Books to Read if You Love Domestic Thrillers

After her best friend’s mysterious death, Elizabeth Smith’s picture-perfect life in the Memphis suburbs has spiraled out of control — so much so that she hires a personal assistant to keep her on track. Composed and elegant, Brianna is exactly who she needs and slides so neatly into Elizabeth’s life, almost like she belonged there from the start. Soon, the assistant Elizabeth hired to distract her from her obsession with her friend’s death is the same person working with her to uncover the truth behind it. As the two women hurtle towards an electrifying final showdown, and the lines between employer and friend blur, it becomes clear that neither of them is what they first appear.

Their love story is simple. He met a gorgeous woman. They fell in love. They had kids. They moved to the suburbs. They told each other their biggest dreams and their darkest secrets. And then they got bored. Everyone has secrets to keeping a marriage alive. Theirs just happens to be getting away with murder…

On an early morning in November, a private plane bound for Geneva drops off the radar, its wreckage uncovered days later in the Alps. Among the disappeared is Matthew Werner, an insider at Swiss United, a powerful offshore bank. His young widow, Annabel, begins a desperate search for answers and quickly determines that Matthew’s death was no accident. She soons finds herself in a terrifying cat-and-mouse chase, on the run from his powerful enemies, who will stop at nothing to hide the truth.

On a bright morning in the suburbs, a family moves into the house they’ve just bought on Trinity Avenue. Nothing strange about that. Except it’s your house. And you didn’t sell it…

In this chilling thriller, a woman returns to the house made famous by her father’s bestselling horror memoir. Is the place really haunted by evil forces, as her father claimed? Or are there more earthbound — and dangerous — secrets hidden within its walls?

Erin is a documentary filmmaker on the brink of a professional breakthrough. Mark is a handsome investment banker with big plans. Passionately in love, they embark on a dream honeymoon to Bora Bora, where they enjoy the sun, the sand, and each other. Then, while scuba diving in the crystal blue sea, they find something in the water … With piercing insight and fascinating twists, Something in the Water challenges the reader to confront the hopes we desperately cling to, the ideals we’re tempted to abandon, and the perfect lies we tell ourselves.

When Myriam decides to return to work as a lawyer after having children, she and her husband look for the perfect nanny for their son and daughter. They never dreamed they would find Louise: a quiet, polite, devoted woman who sings to the children, cleans the family’s chic Paris apartment, stays late without complaint, and hosts enviable kiddie parties. But as the couple and the nanny become more dependent on one another, jealousy, resentment, and suspicions mount, shattering the idyllic tableau. Building tension with every page, The Perfect Nanny is a compulsive, riveting, bravely observed exploration of power, class, race, domesticity, motherhood, and madness.

Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful 13-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family’s Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims — a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story — and survive this homecoming.

“Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.

Growing up, Jane and Marnie shared everything. They knew the other’s deepest secrets. They wouldn’t have had it any other way. But when Marnie falls in love, things begin to change. Because Jane has a secret: She loathes Marnie’s wealthy, priggish husband. So when Marnie asks if she likes him, Jane tells her first lie. After all, even best friends keep some things to themselves. If she had been honest, then perhaps her best friend’s husband might still be alive today. . .

When Caroline and Francis receive an offer to house swap — from their city apartment to a house in a leafy, upscale London suburb — they jump at the chance for a week away from home, their son, and the tensions that have pushed their marriage to the brink. As the couple settles in, Caroline slowly begins to uncover some signs of life in the stark house — signs of her life. The flowers in the bathroom or the music might seem innocent to anyone else — but to her they are clues. It seems the person they have swapped with is someone who knows her, someone who knows the secrets she’s desperate to forget … Be careful who you let in…

Ryan Francis has it all — great job, wonderful wife, beautiful child — until the night his friend Blake asks him to break into a woman’s home to retrieve incriminating items that implicate Blake in an affair. Ryan refuses to help, but when Blake threatens to reveal Ryan’s darkest secret, Ryan has no choice but to honor Blake’s request. When he arrives at the woman’s home, Ryan is shocked to find her dead — and just as shocked to realize he knows her. With police sirens rapidly approaching, Ryan flees, wondering why his friend would set him up for murder. Determined to keep his life intact and to clear his name, Ryan must find the real murderer — but solving the crime may lead him closer to home than he ever could have imagined.