Book picks similar to
The Thicket by Noelle W. Ihli


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Don't Leave Me Alone


Kyla Sharp - 2022
    But so does she.Leah and her husband Ben move to a gorgeous timber cottage in the hills, convinced a change of scenery can fix their marriage. She’ll finally get pregnant. He’ll remain faithful.But Ben is called back to the city for work.Leah is devastated, and all alone in a big, old cabin in the middle of nowhere. Then she starts hearing things at night.Her fears are founded when she finds a threatening note, convinced it’s targeted at her. But she needs to prove to Ben that she’s grounded enough to be a mother, so she keeps her fears a secret.Leah must figure out who’s taunting her. Alone.Does it have to do with the chilling history of her house?Is her husband keeping tabs on her from afar?What about her creepy hillbilly neighbor? Or the handsome one who owns a winery?Leah discovers her husband had more secrets than she thought. But also that she can’t keep her own secrets hidden forever, either.For fans of chilling psychological and domestic thrillers, this page-turner will keep you up until 4 a.m. reading on a wild ride to discover all the surprising twists and turns.

No One Can Hear You Scream


A.B. Whelan - 2021
    After divorcing her husband of eighteen years, Jennifer dives right into a new relationship despite her children’s disapproval.Jennifer’s boyfriend, Tyler, is a middle school English teacher and a mama’s boy. To prove to Jennifer that he can be as outdoorsy as her ex-husband, he suggests going on an off-the-grid vacation in a yurt in Montana. The idea of not having cell phone reception and running water for days doesn’t appeal to Jennifer. Reluctantly, she agrees to the trip because she envisions this unique retreat as an opportunity for her children to connect with her new boyfriend.Jennifer’s subscribers are excited about following their favorite online vlogger on an adventure in the wilderness. But one follower sees her vacation as the perfect opportunity to get close to her and act out his twisted and sick fantasies. Alone on the mountain, where no one can hear her scream, Jennifer realizes that it wasn’t the deep, dark woods she had to fear after all.

Her Last Breath


Hilary Davidson - 2021
    However, her sorrow turns to bone-chilling confusion when she receives a message Caroline sent days earlier warning that her death would be no accident. Long used to being a pariah to her family, Deirdre covers her tattoos and heads to Manhattan for her sister’s funeral.The message claimed Caroline’s husband, Theo, killed his first wife and got away with it. Reeling from the news, Deirdre confronts Theo on the way to the cemetery, and he reveals both his temper and his suspicion that Deirdre’s “perfect” sister was having an affair.Paranoid and armed with just enough information to make her dangerous, Deirdre digs into the disturbing secrets buried with Caroline. But as she gets closer to the truth, she realizes that her own life may be at risk…and that there may be more than one killer in the family.

The Chill


Scott Carson - 2020
    Early in the 20th century, the town was destroyed for the greater good: bringing water to the millions living downstate. Or at least that’s what the politicians from Manhattan insisted at the time. The local families, settled there since America’s founding, were forced from their land, but they didn’t move far, and some didn’t move at all…Now, a century later, the repercussions of human arrogance are finally making themselves known. An inspector assigned to oversee the dam, dangerously neglected for decades, witnesses something inexplicable. It turns out that more than the village was left behind in the waters of the Chill when it was abandoned. The townspeople didn’t evacuate without a fight. A dark prophecy remained, too, and the time has come for it to be fulfilled. Those who remember must ask themselves: who will be next? For sacrifices must be made. And as the dark waters begin to inexorably rise, the demand for a fresh sacrifice emerges from the deep...

The Heatwave


Kate Riordan - 2020
    Elodie was smart. Elodie was manipulative. Elodie is dead.When Sylvie Durand receives a letter calling her back to her crumbling family home in the South of France, she knows she has to go. In the middle of a sweltering 1990's summer marked by unusual fires across the countryside, she returns to La Reverie with her youngest daughter Emma in tow, ignoring the deep sense of dread she feels for this place she's long tried to forget.As memories of the events that shattered their family a decade earlier threaten to come to the surface, Sylvie struggles to shield Emma from the truth of what really happened all those years ago. In every corner of the house, Sylvie can't escape the specter of Elodie, her first child. Elodie, born amid the '68 Paris riots with one blue eye and one brown, and mysteriously dead by fourteen. Elodie, who reminded the small village of one those Manson girls. Elodie who knew exactly how to get what she wanted. As the fires creep towards the villa, it's clear to Sylvie that something isn't quite right at La Reverie . . . And there is a much greater threat closer to home.

