Book picks similar to
Rotten Apple by Natasha A. Salnikova


horror
psychological-thriller
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All the Pretty Lies


Marin Montgomery - 2018
     Only Meghan Bishop doesn’t know it yet. When the married mother stumbles upon evidence suggesting someone close to her may have ties to the heinous crime the nation can’t stop talking about, she’s forced to dive headfirst into an ocean of secrets she never knew existed. Unraveling her life one startling piece at a time, Meghan realizes she believed all the pretty lies she’d been told. And the truth? It’s uglier than she ever could have imagined.

Heart Swarm


Allan Watson - 2015
    Five years ago Harlan headed up the investigation of an identical murder in the same woods; a mishandled investigation that effectively destroyed his credibility as a detective. The new case immediately takes a bizarre twist when the body is identified as the same girl found hanging in the woods five years ago. The following day a local man commits suicide and the police find more dead girls hidden in his basement. The case seems open and closed. Until the killing spree begins. Harlan finds himself drawn into a dark world where murder is a form of self-expression and human life treated as one more commodity to be used and discarded. The only clue that links everything is a large oil painting of ‘Sagittarius A’ – a massive black hole at the centre of the galaxy orbited by thirteen stars daubed in blood with the words – Heart SwarmThis edition is no longer available.

The Visitors


Catherine Burns - 2017
    A timid spinster in her fifties who still sleeps with teddy bears, Marion does her best to shut out the shocking secret that John keeps in the cellar.Until, suddenly, John has a heart attack and Marion is forced to go down to the cellar herself and face the gruesome truth that her brother has kept hidden.As questions are asked and secrets unravel, maybe John isn't the only one with a dark side.

Six Days


Kelli Owen - 2010
    With no outside stimuli, Jenny naturally turns inward and revisits her guilt-ridden past, desperate to figure out which wronged person would be angry enough, evil enough, to do this to her. She must survive her own demons, and then time itself when she finds remnants of previous captives?a plate, a tooth, a bone. Scratched hashmarks in the stone walls around her, leave her to wonder what happens next. What happens after six days?Maelstrom Volume 1, Book 3

The Heatwave


Katerina Diamond - 2020
    One stranger. One killer…Two bad things happened that summer:A stranger arrived. And the first girl disappeared. In the wake of the crime that rocked her community, Felicity fled, knowing more than she let on. But sixteen years later, her new life is shattered by the news that a second girl has gone missing in her hometown. Now Felicity must go back, to face the truth about what happened all those years ago. Only she holds the answers – and they’re more shocking than anyone could imagine. The heatwave is back. And so is the killer.

Button Bright


Michael Kurland - 1990
    But Button was only dimly aware of the sounds. Her consciousness had shrunk down to focus on the body that was blocking her hole— —and the warm, thick liquid that was dripping onto her hand.” Button is an 11 year old, bubbly and intelligent girl who is haunted in her dreams by a tapping sound… Living with her mother and father in Cottsborough, Vermont, Button had been trained to hide and not ever answer to her secret name, ‘Rachel’. One day, two men arrive at Button’s family home searching for her by this secret name. Refusing to give Button up, things turn violent and the men shoot her father dead. Through a narrow crack in the floor boards, Button bears witness to the murder. Eluding the two men who tried to catch her, Button uses her wits to navigate herself from Vermont to Boston and then to New York. Button has a plan to find her uncle Dromkin. When her search seems hopeless, Button is taken in by a resident of her uncle’s apartment building, Phil, who claims he can help. But when they find Dromkin sprawled on the floor with his throat cut, Button is convinced she is somehow the cause of these family murders... Will Phil be able to keep her identity hidden long enough for her to find out the truth? Praise for Michael Kurland: "A perfect tale of childhood terror." - Tom Kasey Michael Kurland grew up in New York City, attended Columbia University, spent four years in the Army, much of it in Europe, and now lives in California with his partner, novelist Linda Robertson, a dog, a cat, and an occasional visiting family of raccoons. He has been a teacher of obscure subjects to disinterested children, the editor of a magazine even more idiosyncratic than himself, a seeker of absent persons, a magical explainer, and guest lecturer at numerous unrelated events. Kurland has written a dozen or so science fiction novels, a brace of mysteries, and several books that fit into that tenuous genre known as “mainstream.” He has been nominated for an Edgar (twice) and for the American Book Award. His books have been translated into eleven other languages. His other novel with Venture Press is Psi Hunt.

Silent Victim


Caroline Mitchell - 2018
    But the truth can’t stay hidden for long.Emma is a loving wife, a devoted mother…and an involuntary killer. For years she’s been hiding the dead body of the teacher who seduced her as a teen.It’s a secret that might have stayed buried if only her life had been less perfect. A promotion for Emma’s husband, Alex, means they can finally move to a bigger home with their young son. But with a buyer lined up for their old house, Emma can’t leave without destroying every last trace of her final revenge…Returning to the shallow grave in the garden, she finds it empty. The body is gone.Panicked, Emma confesses to her husband. But this is only the beginning. Soon, Alex will discover things about her he’ll wish he’d learned sooner. And others he’ll long to forget.

