LibGuides: Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists: Mystery/Suspense

General Mystery/Suspense

Mystery
Suspense/Thriller

The Mystery of Mrs. Christie by Marie Benedict
Call Number: Fic Benedict, Marie
December 1926: England unleashes the largest manhunt in its history. The object of the search is not an escaped convict or a war criminal, but the missing wife of a WWI hero, up-and-coming mystery author Agatha Christie. When her car is found wrecked, empty, and abandoned near a natural spring, the country is in a frenzy. Eleven days later, Agatha reappears, claiming amnesia. She provides no answers for her disappearance. That is...until she writes a very strange book about a missing woman, a murderous husband, and a plan to expose the truth. What role did her unfaithful husband play? And what was he not telling investigators? (Description from catalog)
The Alienist by Caleb Carr
Call Number: Fic Carr, Caleb
When a madman begins stalking victims on the streets of 1896 New York, a team of investigators is forced to apply radical and untested techniques that include fingerprinting and the controversial science of psychology. (Description from catalog.)
The Tenant by Katrine Engberg
Call Number: Fic Engberg, Katrine
When a young woman is discovered brutally murdered in her own apartment, with an intricate pattern of lines carved into her face, Copenhagen police detectives Jeppe Korner and Anette Werner establish a link between the victim, Julie Stender, and her landlady, Esther de Laurenti, a budding novelist who incorporates Julie’s murder into her unfinished novel. But is Esther the culprit -or just another victim, trapped in a twisted game of vengeance? (Description from catalog.)
The Wharton Plot by Mariah Fredericks
Call Number: Fic Fredericks, Mariah
In 1911 New York City, acclaimed novelist Edith Wharton, when fellow writer David Graham Phillips is murdered, becomes obsessed with solving the crime when his sister believes he was killed by someone determined to stop the publication of his next book, which reveals the secrets of powerful people.
(Description from NoveList)
Germania by Harald Gilbers
Call Number: Fic Gilbers, Harald
From international bestselling author Harald Gilbers comes the heart-pounding story of Jewish detective Richard Oppenheimer as he hunts for a serial killer through war-torn Nazi Berlin in Germania. (Description from catalog)
Clark and Division by Naomi Hirahara
Call Number: Fic Hirahara, Naomi
Chicago, 1944: twenty-year-old Aki Ito and her parents have just been released from a California concentration camp where they have been "interned" by the US government since the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. The life the Itos were forced to leave behind is gone and they are being resettled in Chicago, where Aki's older sister, Rose, was sent months earlier as a forerunner of the new Japanese American neighborhood near Clark and Division streets. But on the eve of the Ito family's reunion, Rose is killed by a subway train. Aki is stunned. Officials are ruling Rose's death a suicide, in part because the coroner's examination revealed Rose had recently had an abortion. Aki cannot believe her perfect, polished, and optimistic sister would end her life, nor can she imagine Rose carelessly getting pregnant.
(Description from catalog)
The Arctic Fury by Greer Macallister
Call Number: Fic Macallister, Greer
Secretly hired by an eccentric Lady Franklin to lead a team of women explorers into the Arctic to recover Captain Sir John Franklin's lost expedition, Virginia Reeve survives a harrowing quest only to find herself on trial for murder. (Description from NoveList)
Murder in Old Bombay by Nev March
Call Number: Fic March, Nev
Investigating the double murder of two women in 1892 Bombay, Captain Jim Agnihotri is confronted by suspicion on both sides of a divided land before his investigation triggers unexpected consequences. (Description from NoveList)
The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey
Call Number: Fic Massey, Sujata
Introduces Bombay's first female lawyer, Oxford graduate Perveen Mistry, as she investigates a suspicious will on behalf of three Muslim widows living in strict purdah seclusion who become subject to a murderous guardian's schemes for their inheritances. (Description from NoveList.)
Fortune Favors the Dead by Stephen Spotswood
Call Number: Fic Spotswood, Stephen
A detective novel set in 1945, about two female private investigators trying to solve the locked-room murder of a society widow. (Description from NoveList)
Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart
Call Number: Fic Stewart, Amy
Living in virtual isolation years after the revelation of a painful family secret, Constance Kopp is terrorized by a belligerent silk factory owner and fights back in ways outside the norm for early twentieth-century women. (Description from catalog.)
I Remember You by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir
Call Number: Fic Yrsa Sigurðardóttir
In an isolated village in the Icelandic Westfjords, three friends set to work renovating a rundown house. But soon, they realize they are not as alone as they thought. Something wants them to leave, and it's making its presence felt. Meanwhile, in a town across the fjord, a young doctor investigating the suicide of an elderly woman discovers that she was obsessed with his vanished son. When the two stories collide, the terrifying truth is uncovered. (Description from catalog)
My Favorite Thing Is Monsters: Book Two by Emil Ferris
Call Number: GF Fer Vol. 2
Karen attends the Yippie-organized Festival of Life in Chicago, and finds herself swept up in a police stomping. Privately, she wrestles with her sexual identity, and she continues to investigate her neighbor’s recent death. She discovers one last cassette tape, which sheds light on Anka’s heroic activities.
