Book picks similar to
Relatively Strange by Marilyn Messik


thriller
psychological-thriller
psychological
sf

Her Broken Trust (Rosemary Run #7)


Kelly Utt - 2021
    But behind closed doors, she's suffering.She has a life many women would kill for, complete with two healthy young children and a doting husband who puts her every want and need above his own. Her happy family is the envy of friends and neighbors alike.Looks can be quite deceiving. Layla's husband is in big, life-altering trouble and will soon be headed to federal prison. No one knows. Layla is desperate to keep it that way.Can she withstand the pressure? Will her marriage survive? And how will she hold true to her own sense of right and wrong? Her Broken Trust is the eighth book in the Rosemary Run Series featuring the women of a California town who face the darkness hiding beneath their community’s picturesque facade.

Trance


Adam Southward - 2019
    He is in control. This is his revenge—and he’s only just begun.Three university scientists are found dead in a gruesome murder-suicide, and the only suspect in the case, Victor Lazar, is quickly captured. When the spate of violent suicides follows him to prison he is moved to solitary confinement, reserved for the highest-risk inmates. And then his assigned psychologist inexplicably takes his own life.Alex Madison, a former forensic psychologist turned private therapist, is brought in to interview Victor. He suspects that Victor is controlling his victims, somehow coaxing them into a suggestive trance. It seems like science fiction, but as Alex digs deeper he uncovers a frightening reality of secret research and cruel experimentation—and the perpetrators are closer to home than he could ever have imagined.Too late, Alex learns the true extent of what Victor is capable of—and who he’s after. With everything he holds dear at risk, can Alex take control of a dangerous mind—before it takes control of him?

The Prettiest One


James Hankins - 2015
    Desperate to learn the truth about where she’s been and what has happened to her but terrified of what she may find, Caitlin embarks on a search for answers. Her journey takes her from the safe suburban world she knows to a seedy town she’s never heard of, where a terrible truth from her past lies hidden—a truth she can’t quite remember yet can’t completely forget.

Davenport House


Marie Silk - 2016
    She lives isolated in the Pennsylvania countryside with her affluent and secretive family. When her father dies suddenly, Mary becomes pained with grief and increasingly suspicious of those around her. A humble servant girl has the chance of a lifetime to become a lady's companion. Costly dresses, exquisite rooms, and fine dinners are pleasant distractions from what is really happening in the house.

The Silence


Joss Stirling - 2019
    The eccentric owner, Bridget, is keen to share her house with like-minded artists so also living there is Jonah – charismatic, volatile and pursuing a career in acting. But his past continues to dog him, both a curse and a blessing as his edgy persona gains traction in the acting world.Jenny is herself battling demons; unable to speak after a catastrophic incident when she was a teenager, she is reliant on strong painkillers to dull the constant pain. Gradually, an insidious addiction takes hold and Jenny’s life spirals out of control. A malevolent energy has gripped the house and Jenny, Jonah and Bridget find themselves battling to save not only their sanity, but also their lives…

The Wave


L.E. Luttrell - 2020
    When they meet in Phuket in December 2004 and share their troubles, the future begins to look more promising. Lucy devises a plan to help Kelly escape from her controlling and violent partner. But a tsunami sweeps through the resort causing tragedy and chaos.After recovering from her injuries, Lucy, whose husband died in the tsunami, travels to Llandudno in Wales to visit her in-laws. Thirteen years later, still in Llandudno and having established a successful business there, an unexpected visitor turns up on Lucy’s doorstep who turns her whole world upside down. She then has to consider how far she will go to protect all she holds dear.The Wave is a psychological thriller set in: Phuket, Thailand; Melbourne, Australia and Llandudno, Wales.

Gone


Stacy Claflin - 2014
    Eager to prove herself grown up, she goes to a dark, secluded park. She’s supposed to meet the boy of her dreams who she met online. But the cute fifteen year old was a fantasy, his pictures fake. She finds herself face to face with Chester Woodran, a man capable of murder.Distraught over his own missing daughter, Chester insists that Macy replace his lost girl. He withholds food, locks Macy up, and roughs her up, demanding that she call him dad. Under duress from his constant threats and mind games, her hold on reality starts to slip. Clinging to her memories is the only way of holding onto her true identity, not believing that she is Chester’s daughter. Otherwise she may never see her family again.

The House Guest


Mark Edwards - 2020
    A perfect stranger. A perfect nightmare. When British twenty-somethings Ruth and Adam are offered the chance to spend the summer housesitting in New York, they can’t say no. Young, in love and on the cusp of professional success, they feel as if luck is finally on their side.So the moment that Eden turns up on the doorstep, drenched from a summer storm, it seems only right to share a bit of that good fortune. Beautiful and charismatic, Eden claims to be a friend of the homeowners, who told her she could stay whenever she was in New York.They know you’re not supposed to talk to strangers—let alone invite them into your home—but after all, Eden’s only a stranger until they get to know her.As suspicions creep in that Eden may not be who she claims to be, they begin to wonder if they’ve made a terrible mistake…

The Transformed


Raphael Hirsch - 2004
    Robert Newman is a man obsessed--obsessed with the death of his wife from a rare genetic disease--obsessed with finding a cure to save her sister from the same fate. After years of single-minded effort, he has developed a revolutionary gene therapy procedure. Now the most devastating of human diseases can be stopped in their tracks. But within weeks, his discovery has unleashed a deadly cancer epidemic. His life is threatened and everyone he loves becomes his enemy. As he searches frantically for clues, he discovers a long dormant secret hidden within the human genome. Dr. Newman realizes that malignant transformation in human cells is not a random event. The marked increase in malignancies has a more horrific explanation. Silent for millennia, Cancer is now awakening as a rationale entity with an agenda of its own. And unless it can be stopped, no one--least of all Dr. Robert Newman--has long to live.

