Book picks similar to
The Night Book by Richard Madeley
fiction
thriller
book-club
suspense
Holloway Falls
Neil Cross - 2003
Gentle man. Wanted man. Holloway has secrets. Years ago, he witnessed his wife's betrayal and his life fell apart. Now someone's toying with his mind and the life of a missing woman, the prostitute Holloway pays to imitate his ex-wife. When she is murdered, his ex-wife's name scrawled on her abdomen, Holloway is trapped by the consequence of love and sex, of infidelity and violence in a world of his own terrible making. Hunted as a rogue policeman and a killer, he's on the run. And planning retribution.
The Long Drop
Denise Mina - 2017
Peter Manuel has been found guilty of a string of murders and is waiting to die by hanging. But every good crime story has a beginning. Manuel's starts with the murder of William Watt's family. Looking no further that Watt himself, the police are convinced he's guilty. Desperate to clear his name, Watt turns to Manuel, a career criminal who claims to have information that will finger the real killer. As Watt seeks justice with the cagey Manuel's help, everyone the pair meets has blood on their hands as they sell their version of the truth. The Long Drop is an explosive novel about guilt, innocence and the power of a good story to hide the difference.
A Lady's Guide to Mischief and Mayhem
Manda Collins - 2020
And she's determined to inform and educate the ladies of London on the nefarious-and deadly-criminals who are preying on the fairer sex. When her reporting leads to the arrest of a notorious killer, however, Katherine flees to a country house party to escape her newfound notoriety-only to witness a murder on her very first night. And when the lead detective accuses Katherine of inflaming-rather than informing-the public with her column, she vows to prove him wrong.Detective Inspector Andrew Eversham's refusal to compromise his investigations nearly cost him his own career, and he blames Katherine. To avoid bad publicity, his superiors are pressuring him to solve cases quickly rather than correctly. When he discovers she's the key witness in a new crime, he's determined to prevent the beautiful widow from once again wreaking havoc on his case. Yet as Katherine proves surprisingly insightful and Andrew impresses Katherine with his lethal competency, both are forced to admit the fire between them is more flirtatious than furious. But to explore the passion between them, they'll need to catch a killer.
This Is Not Over
Holly Brown - 2017
I’ve put through a refund to your credit card for the full amount, minus $200 to replace the sheets. I couldn’t get the stain out despite professional laundering and bleaching. . .MirandaAll Dawn wanted was to stay in a beautiful beach house with her husband, to live like money’s no object, for just one long weekend. Then Miranda, the home’s owner, has to send an e-mail like this, full of lies and the suggestion that Dawn’s so dirty, she needs to throw out her sheets. Someone needs to teach Miranda a lesson.Beware of your "host"I wouldn’t leave a review on Getaway.com at all, if I didn’t feel it was my civic duty to warn others . . .DawnMiranda cannot believe her eyes. Yes, she may be a doctor’s wife, but she needs the rental money from the beach house desperately. Someone needs to teach this Dawn a lesson.Two very different women with one thing in common: Each one knows she’s right, and each is determined to win this battle of words and wills and (eventually) worse. Neither will yield, not before they’ve dredged up hidden secrets, old hurts, and painful truths that threaten to shatter the foundations of their lives.Because it’s never really just about the sheets, is it?This is not over.This is so not over.
The Sinner
Petra Hammesfahr - 1999
Why? What would cause this quiet, kind young mother to stab a complete stranger in the throat over and over again, in full view of her family and friends? For the local police, it's an open-and-shut case. Cora quickly confesses and there's no shortage of witnesses, but those questions remain unanswered. Haunted by the case, the police commissioner refuses to close the file and begins his own maverick investigation. So begins the slow unraveling of Cora's past, a harrowing descent into a woman's private hell. A dark, spellbinding novel, where the truth is to be questioned at every turn, The Sinner has been a bestseller around the world, and is poised to be a summer smash with the coming TV adaptation, already hailed as one of the most anticipated shows of the summer."The Sinner is unnerving and weird and guaranteed to stick with you weeks later." -Sarah Weinman, editor of Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives and Women Crime Writers"Hauntingly insightful and sensitive." -The Guardian
The Darkest Secret
Alex Marwood - 2016
Coco is three years old.
When identical twin Coco goes missing during a family celebration, there is a media frenzy. Her parents are rich and influential, as are the friends they were with at their holiday home by the sea. But what really happened to Coco?Over two intense weekends - the first when Coco goes missing and the second twelve years later at the funeral of her father - the darkest of secrets will gradually be revealed...
Taut, emotive and utterly compelling, an unputdownable 'ripped from the headlines' novel that you will want to talk about with everyone you know.
The First Day of Spring
Nancy Tucker - 2021
"That was all it took for me to feel like I had all the power in the world. One morning, one moment, one yellow-haired boy. It wasn't so much after all."Meet Chrissie... Chrissie is eight and she has a secret: she has just killed a boy. The feeling made her belly fizz like soda pop. Her playmates are tearful and their mothers are terrified, keeping them locked indoors. But Chrissie rules the roost -- she's the best at wall-walking, she knows how to get free candy, and now she has a feeling of power that she never gets at home, where food is scarce and attention scarcer.Twenty years later, adult Chrissie is living in hiding under a changed name. A single mother, all she wants is for her daughter to have the childhood she herself was denied. That's why the threatening phone calls are so terrifying. People are looking for them, the past is catching up, and Chrissie fears losing the only thing in this world she cares about, her child.
The Sixes
Kate White - 2011
With taut prose evocative of Laura Lippman’s Life Sentences and Dennis Lehane’s Moonlight Mile, White paints the sinister picture of a quiet Pennsylvania college town left shaken after a mysterious death precipitates a cascade of evil events on campus. When new teacher Phoebe Hall undertakes the dangerous quest of uncovering the truth behind the ghastly recent happenings, her investigation will send her into the clutches of a deadly secret society—the Sixes—and unearth the dark relics of her own long-buried past.
The Cuckoo's Calling
Robert Galbraith - 2013
Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man.
Paris for One and Other Stories
Jojo Moyes - 2016
She's never even been on a romantic weekend away--to anywhere--before. Traveling abroad isn't really her thing. But when Nell's boyfriend fails to show up for their mini-vacation, she has the opportunity to prove everyone--including herself--wrong. Alone in Paris, Nell finds a version of herself she never knew existed: independent and intrepid. Could this turn out to be the most adventurous weekend of her life? Funny, charming, and irresistible, Paris for One is quintessential Jojo Moyes--as are the other stories that round out the collection.
Tigers in Red Weather
Liza Klaussmann - 2012
In the days following the end of the Second World War, the world seems to offer itself up, and the two women are on the cusp of their 'real lives': Helena is off to Hollywood and a new marriage, while Nick is heading for a reunion with her own young husband, Hughes, about to return from the war. Soon the gilt begins to crack. Helena's husband is not the man he seemed to be, and Hughes has returned from the war distant, his inner light curtained over. On the brink of the 1960s, back at Tiger House, Nick and Helena—with their children, Daisy and Ed—try to recapture that sense of possibility. But when Daisy and Ed discover the victim of a brutal murder, the intrusion of violence causes everything to unravel. The members of the family spin out of their prescribed orbits, secrets come to light, and nothing about their lives will ever be the same.Brilliantly told from five points of view, with a magical elegance and suspenseful dark longing, Tigers in Red Weather is an unforgettable debut novel from a writer of extraordinary insight and accomplishment.