Book picks similar to
In the Absence of Serpents by Amanda Gibson


fiction
female-leads
just-coverly-love
romance

Through a Glass Darkly


Gilbert Morris - 1999
    Some unlikely people gather around him to help him back into life, and then he meets a woman who touches his heart and who may be the key to his unknown past

The End of Everything


Megan Abbott - 2011
    Then one afternoon, Evie disappears, and as a rabid, giddy panic spreads through the balmy suburban community, everyone turns to Lizzie for answers. Was Evie unhappy, troubled, or upset? Had she mentioned being followed? Would she have gotten into the car of a stranger?Compelled by curiosity, Lizzie takes up her own furtive pursuit of the truth. Haunted by dreams of her lost friend and titillated by her own new power as the center of the disappearance, Lizzie uncovers secret after secret and begins to wonder if she knew anything at all about her best friend.

Three Novels of Ancient Egypt: River God / The Seventh Scroll / Warlock


Wilbur Smith - 2003
    

Galveston


Nic Pizzolatto - 2010
    On the same day that Roy Cady is diagnosed with a terminal illness, he senses that his boss, a dangerous loan-sharking bar-owner, wants him dead. Known “without affection” to members of the boss’s crew as “Big Country” on account of his long hair, beard, and cowboy boots, Roy is alert to the possibility that a routine assignment could be a deathtrap. Which it is. Yet what the would-be killers do to Roy Cady is not the same as what he does to them, which is to say that after a smoking spasm of violence, they are mostly dead and he is mostly alive.Before Roy makes his getaway, he realizes there are two women in the apartment, one of them still breathing, and he sees something in her frightened, defiant eyes that causes a fateful decision. He takes her with him as he goes on the run from New Orleans to Galveston, Texas—an action as ill-advised as it is inescapable. The girl’s name is Rocky, and she is too young, too tough, too sexy—and far too much trouble. Roy, Rocky, and her sister hide in the battered seascape of Galveston’s country-western bars and fleabag hotels, a world of treacherous drifters, pickup trucks, and ashed-out hopes. Any chance that they will find safety there is soon lost. Rocky is a girl with quite a story to tell, one that will pursue and damage Roy for a very long time to come in this powerful and atmospheric thriller, impossible to put down. Constructed with maximum tension and haunting aftereffect, written in darkly beautiful prose, Galveston announces the arrival of a major new literary talent.

Death Among Friends


Elizabeth Cadell - 1964
    After eighteen months as a companion-secretary to a charming but eccentric old lady, she felt she was ready to forget the past and begin again…But a chance encounter on a London railway station brings it all back…

The Kate Morton Collection: The House at Riverton and The Forgotten Garden


Kate Morton - 2010
    Morton's first two unforgettable novels in one volume: The House at Riverton plus The Forgotten Garden.

Notes from My Captivity


Kathy Parks - 2018
    Now Adrienne's being held captive by the family she was convinced didn't exist, and her best hope for escape is to act like she cares about them, even if it means wooing the youngest son.

It's In Her Blood


S.S. Roswell - 2015
    She must face unsurmountable danger, taking lives and putting hers on the line to save him while dealing with emotional turmoil when she found out her loving husband was not as devoted as she thought and her enemies are more powerful and devious than she imagined.

My Dark Vanessa


Kate Elizabeth Russell - 2020
    Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher. 2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager—and who professed to worship only her—may be far different from what she has always believed?Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. Written with the haunting intimacy of The Girls and the creeping intensity of Room, My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society itself.

A Keeper


Graham Norton - 2018
    Her childhood home is packed solid with useless junk, her mother’s presence already fading. But within this mess, she discovers a small stash of letters—and ultimately, the truth. Forty years earlier, a young woman stumbles from a remote stone house, the night quiet except for the constant wind that encircles her as she hurries deeper into the darkness away from the cliffs and the sea. She has no sense of where she is going, only that she must keep on.

