Archives de catégorie : Crime & Thrillers

THE PERFECT HOME de Daniel Kenitz

Fixer Upper meets Gone Girl in this suspenseful and witty domestic thriller set in the world of home renovation TV—featuring a woman who becomes public enemy #1 after a horrifying discovery prompts her to flee her celebrity husband with their twin babies.

THE PERFECT HOME
by Daniel Kenitz
Scribner, January 2025
(via Lowenstein Associates)

Dawn Decker is an American everywoman and the salt to her husband Wyatt’s sweet, media-friendly charm on their Tennessee-based home renovation reality TV show, The Perfect Home. While Dawn bristles at the trappings of their D-list celebrity status, Wyatt hungers for greater fame. The couple also faces infertility issues stemming from Wyatt’s low sperm count. He secretly orders experimental fertility drugs, and they conceive, but his personality takes a dark turn—he becomes moody, withdrawn, and even cruel.

When Dawn discovers his horrifying plot to manufacture a tragedy in order to skyrocket their celebrity status, she takes their infant twins and goes on the run. Wyatt appears on national television to turn the public against her, painting Dawnas an unstable kidnapper suffering from postpartum psychosis. His charm is so compelling that even Dawn’s closest friends doubt her. She will have to dig deep into the past—both hers and Wyatt’s—to find allies, protect her children, and beat this beloved all-American celebrity at his own game.

Told in dual perspectives from both husband and wife, this smart, captivating, and twisty thriller is a fun, addictive read from the very first page.

“You could easily devour The Perfect Home in one sitting if it wasn’t so nerve-jangling that you have to put it down to regain your composure. This book had me shocked, despondent and furious in turns, and I loved it.. Kenitz turns the perfect home into a nightmare with proficiency and horrifying pizzazz.” —Associated Press

“A unique and enthralling thriller from a great new voice in the genre. Kenitz takes a wrecking ball to the fable of the perfect home while at the same time skewering the culture of fame. Both dark and fun with twists you won’t see coming. A killer debut.” —Alex Finlay, bestselling author of If Something Happens to Me

Daniel Kenitz is the author of several short stories, including the Pushcart Prize–nominated “A Hand to the Plow” (2022, Red Rock Review), “Tickleneck” (2022, Spotlong Review) and “Seen” (2020, EveryDay Fiction). A freelance writer, he lives in southeastern Wisconsin within jogging distance of dairy cows. THE PERFECT HOME is his first novel.

PARENTS WEEKEND d’Alex Finlay

From the bestselling author of If Something Happens to Me, comes one of the year’s most anticipated thrillers.

PARENTS WEEKEND
by Alex Finlay
Minotaur Books, May 2025
(via The Aaron Priest Literary Agency)

In the glow of their children’s exciting first year of college at a small private school in Northern California, five families plan on a night of dinner and cocktails for the opening festivities of Parents Weekend. As the parents stay out way past their bedtimes, their kids―five residents of Campisi Hall―never show up at dinner.

At first, everyone thinks that they’re just being college students, irresponsibly forgetting about the gathering or skipping out to go to a party. But as the hours click by and another night falls with not so much as a text from the students, panic ensues. Soon, the campus police call in reinforcements. Search parties are formed. Reporters swarm the small enclave. Rumors swirl and questions arise.

Libby, Blane, Mark, Felix, and Stella―The Five, as the podcasters, bloggers, and TikTok sleuths call them―come from five very different families. What led them out on that fateful night? Could it be the sins of their mothers and fathers come to cause them peril or a threat to the friend group from within?

Told through multiple points of view in past and present―and marking the return of FBI Special Agent Sarah Keller from Every Last Fear and The Night Shift―PARENTS WEEKEND explores the weight of expectation, family dysfunction, and those exhilarating first days we all remember in the dorms when our friends become our family.

Alex Finlay is the bestselling author of the 2021 breakout novel, Every Last Fear, the 2022 Goodreads Choice nominee for Best Mystery and Thriller, The Night Shift, the 2023 Library Reads Hall of Fame recipient, What Have We Done, and his latest release, the USA Today bestseller, If Something Happens to Me. Alex’s novels are regularly on “best of the year” lists, have been translated into twenty-five languages, and have been optioned for film or television. Every Last Fear is in development for a major limited series. Alex lives in Washington, DC and Virginia.

HALTLOS de Sarah Nisi

Your best friend has been murdered. You saw it happen. But you can’t remember anything…

HALTLOS
by Sarah Nisi
btb/PRH Germany, January 2025

Emily has been feeling like an outsider for months now. The Londoner can’t cope with everyday life any more, and has to give up her studies. Three months ago, her friend Liv fell onto the Tube tracks and died – Emily was standing right next to her, but can’t recall anything about the incident. The police thinks it was an accident, but Emily suspects there’s more to it. She must find a way to remember. But why is everyone she tries to talk to about it being so evasive? And what if she discovers a terrible truth about herself in the process? Little does Emily know that her life is already in serious danger…

A brilliantly constructed psychological thriller about unreliable memories, and a perilous hunt for the truth.

