Book picks similar to
For Rye by Gavin Gardiner


horror
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mental-illness

Into the Darkest Corner


Elizabeth Haynes - 2007
    Gorgeous, charismatic, and a bit mysterious, Lee seems almost too perfect to be true.But what begins as flattering attention and spontaneous, passionate sex transforms into raging jealousy, and Catherine soon discovers that Lee's dazzling blue eyes and blond good looks hide a dark, violent nature. Disturbed by his increasingly erratic, controlling behavior, she tries to break it off; turning to her friends for support, she's stunned to find they don't believe her. Increasingly isolated and driven into the darkest corner of her world, a desperate Catherine plans a meticulous escape.Four years later, Lee is behind bars and Catherine—now Cathy—is trying to build a new life in a new city. Though her body has healed, the trauma of the past still haunts her. Then Stuart Richardson, her attractive new neighbor, moves in. Encouraging her to confront her fears, he sparks unexpected hope and the possibility of love and a normal life.Until the day the phone rings . . .

The Midnight Side


Natasha Mostert - 2000
    Lucid dreaming. A ghost manipulating the London stock exchange. And a truly frightening story of love gone wrong. THE MIDNIGHT SIDE is a chilling tale of a seductive woman who, even from the grave, is able to manipulate events to her satisfaction. A haunting story of obsession and revenge, Natasha Mostert’s novel is an intricate psychological thriller with an ending that will leave you breathless.

There Are No Saints


Sophie Lark - 2021
    Until the night we both laid eyes on Mara Eldritch.Shaw wants to use her as a pawn in his twisted game.I’m fixated on her for a different reason…She makes me feel things I never thought I could feel. Want things I never wanted.Only she can make me lose control.I don’t know if I should protect her at all costs… or destroy her before she ruins me.Mara knows I’m no saint. But she has no idea she’s dancing with the devil… The Lark Notes: I have always been fascinated by true crime, as well as by villains and anti-heroes. A serial killer is, of course, the ultimate anti-hero — the baddest of the bad boys. Redeeming a character who starts so evil was a challenge that inspired me to entirely new heights and entirely new depths. Come on this darkly sensual and utterly brain-bending ride with me! — Sophie"There Are No Saints” is the first book in the Sinners Duet. Reader be warned: this is a dark and steamy serial killer romance that will take you on a journey through the twisted mind of an artist on the brink of madness.

Devil's Creek


Todd Keisling - 2020
    According to local legend, there used to be a church out there, home to the Lord’s Church of Holy Voices—a death cult where Jacob Masters preached the gospel of a nameless god.And like most legends, there’s truth buried among the roots and bones.In 1983, the church burned to the ground following a mass suicide. Among the survivors were Jacob’s six children and their grandparents, who banded together to defy their former minister. Dubbed the “Stauford Six,” these children grew up amid scrutiny and ridicule, but their infamy has faded over the last thirty years.Now their ordeal is all but forgotten, and Jacob Masters is nothing more than a scary story told around campfires. For Jack Tremly, one of the Six, memories of that fateful night have fueled a successful art career—and a lifetime of nightmares. When his grandmother Imogene dies, Jack returns to Stauford to settle her estate. What he finds waiting for him are secrets Imogene kept in his youth, secrets about his father and the church. Secrets that can no longer stay buried. The roots of Jacob’s buried god run deep, and within the heart of Devil’s Creek, something is beginning to stir…

Wrath (Elizabeth Monroe Book 1)


Tom Lowe - 2017
    When forensic psychologist Elizabeth Monroe crosses the midpoint on the bridge in search of her daughter’s killer, there is no turning back. WRATH

Pretty Baby


Mary Kubica - 2015
    She boards a train and is whisked away. But she can't get the girl out of her head...Heidi Wood has always been a charitable woman: she works for a nonprofit, takes in stray cats. Still, her husband and daughter are horrified when Heidi returns home one day with a young woman named Willow and her four-month-old baby in tow. Disheveled and apparently homeless, this girl could be a criminal—or worse. But despite her family's objections, Heidi invites Willow and the baby to take refuge in their home.Heidi spends the next few days helping Willow get back on her feet, but as clues into Willow's past begin to surface, Heidi is forced to decide how far she's willing to go to help a stranger. What starts as an act of kindness quickly spirals into a story far more twisted than anyone could have anticipated.

The Room


Hubert Selby Jr. - 1971
    Selby's second novel is a claustrophobic descent into the tormented soul of a man trapped in a loveless society.

The Wicked Sister


Karen Dionne - 2020
    But what if it's been hunting her this whole time? From the bestselling and award-winning author of The Marsh King's Daughter comes a startling novel of psychological suspense as two generations of sisters try to unravel their tangled relationships between nature and nurture, guilt and betrayal, love and evil.You have been cut off from society for fifteen years, shut away in a mental hospital in self-imposed exile as punishment for the terrible thing you did when you were a child.But what if nothing about your past is as it seems?And if you didn't accidentally shoot and kill your mother, then whoever did is still out there. Waiting for you.For a decade and a half, Rachel Cunningham has chosen to lock herself away in a psychiatric facility, tortured by gaps in her memory and the certainty that she is responsible for her parents' deaths. But when she learns new details about their murders, Rachel returns, in a quest for answers, to the place where she once felt safest: her family's sprawling log cabin in the remote forests of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.As Rachel begins to uncover what really happened on the day her parents were murdered, she learns—as her mother did years earlier—that home can be a place of unspeakable evil, and that the bond she shares with her sister might be the most poisonous of all.

