All this week Hypable is launching a series of Summer Reading Lists to help you discover great new books!
Today’s genre is: Thriller
Below are 20 selections including an Editor’s Choice and Mainstream Choice at the end.
See also: Fantasy | Sci-Fi | Romance | Crime
Check back all this week for new lists, which will be featured here on Hypable throughout the summer. Have any other thriller genre suggestions or comments about these books? Do contribute in the comments!
The following descriptions are from Hypable readers who’ve read the books themselves and/or information found on GoodReads.com.
‘Heart of Darkness’ by Joseph Conrad
A stunning expose on the horrors of colonialism in Africa, Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novel follows mariner Charles Marlowe as he travels through Africa, and up at the Congo River to the rescue of the mysterious Mr. Kurtz, the trading company’s most valuable and efficient station manager, who is believed to be dead, or dying. What he finds there horrifies him beyond belief.
‘The Passage’ by Justin Cronin
First, the unthinkable: a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment. Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos and carnage gives way to sunrise on a nation, and ultimately a world, forever altered. All that remains for the stunned survivors is the long fight ahead and a future ruled by fear — of darkness, of death, of a fate far worse.
‘Tomorrow When the War Began’ by John Marsden
Other categories: Adventure, Reality
Ellie and her friends are camping deep in the Australian bush. When they come home, they find their families gone, their pets starving. They soon figure out that while they were gone, their country had been invaded, and they are some of the few people who haven’t been captured. They can either surrender, or take to the bush and fight back.
‘Ice Station’ by Matthew Reilly
After a diving team at an ice station is killed, a distress signal is picked up by U.S. Recon Marines, led by Shane Schofield, code name Scarecrow. The Marines discover a mysterious metal object below the surface of the ice, and must do whatever it takes to retrieve it, as the military units of other nations arrive and proceed to kill all in their path in order to steal the discovery for themselves. Schofield must trust in his team in order to fulfill the mission, but all is not as it seems, as he soon discovers.
‘Dark Eyes’ by William Richter
Wally was adopted from a Russian orphanage as a child and grew up in a wealthy New York City family. At fifteen, her obsessive need to rebel led her to life on the streets. Now the sixteen-year-old is beautiful and hardened, and she’s just stumbled across the possibility of discovering who she really is.
‘Fallen’ by Ann Simko
The first book in Ann Simko’s Coyote Moon series. Doctor Dakota Thomas is far from prepared for the young marine that comes through his ER as a gunshot wound. What at first seems like a simple case turns into an action-packed thrill ride when Dr. Thomas’ digging discovers that this particular marine was born in 1898 and is the key to unlocking a huge undercover military experiment.
‘A Rush To Violence’ by Christopher Smith
A billionaire investor is dealt a grisly death. The suspects? Six of his seven children, all so desperate for their father’s money, they’d kill for it. His seventh child, Camille, a former assassin who left that life behind to raise her now sixteen-year-old daughter Emma, must tap into old instincts to learn who killed her father and why. What she never sees coming are Emma’s plans to go into Manhattan and find out on her own.
Meanwhile, Camille must be found. Private investigator Marty Spellman is threatened by a mysterious man to find her. He has seventy-two hours or do so – or members of his own family die. Over the course of one day, Spellman, Camille, Emma and Spellman’s own fifteen-year-old daughter, Beth, must intervene to finish this and shut it down. Twists abound. Few are who they appear to be. Soon, all parties are in a rush to violence, but in spite of how quickly they act, it’s clear that no one is safe.
Fifth Avenue Series by Christopher Smith
Look beneath all the power and all the wealth that represents New York City’s Fifth Avenue, and you’ll find greed, blood, and revenge. In the international bestselling thriller, Fifth Avenue, each intermingles within a revered society that is unprepared for what’s in store for it when one man finally strikes in an effort to destroy another man for murdering his wife thirty-one years ago. Louis Ryan is that man. George Redman, his wife, two daughters, and their close friends are his targets.
Both men are self-made billionaires who came from nothing to stake their claim to Fifth Avenue. But when Louis Ryan hires an international assassin to literally rip the Redman family apart, a series of events that can’t be stopped catapults them all through a fast-paced, hard-edged thriller in which nobody is safe. Secrets are revealed. Sex lives are exposed. The Mafia get involved. And George’s two daughters, Celina and Leana Redman, come to the forefront. More than anyone, it’s they who are caught in the throes of their father’s past as Louis Ryan’s blind desire to kill them all takes surprising turns in his all-out effort to see them dead.
‘Before I Go to Sleep’ by S.J. Watson
Christine Lucas wakes up each morning next to a stranger not knowing where she is or how she got there. Every day she must learn that the man next to her is her husband, Ben, and that she was in a terrible accident resulting in her amnesia.