From the Cradle


Louise Voss - 2014
    The third from her own bedroom...When Helen and Sean Philips go out for the evening, leaving their teenage daughter babysitting little Frankie, they have no idea that they are about to face every parent's greatest fear. Detective Inspector Patrick Lennon is hopeful that the three children who have been abducted in this patch of south-west London will be returned safe and well. But when a body is found in a local park, Lennon realizes that time is running out—and that nothing in this case is as it seems...Blending police procedural with psychological thriller, From the Cradle will have every parent checking that their children are safe in their beds...then checking again.

Before She Was Found


Heather Gudenkauf - 2019
    But when they decide to sneak out to go to the abandoned rail yard on the outskirts of town, little do they know that their innocent games will have dangerous consequences.Later that night, Cora Landry is discovered on the tracks, bloody and clinging to life, her friends nowhere to be found. Soon their small rural town is thrust into a maelstrom. Who would want to hurt a young girl like Cora--and why? In an investigation that leaves no stone unturned, everyone is a suspect and no one can be trusted--not even those closest to Cora.Before She Was Found is a timely and gripping thriller about friendship and betrayal, about the power of social pressure and the price of needing to fit in. It is about the great lengths a parent will go to protect their child and keep them safe--even if that means burying the truth, no matter the cost.

One of Us is Lying


Shalini Boland - 2020
    So why does someone want to destroy her?Tia is walking home with her children, along the lakeside of their quiet, safe town, when she realises something is wrong with her five-year-old daughter, Rosie. She seems troubled, not at all her usual happy self.But when Tia finally coaxes Rosie to open up, she wishes she hadn’t. Because her sweet daughter asks a question Tia never thought she’d hear.‘Mummy, why did you kill someone?’Tia knows how rumours spread around her small town. She just can’t understand who would have shared such a horrible story. Or why.It can’t have anything to do with what happened. Only her two best friends really remember that…Tia thought she could trust Fiona and Kelly with her life. They’ve been through so much together. But when she’s sent photos of herself that could tear her whole world apart, she starts to wonder. Someone is determined to punish her. But who? And will her friends stand by her, or will the past destroy all of their lives?From the million-copy-bestselling author of The Secret Mother and The Perfect Family, this absolutely addictive psychological thriller is guaranteed to make you gasp. If you loved Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train and Big Little Lies this book is for you.

The Burning Girls


C.J. Tudor - 2021
    J. Tudor.Welcome to Chapel Croft. Five hundred years ago, eight protestant martyrs were burned at the stake here. Thirty years ago, two teenage girls disappeared without a trace. And two months ago, the vicar of the local parish killed himself.Reverend Jack Brooks, a single parent with a fourteen-year-old daughter and a heavy conscience, arrives in the village hoping to make a fresh start and find some peace. Instead, Jack finds a town mired in secrecy and a strange welcome package: an old exorcism kit and a note quoting scripture. "But there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed and hidden that will not be known."The more Jack and her daughter Flo get acquainted with the town and its strange denizens, the deeper they are drawn into their rifts, mysteries, and suspicions. And when Flo is troubled by strange sightings in the old chapel, it becomes apparent that there are ghosts here that refuse to be laid to rest.But uncovering the truth can be deadly in a village where everyone has something to protect, everyone has links with the village's bloody past, and no one trusts an outsider.

The Ark


Boyd Morrison - 2009
    Before he dies in her arms, he gasps a few cryptic words about a vast conspiracy to hide an awesome historical artifact and tells Dilara that the only person who can help her is a decorated former Army combat engineer named Tyler Locke.Two days later, Locke is consulting on a North Atlantic oil platform when a ferry helicopter carrying Dilara suffers a mechanical failure and goes down next to the rig. With only minutes before the survivors freeze to death in the frigid waters, the quick-thinking Locke manages to rescue everyone on board, including Dilara. She tells him that the helicopter crash was no accident. Someone wants to stop her from finding Noah’s Ark.A second attempt on Dilara’s life convinces a skeptical Locke that there is truth to her story. When a movie star’s private jet crashes into the Mojave desert, it proves to be another link to the conspiracy. Locke and Dilara head to Arizona, and their investigation reveals a chilling discovery. A group of religious fanatics has recovered a weapon from the Ark that will let them recreate the effects of the biblical flood and mold the remnants of humanity according to their leader’s twisted vision.Now Locke and Dilara have just seven days to find the Ark and the secret hidden inside before it is used to wipe out civilization again…

Blur


Steven James - 2014
    Just like everyone in the community, sixteen-year-old Daniel Byers believes that Emily Jackson’s death was accidental. But at her funeral, when he has a terrifying vision of her, his world begins to rip apart at the seams.Convinced that Emily’s appearance was more than just a mere hallucination, Daniel begins to look carefully into her death, even as he increasingly loses the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality.What’s real? What’s not? Where does reality end and madness begin?As Daniel struggles to find the truth, his world begins to crumble around him as he slips further and further into his own private blurred reality.Full of mind-bending twists and turns, Blur launches a new trilogy of young adult thrillers from Steven James, a master of suspense.