There’s something terrifying about a stranger in a thriller. A mysterious figure with unknown motives and capabilities poses a serious threat to unsuspecting victims. But what about someone who isn’t a stranger, who you’ve grown up with, shared meals with, or revealed your darkest desires to?
Can you really trust your own husband, mother, cousin, son, or even yourself? A family member who knows your secrets, flaws and history serves as a powerful force of suspense in a genre wrought with danger.
When family secrets come to the surface, bodies pile up, loyalties change, and motives are uncovered. These five thrillers are full of toxic family members, closely guarded secrets and revelations that change everything.
Try Not to Breathe by David Bell
A traumatic experience in the line of duty forces 30-year-old Avery Rogers to abandon her law enforcement career and retreat to a quiet college town.
But a frantic phone call turns Avery’s life upside down. Her father — a retired cop who never fails to convey his disappointment in Avery —says her half-sister, whom she barely knows, is missing and in danger.
Anna is fed up with her family and a domineering father who thinks it’s okay for cops to shoot unarmed civilians. She hits the road to attend a protest against police brutality, where she catches a glimpse of Avery in the crowd. Then, Anna receives a shocking text and she’s no longer road-tripping; she’s running, pursued by an older sister she doesn’t trust and a violent stranger who has been stalking her for weeks.
When Avery discovers Anna’s hiding place, she risks everything to save her. Little do the sisters know that a secret is catching up to them — a secret at the very heart of their family history.
(Read the interview with the author on BookTrib.)
Right Across the Bay by Quinn Avery
Britta Baxter decides that she is ready to start fresh. Leaving the city behind, she parts with her life as a fitness influencer and estranged wife of a surgeon. Instead of making this journey alone, Britta convinces her cousin Maxine to join her at their grandmother’s lake-side property, where they used to spend summers as kids. With decades of secrets between them, the cousins embark on their trip. To Maxine’s surprise, the boy she loved as a teenager still lives by the lake, and dreams of rekindling a relationship with him.
But when Britta’s body is found floating in the bay, Detective Josephine Kelly knows that something isn’t right in this lakeside town. And of course, Britta isn’t the only one who will fall victim to the killer. Maxine might be the only one who knows her cousin’s secrets, and soon a shadowy past will come to the surface.
The Stepfamily by Bonnie Traymore
Laura’s on the verge of living the life she’s always wanted. At the age of 27, she put her career plans on hold, married handsome widower Peter Foster, settled down in his Silicon Valley home, and helped raise his two children.
When a series of freak accidents turns her fairytale life into a nightmare, it becomes clear that someone is out to get her. Is it someone jealous of her success? Or is it perhaps someone more dangerous and even closer to home?
Laura has never been the type to make enemies, but she senses that her husband Peter is keeping secrets. When she starts digging into the family’s past, she only finds that the rabbit hole goes ever deeper. With the walls closing in, she needs to find out why someone would want to harm her … and what really happened to Peter’s first wife.
(Read the review on BookTrib)
Not My Boy by Kelly Simmons
When Hannah moves into the carriage house in the shadow of her sister’s sprawling family home, not far from her mother, she’s looking for a fresh start in a safe neighborhood. Recently divorced and trying to escape a dark secret that has haunted her son, Hannah pins her hope on proximity to her sister, Hillary, and all the advantages her new home has to offer.
When a little girl goes missing and police descend, secrets are unearthed, and it seems everyone has something to hide. As investigators crisscross the community, searching woods, creeks and homes, tensions mount. And when Hannah’s son, Miles, emerges as a person of interest, she finds herself embroiled in a battle she never expected. Complicating matters even more, Hillary’s husband Ben is keeping a secret of his own, and when the truth comes to light, doubts about who he is and what he may or may not be capable of weigh on everyone.
(Read the review on BookTrib.)
The Push by Ashley Audrain
Three generations of women grapple with the challenges of being mothers. Blythe didn’t have a warm, comforting mother, so now that she has her own daughter, Violet, she wants to do better than the women before her. But Blythe is convinced there is something wrong with Violet, the casual cruelty with which she treats her classmates in preschool, and the way she stares in the night at Blythe’s new baby, Sam, the child with whom Blythe instantly felt the connection she never had with Violet.
Her husband dismisses her fears, and others reassure her she’s just tired from life as a new mother. But Blythe knows who she came from, what she herself has become, what she thinks she’s seeing now. And she knows what she thinks she saw happen when the little boy at the playground died. She will not let that happen to her baby, Sam. Can Blythe trust her daughter, her husband, or even her own reality in this twisted family thriller?
(Read the interview with the author on BookTrib.)
