Book picks similar to
Isolation by Sarah K. Stephens


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The Night Olivia Fell


Christina McDonald - 2019
    And pregnant.A search for the truth. A lifetime of lies.In the small hours of the morning, Abi Knight is startled awake by the phone call no mother ever wants to get: her teenage daughter Olivia has fallen off a bridge. Not only is Olivia brain dead, she’s pregnant and must remain on life support to keep her baby alive. And then Abi sees the angry bruises circling Olivia’s wrists.When the police unexpectedly rule Olivia’s fall an accident, Abi decides to find out what really happened that night. Heartbroken and grieving, she unravels the threads of her daughter’s life. Was Olivia’s fall an accident? Or something far more sinister?Christina McDonald weaves a suspenseful and heartwrenching tale of hidden relationships, devastating lies, and the power of a mother’s love. With flashbacks of Olivia’s own resolve to uncover family secrets, this taut and emotional novel asks: how well do you know your children? And how well do they know you?

Would You Die For Her


Linda S. Prather - 2020
    Darkness creates monsters.Everything in Dakota Dale’s life was measured before and after Christian Salyer. He’d kidnapped and tortured her, leaving behind a broken body and damaged mind. She’d convinced herself she killed him, but her memory was flawed and she no longer knew what was real. She only knew she was desperate to find the truth.Christian’s body was never found and the murders were starting again. Was Salyer still alive? Was Dakota following the trail of bodies, or were the bodies following her?The answers were trapped behind the barriers she’d built in her mind. Until a faded photograph with a chilling message arrived on her doorstep.Would you die for her?

The Forgotten Girls


Alexa Steele - 2014
    That doesn’t happen in Greenvale, with its immaculate lawns, exclusive yacht clubs and multi-million dollar mansions. But behind its perfect façade, its trimmed hedges and luxury cars, a darkness lies. Girls, dependent on Adderall, outmaneuver each other to get into top colleges, while the mothers’ need to live vicariously only makes it worse. Bella DeFranco is one of the Bronx’s top SVU detectives. At only 37, she disarms everyone with her stunning good looks, yet she is as tough as most men—and a lot smarter, too. Yet when is summoned to Greenvale, she finds herself getting lost in a case that even she can’t comprehend. She stumbles into a land of secrets, a place where husbands hide their pasts from their wives, where friends are not what they seem, and where no one wants to know too much. As she digs deeper into layers of suburban dysfunction, she comes to learn that, behind all the fake smiles, there is a subtle violence--rivaling even her crime-ridden streets of the Bronx. With a killer on the loose, time running out, and a new partner who never recovered from his washed-up alcoholic days, the odds are stacked against Bella. She is determined, though, to save these girls, whatever the cost. Yet as she gets close, the depth of psychosis she discovers shocks even her….

You Don't Know Me


Imran Mahmood - 2017
    Just before the Closing Speeches, the young man sacks his lawyer, and decides to give his own defence speech.He tells us that his barrister told him to leave some things out. Sometimes, the truth can be too difficult to explain, or believe. But he thinks that if he's going to go down for life, he might as well go down telling the truth.There are eight pieces of evidence against him. As he talks us through them one by one, his life is in our hands. We, the reader - member of the jury - must keep an open mind till we hear the end of his story. His defence raises many questions... but at the end of the speeches, only one matters: Did he do it?

Before She Disappeared


Lisa Gardner - 2021
    But she spends her life doing what no one else will--searching for missing people the world has stopped looking for. When the police have given up, when the public no longer remembers, when the media has never paid attention, Frankie starts looking.A new case brings her to Mattapan, a Boston neighborhood with a rough reputation. She is searching for Angelique Badeau, a Haitian teenager who vanished from her high school months earlier. Resistance from the Boston PD and the victim's wary family tells Frankie she's on her own--and she soon learns she's asking questions someone doesn't want answered. But Frankie will stop at nothing to discover the truth, even if it means the next person to go missing could be her.

