Guaranteed to give you all the goosebumps you need this sinister season, the following list of spooktastic recommendations is your one-stop-shop for satisfying terror sessions. You won’t be able to put these intriguing novels down, and you won’t want to turn out the light.
I particularly enjoy thinking and writing about complex, unexpected characters and how they change as they become more self-aware. I’d like to compare two, very different, strong, initially unfulfilled women that I have written.
Sometimes there’s nothing better than getting lost in a new thriller that gives you goosebumps and keeps you on the edge of your seat. If you’re looking to get your fix of heart-pounding thrillers in 2020, you’ll want to add these 12 chilling books to your TBR pile.
Jeppe Korner and Anette Werner have just been assigned to a murder case that left one young woman, Julie, dead with an unfamiliar pattern carved into her face. Immediately, the detectives begin to look at Julie’s landlady, Esther, who has just written the recently deceased woman into her latest mystery novel. As they try to piece together who murdered Julie, they find that there may be another sinister force in the picture who’s controlling Esther’s every move.
Having once been a feral child living alone in the woods, Wilde has no idea where he comes from or how he ended up alone at such a young age. Thirty years later, Wilde is now tasked with finding a missing girl, forcing him to go back to the community that outcasted him as a young boy. Teaming up with television crime attorney Hester Crimstein, the two must find the girl, uncovering dangerous secrets along the way that will threaten to unravel the entire community and destroy millions of lives.
When Eva Hansen is struck by lightning, she thinks that’s the worst of her problems—until she awakes in the hospital to the news that her mother has been murdered and she has no memory of the events that happened before the lightning incident. With the police suspicious of Eva and her possible involvement in the murder, Eva has no choice but to travel to London to uncover her mother’s past and clear her name for good.
Carly Kirk has never fully gotten over the mysterious disappearance of her aunt Viv who went missing before Carly was born. Unable to shake the feeling that something sinister occurred, she moves to Fell,
New York, ready to visit the last place her aunt was seen: the Sun Down Motel. Determined to find answers for what happened to Viv, she quickly finds herself in the middle of the terrifying mysteries that
surround the motel.
After the disappearance of Nina Garrity’s husband, she thought she had suffered enough… and then she finds out he was having an affair. A year and a half later, Nina does her best to move on now that her
husband is presumed dead. But moving on won’t be as easy as she anticipates when she meets Simon, a fellow widow.
As the two fall in love, her daughter sees the red flags surrounding Simon, forcing Nina to look further into his past. Ultimately, her investigation reveals a shocking secret that will change her and her family’s life forever.
Marcos is on his own for the first time in a long time after getting divorced and finds himself miserable at best. After moving into a new apartment, he begins receiving letters from an anonymous woman who believes she’s writing to her ex who once lived in the apartment.
As he receives more and more letters from the mysterious “A.”, he becomes obsessed with her and finding out who she really is, going to all extents to find out her true identity.
Marin and her college sweetheart Derek had a seemingly perfect life. But then their son Sebastian goes missing, turning the couple’s world upside down. A year after losing Sebastian, the case has gone cold
and Marin and Derek are no longer the happy couple they used to be.
Desperate for answers about Sebastian, Marin hires a private investigator but instead, the P.I. learns that Derek is having an affair with a much younger woman. Armed with this new information, Marin decides she’ll do whatever it takes to make sure this woman is forced out of Derek’s life for good.
Sisters Robin and Leslie were on completely different pages the last time they spoke. But now, their father has died and if Leslie wants to gain her half of the inheritance, she’ll have to track down Robin.
Unfortunately for Leslie, Robin is dead.
Worried she won’t get the money she so desperately needs from her late father, she finds a woman who is nearly identical to Robin and the two begin a risky arrangement that will benefit both of them in the end. But both women are hiding perilous secrets that eventually come to the surface, putting both of their lives in danger.
Tabitha Girard will never forget the man who broke her heart: Connor Ford. When he unexpectedly appears in her life years later, she can’t shake the feelings she has for him despite the fact that he’s
married. But everything changes when his wife commits suicide, leaving Tabitha and Connor to fully commit to their relationship.
However, things go sideways when Tabitha happens upon the diary of
Connor’s late wife—a diary that claims Connor had something to do with her death.
As the daughter of the biggest arms dealer on the West Coast, Christiana is used to getting her way. But when her boyfriend shows up dead in her Newport Beach boutique, she’s suddenly caught in the middle of an investigation where she’s the primary suspect.
To hopefully get her out of trouble, Christiana’s father hires a private investigator, Isaiah Quintabe, to prove her innocence. What Isaiah doesn’t know is that Christiana has multiple personalities and if he can’t clear her name, he and his girlfriend’s lives will be
on the line.
When Police Investigator Susan Adler is called to the scene of a murder involving a fellow state trooper, she has no idea that this seemingly simple case will end up being one of the most complicated and vicious cases she’s ever worked on. In no time, Susan is tracking down a car that belongs to a nurse who has gone missing, taking one of her elderly patients with her.