The John Milton Series: Books 7-9


Mark Dawson - 2016
    From the Bourne-esque HEADHUNTERS, to dark criminal enterprise of THE NINTH STEP and the thrilling THE JUNGLE, don't start this collection late at night - you won't be able to put it down!***MEET JOHN MILTON.He considers himself an artisan. A craftsman. His trade is murder. Milton is the man the government sends after you when everything else has failed. Ruthless. Brilliant. Anonymous. Lethal. You wouldn't pick him out of a crowd but you wouldn't want to be on his list.But now, after ten years, he's had enough - there's blood on his hands and he wants out. Trouble is, this job is not one you can just walk away from. He goes on the run, seeking atonement for his sins by helping the people he meets along the way. But his past cannot be easily forgotten and before long it is Milton who is hunted, and not the hunter.HEADHUNTERS Bury your enemies, and bury them deep.John Milton thought he was done with Avi Bachman. The most dangerous man he's ever known has been incarcerated in Angola, the brutal Louisiana prison. Inmates rarely leave Angola. Once you go in, the only way out is in a box. But Bachman is no ordinary prisoner. He was an assassin for the Mossad, and he has favours to call in.Milton is in the Australian outback with an old friend and his flirtatious kid sister, looking for a summer’s peace to put his troubled mind to rest. But Bachman has other plans. He thinks that Milton killed his wife, and now he wants revenge. From Australia to Israel, from Hong Kong to Croatia, here is the conclusion of this brutal chapter in Milton’s life. The two headhunters are on a collision course, and only one of them will walk away. THE NINTH STEPMilton is keeping a low profile in London when he meets Eddie Fabian. Fabian confesses that he is considering suicide, and that the reason for his depression was the abuse that he suffered as a child. Milton offers to help, but, before he can, Eddie is found dead in circumstances that Milton considers suspicious.And then events take a turn that no-one could have anticipated…Milton’s attempted good deed becomes a quest to unveil corruption at the highest levels of government and murder at the dark heart of the criminal underworld.Milton is pulled back into the game, and that’s going to have serious consequences for everyone who crosses his path.THE JUNGLEAn assassin haunted by his past. Two young refugees out of their depth and in need of his special talents.John Milton is no stranger to the world’s seedy underbelly. But when the former British Secret Service agent comes up against a ruthless human trafficking ring, he’ll have to fight harder than ever to conquer the evil in his path. After Milton meets a refugee who lost a sister to people smugglers, he travels through war-torn Libya and the murkiest parts of Italy and France to get the girl back. As enemies watch his every move, Milton confronts a group of Albanian pimps and smugglers so dangerous, they could easily make this mission his last. The Jungle is a gripping standalone thriller in Mark Dawson’s bestselling John Milton series.

Prague Summer


Jeffrey Condran - 2014
    They live the life of a comfortably married couple—morning coffee at the same café every day, social events with the same small group of friends, a little too much to drink in the evenings and a single episode of Poirot every night before bed. Until one day their world is turned upside down by the arrival from the States of Stephanie's old friend, Selma Al-Khateeb whose husband has been mysteriously arrested and indefinitely imprisoned. At first it appears that Selma has come to escape her problems, but soon her reasons for coming to Prague grow sinister and murky. Stephanie and Henry’s placid existence is turned upside down in ways they couldn’t have imagined.

Crooked Little Lies


Barbara Taylor Sissel - 2015
    A young man well known in their small town of Hardys Walk, Texas, Bo seems fine, even if Lauren’s intuition says otherwise. Since the accident two years ago that left her brain in a fragile state, she can’t trust her own instincts—and neither can her family. Then Bo vanishes, and as the search for him ensues, the police question whether she’s responsible. Lauren is terrified, not of what she remembers but of what she doesn’t.Unable to trust herself and unwilling to trust anyone else, Lauren begins her own investigation into the mystery of Bo’s disappearance. But the truth can prove to be as shocking as any lie, and as Lauren exposes each one, from her family, from her friends, she isn’t the only one who will face heart-stopping repercussions.

Fossil Hunter


John B. Olson - 2008
    When paleontologist Dr. Katie James leads an expedition to search for an ancient whale fossil rumored to be in the Iraqi desert, she has no idea her archrival, Nick Murad, will be searching for the same fossil. But then Katie makes a ground-breaking discovery and is forced to collaborate with Nick to analyze the find before it's destroyed by a fundamentalist government faction. Nick and Katie's initial results fly in the face of current scientific theory, and it seems the whole world turns against them, including those they thought they could trust. Then the fossil disappears, sending Nick and Katie on a chase that could cost them their reputations, their careers—even their lives.

Purchased For Submission


Jamila Jasper - 2021
    guided only by his unyielding lust.Stavros never wanted to hurt her. He meant to set her free…But Fallon’s freedom comes with a steep price.No passport, no money, and no proof of her identity make her an easy target for enemies and family alike.Stavros loves hard. Too hard.As he falls for the woman he purchased for submission, he understands the darkest truth:He can’t ever let her go.