One morning, she finds a journal that she started in an attempt to start to remember her life. On the first page are three terrifying words: “Don’t trust Ben.” Suddenly, everything that her husband has told her falls under suspicion. Who can she trust? What is the real truth about her situation? Is she in danger? Christina struggles to answer these questions in a psychological thriller that will keep you reading late into the night.
‘The Silence of Murder’ by Dandi Daley Mackall
Seventeen-year-old Hope Long’s life revolves around her brother, Jeremy. So when Jeremy is accused of killing the town’s beloved baseball coach, Hope’s world begins to unravel. Everyone is convinced Jeremy did it, and since he hasn’t spoken a word in nine years, he’s unable to defend himself. Their lawyer instructs Hope to convince the jury that Jeremy is insane, but all her life Hope has known that Jeremy’s just different than other people — better, even. As she works to prove his innocence — joined by her best friend T.J. and the sheriff’s son, Chase — Hope uncovers secrets about the murder, the townspeople, her family, and herself. She knows her brother isn’t the murderer, but as she comes closer to the truth, she’s terrified to find out who is.
‘Shelter: A Mickey Bolitar Novel’ by Harlan Coben
Mickey Bolitar’s year can’t get much worse. After witnessing his father’s death and sending his mom to rehab, he’s forced to live with his estranged uncle Myron and switch high schools.
A new school comes with new friends and new enemies, and lucky for Mickey, it also comes with a great new girlfriend, Ashley. For a while, it seems like Mickey’s train-wreck of a life is finally improving – until Ashley vanishes without a trace. Unwilling to let another person walk out of his life, Mickey follows Ashley’s trail into a seedy underworld that reveals that this seemingly sweet, shy girl isn’t who she claimed to be. And neither was Mickey’s father. Soon, Mickey learns about a conspiracy so shocking that it makes high school drama seem like a luxury – and leaves him questioning everything about the life he thought he knew.
‘Catch Me’ by Lisa Gardner (D.D. Warren series)
In four days, someone is going to kill me…
Detective D.D. Warren is hard to surprise. But a lone woman outside D.D.’s latest crime scene shocks her with a remarkable proposition: Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant believes she will be murdered in four days. And she wants Boston’s top detective to handle the death investigation.
It will be up close and personal. No evidence of forced entry, no sign of struggle.
Charlie tells a chilling story: Each year at 8:00 p.m. on January 21, a woman has died. The victims have been childhood best friends from a small town in New Hampshire; the motive remains unknown. Now only one friend, Charlie, remains to count down her final hours.
‘What Doesn’t Kill You’ by Iris Johansen
Catherine Ling was abandoned on the streets of Hong Kong at age four. Schooled in the art of survival, she traded in the only commodity she had: information. As a teenager, she came under the tutelage of a mysterious man known only as Hu Chang — a skilled assassin and master poisoner. As a young woman, she was recruited by the CIA, and now, she is known as one of its most effective operatives.
Having lived life in the shadows, Catherine is aware of the wobbly moral compass of her existence, and even more aware of just how expendable she is to those she deals with. When her old friend Hu Chang creates something so deadly, and completely untraceable, the chase is on to be the first to get it. With rogue operative John Gallo also on the hunt, Catherine finds herself pitted against a group so villainous and a man so evil that she may not survive the quest to protect those she cares about. Iris Johansen is at her page-turning best in this novel that takes you from the corridors of Langley to the alleyways of Hong Kong, and the darkest places of the human soul.
‘Love is Murder’ by Sandra Brown
Prepare for heart-racing suspense in this original collection by thirty of the hottest bestselling authors and new voices writing romance suspense today.
Go on vacation with Allison Brennan’s Lucy Kincaid, where she saves a man from drowning, only to discover he is in far greater danger on land. Meet Roxanne St. Claire’s “bullet catcher” — bodyguard Donovan Rush — who may have met his match in the sexually charged “Diamond Drop.” Debut author William Simon shows us what happens when the granddaughter of the president of the United States is kidnapped. And Lee Child’s pitch-perfect “I Heard a Romantic Story” puts a whole new spin on “Love Is Murder.”
Bodyguards, vigilantes, stalkers, serial killers, women (and men!) in jeopardy, cops, thieves, P.I.s, killers – these all-new stories will keep you thrilled and chilled late into the night.
‘The Last Victim’ by Karen Robards
Dr. Charlotte Stone sees what others do not.
A sought-after expert in criminal pathology, Charlie regularly sits face-to-face with madmen. Obsessed with learning what makes human monsters commit terrible crimes, Charlie desires little else from life — no doubt because when she was sixteen, she herself survived a serial killer’s bloodbath: a man butchered the family of Charlie’s best friend, Holly, then left the girl’s body on a seaside boardwalk one week later.