Before Susan knows it, she finds herself in the middle of an intricate case that will take multiple lives and lead her to one horrific killer.
In Master Class, students must participate in standardized testing meant to determine their “quotient.” If you score high enough, you are allowed entrance to top-tier schools that will dramatically improve your life. On the other hand, if you score too low, you’re sent to a federal boarding school, giving you limited options for the future.
For Elena Fairchild, a teacher at a top tier school, she’s never had to worry about her daughter’s performance. But all of that changes when the nine-year-old performs poorly on a test and she’s taken to a federal school hundreds of miles away. Now, Elena must do whatever it takes to get her back.
It’s time to share the top fiction books of the week, and these books are perfect for mystery lovers. Who doesn’t love a page-turning mystery thriller? These five books will be great additions to your TBR and will be hard to put down once you dive into these amazing stories.
The Wives follows Thursday, whose Husband has two other wives. Thursday knew of his marriages beforehand, but she didn’t care because she’s so crazy about him. Thursday is unable to see beyond her feelings for him, until one day she finds something that she never knew about her husband. Something so horrifying that it leads her down a crazy path filled with the most shocking twist you will ever read.
In the Dark, follows eight lucky people who believe they’re on their way to a luxurious vacation in the wilderness. A fierce storm approaches and everyone begins to question whether it’s a real vacation or a trap. Each guest has something to hide and now that they’re trapped they begin to fear each other. Cops, Mason and Callie, work together to save the eight guests, but they don’t know how to brave the mountains, leaving the eight guests vulnerable to be hunted and to fight to survive this game.
The Dead Girls Club follows Heather Cole, who, back in 1991, was part of a club with her friends where they exchanged tales of murderers and imaginary monsters. One of the monsters they talked about was the Red Lady. One of the girls, Becca, believed the Red Lady was real, and she wanted to prove it. Becca’s search for the Red Lady ended in her death. Now thirty years have passed and Heather has never told anyone the truth about what happened with Becca and the Red Lady until she gets something in the mail. A necklace, Heather hasn’t seen that necklace since the night Becca died, the night Heather killed her. Someone knows Heather did it and wants her to pay.
Good Girls Lie is about a prestigious school, The Goode School, in Marchburg, Virginia. It is an elite school where the daughters of rich parents attend, only accepting the best and brightest students. Like most elite boarding schools, The Goode School has traditions and honor codes that are important for the students because it will prepare them for the Ivy League colleges and a bright future. However, when a stranger turns up at the school, things take a turn for the worse. Appearances are important to uphold and as long as no one steps out of line, no one will question how cruel the inner societies are, and the girls can basically get away with murder. When a popular student turns up dead, nothing can be ignored. People believe she was driven to suicide, but there is always truth, lies and of course the truth to what really happened.
A Madness of Sunshine, follows the people in a town on the rugged West Coast of New Zealand. However, it is more than just a town. The adults are more than neighbors and the kids are not just schoolmates. One summer, when bodies begin to vanish, things begin to change. The trust shatters on the coast, which leaves broken friendships, and lots of whispers behind closed doors. The silent treatment takes reign in this town, but no one can really hide from the past for long. Eight years later a young woman vanishes and people begin to question their homes and if it hides something more dangerous than an unforgiving landscape. The past and present are close to colliding and exposing deadly secrets.
Long live the King, because he’s done it again! Stephen King launched his newest thriller, The Outsider, in 2018, and trust us when we say that it is bone-chilling. And HBO seems to think so too, because yesterday they launched the premier of the 10 episode mini-series based on the book.
The Outsider presents the viewers with a case that is, in every literal sense, impossible. In small-town USA, an 11-year-old boy is found murdered and all evidences—eyewitnesses, security camera footage, fingerprints, DNA—point to one man, Terry Maitland, played by Jason Bateman (Bateman also directs). Here, however, is the catch — there is also legitimate proof that the prime suspect was elsewhere, and thus couldn’t have done the deed. So, this gives rise to an unexplained situation in which two polar opposite things are simultaneously true.
An impossible problem, of course, can only have an equally impossible solution, and the pressing issue in the plot is that the only place for it to go, eventually, is into supernatural territory, and we’re not mad about that. This makes The Outsider an even more gripping and haunting tale, which highlights an unspeakable crime and the strangeness it brought with it.
The series may be slightly different from the book, but rumor has it that they may share the same ending. The book and the series continue to cast a chilly spell that creeps into ones bones, and its horror elements are used to amplify the investigation of everyday people’s struggles, with death, tragedy and adversity.
If you missed the trailer, here’s a sneak peak! But be careful, because it is creepy.
Bookstr is community supported. If you enjoy Bookstr’s articles, quizzes, graphics and videos, please join our Patreon to support our writers and creators or donate to our Paypal and help Bookstr to keep supporting the book loving community.
