Book picks similar to
The Song of the Mockingbird by Bill Cronin
fiction
mystery
mystery-thriller
tbr
The Murder House
James Patterson - 2015
7 Ocean Drive is a gorgeous, multi-million-dollar beachfront estate in the Hamptons, where money and privilege know no bounds. But its beautiful gothic exterior hides a horrific past: it was the scene of a series of depraved killings that have never been solved. Neglected, empty, and rumored to be cursed, it's known as the Murder House, and locals keep their distance. Detective Jenna Murphy used to consider herself a local, but she hasn't been back since she was a girl. Trying to escape her troubled past and rehabilitate a career on the rocks, the former New York City cop hardly expects her lush and wealthy surroundings to be a hotbed of grisly depravity. But when a Hollywood power broker and his mistress are found dead in the abandoned Murder House, the gruesome crime scene rivals anything Jenna experienced in Manhattan. And what at first seems like an open and shut case turns out to have as many shocking secrets as the Murder House itself, as Jenna quickly realizes that the mansion's history is much darker than even the town's most salacious gossips could have imagined. As more bodies surface, and the secret that Jenna has tried desperately to escape closes in on her, she must risk her own life to expose the truth--before the Murder House claims another victim.Full of the twists and turns that have made James Patterson the world's #1 bestselling writer, The Murder House is a chilling, page-turning story of murder, money, and revenge.
Trespassing
Brandi Reeds - 2018
Her latest round of fertility treatments not only failed but left her on edge and unbalanced. And her three-year-old daughter, Elizabella, has a new imaginary friend, who seems much more devilish than playful. So when Veronica’s husband fails to return home from a business trip, what’s left of her stability begins to crumble.Given her family’s history of mental illness, and Elizabella’s insistence that her daddy is dead, Veronica starts questioning herself. Every move she makes is now suspect. Worse still, Veronica is positive that someone wants her and her daughter dead, too—unless it’s all in her mind…Somewhere beneath her paranoia is the answer to her husband’s vanishing. To find it, she’s led to a house in the Florida Keys. But once there, she isn’t sure she wants to know the truth.
Sentence of Marriage
Shayne Parkinson - 2009
Her life seems mapped out for her by the time she is twelve. Amy dreams of an exciting life in the world beyond her narrow boundaries. But it is the two people who come to the farm from outside the valley who change her life forever, and Amy learns the high cost of making the wrong choice.
Every Last Secret
A.R. Torre - 2020
Watch your husband, watch your friends, and watch your back.Cat Winthorpe has worked hard to get what she has: a gorgeous home; social standing; and William, her successful, handsome husband. Then a friendly new couple moves into the estate next door. While cautious, a good neighbor like Cat greets them with open arms and warm hospitality.Neena Ryder isn’t a fellow lady of leisure. A life coach with off-the-rack dresses, personal issues, and a husband who hasn’t delivered, she’s anxious to move up in the world. This beautiful new town is a step in the right direction. It’s also making Neena aware of what she doesn’t have. Namely, William. When Neena’s infatuation escalates into obsession, it’s just a matter of eliminating a few obstacles to get the life she wants. The life next door.As Neena’s secret fixation grows, so does her friendship with Cat. But beneath their cordial interactions is a wealth of temptations, secrets, and toxic jealousy. For both women, the desire for a perfect life can turn perfectly dangerous.
Black Sands
Carl Goodman - 2014
"You. I recognise you. Why did you say that? Why did you say that about the bank?"She knelt. Frozen, too scared to move or speak. He snapped open the barrel.“You really are going to tell me,” he whispered, and slipped another blood-red round into the gun.Danny Bowen is the reluctant hacktivist who founded Nameless, the collective with attitude and ability whose exposure of global surveillance shook the world. But bringing down governments wasn’t part of Danny’s plan, and he got out before things went too far. Most of the collective found themselves in jail, only the brilliant Cassandra managed to outwit the security services. Danny might have retained his freedom but he’s lost everything else. His best friends, his job, and part of himself. Now he’s a lonely ex-black hat with a mark against his name, scraping a living in information security. But someone wants his attention. Hired to investigate an attack on Hamilton Private Equity he instead uncovers a plot on an unimaginable scale. It’s no coincidence somebody wants him to take the job. Danny knows that on Zero Day ordinary people will bear the brunt of this next attack. It’s his last chance to atone for his failures, and to prove he’s still the best. Hooked into a deadly race with a group of ultra-violent Russian Mafia and a sociopathic search-engine billionaire Danny must find the key before it’s too late. He has nothing to lose. They have everything to gain. Literally, everything.
