Book picks similar to
Cracked by Louise McCreesh
thriller
netgalley
mystery
fiction
The Missing Hours
Emma Kavanagh - 2016
A woman disappears One moment, Selena Cole is in the playground with her children and the next, she has vanished without a trace.A woman returns Twenty hours later, Selena is found safe and well, but with no memory of where she has been.What took place in those missing hours, and are they linked to the discovery of a nearby murder?
‘Is it a forgetting or a deception?’
The French Girl
Lexie Elliott - 2018
It was supposed to be the perfect summer getaway--until they met Severine, the girl next door. For Kate Channing, Severine was an unwelcome presence, her inscrutable beauty undermining the close-knit group's loyalties amid the already simmering tensions. And after a huge altercation on the last night of the holiday, Kate knew nothing would ever be the same. There are some things you can't forgive, and there are some people you can't forget, like Severine, who was never seen again. Now, a decade later, the case is reopened when Severine's body is found in the well behind the farmhouse. Questioned along with her friends, Kate stands to lose everything she's worked so hard to achieve as suspicion mounts around her. Desperate to resolve her own shifting memories and fearful she will be forever bound to the woman whose presence still haunts her, Kate finds herself buried under layers of deception with no one to set her free.
The Woman Before Me
Ruth Dugdall - 2010
Luke had been dead for just three days.Rose Wilks' life is shattered when her newborn baby Joel is admitted to intensive care. Emma Hatcher has all that Rose lacks. Beauty. A loving husband. A healthy son. Until tragedy strikes and Rose is the only suspect.Now, having spent nearly five years in prison in Ipswich, Rose is just weeks away from freedom. Her probation officer Cate must decide whether Rose is remorseful for her crime, or whether she remains a threat to society. As Cate is drawn in, she begins to doubt her own judgement.Where is the line between love and obsession, can justice be served and, if so... by what means?
The Silence
Daisy Pearce - 2020
She’s vulnerable. She’s just what Marco was looking for.Stella Wiseman was a child TV star, but there’s nothing glamorous about her life now. Alone in her thirties, she’s lost her parents and her friends and she’s stuck in a dead-end job. But just as she hits rock bottom she meets Marco, a charismatic older man who offers to get her back on her feet. He seems too good to be true.Is he?She appreciates the money he lavishes on her. And the pills. But are the pills just helping her sleep, or helping her avoid her problems?With Stella’s life still in freefall, Marco whisks her away to a secluded cottage where she is isolated from everyone except him. But the closer he pulls her, the worse she gets. He tells her it’s all in her head, and she just needs time away from the world.No longer sure what’s real and what’s not, Stella begins to question whether she was wrong to trust Marco. Was she wrong to trust herself? Is the one person she thought was fighting for her survival actually her biggest threat?
Too Close
Natalie Daniels - 2018
Then she is assigned to work with Connie, a wife and mother accused of a despicable crime. Connie is suffering from dissociative amnesia—or at least seems to be.Now it is up to Emma to decide whether Connie can stand trial for her sins. But there is something about Connie that inexorably pulls Emma into her orbit. Perhaps it is the way she seems to see right through Emma, speaking to Emma’s deepest insecurities about her life, marriage, and her own tragic past. And soon Emma begins to understand how Connie’s complicated marriage and toxic relationship with her beautiful best friend Ness could have driven Connie to snap—or maybe, she is simply getting too close to a woman who is unforgivable…Alternating between the two women’s points of view, before and after Connie’s breakdown, Too Close is a masterfully written page turner about the powerful—yet dangerous—closeness between women.
The Temp
Michelle Frances - 2018
Must be bright, creative, with killer instincts.Emma would do anything to work for the woman who has the job she wants. Carrie is at the top of her game, with a dream career, a baby on the way, and a handsome screenwriter husband. For Emma, with parents who don't understand her ambition and a serious misstep behind her, this temp position might be her last chance.Carrie has given up more than anyone knows to get to the top of a ruthless business. She won't give up this baby too. But with Emma filling in for her at the office, her perfect life starts to unravel. Her bank account is inexplicably overdrawn, her husband seems strangely distant and colleagues are all too happy to take Emma's creative direction. Carrie finds herself dying to get back to work . . . until a letter left at her door changes everything.Trust and fear trade places in a love triangle that defies readers' expectations at every turn.