The Vanishing Child


Jennifer Harvey - 2021
    His blond hair neatly combed, smiling for the camera. I thought, you will disappear, Johnny. This will be the last photo taken of you.Forty years ago: Cece’s son went out on his bike on a hot summer’s day and never came home. Every evening she lingers on her front porch, hoping to see him coming up the driveway. But the street remains empty and, with her heart aching, Cece goes back inside and closes the door behind her…Forty years later: On a rare visit to her father, Carla stumbles across a box tucked away in one of the cupboards. Full of her father’s diaries and old newspaper clippings, it tells the story of the disappearance of three boys when her father was just a child.Her father refuses to discuss the missing children and his silence only makes Carla more curious. When she meets the mother of the last boy who went missing, and sees her pain first-hand, Carla becomes determined to help Cece finally lay her child to rest.But as Carla begins to read the diaries and discovers more about the dark days all those years before, she realises the truth might be more complicated than she thought. There are people in this town who will do anything to stop her digging up the past, and uncovering the truth could change her world in ways she never imagined possible…A totally gripping, emotionally charged suspense novel about small-town secrets and the price of facing up to the truth. Fans of Liane Moriarty, Diane Chamberlain and The Silent Daughter will be gripped from the very first page until the final, heart-stopping twist.

The Killer Next Door


Alex Marwood - 2013
    23 has a secret. In this bedsit-riddled south London wreck, lorded over by a lecherous landlord, something waits to be discovered. Yet all six residents have something to hide.Collette and Cher are on the run; Thomas is a reluctant loner; while a gorgeous Iranian asylum seeker and a 'quiet man' nobody sees try to stay hidden. And watching over them all is Vesta - or so she thinks. In the dead of night, a terrible accident pushes the neighbours into an uneasy alliance. But one of them is a killer, expertly hiding their pastime, all the while closing in on their next victim...As a cloying heatwave suffocates the city, events build to an electrifying climax in this dark, original and irresistibly compelling thriller.

The Hunted


Rachel Blackledge - 2019
    The best part? She doesn’t even have to talk to anybody. Her outgoing older sister, Virginia - the face of the fictitious writer - takes care of all those pesky activities. It’s a lucrative partnership that landed Amy Mathews literary fame and fortune . . . Until now. Virginia wants more books, but Amy Mathews is pretty much dead to Eugenia. She’s determined to break out of her comfy coffin of a life, ditch the pen name, and maybe even meet a fan or two. But her sister doesn’t like the idea of unemployment. She doesn’t like it one bit. And soon, Eugenia discovers that it’s not that easy to put down the pen. In fact, it can very well turn deadly . . . For fans of Woman In The Window and Gillian Flynn comes this stirring tale that will leave you wondering: do you ever really know someone? This smart and twisty thriller will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last page.

Green Lake


S.K. Epperson - 1996
     (Warning: graphic material may be disturbing.)

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.

Lurk


Adam Vine - 2016
    But late one night, he finds a box of old Polaroids buried under his house that can change to show him whatever he desires, and Drew finds himself with the power to watch the people around him without them ever knowing.Yet as Drew falls deeper into the rabbit hole of jealousy and despair, he begins having strange visions of the students who lived at the house twenty years ago and the gruesome fates they met after moving out. He finds evidence of a stalker who may be living on the property. The line between reality and nightmare blurs. Drew realizes there is something under the house that is manipulating him through the pictures, an eldritch, not-quite-dead thing that will drive him to do unspeakable evil if he doesn't look away...A blistering page-turner, LURK is horror unlike you've ever read.

This Book is Full of Bodies


Rick Wood - 2019
     At least that’s what you’ll tell yourself. You’ll say I’m a monster. A sicko. A deranged killer. But I am no monster, I am no sicko, and I am not deranged. I am simply a man who happens to enjoy murdering people in the most violent of ways. So don’t bother reading this if you have a weak stomach, get easily offended, or are simply not interested in the best way to dispose of a dead body. (It’s pigs, by the way. They eat ANYTHING.) My name is Gerald Brittle. I am a serial killer. And this is my memoir.

Single & Searching


Rita Herron - 1997
    But a lead in a robbery case takes him straight to Casey McIntyre’s door, and her Single and Searching ad, and now he must investigate her...When Casey placed that personal ad to find a date, she never dreamed she’d find true love. But she also never expected her date to write about it!Determined to get revenge, she dresses for seduction.But payback is hell, and when Gabe turns the tables and pursues her with a vengeance, Casey finds herself falling in love.Only Gabe holds her fate – and her heart – in his hands...When the truth is revealed, will Casey be single and searching again, or will she succumb to the passion burning between them?