The Dinner Guest
B.P. Walter - 2021
One would never leave.Matthew: the perfect husband.Titus: the perfect son.Charlie: the perfect illusion.Rachel: the perfect stranger.Charlie didn’t want her at the book club. Matthew wouldn’t listen.And that’s how Charlie finds himself slumped beside his husband’s body, their son sitting silently at the dinner table, while Rachel calls 999, the bloody knife still gripped in her hand.Agatha Christie meets Donna Tartt in this nerve-shredding domestic noir thriller that weaves a sprawling web of secrets around an opulent West London world and the dinner that ends in death.
Pretty Guilty Women
Gina LaManna - 2019
Four Confessions. One Murder.Something has gone terribly wrong at the Banks wedding. A man is dead. Four different women rush to offer confessions, each insisting that they committed the crime -- alone.Ginger is holding her family together by a thread, and this wedding weekend is not the fabulous getaway she anticipated.Kate has enough money to buy her way out of anything. Well, almost anything.Emily can't shake her reputation or her memories, and she's planning to drown this whole vacation in a bottle.Lulu's got ex-husbands to spare, and another on the way -- as soon as she figures out what the devil the current husband is up to behind her back.Why would they confess to the same murder? Only they know -- and they're not telling. This page-turning novel explores the depths of friendship and the truths we love to ignore.
Only the Rain
Randall Silvis - 2017
Facing bills, a new baby, and a bone-dry bank account, he’s got nothing left to lose. Russell comes to the rescue of a naked stranger dancing in the rain, and what was supposed to be a straightforward good deed turns into a spiral of danger. When Russell finds an enticing stash of money in the woman’s house, he knows the cash could be his only hope. Taking just a handful will save his family’s future.His “victimless crime” seems to be anything but risky—until the criminals he robbed come looking for their dirty money. Russell’s ready to surrender it, but then his daughter gets sick…and he must choose between saving her or giving the devils their due. Someone’s going to pay. The question is, how much?
The Man Who Became Frankenstein's Monster
Robert Daicy - 2013
William Barker is such a man. He has a good job, a nice house, a son named James, and a marriage he is trying desperately to hold together. A tragic accident takes this life away and William finds himself alone in his house with terrible mental and physical scars that are a constant reminder of what happened. With no one willing to employ a man with such visible and disturbing scars, William is lost and has no answers for how to live his life. That is when he meets the man who will change that life forever, Roland Skelton, the owner of Skelton’s Spectacular Traveling Carnival. Where others saw a man to be shunned, Roland sees a man he may be able to help. Roland convinces William to join the Carnival as the headliner of the ten-in-one. With the name ‘Frankenstein’s Monster,’ William is a hit with the paying audience and finds that being onstage is a release from his pain and guilt. In time, William realizes that those he works with understand him better than he could have hoped. While working at the carnival, William finds a new happiness, an enemy, purpose, and even love. The Man Who Became Frankenstein’s Monster is a moving novel about a man who rises above adversity set against the backdrop of the golden age of the carnival.
The Passing Storm
Christine Nolfi - 2021
With her father, Connor, she tends to their Ohio farm, a forty-acre spread that itself has enjoyed better days. As memories sweep through her, some too precious to bear, Rae gives shelter from a brutal winter to a teenager named Quinn Galecki.Quinn has been thrown out by his parents, a couple too troubled to help steer the misunderstood boy through his own losses. Now Quinn has found a temporary home with the Langdons—and an unexpected kinship, because Rae, Quinn, and Connor share a past and understand one another’s pain. But its depths—and all its revelations and secrets—have yet to come to light. To finally move forward, Rae must confront them and also fight for Quinn, whose parents have other plans in mind for their son.With forgiveness, love, and the spring thaw, there might be hope for a new season—a second chance Rae believed in her heart was gone forever.
Justice Is Served
Diane Capri - 2017
Looking forward to a quiet week of stunning winter scenery, roaring fires, and warm companionship, Judge Willa Carson and her husband George head north to Pleasant Harbor, Michigan - and slam into murder. A car stranded in the road. A corpse slumped in the front seat. A gunshot wound to left temple. The scene is surreal, the execution ruthless, the victim far from innocent. Local authorities want this case put away fast because it’s bad for their tourism business. Willa sees what the cops don’t, and she is not about to play along to get along. False Justice - Judge Willa Carson’s friend Ursula Westfield is living the good life. Her career as a broadcast journalist is on fire, she finally found a good man to come home to, and her new Manhattan apartment is the stuff of dreams. When a stranger sends her a chilling but cryptic email about a newly nominated Judge in her hometown, she knows she should ignore it. Secret sources armed with conspiracy theories were nothing but trouble. Still, she can’t seem to shake the feeling that there’s something amiss about Judge Aaron Michaels. Driven by an insatiable quest for truth and a desire to do the right thing, she heads back to Tampa and comes face-to-face with a killer. Fair Justice - When a young reporter assigned to cover Judge Willa Carson’s courtroom for the local television station is sent on a fact-finding mission, he never expects to find a body. Residents of a small Florida town are suffering from a strange, debilitating illness. A whistleblower claims the local carpet mill is engaged in dumping toxic chemicals into the water supply. Uncovering the truth may cost the reporter his life, unless Willa Carson can save him. True Justice - Ginny Richards has a great new job working for wickedly smart Federal Judge Willa Carson, and she couldn’t be happier. After a rough patch and an ugly break up, she’s finally making new friends and her career in on the upswing. But when she invites her new workmates to see her moonlighting as a jazz singer at a local club, she never expects that a night of music and merriment will end in murder. Grab your copy now and start reading today!
