Kiss Her Goodbye by Lisa Gardner
When I was a girl, I dreamed.
So begins Lisa Gardner’s supremely effective Kiss Her Goodbye, which starts out in overdrive and only gets faster from there.
Missing-persons expert extraordinaire Frankie Elkin is back in great form, tackling her most complex — and dangerous — case ever when a young mother vanishes without a trace. Sabera Ahmadi is an Afghan refugee with a closet full of skeletons Frankie will have to sort through in order to uncover the truth of what has become of her. Those skeletons include a husband who’s a math savant and a daughter whose memory works like a video recorder. What might the little girl have seen? And what secrets did the Ahmadi family take with them from Afghanistan?
Gardner expertly mines current events in crafting a riveting roller-coaster of a tale that never lets up or disappoints. Never mind dreams. Kiss Her Goodbye is destined to steal a hefty measure of your sleep.
Forget Me Not by Stacy Willingham
Stacy Willingham is back with another seminal psychological thriller in Forget Me Not, which is totally unforgettable.
Claire Campbell has never fully recovered from her older sister Natalie’s (apparent) murder more than 20 years earlier, and now her would-be killer is about to be executed for another young woman’s murder. Claire finally breaks down from the stress of it all and damages her career as a journalist in the process. While on the mend working at a South Carolina vineyard near her childhood home, she happens across a diary penned by one of the farm’s owners that includes details bearing a stark resemblance to Natalie’s death. Whether Claire has been drawn there by fate, or something more sinister, she finds herself assembling a puzzle that may hold her own death as its final piece.
Forget Me Not is an exquisite exercise in primal terror. Elegantly told from Claire’s point of view, we find ourselves joining her on a wild ride into the darkest depths of psychological suspense.
Last Seen by J.T. Ellison
Speaking of terrific psychological thrillers, look no further than J.T. Ellison’s Last Seen, a mind-bending stunner of a tale.
Things aren’t going well for Halley. Her marriage is falling apart, and then she loses her job in a forensics lab at the same time her father needs life-saving surgery. But wait, there’s more. Halley learns her long-dead mother, who perished in a car crash, was actually murdered, a lie that had been perpetuated for years. That sets her on a path to investigate the truth behind her mother’s death, as much to find a purpose as to find justice, opening up a Pandora’s box of secrets in the process.
Last Seen solidifies Ellison’s place on the hallowed ground staked out by the likes of Kristin Hannah, Lisa Scottoline and the aforementioned Lisa Gardner. Halley is one of those characters who is sure to stick with you long after you’ve flipped the final page in the hope she’ll be back again to continue the series.
All This Could Be Yours by Hank Phillippi Ryan
Continuing with this month’s theme of great women writers, Hank Phillippi Ryan’s brilliant All This Could Be Yours strikes a little too close to home for authors dreaming of their own splashy, nationwide book tour.
That’s the kind of tour Tessa Calloway earns after writing an instant bestseller, and novel within a novel, that boasts the same title as Ryan’s latest. She appears before packed audiences cheering her every word and standing in long lines to buy her book. Things couldn’t be better. It’s a dream come true … until it becomes a nightmare when Tessa realizes she’s got a stalker determined to destroy not only the career she’s painstakingly built but also the family she cherishes. And it’s all connected to a secret in her past she thought was buried forever.
All This Could Be Yours is a be-careful-what-you-wish-for tale that delivers on all of its promises. It reads like Harlan Coben or Sandra Brown writing at their level best, as Ryan stakes her claim to the ground roamed by the likes of her literary doppelgänger.
Please Don’t Lie by Christina Baker Kline and Anne Burt
This is also turning into the month to highlight great psychological thrillers. Christina Baker Kline and Anne Burt have combined to write a gem of one in Please Don’t Lie.
With a title like that, it’s a safe bet deception is at the heart of a story set in a remote town perched amid the Adirondack Mountains. That’s where Hayley Stone has settled to rebuild her life with a new husband she adores — that is, until something about the town seems to change him. Combine that with the secluded nature of Crystal River and warnings from Hayley’s neighbors suggesting something is awry and you’ve got the recipe for a terrific neo-gothic tale, as she finds herself isolated with no one to turn to for help.
Please Don’t Lie is culled from the brilliant paranoid tradition mastered by the likes of Ira Levin in Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives. Small towns harboring big secrets are nothing new, but thanks to Kline and Burt’s deft hands, we are in the grasp of great storytellers who make the trope feel fresh. A wondrously staged exercise in psychological terror.
The Story that Wouldn’t Die by Christina Estes
Christina Estes brings back intrepid, dogged reporter Jolene Garcia in The Story that Wouldn’t Die, a follow-up to last year’s Off the Air.
Garcia is the Phoenix-area reporter who serves as Estes’ literary doppelgänger. And this time out, she sinks her teeth into the accidental death of a local business owner who’s been roiling local politicos with accusations of favoritism and corruption. Since no one else seems to suspect anything amiss, Garcia takes up the case, turning up secrets beneath every rock she turns over. This in spite of the fact that her own TV station wants her to drop the investigation that runs her afoul of powerful types who’d rather see her dead than fired.
The Story that Wouldn’t Die is a sumptuously scintillating mystery in the style of Michael Connelly’s Renee Ballard series, further establishing Estes as a major genre force to be reckoned with.
