Book picks similar to
The Glass Cage by Colin Wilson


fiction
mystery
colin-wilson
thriller

Gilded Needles


Michael McDowell - 1980
    With her daughters and grandchildren, Black Lena led a ring of consummate female criminals - women skilled in the art of cruelty.Only a few blocks away, amidst the elegant mansions and lily-white reputations of Gramercy Park and Washington Square lived Judge James Stallworth. He was determined to crush Lena's evil crew, and with icy indifference he ordered three deaths in her family.Then, one Sunday, all the Stallworths receive individual invitations - invitations to their own funerals. Black Lena has vowed a reign of revenge. Can even the Stallworth fortune and awesome power save them from her diabolical lust for revenge?

The Wrong Man


John Katzenbach - 2006
    But he becomes uneasy after finding an anonymous love letter hidden in his daughter's room: "No one could ever love you like I do. No one ever will. We will be together forever. One way or another." But the reality of Ashley's plight far exceeds Scott's worst suspicions. One drink too many had led Ashley, a beautiful, bright art student, into what she thought was just a fling with a blue-collar bad boy. But now, no amount of pleading or reasoning can discourage his phone calls, ardent e-mails, and constant, watchful gaze. Michael O'Connell is but a malignant shadow of a man. His brash, handsome features conceal a black and empty soul. Control is his religion. Cunning and criminal skill are his stock-in-trade. Rage is his language. The harder Ashley tries to break free, the deeper Michael burrows into every aspect of her life, so she turns in desperation to her divorced parents and her mother's new partner-three people still locked in a coldly civilized triangle of resentment. But their fierce devotion to Ashley is the common bond that will draw them together to face down a predator. For Ashley's family, it is a test of primal love that will drive them to the extreme edge-and beyond-in a battle of wills that escalates into a life-or-death war to protect their own. From the bestselling master of suspense, John Katzenbach, The "Wrong Man" is an elegantly crafted and breathtakingly intense read that asks the question, "How far would you go to save the child you love?"

Santa Cruz Noir


Susie BrightPeggy Townsend - 2018
    Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.Featuring brand-new stories by: Tommy Moore, Jessica Breheny, Naomi Hirahara, Calvin McMillin, Liza Monroy, Elizabeth McKenzie, Jill Wolfson, Ariel Gore, Jon Bailiff, Maceo Montoya, Micah Perks, Seana Graham, Vinnie Hansen, Peggy Townsend, Margaret Elysia Garcia, Lou Mathews, Lee Quarnstrom, Dillon Kaiser, Beth Lisick, and Wallace Baine.From the introduction by Susie Bright:Every town has its noir-ville. It’s easy to find in Santa Cruz. We live in what’s called “paradise,” where you can wake up in a pool of blood with the first pink rays of the sunrise peeking out over our mountain range. The dewy mist lifts from the bay. Don’t hate us because we’re beautiful—we were made that way, like Venus rising off the foam with a brick in her hand. We can’t help it if you fall for it every time . . .“If I lived in a place like this,” visitors often say, “I’d wake up with a smile every day.”Oh, we do, thank you for that. There’s no beauty like a merciless beauty—and like every crepuscular predator, it thrives at dawn and dusk. You’re just the innocent we’ve been waiting for, with your big paper cone of sugar-shark cotton, whipped out of pure nothing. We have just the ride for you, the longest tunnel ever. Santa Cruz is everything you ever dreamed, and everything you ever screamed, in one long drop you’ll never forget.

How's the Pain?


Pascal Garnier - 2006
    And now the ageing vermin exterminator is preparing to die. But he still has one last job down on the coast and he needs a driver. Bernard is twenty-one. He can drive and he’s never seen the sea. He can’t pass up the chance to chauffeur for Simon, whatever his mother may say. As the unlikely pair set off on their journey, Bernard soon finds that Simon’s definition of vermin is broader than he’d expected...Veering from the hilarious to the horrific, this offbeat story from master stylist, Pascal Garnier, is at heart an affecting study of human frailties.