(Description from NoveList)

Give Me Your Hand by Megan Abbott
Call Number: Fic Abbott, Megan
Kit Owens harbored only modest ambitions for herself when the mysterious Diane Fleming appeared in her high school echemistry class. But Diane's academic brilliance lit a fire in Kit, and the two developed an unlikely friendship... until Diane shared a secret that changed everything between them.
(Description from catalog)
While Justice Sleeps by Stacey Abrams
Call Number: Fic Abrams, Stacey
An inside-Washington thriller about an ambitious law clerk thrown into a life-or-death treasure hunt with major national implications when the Supreme Court justice she works for slips into a sudden coma.
(Description from catalog)
Bunny by Mona Awad
Call Number: Fic Awad, Mona
Invited to join a popular clique at her university, a misfit artist with a dark imagination is drawn into ritualistic activities that transform her perspectives on reality. (Description from NoveList)
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Call Number: Fic Bardugo, Leigh
Surviving a horrific multiple homicide, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks is unexpectedly offered a full scholarship to Yale, where her mysterious benefactors task her with monitoring the university’s secret societies. (Description from NoveList.)
The Kaiser's Web by Steve Berry
Call Number: Fic Berry, Steve
In New York Times bestseller Steve Berry's latest Cotton Malone adventure, a secret dossier from a World War II-era Soviet spy comes to light containing information that, if proven true, would not only rewrite history - it could impact Germany's upcoming national elections and forever alter the political landscape of Europe.
(Description from catalog)
Madwoman by Chelsea Bieker
Call Number: Fic Bieker, Chelsea
Clove has gone to extremes to keep her past a secret. Thanks to her lies, she’s landed the life of her dreams, complete with a safe husband and two adoring children who will never know the terror that was routine in her own childhood. If her buried anxiety threatens to breach the surface, Clove (if that is really her name) focuses on finding the right supplement, the right gratitude meditation.
(Description from Amazon)
My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Call Number: Fic Braithwaite, Oyinkan
Slasher meets satire, in this darkly comic novel set in Nigeria about a woman whose younger sister has a very inconvenient habit of killing her boyfriends.
(Description from catalog)
North of Nowhere by Allison Brennan
Call Number: Fic Brennan, Allison
After five years in hiding from their murderous father, the day Kristen and Ryan McIntyre have been dreading has arrived: Boyd McIntyre, head of a Los Angeles crime family, has at last tracked his kids to a small Montana town and is minutes away from kidnapping them. They barely escape in a small plane, but gunfire hits the fuel line. The pilot, a man who has been raising them as his own, manages to crash land in the middle of the Montana wilderness. The siblings hike deep into the woods, searching desperately for safety-unaware of the severity of the approaching storm.
(Description from catalog)
Girl in the Rearview Mirror by Kelsey Rae Dimberg
Call Number: Fic Dimberg, Kelsey Rae
Accepting what she believes will be a dream job from a prominent political family, a young nanny is dazzled by her employers' glamorous life before a mysterious stranger draws her into a menacing web of secrets. (Description from NoveList.)
They Never Learn by Layne Fargo
Call Number: Fic Fargo, Layne
Scarlett Clark is an exceptional English professor. But she's even better at getting away with murder. Every year, she searches for the worst man at Gorman University and plots his well-deserved demise. Thanks to her meticulous planning, she's avoided drawing attention to herself - but as she's preparing for her biggest kill yet, the school starts probing into the growing body count on campus.
(Description from catalog)
The Secret Place by Tana French
Call Number: Fic French, Tana
Investigating a photograph of a boy whose murder was never solved, aspiring Murder Squad member Stephen Moran partners with detective Antoinette Conway to search for answers in the cliques and rivalries at a Dublin boarding school. (Description from NoveList)
The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins
Call Number: Fic Hawkins, Rachel
After North Carolina’s richest—and most notorious—heiress dies, her adopted son, Camden, rejects his inheritance until 10 years later, when his uncle’s death pulls him and his wife back into the family fold at Ashby House where he realizes the bonds of family stretch far beyond the grave.
(Description from NoveList)
Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor
Call Number: Fic Kapoor, Deepti
Deftly shifting through time and perspective in contemporary India, Age of Vice is an epic action-packed story propelled by the seductive wealth, startling corruption, and bloodthirsty violence of the Wadia family--loved by some, loathed by others, feared by all.
(Description from catalog)
The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years by Shubnum Khan
Call Number: Fic Khan, Shubnum
Moving into Akbar Manzil, a ruined mansion off the coast of South Africa, Sana stumbles upon the long-forgotten story of Meena, the original owner's second wife who died there tragically 100 years ago, awakening a grieving djinn, an invisible spirit who has haunted the mansion since Meena's mysterious death.
(Description from NoveList)
Silverview by John le Carré
Call Number: Fic Le Carre, John
Julian Lawndsley has renounced his high-flying job in the city for a simpler life running a bookshop in a small English seaside town. But only a couple of months into his new career, Julian's evening is disrupted by a visitor. Edward, a Polish immigrant living in Silverview, the big house on the edge of town, seems to know a lot about Julian's family and is rather too interested in the inner workings of his modest new enterprise. When a letter turns up at the door of a spy chief in London warning him of a dangerous leak, the investigations lead him to this quiet town by the sea.
