Archives de catégorie : Crime & Thrillers

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.



EL DORADO DRIVE de Megan Abbott

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Turnout comes a simmering, atmospheric novel of friendship and betrayal, following a women-led pyramid scheme in suburban Detroit.

EL DORADO DRIVE
by Megan Abbott
Putnam/PRH, June 2025
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan)

« Abbott is a superstar of the suspense genre. » —NPR

All I want is to be innocent again. But that’s not how it works. Especially not after the Wheel.

The three Bishop sisters grew up in privilege in the moneyed suburbs of Detroit. But as the auto industry declined, so did their fortunes. Harper, the youngest, is barely making ends meet when her beloved, charismatic sister Pam—currently in the middle of a contentious battle with her ex-husband—and her eldest sister, Debra, approach her about joining an exciting new club.

The Wheel offers women like themselves—middle-aged and of declining means—a way to make their own money, independent of husbands or families. Quickly, however, the Wheel’s success, and their own addiction to it, leads to greater and greater risks—and a crime so shocking it threatens to bring everything down with it.

Megan Abbott turns her keen eye toward women and money in El Dorado Drive, a riveting story about power, vulnerability, and how desperation draws out our most destructive impulses.

Megan Abbott is the Edgar award-winning author of eleven crime novels, including You Will Know Me, Give Me Your Hand and the New York Times bestseller The Turnout, the winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She received her Ph.D. in English and American literature from New York University and her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Paris Review and the Wall Street Journal. Dare Me, the series she adapted from her own novel, now streaming on Netflix. Her latest novel, Beware the Woman, is now in paperback.

RUNNING COLD de Susan Walter

In this heart-pounding story of deception, murder, and survival, a former Olympian retreats to the Canadian wilderness for a fresh start, only to find out that the past will always catch up to her.

RUNNING COLD
by Susan Walter
Lake Union/Amazon, October 2024
(via Laura Dail Literary)

Julie Adler’s perfect facade is shattered by grief when her husband commits suicide. His death reveals that their luxurious California life was a house of cards, and his secret business dealings have left Julie penniless.

As she strikes out on her own, Julie feels drawn to her old stomping grounds in Banff, a charming and isolated ski town where she once trained for the Olympics. She finds work as a housekeeper at a luxury resort, but just as she starts to piece together a new life, an eccentric guest turns up dead. And Julie, the last person seen in her hotel room, is the prime suspect.

The evidence is stacked against her, but even in the encroaching blizzard, Julie knows her way around these mountains. She just needs to evade the police long enough to find the truth behind the murder…and before the real killer finds her first.

“Set in a stunning but unforgiving landscape, Running Cold is chilling—both literally and figuratively. This twisty tale of murder, secrets, and exceptional human grit had me flying through the pages!” —Robyn Harding, bestselling author of The Drowning Woman

“When Julie’s life is ripped apart by her husband’s untimely death, it’s just the beginning of the journey that will lead her into her dark past and the secrets that swirled around her, sight unseen. A taught page-turner that draws you in and never lets go…” —Catherine McKenzie, USA Today bestselling author of I’ll Never Tell

Susan Walter is the author of Lie by the Pool, Good as Dead, and Over Her Dead Body. She was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After being given every opportunity—and failing—to become a concert violinist, Susan attended Harvard University. She had hoped to be a newscaster, but the local TV station had different ideas and hired her to write and produce promos instead. Seeking sunshine and a change of scenery, Walter moved to Los Angeles to work in film and television production. Upon realizing writers were having all the fun, Susan transitioned to screenwriting, then directing. She wrote and made her directorial debut with the 2017 film All I Wish, starring Sharon Stone.

THE LEDGE de Christian White

The new and highly anticipated thriller from bestselling author Christian White. His twistiest thriller yet!

THE LEDGE
by Christian White
Affirm Press, October 2024
(via Kaplan/DeFiore Rights)

When human remains are discovered in a forest, police are baffled, the locals are shocked and one group of old friends starts to panic. Their long-held secret is about to be uncovered.

It all began in 1999 when sixteen-year-old Aaron ran away from home, drawing his friends into an unforeseeable chain of events that no one escaped from unscathed.

In The Ledge, past and present run breathlessly parallel, leading to a climax that will change everything you thought you knew. This is a mind-bending new novel from the master of the unexpected.

Christian White is an Australian author and screenwriter whose credits include feature film Relic, Netflix series Clickbait and numerous other projects in the pipeline. His debut novel The Nowhere Child was one of Australia’s bestselling debut novels ever, with rights sold in 17 international territories and a major screen deal. Christian’s second book, The Wife and the Widow (2019),and third, Wild Place (2021), were instant bestsellers. THE LEDGE is his fourth novel.