Book picks similar to
New Year’s Eve by Hannah Emery


netgalley
domestic-suspense
mystery
dnf

The Boyfriend


Michelle Frances - 2022
    But as she approaches her thirtieth birthday, she can't help but rue the one thing she doesn't have - a relationship.When Amy comes round following a serious fall, she doesn't remember anything from the last six months. Not even the week skiing at her aunt's luxurious chalet in Val D'Isere with her mum and best friends to celebrate her birthday. And she certainly doesn't remember being swept off her feet by the handsome Dr Jack Stewart . . .Jack is the full package - charming, caring and devoted to Amy. Everyone is smitten with him, but as the week goes on, Amy begins to find Jack’s presence chilling. Is her broken mind playing tricks? Or is the perfect boyfriend really too good to be true?

The Safe Place


Anna Downes - 2020
    Until he meets Emily.Emily is perfect.Scott offers Emily a summer job as a housekeeper on his remote, beautiful French estate. Enchanted by his lovely wife Nina, and his eccentric young daughter, Aurelia, Emily falls headlong into this oasis of wine-soaked days by the pool. But soon Emily realizes that Scott and Nina are hiding dangerous secrets, and if she doesn't play along, the consequences could be deadly.Superbly tense and oozing with atmosphere, Anna Downs's debut is the perfect summer suspense, with the modern gothic feel of Ruth Ware and the morally complex family dynamics of Lisa Jewell.Welcome to paradise...will you ever be able to leave?

No Place Like Home


Jane Renshaw - 2021
    They have left the rat race of the big city and moved into a gorgeous, custom-built house in the Scottish Highlands. Bram has already planted up a vegetable plot and is planning to create a wildflower meadow and keep chickens and goats.But then a dead crow appears on their washing line, their vegetables are weedkilled and someone shoots at Bertie, a gentle guide dog belonging to Kirsty’s mother.The police say it’s nothing to worry about, it’s just bored local teenagers hanging out in the woods. But Bram is sure that more sinister forces are at work, that these events may be connected to a terrible secret in Kirsty’s past.And he’s right. As the campaign against them escalates, the family is pulled down into a relentless spiral of terror and violence until the home they always dreamed of becomes a nightmare from which they may never escape.

What I Never Told You


Dawn Goodwin - 2021
    Diana is smart, beautiful, feisty and clearly out to cause trouble.Then an old photograph resurfaces that threatens to uncover a long-buried secret, one that Helen has taken great care to keep hidden in the past. Only one person could have that photograph – and she is dead.Helen immediately suspects that Diana is connected somehow, but before she can confront her, Diana is found dead and the entire family has motive.An addictive, page-turning thriller perfect for Lisa Jewell, BA Paris and Louise Candlish.

A Lily in the Light


Kristin Fields - 2019
    People Esme has known her whole life suddenly become suspects, each new one hitting closer to home than the last.Unable to cope, Esme escapes the nightmare that is her new reality when she receives an invitation to join an elite ballet academy in San Francisco. Desperate to leave behind her chaotic, broken family and the mystery surrounding Lily’s disappearance, Esme accepts.Eight years later, Esme is up for her big break: her first principal role in Paris. But a call from her older sister shatters the protective world she has built for herself, forcing her to revisit the tragedy she’s run from for so long. Will her family finally have the answers they’ve been waiting for? And can Esme confront the pain that shaped her childhood, or will the darkness follow her into the spotlight?

What I Did


Kate Bradley - 2021
    What would you do to protect it?

The Perfect Family Man


M.M. DeLuca - 2021
    Now my husband’s vanished, too.I wish I could say that the tragedy of little Jack disappearing brought me and Nate closer together. But my husband is more distant from me now than he’s ever been. Perhaps that’s why I don’t ask him exactly where he’s going when he sets off on another business trip.Or perhaps I was too distracted by the woman moving in across the street with bouncing blonde hair and a cherubic toddler boy. He reminds me so much of the child I lost. But his mother doesn’t seem to properly watch him. And I can’t be sure, but I’m sure Nate and this woman share a look of recognition before he leaves.The first day Nate’s away, things feel okay, even though I know when he returns we’re going to have to discuss what I found in his coat pocket. But one day turns into two, and then three. I don’t want to seem like the crazy wife, but I have to call his work and ask what’s going on. And that’s when they tell me the shocking truth.Nate hasn’t worked for the company in six months.Once I’ve found this lie, it’s hard not to pick at the scab of our marriage, see what other secrets lie beneath his apparent love for me. By the end of the week, I hope I might finally learn the truth about my husband, about the woman across the street, and about what really happened to my little boy.

Secrets of Our House


Rea Frey - 2022
    Nestled high into the mountains of North Carolina, it is a sleek place, a luxurious place, a dark place.A place full of secrets.Secrets about the man she longs for, a man who is not her husband. Secrets about the roots of her family that must never, ever, see the light of day. When Desi and her family arrive from Chicago to spend the summer in the mountains, the seeds for the tumultuous months to follow are planted--her marriage on the rocks, not knowing which way they'll go. Her seventeen year-old daughter Jules, falling in love for the first time with a local boy--and forging a new path that will take her to uncharted places. And Carter--a man Desi knew long ago, before she expunged him from her life for good.All hurtling toward events none of them can undo.Engaging, propulsive, and with a dramatic, heart-pounding final act, Secrets of Our House is a dazzling novel, richly-drawn, that shows no matter how hard outside forces may shake you, the bonds of family are stronger than the harshest winds.

