There’s something about dark narratives about dysfunctional families that pulls readers in. It probably stems from a sense of empathy mixed with familiarity. However, some stories take dysfunction into places so dark and dangerous that readers aren’t pulled in; they’re brutally dragged. Abigail Dean’s Girl A belongs to this second group. A crushing tale that…
The Push by Ashley Audrain is a debut novel and a tense, page-turning psychological drama about the making and breaking of a family and a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for but everything she feared. College sweethearts Blythe and Fox Connor have a charmed life and romance. With…
The Lady Upstairs by Halley Sutton is a dark debut thriller and modern-day noir that tells the story of a woman who makes a living taking down terrible men and the final con she must pull for her freedom. Jo is a professional blackmailer. She studies, entraps, and extorts the richest and most powerful men…
The Girl in the Mirror by Rose Carlyle is a chilling, twisty suspense novel and a seductive debut thriller about greed, lust, secrets, and deadly lies involving identical twin sisters. Cases of mistaken identity and murderous doppelgängers are a dime a dozen in the crime genre, but Rose Carlyle has written something truly fresh and…
With all the twisty verve of Liane Moriarty, crossed with the more acerbic political observations of Tom Perotta, comes the debut novel of Cassidy Lucas, the pen name of writing duo Julia Fierro and Caeli Wolfson Widger. Both real-life residents of their titular town, they bring sharp eyes and large hearts to this tale of…
Anyone who has ever taken a creative writing class, whether it be for long or short fiction, will recognize that one of the golden rules before starting is to write what you know. This allows you to write with a more confident voice and allow your story to remain grounded in reality. This is precisely…
Mina Richards is a beautiful, best-selling romance author who’s only been married to Alex Zarabian for several months now after a fairly whirlwind courtship. After an argument one weekend, Mina retreats to her writing cottage in Provincetown, Massachusetts, several hours away from where they live in Boston. When she doesn’t respond to several days worth…
Following a career as an award-winning screenwriter and director for the past two decades, Katie Tallo of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, decided she wanted to write a novel. The end result is a complex, character-driven thriller she has aptly titled Dark August. The protagonist in this saga is Augusta ‘Gus’ Monet, a young woman who is…
What’s Left of Me Is Yours is a gripping debut set in modern-day Tokyo and inspired by a true crime that charts a young woman’s search for the truth about her mother’s life—and her murder. Stephanie Scott’s What’s Left of Me Is Yours is an outstanding novel that occupies the interstitial space between crime and…
In Alex Finlay’s Every Last Fear (Minotaur Books, March 2021) a family made infamous by a true-crime documentary is found dead, leaving their surviving son to uncover the truth about their final days. For the first time, you can check out the cover here and read on for an exclusive excerpt from this highly anticipated…