Because of the information Charlie gave police, the Boardwalk Killer went underground. She kept to herself her eerie postmortem visions of Holly and her mother. And even years later, knowing her contact with ghosts might undermine her credibility as a psychological expert, Charlie tells no one about the visits she gets from the spirit world.
‘Sister: A Novel’ by Rosamund Lupton
When her mom calls to tell her that Tess, her younger sister, is missing, Bee returns home to London on the first flight. She expects to find Tess and give her the usual lecture: the bossy big sister scolding her flighty baby sister for taking off without letting anyone know her plans. Tess has always been a free spirit, an artist who takes risks, while conservative Bee couldn’t be more different. Bee is used to watching out for her wayward sibling and is fiercely protective of Tess (and has always been a little stern about her antics). But then Tess is found dead, apparently by her own hand.
Bee is certain that Tess didn’t commit suicide. Their family and the police accept the sad reality, but Bee feels sure that Tess has been murdered. Single-minded in her search for a killer, Bee moves into Tess’s apartment and throws herself headlong into her sister’s life – and all its secrets.
Though her family and the police see a grieving sister in denial, unwilling to accept the facts, Bee uncovers the affair Tess was having with a married man and the pregnancy that resulted, and her difficultly with a stalker who may have crossed the line when Tess refused his advances. Tess was also participating in an experimental medical trial that might have gone very wrong. As a determined Bee gives her statement to the lead investigator, her story reveals a predator who got away with murder – and an obsession that may cost Bee her own life.
‘Turn of Mind’ by Alice LaPlante
When the book opens, Dr. Jennifer White’s best friend, Amanda, has been killed, and four fingers surgically removed from her hand. Dr. White is the prime suspect and she herself doesn’t know whether she did it. Told in White’s own voice, fractured and eloquent, a picture emerges of the surprisingly intimate, complex alliance between these life-long friends – two proud, forceful women who were at times each other’s most formidable adversaries. As the investigation into the murder deepens and White’s relationships with her live-in caretaker and two grown children intensify, a chilling question lingers: is White’s shattered memory preventing her from revealing the truth, or helping her hide it?
A startling portrait of a disintegrating mind clinging to reality through anger, frustration, shame, and unspeakable loss, Turn of Mind examines the deception and frailty of memory and how it defines our very existence.
‘The Tiger’s Wife’ by Tea Obreht
In a Balkan country mending from war, Natalia, a young doctor, is compelled to unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather’s recent death.
Searching for clues, she turns to his worn copy of The Jungle Book and the stories he told her of his encounters over the years with “the deathless man.” But most extraordinary of all is the story her grandfather never told her — the legend of the tiger’s wife.
‘Thieves Like Us’ by Stephen Cole
A mysterious benefactor hand-picks a group of teen geniuses to follow a set of clues leading to the secrets of everlasting life; secrets which they must steal, and for which they risk being killed.
‘Sure Fire’ by Jack Higgins
Resentful of having to go and live with their estranged father after the death of their mother, fifteen-year-old twins, Rich and Jade, soon find they have more complicated problems when their father is kidnapped and their attempts to rescue him involve them in an extremely dangerous international plot to control the world’s oil.
Editor’s Choice: ‘The Shadow of the Wind’ by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
In post-World War II Barcelona, young Daniel is taken by his bookseller father to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a massive sanctuary where books are guarded from oblivion. Told to choose one book to protect, he selects The Shadow of the Wind, by Julian Carax. He reads it, loves it, and soon learns it is both very valuable and very much in danger because someone is determinedly burning every copy of every book written by the obscure Carax.
Mainstream Choice: ‘The House at Riverton’ by Kate Morton
Grace Bradley went to work at Riverton House as a servant when she was just a girl, before the First World War. For years her life was inextricably tied up with the Hartford family, most particularly the two daughters, Hannah and Emmeline.
In the summer of 1924, at a glittering society party held at the house, a young poet shot himself. The only witnesses were Hannah and Emmeline and only they – and Grace – know the truth.
In 1999, when Grace is ninety-eight years old and living out her last days in a nursing home, she is visited by a young director who is making a film about the events of that summer. She takes Grace back to Riverton House and reawakens her memories. Told in flashback, this is the story of Grace’s youth during the last days of Edwardian aristocratic privilege shattered by war, of the vibrant twenties and the changes she witnessed as an entire way of life vanished forever.
The novel is full of secrets – some revealed, others hidden forever – reminiscent of the romantic suspense of Daphne du Maurier. It is also a meditation on memory, the devastation of war and a beautifully rendered window into a fascinating time in history.
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