Horror, Thrillers, & Suspense
Why do we read books that scare us? Does the thrill of fear shock us into feeling more alive? Or do we just like reading about danger while we're safely curled up with a book? Whatever the reason, you might find the next book to thrill you or chill you in this study guide collection.
1st to Die (2001), by bestselling author James Patterson, is the first novel in The Women’s Murder Club series. The club features four friends—San Francisco homicide detective Lindsay Boxer, medical examiner Claire Washburn, crime reporter Cindy Thomas, and assistant district attorney Jill Bernhardt—who work together, both professionally and personally, to solve crimes. In this first novel, the club works to solve the Honeymoon Murders, the killing of three couples just after their weddings. 1st to... Read 1st to Die Summary
A Great Reckoning (2016) is the 12th novel in the Inspector Gamache series. The series consists of contemporary mysteries written by the Canadian author Louise Penny. Like the other novels in the series, A Great Reckoning revolves around the small village of Three Pines, Quebec, and its inhabitants. The novel includes a standalone murder mystery plot and references to events in other novels within the series; Penny explores themes of parenthood, loss, and betrayal. This... Read A Great Reckoning Summary
A Land of Permanent Goodbyes is a young adult novel from author Atia Abawi. Published in 2018, it tells the story of a teenage refugee, Tareq, who flees his homeland of Syria, making the journey to Turkey, Greece, and eventually Germany. Tareq’s story is complemented by a second narrative, that of Alexia, a young American woman who defers a semester of college in order to support a volunteer organization that assists refugees as they arrive... Read A Land of Permanent Goodbyes Summary
All the Missing Girls, a 2016 suspense novel by Megan Miranda, tells the story of Nic Farrell, who returns home after receiving a phone call from her brother suggesting that she needs help take care of their ill father. Nic lives in Philadelphia with her fiancé, Everett, but is from Cooley Ridge, a small town on the edge of the Smoky Mountains. Upon returning home, she is forced to confront memories she thought she’d put behind... Read All the Missing Girls Summary
Along Came a Spider (1992) is the first novel in the Alex Cross psychological thriller series by James Patterson. Alex Cross is a Black psychologist and police detective working in Washington, DC, with his partner and childhood friend, John Sampson. In this novel, Alex and John are part of a hostage-rescue team investigating the kidnapping of two children by their teacher, Gary Soneji. As of 2023, there are 32 novels in the Alex Cross series... Read Along Came a Spider Summary
Published in 1939, And Then There Were None is a mystery novel by Agatha Christie, best-selling novelist of all time, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. With over 100 million copies sold, And Then There Were None is the world’s best-selling crime novel as well as one of the best-selling books of all time. It has had more adaptations than any other work by Agatha Christie, including television programs, films, radio broadcasts, and most... Read And Then There Were None Summary
A Perfect Spy is a 1986 spy novel by British author John le Carré. Described by the author as his most autobiographical work, the story involves the unexpected disappearance of British spy Magnus Pym after his father’s funeral. While hiding from his superiors, Pym reflects on his father’s influence and his lifetime spent lying to the world. A Perfect Spy has been adapted for television and radio. The story explores themes common to the world... Read A Perfect Spy Summary
John Grisham’s 1988 novel A Time to Kill tells the story of attorney Jake Brigance and his infamous client, Carl Lee Hailey. Set against the backdrop of racially charged Mississippi, the legal thriller examines themes of inequality, intolerance, and retribution. The novel begins when two white men, Billy Ray Cobb and Pete Willard, abduct and rape a ten-year old black girl named Tonya Hailey. They throw her off a bridge, thinking the fall will kill... Read A Time to Kill Summary
The 2016 suspense novel Behind Closed Doors, by B.A. Paris, is a story about a perfect-looking marriage that is anything but what it appears to be on the surface. The novel is narrated in both the present and past tenses by the protagonist, Grace Angel. These tenses are reflected in alternating “Present” and “Past” chapters. In this way, Paris builds backstory and current action into storylines that build in parallel and meet at the end... Read Behind Closed Doors Summary
Behind Her Eyes, a psychological thriller, was written by Sarah Pinborough and published in 2017. The book has sold over 1 million copies worldwide and was adapted for a TV series by Netflix. While clearly a best seller, there is great divergence of opinion on the book’s very unexpected twist at the end, with the publishers using the hashtag #WTFThatEnding to promote the book.Plot SummaryLouise is a single mother living in London and working as... Read Behind Her Eyes Summary
Bird Box is a 2014 post-apocalyptic horror novel by Josh Malerman. The story follows a woman’s struggle to protect two children in a world where people are driven to violence by unseen monsters, touching on such themes as paranoia, raising children to deal with an uncertain future, and the dangers of exceptionalism. Bird Box won a Michigan Notable Book Award and was also nominated for the James Herbert Award as well as the Bram Stoker... Read Bird Box Summary
Bluebird, Bluebird (2017) by Texas native Attica Locke, published by Little, Brown and Company, is a 2018 Edgar and Anthony award-winning mystery novel. It was also selected as a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Kirkus Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2017. The first in the Highway 59 series follows Texas Ranger Darren Mathews through the backroads of Texas in search of justice and reform... Read Bluebird, Bluebird Summary