I Invited Her In
Adele Parks - 2018
Mel and Abi were best friends back in the day, sharing the highs and lows of student life, until Mel’s unplanned pregnancy made her drop out of her studies.Now, seventeen years later, Mel and Abi’s lives couldn’t be more different. Mel is happily married, having raised her son on her own before meeting her husband, Ben. Now they share gorgeous girls and have a chaotic but happy family home, with three children.Abi, meanwhile, followed her lover to LA for a glamorous life of parties, celebrity and indulgence. Everything was perfect, until she discovered her partner had been cheating on her. Seventeen years wasted, and nothing to show for it. So what Abi needs now is a true friend to lean on, to share her grief over a glass of wine, and to have some time to heal. And what better place than Mel’s house, with her lovely kids, and supportive husband…This dark, unsettling tale of the reunion of long-lost friends is thoroughly gripping exploration of wanting what you can’t have, jealousy and revenge from Sunday Times bestseller Adele Parks.
I Spy
Claire Kendal - 2019
Now, Holly lives in hiding under an assumed name. She avoids relationships and trusts no one.But Holly’s new life begins to unravel when she encounters a young mother and her two-year-old child… a child who reminds her of a past she has tried hard to forget. This time, someone is spying on her, and Holly will need to decide how far she is willing to go to survive.A psychological thriller unlike anything you’ve read before...
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.
Not My Daughter
Suzy K. Quinn - 2020
And it’s not safe out there…
After sixteen years of protecting my daughter from the dark secret of her past, I wake one morning to find her room empty, rucksack gone.Most runaways return within 72 hours, but I’m not so sure. I think my daughter has gone to find her real father – the man I fled from years ago.No one knows better than me that beneath his charm lies a monster.I escaped him once. But will she see him for what he really is?After all, blood is thicker than water…***
An Inconvenient Woman
Stéphanie Buelens - 2020
When she sees him move in with another woman, to play step-father for a girl the same age as the one she lost, Claire tries desperately to warn the new bride of the danger her family is in. But when the woman dismisses her admonishments, she feels she must take matters into her own hands and stop the crime she failed to stop before.Sloane Wilson left the LAPD to work as a “sin eater,” a contractor for hire who specializes in cleaning up inconvenient situations—situations which, for whatever reason, are better handled outside the law. Like, for example, an ex-wife who stalks her former husband, throws paint on his door, and makes vague, violent threats to his new wife. A domestic dispute like that can get messy when the cops are called; plus, there is a risk that their presence will aggravate the woman in question.As Sloane investigates her newest mission, however, she finds that there is more to it than meets the eye, uncovering a history of trauma that casts aspersions on the stories of both Claire and Sloane’s client. In a case where objective truth is increasingly muddled by passions, suspicions, and fears, she soon loses the ability to distinguish fact from fiction. But Sloane knows one thing for certain: sometimes the only way to prevent a crime is by committing one.
I'll Never Tell
Catherine McKenzie - 2019
No one was ever charged with the crime.Now, after their parents’ sudden deaths, the MacAllister siblings return to camp to read the will and decide what to do with the prime real estate the camp occupies. Ryan needs to sell. Margaux hasn’t made up her mind. Mary believes in leaving well enough alone. Kate and Liddie—the twins—have opposing views. And Sean Booth, the groundskeeper, just hopes he still has a home when all is said and done.But it’s more complicated than a simple vote. The will stipulates that until they unravel the mystery of what happened to Amanda, they can’t settle the estate. Any one of them could have done it, and each one is holding a piece of the puzzle. Will they work together to finally discover the truth, or will their secrets finally tear the family apart?
One Last Child
Anni Taylor - 2020
The heat was stifling that day, the tinkle of an ice-cream van in the air....Three-and-a-half years later, in the dead of winter, the children are returned to their families...one by one.All except for Ivy - the granddaughter of Homicide Detective Kate Wakeland. The other four children say Ivy is dead.Speculation grows that the mysterious abductor is enacting a cruel revenge plot due to a murderer that Kate put in jail years before.Kate isn't sure what to believe. But one thing is certain - she's about to begin the battle of her life. When the children were first stolen, she was prevented from investigating the case.But now, Kate will be relentless in uncovering the identity of the abductor and discovering what happened to Ivy.
Lucy's Coming For You
Ashley Beegan - 2021
because no one else will admit that Lucy exists.As Summer digs deeper into the disappearance, it becomes apparent that Lucy is looking for her too, but Summer should have stayed away.Now, Lucy is coming for her... and there's no escaping someone who doesn't exist.A gripping and addictive debut with a shocking twist that will send shivers down your spine!