there’s nothing demure about these thriller book damsels who are anything but in distress.
The brightest of days can be made a bit more exciting with the introduction of a dark but extraordinary tale of a killer female. The novels we’ve collected here delve way deeper than your typical thriller, exploring psychological nuances tucked in between the twists and turns the stories take. You’ll find two sisters on a treacherous hunt for their missing mother, a cohort of wives whose husbands won’t get away with their abusive ways any longer, a daughter with revenge on her mind, and more. You can be certain that none of these damsels would identify as distressed.
PAPERBACKS
Hard Girls
by J. Robert Lennon
In this "racing, twisty crime novel," two estranged twin sisters hunt down their elusive mother – and face down the darkness they tried to escape. (Chelsea Bieker)
Jane Pool likes her safe, suburban existence just fine. She has a house, a family, an infuriating mother-in-law, and a quiet-if-unfulfilling administrative job at the local college. Everything is wonderfully, numbingly normal. Yet Jane remains haunted by her past: her mercurial, absent mother, her parents' secrets, and the act of violence that transformed her life.
When her estranged twin, Lila, makes contact, claiming to know where their mother is and why she left all those years ago, Jane agrees to join her, desperate for answers and the chance to reconnect with the only person who really knew her true self. Yet as the hunt becomes treacherous, and pulls the two women to the earth's distant corners, they find themselves up against their mother's subterfuge and the darkness that always stalked their family. Now Jane stands to lose the life she's made for the one that has been impossible to escape.
Set in both the Pool family's past and their present, and melding elements of a chase novel, an espionage thriller, and domestic suspense, Hard Girls is an utterly distinctive pastiche – propulsive, mysterious, cracked, intelligent, and unexpected at every turn.
How Can I Help You
by Laura Sims
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
The New York Times Book Review - Publishers Weekly - CrimeReads - Book Riot
A New York Times Book Review Paperback Row Pick
A LibraryReads Pick
The lives of two librarians become dangerously intertwined in this razor-sharp exploration of human nature and the lure of artistic obsession.
No one knows Margo's real name. Her colleagues and patrons at a small-town public library know only her middle-aged normalcy, congeniality, and charm. They have no reason to suspect that she is, in fact, a former nurse with a trail of premature deaths in her wake. She has turned a new page, so to speak, and the library is her sanctuary, a place to quell old urges.
That is, at least, until Patricia, a recent graduate and failed novelist, joins the library staff. Patricia quickly notices Margo's subtly sinister edge, and watches her carefully. When a tragic incident in the library bathroom gives her a hint of Margo's mysterious past, Patricia can't resist digging deeper – even as her new fixation becomes all-consuming and sends both women hurtling toward disaster.
Chilling, incisive, and darkly humorous, How Can I Help You is a propulsive work of psychological suspense that asks how far we might go to justify our most monstrous desires.
The Best Way to Bury Your Husband
by Alexia Casale
A dark comedy about four women coming together to heal the damage their husbands have done – and hide their bodies once they've killed them
When Sally kills her husband with a cast-iron skillet, she's more fearful of losing her kids than of disposing of a fresh corpse. That just wouldn't be fair – not after twenty years of marriage to a truly terrible man. But Sally isn't the only woman in town reaching the brink. Soon, Sally finds herself leading an extremely unusual self-help group, and among them there are four bodies to hide. Can they all figure out the perfect way to bury their husbands . . . and get away with it?
First to join is former nurse, Ruth, who met her husband as a single mom. Now her son is grown and her husband's violence builds by the day until an attack on the stairs leads to a fatal accident – for him. A few doors down, Samira's last straw comes when she discovers her husband is planning a campaign of violence against her eldest daughter, who has just come out. Janey, Sally's best friend, has just had her first child at forty-two. Sleep-deprived Janey needs a hero to slay the monster in the fairy tales she whispers to her daughter each night . . . and as her husband's violence escalates, it might just be her.
Together, fueled by righteous anger but tempered by a moral core, the four women must help each other work out a plan to get rid of their husbands for good. Along the way, Sally, Ruth, Samira, and Janey rediscover old joys and embark on new passions in work, education, and life. Friendship and laughter really are the best medicine – and so is getting away with murder.
Bad, Bad Seymour Brown
by Susan Isaacs
New York Times bestselling author Susan Isaacs returns to a pair of her readers' favorite characters, former FBI agent Corie Geller and her retired cop dad, who must solve one of the NYPD's coldest homicide cases – before the crime's sole survivor is killed.
When Corie Geller asked her parents to move from their apartment into the suburban McMansion she shares with her husband and teenage daughter, she assumed they'd fit right in with the placid life she'd opted for when she left the Joint Anti-terrorism Task Force of the FBI.
But then her retired NYPD detective father gets a call from good-natured and slightly nerdy film professor April Brown – one of the victims of a case he was never able to solve. When April was a five-year-old, she'd emerged unscathed from the arson that killed her parents. Now, two decades later, April is asking for help. Someone has made an attempt on her life. It takes only a nanosecond for Corie and her dad to say yes, and they jump into a full-fledged investigation.
If they don't move fast, whoever attacked April is sure to strike again. But while her late father, Seymour Brown, was the go-to money launderer for the Russian mob - a mercurial and violent man with a penchant for Swiss watches and cheating on his wife - April Brown has no enemies. Well-liked by her students, admired by her colleagues, her only connection to crime is her passion for the noir movies of Hollywood's golden age. Who would want her dead now? And who set that horrific fire, all those years ago?
The stakes have never been higher. Yet as Corie and her dad are realizing, they still live for the chase. Savvy and surprising, witty and gripping, Bad, Bad Seymour Brown is another standout hit from the beloved Susan Isaacs.