The Hiding Place


Jenny Quintana - 2021
    But so do some people . . .From the bestselling author of The Missing Girl and Our Dark Secret, comes The Hiding Place: a story about identity, love, long-buried secrets and lies.Abandoned as a baby in the hallway of a shared house in London, Marina has never known her parents, and the circumstances of her birth still remain a mystery.Now an adult, Marina has returned to the house where it all started, determined to find out who she really is. But the walls of this house hold more than memories, and Marina’s reappearance hasn’t gone unnoticed by the other tenants.Someone is watching Marina. Someone who knows the truth . . .

The Secrets We Keep


Kate Hewitt - 2018
    For all of them. Never mind that the rental house is a bit small – it’s theirs for the summer. A place to hide… Their isolation is disrupted when they meet the family from the big house next door. Three children Charlotte, Zoe and Max and their glamorous mother Rebecca – who seems absolutely determined to invite Tessa in to their lives. But Rebecca is harbouring a dark secret of her own. One that will put not only her family at risk, but Tessa’s too. And when she discovers she has no option but to leave her children for several weeks, Tessa feels like the only person she can trust. Suddenly Tessa finds herself living a life she could only have dreamed of. Wealth, a large brood of children, and Rebecca’s handsome husband Josh visiting at weekends. But even as powerful bonds are forming between them, secrets have a way of catching up with people. And as the summer comes to an end, who will learn to love again and who will risk losing everything?

New Year's Eve


J.G. Murray - 2020
    No more run-down flats in dodgy areas. But behind the exterior of this beautiful Victorian house, things are less than picture-perfect, and the tight-knit community is unwelcoming.When Hayley befriends the woman next door, no-one is pleased. Least of all the man from upstairs. The one who watches them all from behind his window. Then they receive an invite for a New Year's Eve party. But what seems like a friendly gesture, proves to be anything but...

Little Whispers


K.L. Slater - 2020
    Tanya takes Janey under her wing, and her teenage daughter Angel is amazing with Janey’s little boy. As Janey and Tanya grow closer, Janey feels she can finally leave her troubled past behind.But then everything changes…In a weak moment over a bottle of wine, Janey finds herself telling Tanya her most shocking secret. Why wouldn’t she trust her new friend?The following day, Janey sees Angel, with a man old enough to be her father, pushing someone into a car. The next day a body is found and police appeal for witnesses – and share a picture of the same car…When Janey tells Tanya she is going to the police, Tanya turns threatening. She’ll stop at nothing to defend Angel, even if her daughter is guilty. If Janey says anything, Tanya will make sure that her dark secret gets out.Janey faces an impossible choice. Stay quiet about what she saw that terrible day. Or speak up, and destroy the family she has worked so hard to protect…

The Missing Letters of Mrs Bright


Beth Miller - 2020
    She’s that nice woman who lives three doors down and always smiles at you in the mornings. She’s planning her thirtieth wedding anniversary with her husband. She wants to travel, read endless books and take beautiful pictures. She’s been waiting for this forever. For the past twenty-nine years, Kay Bright’s days have had a familiar rhythm: she works in her husband’s stationery shop, cooks for her family, tries to remember to practice yoga, and every other month she writes to her best friend, Ursula, and Ursula replies. Kay could set her calendar by their letters: her heart lifts when the blue airmail envelope, addressed in Ursula’s slanting handwriting, falls gently onto the mat. Ursula is the only one who knows Kay’s deepest secret, something that happened decades ago that could tear Kay’s life apart today. Ursula has always been the person Kay relies on. Knowing she will hear from Ursula is like being sure the sun will rise tomorrow. And now Ursula has stopped writing. Three missing letters doesn’t sound like a lot, but Kay gets out her shoebox of notes from her best friend, in case there’s something she overlooked. Ursula seems fine, but the further back she goes, the more Kay begins to question every choice she has made in her life. Which might be why, at ten o’clock one morning, Kay walks out of her yellow front door with a just a rucksack, leaving her wedding ring on the table... An emotional and heart-warming novel for anyone who knows it’s never too late to look for happiness. Fans of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, A Man Called Ove and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry will fall in love with this feel-good and moving story that shows you that the best friendships truly last forever.

Imperfect Women


Araminta Hall - 2020
    Nancy was gorgeous, wealthy, and cherished by those who knew her—from the outside, her life was perfect. But as the investigation into her death flounders and her friends Eleanor and Mary wrestle with their grief, dark details surface that reveal how little they knew their friend, each other, and maybe even themselves.A gripping, immersive novel about impossible expectations and secrets that fester and become lethal, Imperfect Women unfolds through the perspectives of three fascinating women. Their enduring, complex friendship is the knot the reader must untangle to answer the question Who killed Nancy?Imperfect Women explores guilt and retribution, love and betrayal, and the compromises we make that alter our lives irrevocably. With the wickedly sharp insights and finely tuned suspense that has drawn comparisons to Patricia Highsmith and Paula Hawkins, Araminta Hall returns with another page-turning, thought-provoking tour de force.

All the Lies We Told


Jennifer Harvey - 2020
    Not since he killed the man I loved. And now he’s back.I have imagined this scene a million times. But nothing could prepare me for what he actually says:“I didn’t do it.”He must be lying. Because who pleads guilty to a murder they didn’t commit?He insists that with my help he can prove his innocence. But no one else will ever believe it. Everyone in our small town wants him gone. They’re all scared of him. And up here, with nothing but the mountains and forests surrounding us, I’m scared of him too.And then I see something in his blue eyes. As blue as the sky reflected in the lake on that last morning before my world fell apart: before the fire, the police and the red blood on the ferns. That look reminds me of everything we used to be and I realise I need to know the truth.No matter what it costs me…A dark, emotional story of a family shattered by a terrible crime that will make you wonder how well we truly know the ones you love. Fans of Claire McGowan and Teresa Driscoll will be totally gripped by this absolutely addictive read.