Plastic


Christopher Fowler - 2013
    After discovering her husband’s infidelity with her flight attendant neighbour, Hilary ‘Boarding From The Rear’ Cooper, she loses her home, her husband and her credit rating. • Then her best pal Lou offers a solution; a mutual friend needs someone reliable to act as caretaker in a spectacular London high-rise apartment. It’s just for the weekend, but there’s good money in it… Seizing the opportunity to escape, June moves into the penthouse only to find that there’s no electricity and the phones don’t work. She must flat-sit until the security system comes back on. When a terrified girl breaks into the flat and June makes the mistake of asking the neighbours for help, she finds herself embroiled in an escalating nightmare, trying to prove that a murderer exists. Over the next 24 hours she must survive on the streets without friends or money, solve an impossible crime, and fight off the urge to buy a new wardrobe. • Christopher Fowler’s cult novel features a foreword by Joanne Harris. • ‘The dark reverse of a personal growth novel, a hoot of a crime thriller.’ Literary Editor, The Independent.

Mother May I


Joshilyn JacksonJoshilyn Jackson - 2021
    Bree rejected that fearful outlook, and life has proved her right. Having married into a family with wealth, power, and connections, Bree now has all a woman could ever dream of.Until the day she awakens and sees someone peering into her bedroom window--an old gray-haired woman dressed all in black who vanishes as quickly as she appears. It must be a play of the early morning light or the remnant of a waking dream, Bree tells herself, shaking off the bad feeling that overcomes her.Later that day though, she spies the old woman again, in the parking lot of her daughters' private school . . . just minutes before Bree's infant son, asleep in his car seat only a few feet away, vanishes. It happened so quickly--Bree looked away only for a second. There is a note left in his place, warning her that she is being is being watched; if she wants her baby back, she must not call the police or deviate in any way from the instructions that will follow.The mysterious woman makes contact, and Bree learns she, too, is a mother. Why would another mother do this? What does she want? And why has she targeted Bree? Of course Bree will pay anything, do anything. It's her child.To get her baby back, Bree must complete one small--but critical--task. It seems harmless enough, but her action comes with a devastating price.Bree will do whatever it takes to protect her family--but what if the cost tears their world apart?

Don't Try to Find Me


Holly Brown - 2014
    Though the message on the kitchen white board is written in Marley's hand, her mother Rachel knows there has to be some other explanation. Marley would never run away.As the days pass and it sinks in that the impossible has occurred, Rachel and her husband Paul are informed that the police have "limited resources." If they want their 14-year-old daughter back, they will have to find her themselves. Desperation becomes determination when Paul turns to Facebook and Twitter, and launches FindMarley.com.But Marley isn't the only one with secrets.With public exposure comes scrutiny, and when Rachel blows a television interview, the dirty speculation begins. Now, the blogosphere is convinced Rachel is hiding something. It's not what they think; Rachel would never hurt Marley. Not intentionally, anyway. But when it's discovered that she's lied, even to the police, the devoted mother becomes a suspect in Marley's disappearance.Is Marley out there somewhere, watching it all happen, or is the truth something far worse?

The Cabin


Amy Cross - 2015
    It's said that something really bad happened here once, in the room where we're standing right now." When Anna arrives in Norway to visit a long-lost friend, she expects to spend a calm, relaxing weekend at a remote cabin. Soon, however, she learns that some of the other guests are not what they seem, and the cabin itself has a dark history. As the weekend continues, Anna finds herself being drawn into a nightmarish situation. A girl died many years ago in the cabin, and now someone is out to repeat the events of that horrific night. By the time Anna learns the truth, she's too late to keep herself from being dragged into the darkness. Whether she escapes, and whether her soul survives, depends on her ability to survive a series of agonizing attacks. The Cabin is a horror novel about a girl who finds herself living a nightmare. Contains violent scenes and occasional adult language.

The Dark Side


Danielle Steel - 2019
    As a young woman driven by these painful memories, Zoe sets the bar high for herself, studying hard and pursuing a career in the nonprofit world, where her deep compassion for disadvantaged children finds a focus. When Zoe falls in love and has her own child, she is determined to be a perfect mother as well. But before long, old scars long dormant begin to pull Zoe to the edge of an abyss too terrifying to contemplate. As Zoe is haunted by the ghosts of the past, her story will become a race against time and a tale of psychological suspense that no reader will soon forget.

Piercing


Ryū Murakami - 1994
    His first novel, Almost Transparent Blue, won Japan’s most coveted literary prize and sold over a million copies, and his most recent psychosexual thriller, In the Miso Soup, gave readers a further taste of his incredibly agile imagination. In Piercing, Murakami, in his own unique style, explores themes of child abuse and what happens to the voiceless among us, weaving a disturbing, spare tale of two people who find each other and then are forced into hurting each other deeply because of the haunting specter of their own abuse as children.

Oblivion


Sasha Dawn - 2014
    His blood is on my hands. His heart is in my soul. I KILLED HIM." But she remembers nothing of that night or of the previous thirty-six hours. All she knows is that her father, the reverend at the Church of the Holy Promise, is missing, as is Hannah, a young girl from the parish. Their disappearances have to be connected and Callie knows that her father was not a righteous man.Since that fateful night, she's been plagued by graphomania -- an unending and debilitating compulsion to write. The words that flow from Callie's mind and through her pen don't seem to make sense -- until now. As the anniversary of Hannah's vanishing approaches, more words and memories bubble to the surface and a new guy in school might be the key to Callie putting together the puzzle. But digging up the secrets she's buried for so long might be her biggest mistake.