English Authors Psychological Thrillers

First published in 1948, Nothing but the Night marked the auspicious beginning of John Williams' career as a novelist. In the person of Arthur Maxley, Williams investigates the terror and the waywardness of a man who has suffered an early traumatic experience. As a child, Maxley witnessed a scene of such violence and of such a nature that the evocation of Greek tragedy is inescapable. Now, years later, we move through a single significant day in the grown Arthur Maxley's life, the day when he is to meet his father, who has been absent for many years.

Diary of a Murderer captivates and provokes in equal measure, exploring what it means to be on the edge - between life and death, good and evil. In the titular novella, a former serial killer suffering from memory loss sets his sights on one final target: his daughter's boyfriend, who he suspects is also a serial killer. In other stories we witness an affair between two childhood friends that questions the limits of loyalty and love; a family's disintegration after a baby son is kidnapped and recovered years later; and more.

A canny young woman is struggling to survive by perpetrating various levels of mostly harmless fraud. On a rainy April morning, she is reading auras at Spiritual Palms when Susan Burke walks in. A keen observer of human behavior, our unnamed narrator immediately diagnoses beautiful, rich Susan as an unhappy woman eager to give her lovely life a drama injection. However, when the "psychic" visits the eerie Victorian home that has been the source of Susan’s terror and grief, she realizes she may not have to pretend to believe in ghosts anymore.

Bill Corde looks down at the face of the murdered girl and sees the horror of sudden death. He cannot know, as he stands there at the trampled, muddy scene beside the college girl's corpse, that his own life is about to slip into terror. He cannot know that everything he holds precious is about to shatter before his eyes. He cannot know that his career - and his family - are about to enter a new dimension of danger.

When the flood hits, America's East Coast is evacuated by every means possible. Brooklyn paramedic Travis Cooke had dreamed of reuniting his family, but not like this. Escaping New York with his son and the ex-wife he still loves - and her new husband - they find themselves evacuated on the luxury cruise ship, the Festival of the Waves. Hours later, the Festival lies dead in the open Atlantic: no power, no communications, and nowhere near enough food.

George is bitter. As he should be. Once a household name, George is dying to make a comeback, and death may be the only option left to get the public's attention. Ask anyone, his life is unraveling at the seams. Meanwhile, his new apprentice is everything he is not. The enigmatic man his publisher sends to help is young and ambitious, with looks that could kill and possibly do.

In her grandmother's fine, rich Boston house, Heaven Leigh Casteel dreamed of a wonderful new life of new friends, the best schools, beautiful clothes, and most important, love. The pearls of culture, wisdom, and breeding would now be hers. Soon, she would make the Casteel name respectable, find her brothers and sisters, and have a family again. But even in the world of the wealthy, there were strange forebodings, secrets best forgotten. And as Heaven reached out for love, she was slowly ensnared in a sinister web of cruel deceits and hidden passions.

Brooklyn, 2020. Theo Harper and his pregnant wife, Darla, head upstate to their summer cottage to wait out the lockdown. Not everyone in their upscale Park Slope building has this privilege: not Xavier, the teenager in the Cardi B T-shirt, nor Darla’s best friend, Ruby, and her partner, Katsumi, who stay behind to save their Michelin-starred restaurant. During an upstate hike on the aptly named Devil’s Path, Theo divulges a long-held secret—and when Darla disappears after the ensuing argument, he finds himself the prime suspect.

Con man Milan Berg has a photographic memory. But he’s hiding a secret: He can’t read. Unable to interpret the world around him, Milan finds increasingly crafty ways to navigate it. That is, until he comes across a car in traffic with a girl in the back seat. She desperately holds a written note up to the window, but what does it say? Fearing the girl is in mortal danger, Milan determines to search for her. As he follows a series of clues, each darker and scarier than the next, he’s thrust into a nightmarish odyssey with a deepening, disturbing progression: The clues are tied to his past.

When the lightning illuminated the night, I saw their bloodied faces. They were no longer the boys from next door. As quick as the storm rolled over the neighborhood, a crime of passion was committed, Lucas and Mason Carter dangerously altering the course of all our lives. Ten years later, on my 26th birthday, when detectives come digging for information on a cold case, I find myself once again unwillingly tangled in the spider's web. I hold information on a heinous crime. I have become the number-one target. More specificly, I have become Mason Carter's obsession.