The Survival of Thomas Ford
John A.A. Logan - 2011
He is also the only witness who would be willing to identify the young, reckless driver who caused the crash. But the driver has no intention of ever letting himself be identified, not to mention what his father’s intentions are…or those of his girlfriend, Lorna, the hospital cleaner.The young driver’s father is Jack McCallum, the powerful entrepreneur who has built a housing empire, McCallum Homes, on the high hills surrounding the city. Jack has his own dark secret to protect, as well as his business edifice to hold onto. There is no way in the world that Jack McCallum will ever let anything threaten the future of McCallum Homes. Robert Ferguson, the passenger who was with the young driver on the day of the crash, curses himself for ever getting into the car. He watches carefully to see what the universe will do about it all, and he thinks he can hear the gears and chambers of the universe’s engine, rolling terribly towards them, out of the future, and he knows he can’t cope with that, not even if he takes his medication. In the end, destiny will pull them all far out of the city, some of them to the moonlit hillside, where white butterflies and mysterious gas fill the air, and wild cats wrap themselves around cold trees. Jack McCallum’s trusted Polish foreman, Lanski, will recognise the place from the folklore-wilderness of his own childhood, a place where death can come stalking in the form of a white wolf, but perhaps also redemption can appear, for those like Thomas Ford who seek it. In any case, the young driver has it in mind to take his destiny into his own hands now, which will soon lead to the life of a second young woman hanging in the balance, awaiting salvation or destruction, perhaps only the Fates, or the wind that blows through the trees, know which.
Good as Dead
Susan Walter - 2021
Holly saw it all. In one violent moment, a hit-and-run accident turns Holly’s life upside down. Then a fixer for the high-powered guilty party approaches Holly with an offer she is in no position to refuse. Holly and her daughter, Savannah, will want for nothing, beginning with a luxury dream house—all for the price of their silence. But when their sudden appearance in privileged Calabasas, California, piques the curiosity of neighbors, the price becomes greater than they imagined. Because Holly and Savannah aren’t the only ones in the neighborhood with something to hide.Told from alternating points of view, Good as Dead draws together an unlikely group of people bound to one another by a crime, a cover-up, and compounding deceptions. As carefully constructed lives begin to crumble, how far will everyone be willing to go to bury the truth and protect the people they love?
The Six
Anni Taylor - 2017
She's stunned when she's offered a lifeline: A program that includes a six-day stay in a Greek monastery, six challenges and a chance at sixty thousand dollars. There is just one condition - she must keep it secret. Evie's husband Gray is gutted to find the note that Evie left behind. Why did she leave and where did she go? And is she ever coming back? But his anger turns to alarm as he begins to piece together the circumstances of his wife's disappearance. When Evie's car is found burned in woodland, the police suspect him of murdering Evie. Gray has got one chance to get out of the country and find Evie - before he's arrested for something he didn't do.Too late, Evie discovers the chilling truth about the program and the island itself. And the closer she gets to finding an escape, the closer the deadly danger lurking in the depths of the monastery gets to her.
The Plot
Jean Hanff Korelitz - 2021
Today, he's teaching in a third-rate MFA program and struggling to maintain what's left of his self-respect; he hasn't written--let alone published--anything decent in years. When Evan Parker, his most arrogant student, announces he doesn't need Jake's help because the plot of his book in progress is a sure thing, Jake is prepared to dismiss the boast as typical amateur narcissism. But then... he hears the plot.Jake returns to the downward trajectory of his own career and braces himself for the supernova publication of Evan Parker's first novel: but it never comes. When he discovers that his former student has died, presumably without ever completing his book, Jake does what any self-respecting writer would do with a story like that--a story that absolutely needs to be told.In a few short years, all of Evan Parker's predictions have come true, but Jake is the author enjoying the wave. He is wealthy, famous, praised and read all over the world. But at the height of his glorious new life, an e-mail arrives, the first salvo in a terrifying, anonymous campaign: You are a thief, it says.As Jake struggles to understand his antagonist and hide the truth from his readers and his publishers, he begins to learn more about his late student, and what he discovers both amazes and terrifies him. Who was Evan Parker, and how did he get the idea for his "sure thing" of a novel? What is the real story behind the plot, and who stole it from whom?Hailed as breathtakingly suspenseful, Jean Hanff Korelitz's The Plot is a propulsive read about a story too good not to steal, and the writer who steals it.