This Secret Thing


Marybeth Mayhew Whalen - 2020
    Out of protection. Out of fear. Everyone has a reason to lie.Everyone in Raleigh, North Carolina, is talking about Norah Ramsey, the single mother accused of being a suburban madam. But Norah’s not the only one keeping secrets.After her mother’s arrest, Norah’s teenage daughter, Violet, is devastated and alone. She has no one to turn to until her grandmother Polly arrives. Polly, long estranged from Norah, is running from her own troubles. Down the street, Bess, once Norah’s best friend, desperately tries to hide secrets while Casey, Bess’s daughter, flees college after a traumatic event, only to find that home isn’t the safe haven she expected. And Nico, the detective who has doggedly pursued Norah Ramsey in hopes that she will lead him to his missing brother, is drawn further into these women’s lives while facing his own domestic disturbance.Scandal has brought each of them to a crossroads. Now, as they delve into Norah’s secrets, they must come to terms with secrets of their own—ones that still have the power to hurt or to heal.

Cicada Spring


Christian Galacar - 2015
    . .On a warm May evening in the spring of 1979, the people of Heartsridge, Massachusetts, are living the American dream. Families are gathered for barbecues. Kids are playing in front yards. Gardens are being kept. Meanwhile, Kara Price stumbles home through the woods, raped and beaten, her life shattered by a wicked act of violence, perpetrated by one of the town’s most beloved and public figures. Surrounding Kara is a cast of compelling and nefarious characters—a violent-tempered mayor who can do no wrong in the eyes of the town, a sheriff bound by the rules and plagued by a guilty conscience, a father bent on revenge, a serial killer in the midst of an identity crisis. And at the center of it all there's Kara, who just wants to move on with her life and forget everything that happened to her. But how can she do that when everyone thinks she is a liar who is only out for attention? With plot and emotion braided together by a careful hand, this haunted group of people all acting on behalf of their own interests begs the question: How far would you go to protect your own?

Bad Robot


John Benedict - 2018
    Luckily, he discovered the med error quickly and was able to save the patient. Mortified, Brandt decided not to mention his mistake to his coworkers, and to his surprise, he was hailed as a hero for his diagnostic skill. Afterward, he began to consider not just the implications, but the potential. Could this advance his career? Could it impress a certain female coworker? OR scrub nurse Kaycee Blair is gorgeous and knows it. Her tastes run to the finer things in life, and she is not above using her beauty to advance her goals. Though she’s currently dating Brandt, the brilliant ICU nurse whose career is on the upswing, Kaycee finds herself drawn to Dr. Salazar, the hospital’s new robotic heart surgeon. Dr. Dominic Salazar is a man blessed with Mediterranean good looks, supreme confidence, and obvious wealth. He is also a virtuoso with the Michelangelo robotic surgical system. However, due to a prior indiscretion, he was forced to give up his prestigious chairmanship of robotic surgery at Mass General and relocate to Swatara Regional Hospital. Dom is determined to rehabilitate his reputation, repair his marriage, and return to a more suitable academic center. But when he meets Kaycee—someone he knows should be off limits—all bets are off. Anesthesiologist Luke Daulton is back after his harrowing brush with death at the hands of Dr. Katz. A series of unexplainable—and deadly—post-surgical complications eventually entangle Luke in the tumultuous love triangle between Brandt, Kaycee, and Salazar; a triangle rife with sex, jealousy, anger, and revenge—where murder is just a matter of time.

These Deadly Games


Diana Urban - 2022
    If you break my rules, she dies. If you call the police, she dies. If you tell your parents or anyone else, she dies.Are you ready?When Crystal Donavan gets a message on a mysterious app with a video of her little sister gagged and bound, she agrees to play the kidnapper’s game. At first, they make her complete bizarre tasks: steal a test and stuff it in a locker, bake brownies, make a prank call.But then Crystal realizes each task is meant to hurt—and kill—her friends, one by one. But if she refuses to play, the kidnapper will kill her sister. Is someone trying to take her team out of the running for a gaming tournament? Or have they uncovered a secret from their past, and wants them to pay for what they did…As Crystal makes the impossible choices between her friends and her sister, she must uncover the truth and find a way to outplay the kidnapper… before it’s too late.Author of All Your Twisted Secrets, Diana Urban’s explosive sophomore novel, These Deadly Games, will keep you riveted until the final twist is revealed.