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a key figure in the British Romantic Era of poetry wrote the Gothic narrative poem “Christabel” in two parts, the first in 1797, and the second in 1800. Though it was still unfinished, “Christabel” was published in 1816.“Christabel” is Coleridge’s longest poem, at almost 700 lines. It is also the least edited of Coleridge’s work. Most of the poem contrasts the innocent piety of Christabel with the experience and supernatural abilities of... Read Christabel Summary
Cujo, a horror-thriller novel first published in 1981, is the 10th novel by the American “King of Horror,” Stephen King. It was inspired by a trip the author took to a mechanic in rural Maine whose St. Bernard nearly attacked King. Cujo received several accolades upon its release and won the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1982. It was adapted into a film of the same name in 1983.The citations in this study... Read Cujo Summary
Introduction Different Seasons (1982) by Stephen King is a collection of four novellas that are tied together by a connection to the four seasons. Three of the four stories (“Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption”, “Apt Pupil”, and “The Body”) have been made into films, and the fourth (“The Breathing Method”) is under consideration for adaptation. This guide refers to the 1983 Signet edition.Content Warning: This book contains references to death by suicide, sexual assault... Read Different Seasons Summary
Disappearing Earth (2019) is a debut novel by Julia Phillips published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, a division of Penguin Random House. This cross-genre novel combines elements of Mystery, Thriller, Women’s Fiction, and Literary Fiction. In 2019, it was a National Book Award finalist for fiction, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. New York Times Book Review named... Read Disappearing Earth Summary
Doctor Sleep is a 2013 horror novel by Stephen King. It is a sequel to the events that occurred in King’s popular novel The Shining and features the return of Danny Torrance. Decades after the horrors at the Overlook Hotel, Dan Torrance must now reckon with the renewed threat of the spirits. When the novel begins, the dead woman from the Overlook’s Room 217 has returned and threatens Danny in his bathroom. King uses this... Read Doctor Sleep Summary
Dolores Claiborne (1992) is a psychological thriller by the American novelist Stephen King. The novel, narrated from Dolores’s first-person point of view, tells the story of her work as a housekeeper for the wealthy Vera Donovan and Dolores’s eventual murder of her abusive husband. Unique among King’s work for its unconventional narrative style, including a lack of chapter designations and section breaks, the novel deals with themes of revenge, family, physical and sexual abuse, and... Read Dolores Claiborne Summary
Olga Tokarczuk is among Poland’s most famous and critically acclaimed contemporary authors. She has received multiple national and international literary awards, including the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature. Her most well-known novels and their translation dates into English are House of Day, House of Night (2003), Primeval and Other Times (2010), Flights (2018), and The Books of Jacob (2021).Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead was published in Poland in 2009 but didn’t... Read Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead Summary
Edgar Huntly: Or, Memoirs of a Sleepwalker by Charles Brockden Brown is an early American gothic novel originally published in 1799. Like other novels in the gothic genre, Edgar Huntly is an epistolary work, told mostly in a letter from the eponymous narrator to his fiancée, Mary Waldegrave, with three short letters between Edgar and Mr. Sarsefield at the end. Edgar’s letters includes the embedded narrative of Clithero Edny (another sleepwalker). Edgar confronts Native Americans... Read Edgar Huntly Summary
Fight Club (1996) is the debut novel of American author Chuck Palahniuk. Three years later, American filmmaker David Fincher directed the film adaptation starring Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden, Edward Norton as the Narrator, and Helena Bonham Carter as Marla Singer. This study guide uses the 2018 paperback edition published by W. W. Norton & Co.Fight Club is a contemporary work of literary fiction that contends with masculinity, materialism, consumer culture, and modern disillusionment. Inspired... Read Fight Club Summary
Frankenstein in Baghdad, written by Ahmed Saadawi, was originally published in Arabic in 2013; it was published in English in 2018 in a translation by Jonathan Wright. It is a modern, magical realist take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, updated to take place in post-war, US-occupied Iraq. It won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2014. Plot SummaryIn Bataween, a neighborhood in Baghdad, Iraq, live a series of interrelated characters: Elishva, an old widow who... Read Frankenstein in Baghdad Summary
Ghosted is British novelist Rosie Walsh’s first novel, published in 2018. After a career in television that included extensive travel, Walsh settled in the United Kingdom with her family, and Ghosted is set primarily in Gloucestershire and partially in other parts of England and Los Angeles, California. Released in the UK as The Man Who Didn’t Call and Ghosted in the United States, the novel addresses the phenomenon of “ghosting” in which a potential partner... Read Ghosted Summary
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn is a psychological thriller: a tale of a marriage gone cold and a sociopath who will stop at nothing to get revenge. Echoing the domestic noir genre, Flynn takes that genre one step further by incorporating several plot twists that subvert the reader’s expectations. Chief among the subverted expectations is the reader’s ability to trust the narrator. The novel consists of alternating chapters: one told by husband, Nick, and the... Read Gone Girl Summary
