Category Archives: Mystery & Thriller

Nowhere Like Home by Sara Shepard

When Lenna gets a call from her old friend Rhiannon, she is startled; Rhiannon disappeared years ago without a trace. But Lenna is even more startled to learn that Rhiannon has a son and that she lives off the grid with a group of women in a community called Halcyon. Rhiannon invites Lenna, a new mother herself, to join them. Why suffer the sleepless nights by yourself? It takes a village, after all. Lenna decides to go and hopefully repair her relationship with Rhiannon, but as she drives into the desert and her cell service gets weaker, she becomes suspicious. Who are… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexual assault mentioned
  • Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) & anxiety (protagonist)
  • Teen pregnancy & fertility treatments mentioned
  • Kidnapping & stalking
  • Cults

I Love It When You Lie by Kristen Bird

Just days before her eightieth birthday, Pearl Williams has the gall to up and die on everyone. Now her granddaughters must make plans for a proper send-off…all while their own lives unravel a little more each day. Tara, the pastor’s wife, makes a series of decisions that could scatter his flock. Then there’s June, who would do anything to have a baby of her own, even if her husband won’t. Clementine, the youngest, is entangled in an affair with her professor, desperate to ignore who he really is. Finally, there’s Stephanie, the sister-in-law—an outsider who knows all… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Divorce (protagonist)
  • Miscarriage mentioned
  • Kidnapping of a newborn
  • Medical treatment & hospitalisation discussed (protagonist is a nurse)
  • Death of a grandmother mentioned
  • Murder

Perfect Little Monsters by Cindy R.X. He

SElla Moore was the most popular girl in school…and also the most hated. When she’s murdered at her own party, there are too many suspects to count–and too many people who think she deserved it. The police’s prime suspect is the new girl, Dawn Foster. She was the last to hand Ella a drink on the night Ella died. Plus, all of Ella’s friends with a motive for wanting her dead are more than willing to implicate Dawn. But Dawn refuses to go down without a fight. She’s determined to clear her name. As she delves deeper into th… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Lesbophobia, disfiguremisia, ableism and fatphobia & body-shaming
  • Adult-minor relationship and statutoray rape
  • Image-based sexual assault (‘revenge porn’)
  • Infidelity
  • Disordered eating & body image issues
  • Panic attacks
  • Attempted suicide by overdose and stepping in front of a vehicle & suicidal ideation
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Car accident recounted & discussed
  • Poisoning
  • Strangulation
  • Kidnapping
  • Blackmail & stalking
  • Fire
  • Bullying & cyberbullying

This Is Where We Die by Cindy R.X. He

Sadie, Will, Isla, Anthony, Emily, and Charlie are survivors. They were the six (out of eight) to return from a ski holiday turned nightmare two years ago. Although… nobody knows exactly what happened; the details hushed up via the wealth and connections of Sadie’s rich parents. When an exclusive private island with a mansion for rent goes viral on social media, their graduating class persuades Sadie to rent it for the weekend. The six arrive first by helicopter and wait for the rest of their classmates to join them by boat the next day. But nobody ever comes…. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Toxic friendships
  • Self-harm
  • Alcoholism
  • Drug use
  • Miscarriage
  • Blood depiction, cannibalism & emesis
  • Murder

A Murder Most Camp by Nicolas DiDomizio

Mikey Hartford IV has coasted through his twenties in a distracted blur of yachts and sex and partying. But when his father discovers his latest million-dollar impulse buy and changes the terms of his trust, the party’s finally over. Now, unless Mikey can make a positive contribution to the world before his thirtieth birthday—one that doesn’t involve throwing cash at his problems—he’ll never see another yacht again. (Or even so much as a canoe.) Camp Lore, a struggling summer camp in upstate New York where Mikey has to work as the oldest, least-qualified staffer to prove… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Adult-minor relationship
  • Toxic friendship
  • Alcohol abuse mentioned
  • Cancer mentioned
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder

The Disaster Gay Detective Agency by Lev A.C. Rosen

Brandon is a hopeless romantic. So when a handsome stranger named Jon checks in at the hotel he works at and invites Brandon to his room, Brandon ignores the advice of his crew—a group of loveable and messy queer twenty—somethings—and accepts. What follows is a tale as old as time: they hook up, Jon promises to text, Brandon falls in love, and Jon ghosts. Case closed—or is it? When Jon checks out early, leaving behind a bag of belongings and his cellphone, Brandon takes the phone and sets out to find him, thinking that this must at last be his Cinderella story. But he gets more… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Murder
  • Stalking by an ex-partner
  • Homophobic cyberbullying

Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey

Celia is so tired of being alone. All she wants is to have a family―to belong to someone. That’s why she’s going to Kindred Cove for the annual Salt Festival held by the secluded community that lives there. They promise that healing is possible. They promise that transformation is inevitable. There is no grief at Kindred Cove, because there is no suffering. Nothing is ever lost. Celia knows that, at that mysterious island surrounded by that impossible, ever-growing reef — she will find herself. She’s ready to be healed. She’s ready to be transformed. She’s ready to believe.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infertility & miscarriage (protagonist)
  • Cults

Somebody Worth Killing by Jessica Payne

Nadia Davis is living the dream as a successful working mom with a career she loves, two adorable little girls, and a devoted husband who has no idea that she’s secretly a hired assassin and psychopath who kills certified bad guys. So when Nadia finds out she’s been “mommy tracked” by her assassin’s agency and is no longer getting the bigger, more exciting jobs, she demands an important mark…somebody worth killing. But it turns out that big kill is the last person she expects—her husband. How is the sweet, kind, teller-of-dad jokes she’s promised her life to an… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grandparent with dementia
  • Murder discussed

Judas Kiss by J.T. Ellison

It was a murder made for TV: a trail of tiny bloody footprints. An innocent toddler playing beside her mother’s bludgeoned body. Pretty young Corinne Wolff, seven months pregnant, brutally murdered in her own home. Cameras and questions don’t usually faze Nashville homicide lieutenant Taylor Jackson, but the media frenzy surrounding the Wolff case is particularly nasty…and thorough. When the seemingly model mommy is linked to an amateur porn Web site with underage actresses and unwitting players, the sharks begin to circle. The shocks is magnified… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Pregnancy
  • Murder
  • Stalking & blackmail

Fourteen by J.T. Ellison

Ten victims, each with pale skin and long dark hair. All have been slashed across the throat, the same red lipstick smeared across their lips.In the mid-1980s the Snow White Killer terrorized the streets of Nashville, Tennessee. Then suddenly the murders stopped. A letter from the killer to the police stated that his work was done. Now four more bodies are found, marked with his fatal signature. The residents of Nashville fear a madman has returned, decades later, to finish his sick fairy tale. Homicide Lieutenant Taylor Jackson believes the killings are the work of a copycat killer… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape mentioned
  • Infidelity
  • Suicide
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Kidnapping
  • Car accident
  • Animal death mentioned