Sarah Nisi has lived in London since 2012. She was born in Hildesheim, and worked as a corporate lawyer in Düsseldorf for several years before moving to London to study creative writing. Since then the German-British author has dedicated most of her time to writing. London’s particular atmosphere and social diversity are key ingredients of her thrillers. Her debut Ich will dir nah sein (‘I want to be close to you’) was a bestseller in Germany, and shortlisted for prestigious prizes including the Glauser, the Viktor Crime Award and the Crime Cologne Award.

THE LAST ILLUSION OF PAIGE WHITE de Vanessa McCausland

A small-town mommy blogger kayaked across the lake each morning at dawn, snapping selfies in the early-morning sun. Everyone obsessively watched her document a picturesque life on Instagram. But when an ominous, brooding image is posted to her account and the next day she is discovered drowned, immediately everyone wonders – suicide or was her online persona a façade?

THE LAST ILLUSION OF PAIGE WHITE
by Vanessa McCausland
Crown, June 2025

Paige has always lived a picture-perfect life, now documented closely on her social media. The world she has curated exudes an old-fashioned, wholesome lifestyle set against a quaint, lakeside town in Australia. Her page is littered with breakfasts lakeside with her daughter, sunny afternoons in the family van, and romantic picnics with her husband.

Jane was one of Paige’s childhood best friends, but left her and their small town behind to pursue a bigger life in Sydney. When Paige’s death makes national news, Jane, a journalist, finds herself reluctantly traveling back to where it all began. Struggling with the morality of covering her friend’s death, and forced to come back to her childhood home, Jane must confront the friends and family she abandoned, and the secrets she left in her wake. But one thing Jane is sure about? This was not a suicide.

Readers will fall in love with Vanessa McCausland’s THE LAST ILLUSION OF PAIGE WHITE, told through Paige’s perspective from the beyond, Jane’s present-day narration, an anonymous voice that watched Paige each morning, and flashbacks to Paige and Jane’s high school days, all leading towards a shocking, gasp-worthy ending.

“Compelling, haunting, and beautifully written, THE LAST ILLUSION OF PAIGE WHITE is a clever, page-turning modern mystery as well as a thoughtful exploration of female friendship, family dynamics, and the complex impact of social media on self-identity. You’ll be thinking about it long after you turn the last page!” —Liane Moriarty, #1 New York Times bestselling author

Vanessa McCausland studied English and Australian literature at Sydney University and graduated with honors in theatre and performance studies. She worked as a journalist for nearly twenty years, including as a news and arts journalist for the Daily Telegraph, and her writing has appeared in numerous other publications. She’s published four novels in Australia, and now lives in Sydney with her husband and daughter.

DOLL PARTS de Penny Zang

The Virgin Suicides meets I Have Some Questions For You with a dash of the horrors of Nightbitch in this debut suspense following one woman as she begins to uncover the truth of the death of her estranged best friend and the Sylvia Plath adoring girls they attended college with decades ago.

DOLL PARTS
by Penny Zang
Sourcebooks Landmark, August 2025

For Nikki and Sadie, life at Loch Raven College was supposed to be filled with poetry and days spent trying on thrifted clothes. But there’s a dark story that plagues the school halls – that of the Sylvia Club, a campus legend surrounding the death of multiple Sylvia Plath adoring girls, all written off as suicides. Aspiring writer Nikki finds herself drawn to the stories, so much so that dead girls begin to haunt her dark imagination. To satiate her obsession, Nikki begins to dig into the deaths, and she soon suspects there’s more to the story than just a tragic group of sad girls – a suspicion that will lead to a tragedy of its own, one that will tear her and Sadie apart.

It’s been twenty years since Sadie saw her estranged friend. Now, Nikki is dead. And when Sadie ends up pregnant with Nikki’s grieving husband, she finds herself stepping into her seemingly perfect life. But Nikki’s eerily preserved home seems to hold clues for Sadie from beyond-the-grave, and soon, she’s spiraling into a deep obsession that will make her question her own reality. Because it seems Nikki never stopped looking for answers about what happened to the girls of the Sylvia Club, and she may have been its latest victim.

A provocative and irresistible debut, DOLL PARTS is at once an exploration of the dark chasms that break apart friendships, an ode to the aching beauty of girlhood, and a sharp portrayal of grief that can physically haunt you.

Penny Zang is from Maryland and graduated with an MFA in Fiction from West Virginia University. Her work has appeared in the Potomac Review, Louisville Review, and Superstition Review, among others. She is the 2024 Elizabeth Boatwright Coker fiction fellow via the South Carolina Academy of Authors. She lives in South Carolina, where she teaches English at a two-year college.