Book picks similar to
The train by Roger Wheatley
5-stars
thrillers
booksirens
dark-themes
Mother Knows Best
Netta Newbound - 2014
Sick and tired of living in fear, Ruby arranges a date without her mother’s knowledge. On first impressions, charming and sensitive Cody Strong seems perfect. When they visit his home overlooking the Welsh coast, she meets his delightful father Steve and brother Kyle. But it isn’t long before she discovers all is not as it seems. After a shocking turn of events, Ruby’s world is blown apart. Terrified and desperate, she prepares to face her darkest hour yet. Will she ever escape this nightmare?
White Bodies
Jane Robins - 2017
Felix and Tilda seem like the perfect couple: young and in love, a financier and a beautiful up-and-coming starlet. But behind their flawless facade, not everything is as it seems. Callie, Tilda's unassuming twin, has watched her sister visibly shrink under Felix's domineering love. She has looked on silently as Tilda stopped working, nearly stopped eating, and turned into a neat freak, with mugs wrapped in Saran Wrap and suspicious syringes hidden in the bathroom trash. She knows about Felix's uncontrollable rages, and has seen the bruises on the white skin of her sister's arms. Worried about the psychological hold that Felix seems to have over Tilda, Callie joins an Internet support group for victims of abuse and their friends. However, things spiral out of control and she starts to doubt her own judgment when one of her new acquaintances is killed by an abusive man. And then suddenly Felix dies--or was he murdered? A page-turning work of suspense that announces a stunning new voice in fiction, White Bodies will change the way you think about obsession, love, and the violence we inflict on one another--and ourselves.
Hanover House
Brenda Novak - 2015
Why do psychopaths act as they do? How do they come to be? Why don’t they feel any remorse for the suffering they cause? And are there better ways of spotting and stopping them?After having been kidnapped, tortured and left for dead when she was just a teenager—by her high school boyfriend—she’s determined to understand how someone she trusted so much could turn on her. So she’s established a revolutionary new medical health center in the remote town of Hilltop, Alaska, where she studies the worst of the worst.But not everyone in Hilltop is excited to have Hanover House and its many serial killers in the area. Alaskan State Trooper, Sergeant Amarok, is one of them. And yet he can’t help feeling bad about what Evelyn has been through. He’s even attracted to her. Which is partly why he worries.He knows what could happen if only one little thing goes wrong...
Christmas with Hamish
Sophie Penhaligon - 2021
When her younger sister sends her an invite to her Christmas wedding on the other side of the country in Vancouver, she decides to kill two birds with one stone and plans a ski trip to Whistler with some old friends. However, her dreams of a snowy Christmas on skis are thwarted by her sister’s dog sitting crisis.Instead of spending Christmas enjoying the après ski alcohol, she is instead stuck minding Hamish McDuff for the next week. They say that every cloud has a silver lining and for Verity, the silver lining comes in the guise of her sexy new neighbour, Nikau Taylor. Nikau seems determined to help Verity eradicate her ghosts of Christmas past, but what will happen when her time is up and it’s time to go home to Toronto?
Things We Have in Common
Tasha Kavanagh - 2015
You were looking down at your brown straggly dog, your mouth going slack as your eyes clocked her. Alice Taylor.I was no different. I’d catch myself gazing at the back of her head in class, at her thick fair hair swaying between her shoulder blades.If you’d glanced just once across the field, you’d have seen me standing in the middle on my own looking straight at you, and you’d have gone back through the trees to the path quick, tugging your dog after you. You’d have known you’d given yourself away, even if only to me.But you didn’t. You only had eyes for Alice.
The Three
Sarah Lotz - 2014
Three child survivors. A religious fanatic who insists the three are harbingers of the apocalypse. What if he's right?The world is stunned when four commuter planes crash within hours of each other on different continents. Facing global panic, officials are under pressure to find the causes. With terrorist attacks and environmental factors ruled out, there doesn't appear to be a correlation between the crashes, except that in three of the four air disasters a child survivor is found in the wreckage. Dubbed 'The Three' by the international press, the children all exhibit disturbing behavioural problems, presumably caused by the horror they lived through and the unrelenting press attention. This attention becomes more than just intrusive when a rapture cult led by a charismatic evangelical minister insists that the survivors are three of the four harbingers of the apocalypse. The Three are forced to go into hiding, but as the children's behaviour becomes increasingly disturbing, even their guardians begin to question their miraculous survival.
Baby Teeth
Zoje Stage - 2018
He’s the only person who understands her, and all Hanna wants is to live happily ever after with him. But Mommy stands in her way, and she’ll try any trick she can think of to get rid of her. Ideally for good.Meet Suzette.She loves her daughter, really, but after years of expulsions and strained home schooling, her precarious health and sanity are weakening day by day. As Hanna’s tricks become increasingly sophisticated, and Suzette's husband remains blind to the failing family dynamics, Suzette starts to fear that there’s something seriously wrong, and that maybe home isn’t the best place for their baby girl after all.
