Category Archives: Mystery & Thriller

When You’re Dying by M.Q. Webb

When you’re dying, a lot goes through your mind… A shock diagnosis forces Verity Casmere to consider how she wants to spend the time she has left. The question haunting Verity is what happened to her missing sister, Ashlee. Was she murdered, like the police suspect? How far will Verity go to learn the truth? Moved by her situation, Forensic Psychiatrist, Oscar de la Nuit, agrees to help Verity learn what happened, but with the truth comes consequences neither of them could predict. Can they resurface before a dark secret consumes them both?

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Terminal cancer
  • Drugging
  • Hospitalisation for an injury sustained from a fall
  • Disappearance of a sibling

What the Neighbors Saw by Melissa Adelman

When Alexis and her husband Sam buy a neglected Cape Cod house in an exclusive DC suburb, they are ecstatic. Sam is on the cusp of making partner at his law firm, Alexis is pregnant with their second child, and their glamorous neighbours welcome the couple with open arms. Things are looking up, and Alexis believes she can finally leave her troubled past behind. But the neighbourhood’s picture-perfect image is shattered when their neighbour Teddy – a handsome, successful father of three – is found dead on the steep banks of the Potomac River. The community is shaken… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Pregnancy from rape mentioned
  • Infidelity
  • Incest (half-siblings)
  • Disordered eating
  • Murder

Context : The protagonist has her husband murdered because she finds out they’re half-siblings and she can’t deal with the public humiliation. She also learns she is the product of rape.

The Book Swap by J.E. Rowney

Newly-separated Laura is back home living with her mum. She spends her days reading and escaping from the realities of her new life alone – until that life suddenly becomes more complicated than she could ever have imagined. When a novel received from an online book swap contains a chilling note, Laura has to overcome her own fears to help a stranger. First, she must uncover just exactly who is it that needs to be saved, and from what.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Divorce (protagonist)

A Death at the Party by Amy Stuart

Nadine Walsh’s summer garden party is in full swing. The neighbours all have cocktails, the catered food is exquisite—everything’s going according to plan. But Nadine—devoted wife, loving mother, and doting daughter—finds herself standing over a dead body in her basement while her guests clink glasses upstairs. What happened? How did it come to this? Rewind to that morning, when Nadine is in her kitchen, making last-minute preparations before she welcomes more than a hundred guests to her home to celebrate her mother’s birthday. But her husband is of… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Slut-shaming
  • Teacher-student relationship
  • Attempted suicide
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Murder

The Perfect Neighborhood by Liz Alterman

When actress and model Allison Langley leaves her former rockstar husband, Christopher, in the middle of the night, it’s all her Oak Hill neighbours can talk about. The gossip comes to an abrupt halt when five-year-old Billy Barnes goes missing on his walk home from kindergarten. Billy’s mother, Rachel, blames herself for being at work and letting her only child walk alone. Cassidy, Billy’s teenage babysitter, was also late to arrive on the afternoon he disappeared and blames herself for his disappearance. As the clock ticks down, police are unable to find any trace of Billy.. Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Teacher-student relationship
  • Infertility & miscarriage
  • Kidnapping & drugging of children

The Last Girl To Die by Helen Sarah Fields

In search of a new life, sixteen-year-old Adriana Clark’s family moves to the ancient, ocean-battered Isle of Mull, far off the coast of Scotland. Then she goes missing. Faced with hostile locals and indifferent police, her desperate parents turn to private investigator Sadie Levesque. Sadie is the best at what she does. But when she finds Adriana’s body in a cliffside cave, a seaweed crown carefully arranged on her head, she knows she’s dealing with something she’s never encountered before. The deeper she digs into the island’s secrets, the more urgent her quest to find the killer grows. Because what if Adriana is not the last girl to die?

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Domestic violence mentioned
  • Sexual assault
  • Murder & torture
  • Animal death (off-page)

The Institution by Helen Sarah Fields

On a locked ward in the world’s highest-security prison hospital for the criminally insane, a nurse has been murdered and her newborn baby kidnapped. A ransom must be paid, and the clock is ticking. Forensic profiler Dr Connie Woolwine is renowned for her ability to get inside the mind of a murderer. Now she must go deep undercover among the most deranged and dangerous men on earth, and use her unique skills to find the baby – before it’s too late. She has five days to catch the killer. But with the walls of The Institution closing in on her, will her sanity last that long?

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism & mentions of homophobia
  • Suicide
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Murder & foetal abduction
  • Physical & child sexual abuse

The Golden Spoon by Jessa Maxwell

Every summer for the past ten years, six awe-struck bakers have descended on the grounds of Grafton, the leafy and imposing Vermont estate that is not only the filming site for “Bake Week” but also the childhood home of the show’s famous host, celebrated baker Betsy Martin. The author of numerous best-selling cookbooks and hailed as “America’s Grandmother,” Betsy Martin isn’t as warm off-screen as on, although no one needs to know that but her. She has always demanded perfection, and gotten it with a smile, but this year something is off. Things go awry… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape & sexual harassment
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder

The Resort by Sara Ochs

Just graduated from high school and waiting to start college at Oxford, Lily lives under the scrutiny of her volatile Singaporean mother, May, and is unable to find kinship with her elusive British father, Charlie. When May suspects that Charlie is having an affair, there’s only one thing that calms May down: a glass of perfectly spoiled orange juice served by Lily, who must always taste it first to make sure it’s just right. As her mother becomes increasingly unhinged, Lily starts to have flashbacks that she knows aren’t her own. Over a sweltering London summer, all semblance of civility and propriety is lost, as Lily begins to unravel… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Suicide mentioned

Bad Fruit by Ella King

Just graduated from high school and waiting to start college at Oxford, Lily lives under the scrutiny of her volatile Singaporean mother, May, and is unable to find kinship with her elusive British father, Charlie. When May suspects that Charlie is having an affair, there’s only one thing that calms May down: a glass of perfectly spoiled orange juice served by Lily, who must always taste it first to make sure it’s just right. As her mother becomes increasingly unhinged, Lily starts to have flashbacks that she knows aren’t her own. Over a sweltering London summer, all semblance of civility and propriety is lost, as Lily begins to unravel… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Slut-shaming & victim-blaming
  • Rape
  • Graphic emotional child abuse