The Night of the Generals


Hans Hellmut Kirst - 1962
    The possible suspects are narrowed down to three German generals, but the investigation eventually comes to nothing. A similar crime happens in Paris in 1944 when all three generals are assembled once more - but again the investigations are halted by the famous 'night of the generals' - the coup against Hitler. Then, in 1956, a third murder occurs in Dresden. This time the killer must be caught...

After Many a Summer Dies the Swan


Aldous Huxley - 1939
    With his customary wit and intellectual sophistication, Huxley pursues his characters in their quest for the eternal, finishing on a note of horror. "This is Mr. Huxley's Hollywood novel, and you might expect it to be fantastic, extravagant, crazy and preposterous. It is all that, and heaven and hell too....It is the kind of novel that he is particularly the master of, where the most extraordinary and fortuitous events are followed by contemplative little essays on the meaning of life....The story is outrageously good."-New York Times. "A highly sensational plot that will keep astonishing you to practically the final sentence."-The New Yorker. "Mr. Huxley's elegant mockery, his cruel aptness of phrase, the revelations and the ingenious surprises he springs on the reader are those of a master craftsman; Mr. Huxley is at the top of his form." -London Times Literary Supplement.

Family Happiness


Leo Tolstoy - 1859
    Family Happiness (Russian: Семейное счастье [Semeynoye Schast'ye]) is an 1859 novella written by Leo Tolstoy, first published in The Russian Messenger.

Whitechapel: The Final Stand Of Sherlock Holmes


Bernard Schaffer - 2011
    In London's infamous East End, a ritualistic serial killer is slaughtering women. The police are baffled, the media is in a frenzy, and people the world over are captivated by the fiend known as Jack the Ripper. Only a short distance away, the Great Detective has succumbed to an addiction to morphine and cocaine. His faithful friend, Dr. John Watson, and Irene Adler will venture into Whitechapel alone to try and lure the Ripper out of hiding using themselves as bait. As darkness threatens to consume all of London, her greatest champion, the immortal Sherlock Holmes, will rise one final time to defend her. WHITECHAPEL: THE FINAL STAND OF SHERLOCK HOLMES combines the actual events of the investigation into Jack the Ripper's crimes with the canon of Arthur Conan Doyle. Historically accurate, graphic, and bold. This is Sherlock Holmes as you've never seen him, and will never be able to forget.

Beneath the Mountain


Luca D'Andrea - 2016
    He and his partner, Mike, made a reality show about roadies that skyrocketed them to fame. But now Salinger’s left that all behind, to move with his wife, Annelise, and young daughter, Clara, to the remote part of Italy where Annelise grew up—the Alto Adige. Nestled in the Dolomites, this breathtaking, rural region that was once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire remains more Austro than Italian. Locals speak a strange, ancient dialect—Ladino—and root for Germany (against Italy) in the world cup. Annelise’s small town—Siebenhoch—is close-knit to say the least and does not take kindly to out-of-towners. When Salinger decides to make a documentary about the mountain rescue group, the mission goes horribly awry, leaving him the only survivor. He blames himself, and so—it seems—does everyone else in Siebenhoch. Spiraling into a deep depression, he begins having terrible, recurrent nightmares. Only his little girl Clara can put a smile on his face. But when he takes Clara to the Bletterbach Gorge—a canyon rich in fossil remains—he accidentally overhears a conversation that gives his life renewed focus. In 1985, three students were murdered there, their bodies savaged, limbs severed and strewn by a killer who was never found. Although Salinger knows this is a tightlipped community, one where he is definitely persona non grata, he becomes obsessed with solving this mystery and is convinced it is all that can keep him sane. And as Salinger unearths the long kept secrets of this small town, one by one, the terrifying truth is eventually revealed about the horrifying crime that marked an entire village.