Behind Dark Doors
Susan May - 2019
Brought to you by the international best-selling author readers have named the new Stephen King.Enter strange worlds and meet the unusual and sometimes terrifying residents. Dive into the complete collection of Behind Dark Doors, filled with stories of suspense, horror, paranormal and supernatural, from the dark mind of short story award-winning author Susan May.Enjoy these and thirteen more stories, plus Susan May's celebrated and fascinating From the Imagination Vault, behind-the-scenes visit discussing the inspiration for each tale. This collection combines Behind Dark Doors (one) (two) (three).DO US PARTWhen you've been married seventy years, what secret and deadly thoughts lie behind the smiles?RING RINGJanuary 13, 1887 is the day the telegraphic transmitter patent is granted to a desperate Alexander Graham Bell. But Bell is eaten by guilt due to a mysterious phone call from the future which changed everything.PROGRAM DELETEThe Intelervate Chip repairs brain-damaged babies good as new, better than new, superior. But as the children mature, the differences between chipped children and their peers changes everything. BACK AGAINA tragic accident takes Dawn's son before her eyes. The grief is overwhelming, until she finds herself back again reliving that terrible day. Fate is now within her grasp. Only one problem... fate doesn’t want change.SCENIC ROUTEWhen a young family stop overnight at a quaint country bed-and-breakfast what they don’t know is that something is wrong in Broken Springs, population 402.
True Crime Story
Joseph Knox - 2021
Through interviews with Zoe's closest friends and family, she begins piecing together what really happened in 2011. But where some versions of events overlap, aligning perfectly with one another, others stand in stark contrast, giving rise to troubling inconsistencies.Shaken by revelations of Zoe's secret life, and stalked by a figure from the shadows, Evelyn turns to crime writer Joseph Knox to help make sense of a case where everyone has something to hide.Zoe Nolan may be missing presumed dead, but her story is only just beginning
There's Someone Inside Your House
Stephanie Perkins - 2017
She's found new friends and has even started to fall for mysterious outsider Ollie Larsson. But her past isn't far behind.Then, one by one, the students of Osborne Hugh begin to die in a series of gruesome murders, each with increasingly grotesque flair. As the terror grows closer and her feelings for Ollie intensify, Makani is forced to confront her own dark secrets.
Providence
Caroline Kepnes - 2018
When Jon is finally ready to confess his feelings, he's suddenly kidnapped by his substitute teacher who is obsessed with H.P. Lovecraft and has a plot to save humanity.Mourning the disappearance of Jon and facing the reality he may never return, Chloe tries to navigate the rites of entering young adulthood and "fit in" with the popular crowd, but thoughts of Jon are never far away. When Jon finally escapes, he discovers he now has an uncontrollable power that endangers anyone he has intense feelings for. He runs away to protect Chloe and find the answers to his new identity—but he's soon being tracked by a detective who is fascinated by a series of vigilante killings that appear connected. Whisking us on a journey through New England and crashing these characters' lives together in the most unexpected ways, Kepnes explores the complex relationship between love and identity, unrequited passion and obsession, self-preservation and self-destruction, and how the lines are often blurred between the two.
Vanishing Girls
Lauren Oliver - 2015
But another girl, nine-year-old Madeline Snow, has vanished, too, and Nick becomes increasingly convinced that the two disappearances are linked. Now Nick has to find her sister, before it's too late.
The River at Night
Erica Ferencik - 2017
A high-stakes drama set against the harsh beauty of the Maine wilderness, charting the journey of four friends as they fight to survive the aftermath of a white water rafting accident, The River at Night is a nonstop and unforgettable thriller.
Love Lies Beneath
Ellen Hopkins - 2015
or her undoing.Tara is gorgeous, affluent, and forty. She lives in an impeccably restored Russian Hill mansion in San Francisco. Once a widow, twice divorced, she's a woman with a past she prefers keeping to herself.Enter Cavin Lattimore. He's handsome, kind, charming, and the surgeon assigned to Tara following a ski accident in Lake Tahoe. In the weeks it takes her to recover, Cavin sweeps her off her feet and their relationship blossoms into something Tara had never imagined possible. But then she begins to notice some strange things: a van parked outside her home at odd times, a break-in, threatening text messages and emails. She also starts to notice cracks in Cavin's seemingly perfect personality, like the suppressed rage his conniving teenage son brings out in him, and the discovery that Cavin hired a detective to investigate her immediately after they met.Now on crutches and housebound, Tara finds herself dependent on the new man in her life—perhaps too much so. She's handling rocky relationships with her sister and best friend, who are envious of her glamour and freedom; her prickly brother-in-law, who is intimidated by her wealth and power; and her estranged mother. However perfect Tara's life appears, things are beginning to get messy.Writing in beautiful prose, Ellen Hopkins unveils a new style while evoking her signature poetic form that readers fell in love with in Collateral and Triangles.
The Loneliest Girl in the Universe
Lauren James - 2018
Alone in space, she is the loneliest girl in the universe until she hears about a new ship which has launched from Earth – with a single passenger on board. A boy called J.Their only communication with each other is via email – and due to the distance between them, their messages take months to transmit across space. And yet Romy finds herself falling in love.But what does Romy really know about J? And what do the mysterious messages which have started arriving from Earth really mean?Sometimes, there’s something worse than being alone . . .