Sally Grissom is a top secret service agent in charge of the Presidential Protection team. She knows that something is amiss when she is summoned to a private meeting with the president and his chief of staff without any witnesses. But she couldn't have predicted that she'd be forced to take on an investigation surrounding the mysterious disappearance of the first lady - with strict orders to keep it a secret.

Hope Ross isn't crazy, but she knows crazy. Crazy is: A father telling his daughter to pretend her twin sister doesn't exist. A sister never leaving the house. A disturbed woman hidden away in the attic. No, Hope's not crazy, and she's through playing games. As soon as she gets out of this mental facility, she's going to prove it.

Crime writer Julia Gooden has just completed the most important story of her life - a book about her beloved brother's childhood abduction and how she found his killer after 30 years. But that hasn't taken her focus off her day job - especially with what looks to be a serial killer terrorizing the city. Female runners are being snatched off jogging trails, then slaughtered in abandoned churches. As Julia begins investigating, with help from Detective Raymond Navarro, she realizes just how personal this case has become.

A tough special agent with the Department of Justice and a dedicated single mother to her orphaned nephews, Samantha Chase is unbreakable. Until two women, both from the shadows of Sam's past, are discovered strangled. For Sam, the most unnerving detail is the eucalyptus branch tucked behind the victims' ears - the signature of a notorious serial murderer already convicted and executed for his crimes.

In a suburban LA neighborhood, neighbors keep wary distance and at times collide, propelled by desire, fury, and mischief. Precocious Korean-American sisters Mira and Rosemary find their world rocked by a suicide; a charismatic and creepy drama teacher grooms his students; an aging gay horror novelist fights loneliness; and a white mother and her adopted Vietnamese daughter deal with lifelong anger issues.

In this gothic, virtuoso debut collection, Mike McCormack dispenses nightmares both stylish and macabre. "A Is for Ax" offers alphabetized look at the killing of a parent, while the title story tracks a chilling sibling rivalry. Other works here offer multiple-quiz on the road to Calvary, a door-to-door saleswoman trafficking in strange and menacing feats, and a self-mutilating artist pushing himself to the limit. These sly and dangerous stories show us a young writer who was already a master of wicked formal play, and whose sly takes on life and death remain profoundly unsettling.

They say that lightning doesn't strike the same place twice. How the people of Wiltshire wished that were true. When Paul Ray decides to burn down his evil family's legacy, he falls into the clutches of those he thought gone. And now Detective Yorke and his team face a race against time to find Paul before Wiltshire again falls under the dark spell of a ruthless family. Unfortunately for Yorke, the answers lie in the most sinister of places. The beating heart of a long-dead killer. Can Yorke find the truth before it's too late? Or will the curse of the Ray family prove too strong?

A famous 18-year-old fiddle player, Beau, is abducted from her parents’ huge Sierra home at a birthday folk jam in her honor one summer in the early part of the 21st century. As a fire burns up the mountain while she is buried on the land under a pile of brush, she is found just in time. A month later, much to her horror, she is abducted again, this time from a Berkeley music jam.

Isla and Jake are a couple drifting apart. She is a chef and co-owner of a farm-to-table restaurant on the brink of closing; he is a visual artist tormented by the oil-and-gas legacy of his late father. A looming figure in both their lives is Reg Bevaqua, Jake’s childhood friend-turned-enemy, turned bottled-water baron. Reg is a demanding regular at Isla’s restaurant and a man with a seething resentment toward Jake. With good reason, the feeling is mutual, but Jake keeps their past from Isla as he follows a devastating trail to the source of Reg’s wealth.

Summer, 2021. Nell has come home at her family's insistence to celebrate an anniversary. Fifty years ago, her father wrote The Golden Bones. Part picture book, part treasure hunt, Sir Frank Churcher created a fairy story about Elinore, a murdered woman whose skeleton was scattered all over England. Clues and puzzles in the pages of The Golden Bones led readers to seven sites where jewels were buried—gold and precious stones, each a different part of a skeleton. One by one, the tiny golden bones were dug up until only Elinore's pelvis remained hidden.