The Traitor's Emblem


Juan Gomez-Jurado - 2008
    He doesn’t know who they are or where they came from, but one of them gives him a mysterious gold-and-diamond emblem before disembarking. Decades later, the captain’s son receives a substantial offer for it and is told an astounding story behind the object: it holds the key to Paul Reiner’s lifelong quest. . . . Munich, 1919. After his family falls into disgrace, fifteen-year-old Paul dreams of the heroic father he never knew. But one night, seconds before committing suicide, Paul’s cousin reveals a terrible secret about his father’s death. This discovery turns Paul’s world upside down and leads him on a hunt in Nazi Germany to uncover the mystery surrounding his father’s death. The Traitor’s Emblem is an epic novel spanning decades of family betrayal, impossible love, and the high price of vengeance. Set against the menacing streets of Depression-era Munich and the cruel rise of Nazism, Gómez-Jurado’s spellbinding thriller proves again that he is a master of narration.

The Complete Gillian Flynn: Gone Girl, Dark Places, Sharp Objects


Gillian Flynn - 2014
    A #1 New York Times bestseller, Gone Girl is an unputdownable masterpiece about a marriage gone terribly, terribly wrong. The Chicago Tribune proclaimed that Flynn’s work “draws you in and keeps you reading with the force of a pure but nasty addiction.” Gone Girl’s toxic mix of sharp-edged wit and deliciously chilling prose creates a nerve-fraying thriller that confounds you at every turn. Flynn’s second novel, Dark Places, is an intricately orchestrated thriller that ravages a family's past to unearth the truth behind a horrifying crime. A New York Times bestseller and Weekend Today Top Summer Read, Dark Places solidified Flynn’s status as one of the most critically acclaimed suspense writers of our time. In Sharp Objects, Flynn’s debut novel, a young journalist returns home to cover a dark assignment—and to face her own damaged family history. With its taut, crafted writing, Sharp Objects is addictive, haunting, and unforgettable.

The Shark-Infested Custard


Charles Willeford - 1993
    Eddie Miller is an airline pilot who's studying to get his real estate license. Don Luchessi is a silver salesman who's separated from his wife but too Catholic to get a divorce. Hank Norton is a drug company rep who gets four times as many dames as any of the other guys. They are all regular guys who like to drink, play cards, meet broads, and shoot a little pool. But when a friendly bet goes horribly awry, they find themselves with two dead bodies on their hands and a homicidal husband in the wings—and acting more like hardened criminals than upstanding citizens.

Life is Elsewhere


Milan Kundera - 1969
    The lyrical age, according to Kundera, is youth, and this novel, above all, is an epic of adolescence; an ironic epic that tenderly erodes sacrosanct values: childhood, motherhood, revolution, and even poetry. Jaromil is in fact a poet. His mother made him a poet and accompanies him (figuratively) to his love bed, and (literally) to his deathbed. A ridiculous and touching character, horrifying and totally innocent ("innocence with its bloody smile"!), Jaromil is at the same time a true poet. He's no creep, he's Rimbaud. Rimbaud entrapped by the communist revolution, entrapped in a sombre farce.

Stillhouse Lake


Rachel Caine - 2017
    But when a car accident reveals her husband’s secret life as a serial killer, she must remake herself as Gwen Proctor—the ultimate warrior mom.With her ex now in prison, Gwen has finally found refuge in a new home on remote Stillhouse Lake. Though still the target of stalkers and Internet trolls who think she had something to do with her husband’s crimes, Gwen dares to think her kids can finally grow up in peace.But just when she’s starting to feel at ease in her new identity, a body turns up in the lake—and threatening letters start arriving from an all-too-familiar address. Gwen Proctor must keep friends close and enemies at bay to avoid being exposed—or watch her kids fall victim to a killer who takes pleasure in tormenting her. One thing is certain: she’s learned how to fight evil. And she’ll never stop.

The X-Files: Goblins


Charles L. Grant - 1994
    The agency maverick and the female agent assigned to keep him in line.Their job: investigate the eeriest unsolved mysteries in modern America, from pyro-psychics to death row demonics, from rampaging Sasquatches to alien invasions. The cases the Bureau wants handled quietly, but quickly, before the public finds out what's really out there. And panics. The cases filed under "X."Something out there is killing people, remaining invisible and unseen by human eyes until it strikes with deadly force...