyed a novel this much in years." (James Crumley, author of The Last Good Kiss)
Iron House
John Hart - 2011
Time to burn and time to kill, time for two young orphans to learn that life isn’t won without a fight. Julian survives only because his older brother, Michael, is fearless and fiercely protective. When tensions boil over and a boy is brutally killed, there is only one sacrifice left for Michael to make: He flees the orphanage and takes the blame with him.To keep her safe... For two decades, Michael has been an enforcer in New York’s world of organized crime, a prince of the streets so widely feared he rarely has to kill anymore. But the life he’s fought to build unravels when he meets Elena, a beautiful innocent who teaches him the meaning and power of love. He wants a fresh start with her, the chance to start a family like the one he and Julian never had. But someone else is holding the strings. And escape is not that easy. . . . Go to Hell, and come back burning.... The mob boss who gave Michael his blessing to begin anew is dying, and his son is intent on making Michael pay for his betrayal. Determined to protect the ones he loves, Michael spirits Elena—who knows nothing of his past crimes, or the peril he’s laid at her door— back to North Carolina, to the place he was born and the brother he lost so long ago. There, he will encounter a whole new level of danger, a thicket of deceit and violence that leads inexorably to the one place he’s been running from his whole life: Iron House.
Risk
Colin Harrison - 2009
But Mrs. Corbett, the rich, eccentric wife of the firm's founder, has it in mind to put George’s skills to a peculiar assignment. With only a few months to live, her one desire is to know the true circumstance of her son Roger's violent death. George's investigation leads him to Roger's mistress, a cagy Czech hand model named Eliska, whose motives for latching on to Mrs. Corbett's son may have gotten him killed. Set against a brilliantly-drawn Manhattan, at once volatile and vivid, Risk is prime Colin Harrison.
Always, 'Twas You
Jennifer Moore - 2018
But they lost touch and her dreams of a lasting love died. Now that she's back, Kaitlyn won't risk her heart again. But fate has other plans. She and Connor reconnect and he realizes the pendant makes her a target. As a government agent, Connor is conflicted between his duty protecting Kaitlyn and feelings he never got over. As the two race to find a centuries' old treasure, they discover first loves aren't easily forgotten.
The Short Drop
Matthew FitzSimmons - 2015
Still unsolved, the mystery remains a national obsession.For legendary hacker and marine Gibson Vaughn, the case is personal—Suzanne Lombard had been like a sister to him. On the tenth anniversary of her disappearance, the former head of Benjamin Lombard’s security asks for Gibson’s help in a covert investigation of the case, with new evidence in hand.Haunted by tragic memories, he jumps at the chance to uncover what happened all those years ago. Using his military and technical prowess, he soon discovers multiple conspiracies surrounding the Lombard family—and he encounters powerful, ruthless political players who will do anything to silence him and his team. With new information surfacing that could threaten Lombard’s bid for the presidency, Gibson must stay one step ahead as he navigates a dangerous web to get to the truth.
Indian Summer
C. James Brown - 2019
He’s also out of his element. He’s just an ex-cop from a small New Hampshire town turned private eye, who finds himself looking for a murderer among America’s modern-day aristocracy in Greenwich, Westchester, and the Upper East Side. Earl doesn’t much like these people, their lifestyles, or their attitudes, and they don’t like Earl. Along the way, they’ll underestimate him, mock him, seduce him, and even try to kill him.
I Love You More
Jennifer Murphy - 2014
A scintillating novel of betrayal and conspiracy. Picasso Lane is twelve years old when her father, Oliver, is murdered at their summer beach house. Her mother, Diana, is the primary suspect—until the police discover his second wife, and then his third. The women say they have never met—but Picasso knows otherwise. Picasso remembers the morning beautiful Jewels showed up at their house, carrying the same purse as her mother, and a family portrait featuring her father with two strange boys. Picasso remembers lifting the phone, listening to late night calls with Bert, a woman heavily pregnant with Oliver's fourth child. As the police circle and a detective named Kyle Kennedy becomes a regular fixture in their home, Picasso tries to make sense of her father's death, the depth of his deceit, and the secrets that bind these three women. Cunningly paced and plotted, I Love You More is a riveting novel of misplaced loyalty, jealousy, and revenge.