Category Archives: Mystery & Thriller

The Salty Taste of Murder by Christine Zane Thomas

Thirty-year-old Allie Treadwell is a singleton. She’s a foodie, and a runner. A restaurant reviewer by day, and a Netflix aficionado by night. Even if it doesn’t make her the most popular dinner guest in the charming southern town of Lanai, Georgia, Allie’s reviews are always honest. And her latest is no different from any other. But Allie’s review isn’t the only thing to hit the newsstand. The restaurant’s owner and Allie’s one-time high school nemesis, Jessica Hayes, is found murdered. When Jessica’s husband, Miller, is labelled the prime suspect, Allie’s convinced the police are mistaken. As if dodging the bad press while she works… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Fatmisia & body shaming
  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Murder
  • Gun violence

The Girl with the Gold Bikini by Lisa Walker

The Girl with the Gold Bikini by Lisa Walker

Eighteen-year-old Olivia Grace has deferred her law degree and ducked out of her friends’ gap-year tour of Asia. Instead, she’s fulfilling her childhood dream of becoming a private investigator, following in the footsteps of Nancy Drew and Veronica Mars – who taught her everything she knows, including a solid line in quick-quipping repartee and the importance of a handbag full of disguises.

Playing Watson to the Sherlock of her childhood friend, detective agency owner Rosco, Olivia pursues a routine cheating husband case from the glitzy Gold Coast to Insta-perfect Byron Bay, where she faces yoga wars, dirty whale activism, and a guru who’s kind of a creep.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Fatmisia
  • Cheating
  • Disappearance

Bad Boy by Elliot Wake 

Bad Boy by Elliot Wake

Vlog star Renard Grant has nothing to prove: he’s got a pretty face, chiselled body, and two million adoring video subscribers. Plus the scars on his chest and a prescription for testosterone. Because Ren is transgender: assigned female at birth, living now as male. He films his transition and shares it bravely with the world; his fans love his honesty and positivity. But Ren has been living a double life.

Off-camera, he’s Cane, the muscle-bound enforcer for social justice vigilante group Black Iris. As Cane, he lets his dark side loose. Hurts those who prey on the disempowered. Indulges in the ugly side of masculinity. And his new partner, Tamsin Baylor, is a girl as rough and relentless as him. Together, they terrorize the trolls into silence… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Transmisia
  • Rape
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Doxxing

Blood Will Out by Jo Treggiari

Blood Will Out by Jo Treggiari

Ari Sullivan is alive—for now. She wakes at the bottom of a cistern, confused, injured and alone, with only the shadowy recollection of a low-pitched voice and a gloved hand. No one can hear her screams. And the person who put her there is coming back. The killer is planning a gruesome masterpiece, a fairytale tableau of innocence and blood, meticulously designed.

Until now, Ari was happy to spend her days pining for handsome, recent-arrival Stroud Bellows, fantasizing about their two-point-four-kids-future together. Safe in her small hometown of Dempsey Hollow. But now her community has turned very dangerous—and Ari may not be the only intended victim.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Child abuse
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Graphic animal death

The Ice Twins by SK Tremayne

The Ice Twins by S.K. Tremayne

A year after one of their identical twin daughters, Lydia, dies in an accident, Angus and Sarah Moorcraft move to the tiny Scottish island Angus inherited from his grandmother, hoping to put together the pieces of their shattered lives.

But when their surviving daughter, Kirstie, claims they have mistaken her identity – that she, in fact, is Lydia – their world comes crashing down once again.

As winter encroaches, Angus is forced to travel away from the island for work, Sarah is feeling isolated, and Kirstie (or is it Lydia?) is growing more disturbed. When a violent storm leaves Sarah and her daughter stranded, Sarah finds herself tortured by the past – what really happened on that fateful day one of her daughters died?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Death of a child

Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay

Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay

In a matter of weeks, Massachusetts has been overrun by an insidious rabies-like virus that is spread by saliva. But unlike rabies, the disease has a terrifyingly short incubation period of an hour or less. Those infected quickly lose their minds and are driven to bite and infect as many others as they can before they inevitably succumb. Hospitals are inundated with the sick and dying, and hysteria has taken hold. To try to limit its spread, the commonwealth is under quarantine and curfew. But society is breaking down and the government’s emergency protocols are faltering.

Dr. Ramola “Rams” Sherman, a soft-spoken pediatrician in her mid-thirties, receives a frantic phone call from Natalie, a friend who is eight months pregnant… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Pregnancy
  • Medical procedures
  • Graphic blood & gore depiction
  • Death of a partner
  • Murder
  • Knife violence
  • Home invasion
  • Animal injury
  • Animal death
  • Animal attack

A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay

A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay

The lives of the Barretts, a normal suburban New England family, are torn apart when fourteen-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia.

To her parents’ despair, the doctors are unable to stop Marjorie’s descent into madness. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest for help. Father Wanderly suggests an exorcism; he believes the vulnerable teenager is the victim of demonic possession. He also contacts a production company that is eager to document the Barretts’ plight. With John, Marjorie’s father, out of work for more than a year and the medical bills looming… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism
  • Homomisia & homomisic slurs
  • Paedophilia & child sexual abuse mentioned
  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Schizophrenia
  • Self-harm
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Emesis
  • Death of a child
  • Loss of autonomy (demonic possession)
  • Bullying mentioned

A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny

A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny

In the murky London gloom, a knife-wielding gentleman named Jack prowls the midnight streets with his faithful watchdog Snuff – gathering together the grisly ingredients they will need for an upcoming ancient and unearthly rite. For soon after the death of the moon, black magic will summon the Elder Gods back into the world. And all manner of Players, both human and undead, are preparing to participate.

Some have come to open the gates. Some have come to slam them shut. And now the dread night approaches – so let the Game begin.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Animal abuse

How We Fall Apart by Katie Zhao

How We Fall Apart by Katie Zhao

Nancy Luo is shocked when her former best friend, Jamie Ruan, top-ranked junior at Sinclair Prep, goes missing, and then is found dead. Nancy is even more shocked when word starts to spread that she and her friends–Krystal, Akil, and Alexander–are the prime suspects, thanks to “The Proctor,” someone anonymously incriminating them via the school’s social media app.

They all used to be Jamie’s closest friends, and she knew each of their deepest, darkest secrets. Now, somehow The Proctor knows them, too. The four must uncover the true killer before The Proctor exposes more than they can bear and costs them more than they can afford, like Nancy’s full scholarship. Soon, Nancy suspects that her friends may be keeping secrets from her, too.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Parental neglect
  • Teacher-student relationship
  • Suicide
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Self harm
  • Panic attack
  • Recreational drug use
  • Death of a friend
  • Murder
  • Blackmail
  • Fire

Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh

Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh

While on her daily walk with her dog in the nearby woods, our protagonist comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground with stones. Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn’t me. Here is her dead body.

Shaky even on her best days, she is also alone, and new to this area, having moved here from her longtime home after the death of her husband, and now deeply alarmed. Her brooding about the note grows quickly into a full-blown obsession, as she explores multiple theories about who Magda was and how she met her fate. Her suppositions begin to find echoes in the real world, and the fog of mystery starts to form into a concrete and menacing shape. But is there either a more innocent explanation for all this, or a much more sinister one – one that strikes closer to home?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Fatmisia
  • Antiziganism
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Animal cruelty
  • Death of a dog