(Description from catalog)
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Call Number: Fic Moren-Garcia, Silvia
A reimagining of the classic gothic suspense novel follows the experiences of a courageous socialite in 1950s Mexico who is drawn into the treacherous secrets of an isolated mansion. (Description from NoveList.)
The President Is Missing by James Patterson; Bill Clinton
Call Number: Fic Patterson, James
The White House is the home of the President of the United States, the most guarded, monitored, closely watched person in the world. So how could a U.S. President vanish without a trace? And why would he choose to do so? (Description from catalog)
State of Terror by Louise Penny
Call Number: Fic Penny, Louise
After a tumultuous period in American politics, a new administration has just been sworn in, and to everyone’s surprise the president chooses a political enemy for the vital position of secretary of state. There is no love lost between the president of the United States and Ellen Adams, his new secretary of state. With this appointment, he silences one of his harshest critics, since taking the job means Adams must step down as head of her multinational media conglomerate.
(Description from Amazon)
Night Film by Marisha Pessl
Call Number: Fic Pessl, Marisha
When the daughter of a cult horror film director is found dead in an abandoned Manhattan warehouse, investigative journalist Scott McGrath, disbelieving the official suicide ruling, probes into the strange circumstances of the young woman's death.
Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips
Call Number: Fic Phillips, Julia
The shattering disappearance of two young girls from Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula compounds the isolation and fears of a tight-woven community, connecting the lives of neighbors, witnesses, family members and a detective throughout an ensuing year of tension. (Description from NoveList)
The Godfather by Mario Puzo
Call Number: Fic Puzo, Mario
A Searing novel of the Mafia underworld, this book introduced readers to the first family of American crime fiction, the Corleones - and became the definitive novel of the virle, violent subculture that remains steeped in intrigue, in controversy, and in our collective consciousness. (Description from catalog)
Hour of the Assassin by Matthew Quirk
Call Number: Fic Quirk, Matthew
Using his elite training as a former Secret Service agent to test security around high officials, Nick implicates himself while trying to prevent a death before uncovering a decades-old conspiracy targeting the Oval Office. - description from Novelist
Sleeping Bear by Connor Sullivan
Call Number: Fic Sullivan, Connor
After her young husband's untimely death, Army veteran Cassie Gale decides to take a few days of solitude in the Alaska wilderness before she starts her new job. But when she fails to show up on her first day and her dog is discovered injured at her wrecked campsite, her father knows that this is much more than a camping trip gone awry. Cassie is not the first person to disappear without a trace in Alaska's northern interior. Bears. Wolves. Avalanches. Frostbite. Starvation. There are many ways to die in here. But not all disappearances can be explained.
(Description from catalog)
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Call Number: Fic Tartt, Donna
Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and forever, and they discover how hard it can be to truly live and how easy it is to kill. (Description from catalog)
Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas
Call Number: Fic Thomas, Elisabeth
A dangerously curious, rebellious undergraduate uncovers a shocking secret about an exclusive circle of students and the dark truths beneath their school’s promises of prestige. (Description from NoveList.)
Bright Objects by Ruby Todd
Call Number: Fic Todd, Ruby
A young widow grapples with the arrival of a once-in-a-lifetime comet and its tumultuous consequences.
(Description from NoveList)
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
Call Number: Fic Ward, Jesmyn
Jojo and his sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on a farm on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Leonie is simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she's high, Mam is dying of cancer, and quiet Pop tries to run the household and teach Jojo how to be a man. When the white father of Leonie's children is released from prison, she packs her kids and a friend into her car and sets out across the state for Parchman farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, on a journey rife with danger and promise.
(Description from catalog)
The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware
Call Number: Fic Ware, Ruth
When she stumbles across the ad, she's looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss--a live-in nannying post, with a staggeringly generous salary. And when Rowan Caine arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is smitten--by the luxurious "smart" home fitted out with all modern conveniences, by the beautiful Scottish Highlands, and by this picture-perfect family. What she doesn't know is that she's stepping into a nightmare--one that will end with a child dead and herself in prison awaiting trial for murder.
(Description from catalog)
We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker
Call Number: Fic Whitaker, Chris
Thirty years ago, a teenage Vincent King was sent to prison. But now, he's served his sentence and is returning to his hometown. The hometown where his childhood best friend, Walk, is now the chief of police. The town where his childhood sweetheart, Star Radley, still lives. The same Star Radley whose sister he killed.
(Description from catalog)
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
Call Number: Fic Whitehead, Colson
A furniture salesman in 1960s Harlem becomes a fence for shady cops, local gangsters and low-life pornographers after his cousin involves him in a failed heist in the new novel from the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad. (Description from NoveList)
The White Lady by Jacqueline Winspear
Call Number: Fic Winspear, Jacqueline
A reluctant ex-spy with demons of her own, Elinor finds herself facing down one of the most dangerous organized crime gangs in London, ultimately exposing corruption from Scotland Yard to the highest levels of government.
(Description from catalog)