Blue Monday


Nicci French - 2011
    A day of dark impulses. A day to snatch a child from the streets ...The abduction of five-year-old Matthew Farraday provokes a national outcry and a desperate police hunt. And when a picture of his face is splashed over the newspapers, psychotherapist Frieda Klein is left troubled: one of her patients has been relating dreams in which he has a hunger for a child. A child he can describe in perfect detail, a child the spitting image of Matthew.Detective Chief Inspector Karlsson doesn't take Frieda's concerns seriously until a link emerges with an unsolved child abduction twenty years ago and he summons Frieda to interview the victim's sister, hoping she can stir hidden memories. Before long, Frieda is at the center of the race to track the kidnapper.But her race isn't physical. She must chase down the darkest paths of a psychopath's mind to find the answers to Matthew Farraday's whereabouts.And sometimes the mind is the deadliest place to lose yourself.

All Is Not Forgotten


Wendy Walker - 2016
    In the hours immediately after, she is given a controversial drug to medically erase her memory of the violent assault. But, in the weeks and months that follow, as she heals from her physical wounds, and with no factual recall of the attack, Jenny struggles with her raging emotional memory. Her father, Tom, becomes obsessed with his inability to find her attacker and seek justice while her mother, Charlotte, prefers to pretend this horrific event did not touch her perfect country club world. As they seek help for their daughter, the fault lines within their marriage and their close-knit community emerge from the shadows where they have been hidden for years, and the relentless quest to find the monster who invaded their town - or perhaps lives among them - drive this psychological thriller to a shocking and unexpected conclusion.

My Perfect Sister


Penny Batchelor - 2020
    Does a faded photograph in her sister’s old room hold the key to the past?Desperate for clues, she delves deeper in search of the truth. But is it safer to be kept in the dark? Annie is about to find out…

Apple Tree Yard


Louise Doughty - 2013
    The charge is murder. Before all of this, she was happily married, a successful scientist, a mother of two. Now she's a suspect, squirming under fluorescent lights and the penetrating gaze of the alleged accomplice who's sitting across from her, watching: a man who's also her lover. As Yvonne faces hostile questioning, she must piece together the story of her affair with this unnamed figure who has charmed and haunted her. This is a tale of sexual intrigue, ruthless urges, and danger, which has blindsided her from a seemingly innocuous angle. Here in the courtroom, everything hinges on one night in a dark alley called Apple Tree Yard.

Fierce Kingdom


Gin Phillips - 2017
    They are happy, and the day has been close to perfect. But what Joan sees as she hustles her son toward the exit gate minutes before closing time sends her sprinting back into the zoo, her child in her arms. And for the next three hours—the entire scope of the novel—she keeps on running. Joan’s intimate knowledge of her son and of the zoo itself—the hidden pathways and under-renovation exhibits, the best spots on the carousel and overstocked snack machines—is all that keeps them a step ahead of danger.A masterful thrill ride and an exploration of motherhood itself—from its tender moments of grace to its savage power—Fierce Kingdom asks where the boundary is between our animal instinct to survive and our human duty to protect one another. For whom should a mother risk her life?

Those Girls


Chevy Stevens - 2015
    Life has never been easy for the three Campbell sisters. Jess, Courtney, and Dani live on a remote ranch in Western Canada where they work hard and try to stay out of the way of their father’s fists. One night, a fight gets out of hand and the sisters are forced to go on the run, only to get caught in an even worse nightmare when their truck breaks down in a small town. Events spiral out of control and a chance encounter with the wrong people leaves them in a horrific and desperate situation. They are left with no choice but to change their names and create new lives. Eighteen years later, they are still trying to forget what happened that summer when one of the sisters goes missing and they are pulled back into their past. This time there’s nowhere left to run. As much of a thriller as it is a deep exploration of the bonds among sisters, THOSE GIRLS is an unforgettable portrait of desperation, loyalty, and evil.

Not a Sound


Heather Gudenkauf - 2017
    Now, two years later and with the help of her hearing dog, Stitch, she is finally getting back on her feet. But when she discovers the body of a fellow nurse in the dense bush by the river, deep in the woods near her cabin, she is plunged into a disturbing mystery that could shatter the carefully reconstructed pieces of her life all over again.As clues begin to surface, Amelia finds herself swept into an investigation that hits all too close to home. But how much is she willing to risk in order to uncover the truth and bring a killer to justice?

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.