Friends Like These


Kimberly McCreight - 2021
    Doesn’t matter how long it’s been, or how badly they’ve occasionally behaved, or how late it is when that call finally comes—you show up. No questions asked.Honestly, that’s how the five of us ended up here in the Catskills. We did have the best of intentions. Especially after what happened to Alice all those years ago, we can’t bear to think of losing anyone else. In fact, we’ll do anything to make sure that doesn’t happen. We’ll go so much farther than we ever thought we would. In the end, maybe that’s what caught up with us. That, and the fact that we’re such a complicated group—so much history and so many big personalities. Secrets, too, that can slip out at the most inopportune moments. Of course, we love each other despite all of those things. We love each other no matter what.There’s something so beautiful about that kind of unconditional love. It can turn ugly, though. Or maybe that’s just us. After all, we’ve already been through so much together. And we have so very much to hide.

The Last One Home


Victoria Helen Stone - 2021
    After a serial killer’s confession to the crime restored justice, Lauren chose to live with her father and grandmother. Now an adult, Lauren has come home to the Sacramento family estate for good, her mother’s lies be damned…It’s been decades since Donna made her cheating husband pay, but she hasn’t forgotten the past. She knows her estranged daughter has made a terrible mistake by returning to the estate. There’s more to the story of the welcoming old homestead—and her childhood—than Lauren knows.As Lauren settles in, she is haunted by the questions of what really happened with her father, what her mother might be hiding, and what secrets the family ranch holds. It’s getting so dark, Lauren may not be able to see the truth to save her life.

White Oaks


Jill Hand - 2019
    Also on hand are her two brothers, wily Marsh and ne’er-do-well Trainor. With a forty-billion-dollar inheritance at stake, they’re willing to do whatever it takes to make the old man happy.To their shock they learn that what their father wants for his birthday is to kill someone. He doesn’t care who it is. He just wants to know what it’s like to commit murder.Betrayal, double-dealing, and fast-paced action set the Trapnells on a collision course with an unexpected villain. Their journey takes them from the swamps of Georgia, to Italy’s glittering Amalfi coast, to rugged Yellowstone National Park.

The Patient


Jasper DeWitt - 2020
    In a series of online posts, Parker H., a young psychiatrist, chronicles the harrowing account of his time working at a dreary mental hospital in New England. Through this internet message board, Parker hopes to communicate with the world his effort to cure one bewildering patient. We learn, as Parker did on his first day at the hospital, of the facility’s most difficult, profoundly dangerous case—a forty-year-old man who was originally admitted to the hospital at age six. This patient has no known diagnosis. His symptoms seem to evolve over time. Every person who has attempted to treat him has been driven to madness or suicide. Desperate and fearful, the hospital’s directors keep him strictly confined and allow minimal contact with staff for their own safety, convinced that releasing him would unleash catastrophe on the outside world. Parker, brilliant and overconfident, takes it upon himself to discover what ails this mystery patient and finally cure him. But from his first encounter with the mystery patient, things spiral out of control, and, facing a possibility beyond his wildest imaginings, Parker is forced to question everything he thought he knew. Fans of Sarah Pinborough’s Behind Her Eyes and Paul Tremblay’s The Cabin at the End of the World will be riveted by Jasper DeWitt’s astonishing debut.

This Is How You Die


David Jester - 2016
    He isn’t like the academic elite, the geeky students who get all the grades and are adored by their teachers. He isn’t like the extroverts, the socially adept and popular kids who never want for anything and always have a shoulder to cry on. And he isn’t like the bullies, the ones who taunt and beat him on a daily basis. Herman isn’t like any of his peers, or indeed anyone he knows. The person Herman identifies with the most, the person he idolizes and yearns to be, is The Butcher, a brutal and prolific serial killer.Following yet another beating by the kids he despises at a school he hates, Herman returns home to his inconspicuous existence with his solitary, silent, and coldhearted father. But life for Herman is about to change. The shackles that have held him to mediocrity and anonymity are about to be broken. Not only does Herman discover his father has died, but on further examination, he also discovers his dad was The Butcher, the very man whom everyone had feared and whom he had worshipped.Life had been cruel to his father and death had been cruel to his legend, but Herman decides that he will carry on his father’s work. He may not have his father’s experience, but with a little practice, Herman knows he can become the man in the shadows, the thing that everyone fears.Now, if only Homicide Detective Lester Keats would just leave him be. . . .

Hearers of the Constant Hum


William Pauley III - 2014
    Although they incessantly hum the same nonsensical phrase ad nauseam, he can't help but think there must be some reason he alone can hear it. Now in his thirties, Krang's body is beginning to literally collapse in places, just as he discovers there may be other hearers of the constant hum. Convinced this is no coincidence, he sets out for answers, and manages to dismantle all he ever thought he knew about everything.