Not What She Seems
by Yasmin Angoe
She left home as the local pariah at twenty-two, but when a family tragedy brings her back, she must confront her tortured past – and a new danger in town that no one seems to understand but her.
After years of self-exile, Jacinda "Jac" Brodie is back in Brook Haven, South Carolina. But the small cliffside town no longer feels like home. Jac hasn't been there since the beloved chief of police fell to his death – and all the whispers said she was to blame.
That chief was Jac's father.
Racked with guilt, Jac left town with no plans to return. But when her granddad lands in the hospital, she rushes back to her family, bracing herself to confront the past.
Brook Haven feels different now. Wealthy newcomer Faye Arden has transformed the notorious Moor Manor into a quaint country inn. Jac's convinced something sinister lurks beneath Faye's perfect exterior, yet the whole town fawns over their charismatic new benefactor. And when Jac discovers one of her granddad's prized possessions in Faye's office, she knows she has to be right.
But as Jac continues to dig, she stumbles upon dangerous truths that hit too close to home. With not only her life but also her family's safety on the line, Jac discovers that maybe some secrets are better left buried.
HARDCOVERS
You Will Never Be Me
by Jesse Q. Sutanto
When cracks start forming in an influencer's curated life, she finds out that jealousy is just as viral as a video in this riveting suspense novel by bestselling author Jesse Q. Sutanto.
Influencer Meredith Lee didn't teach Aspen Palmer how to blossom on social media just to be ditched as soon as Aspen became big. So can anyone really blame Mer for doing a little stalking? Nothing serious, more like Stalking Lite. Then, Mer gets lucky; she finds one of Aspen's kids' iPads and swipes it. Now, she has access to everything: the family calendar and Aspen's social media accounts. Would anyone else be able to resist tweaking things a little here and there, showing up in Aspen's place for meetings with potential sponsors? Mer's only taking back what she deserves – what should have been hers.
Meanwhile, Aspen doesn't understand why her perfectly filtered life is falling apart. Sponsors are dropping her, fellow influencers are ghosting her, and even her own husband seems to find her repulsive. If she doesn't find out who's behind everything, she might just lose it all. What everyone seems to forget is that Aspen didn't become one of TikTok's biggest momfluencers by being naive. When Meredith suddenly goes missing, Aspen's world is upended and mysterious threats begin to arrive – but she won't let anything get in the way of her perfect life again.
The Hunter
by Tana French
A New York Times Bestseller - A New York Times Best Thriller of the Year (So Far) - An NPR Favorite Fiction Read of 2024 - A Parade Best Book of 2024 So Far - Named a Best Beach Read of 2024 by Entertainment Tonight and Harper's Bazaar
“Hailed as the queen of Irish crime fiction, French spins a taut tale of retribution, sacrifice, and family.” –TIME
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Searcher and "one of the greatest crime novelists writing today" (Vox), a spellbinding new novel set in the Irish countryside.
It's a blazing summer when two men arrive in a small village in the West of Ireland. One of them is coming home. Both of them are coming to get rich. One of them is coming to die.
Cal Hooper took early retirement from Chicago PD and moved to rural Ireland looking for peace. He's found it, more or less: he's built a relationship with a local woman, Lena, and he's gradually turning Trey Reddy from a half-feral teenager into a good kid going good places. But then Trey's long-absent father reappears, bringing along an English millionaire and a scheme to find gold in the townland, and suddenly everything the three of them have been building is under threat. Cal and Lena are both ready to do whatever it takes to protect Trey, but Trey doesn't want protecting. What she wants is revenge.
From the writer who is "in a class by herself," (The New York Times), a nuanced, atmospheric tale that explores what we'll do for our loved ones, what we'll do for revenge, and what we sacrifice when the two collide.
Bad Men
by Julie Mae Cohen
Darkly comic and addictively readable, Bad Men is a wild romp of a feminist thriller that asks if even a serial killer can have a happily ever after.
Julie Mae Cohen subverts expectations with this gripping thriller where the woman is the hunter, not the prey.
Saffy, a vigilante with a strict moral code, takes justice into her own hands, eliminating the "bad men" who prey on women. But as she gets closer to the man of her dreams, she must decide if love is worth risking everything.
Saffy's mission is fueled by righteous anger and a deep desire for justice, but it's also complicated by her own vulnerabilities and desires. As she navigates the treacherous waters of romance and revenge, she'll challenge your assumptions about what it means to be a hero.
Sharp, witty, and utterly original, Bad Men is a must-read for fans of Gillian Flynn and Oyinkan Braithwaite. It's a thrilling, thought-provoking exploration of power, morality, and the lengths we'll go to protect the ones we love.
COMING SOON
The Arizona Triangle: A Jo Bailen Detective Novel
by Sydney Graves
In the vein of the bestselling California noirs of Sue Grafton and Sara Gran, a whodunnit about loyalty, love, and the legacy of trauma featuring a hardboiled, queer private eye whose latest case takes her deep into her own complicated past.
On the cusp of forty, Justine Bailen, better known as Jo, works for an all-female detective agency based in Tucson, Arizona. While staking out a cheating spouse, she learns that her long-estranged best friend from childhood, Rose, is missing, and that Rose's mother wants to hire Jo to find her. This case is all kinds of wrong for Jo, but she has no choice but to head back to her hometown, an hour north and a world away from Tucson.
Back in Delphi, she learns that her high school boyfriend, Tyler – who is probably part of the reason her friendship with Rose went south – is the cop assigned to the case. It doesn't take long for Jo to realize that he's all mixed up in it, too. To have any hope of learning the truth about Rose's disappearance, Jo must finally face the demons she thought she'd escaped.