Edie is in her 30s, lives alone, works as a waitress and is pregnant. Hers is an unremarkable life, except for the horrific secret she keeps buried in her past. Edie has all but erased that moment by cutting off contact with her mother, moving far from her sleepy hometown and, most importantly, not speaking with Heather—her best friend who was also involved—for 17 years. But when Edie suffers from severe postpartum depression, she becomes physically incapable of caring for the baby. When Heather unexpectedly appears at Edie’s side, offering to move in and help with little Maya, Edie knows that for the sake of her daughter, she cannot refuse. As she emerges from the haze of her depression, her fears return. What does Heather want, and why has she returned after all this time?

A teenage Heather narrates passages that take place before the incident, while Edie recounts chapters occurring in the present. As the narrative voices alternate, the reader’s loyalty to Edie waxes and wanes. Present-day Edie has lost some of her spark; she is more reserved than her teenage self, but is kind and intelligent. Her fear of Heather is absolute and visceral, and author Camilla Way adeptly transfers this paranoia to the page and the reader. But high school-aged Heather is also a sympathetic character. Awkward and anxious, her devotion to beautiful, confident Edie is understandable. Heather’s strangeness and unpopularity are skillfully written as pathetic yet relatable.

Way proves to be an expert at setting narrative traps, providing enough information for readers to make inferences and assumptions, but stealthily holding back the key elements as long as possible. While much psychological suspense has focused on spousal relationships, Watching Edie thoughtfully explores female friendships and betrayal. A compelling voice in suspense fiction, Way keeps readers guessing throughout this smart, taut psychological thriller.

The word “shine” takes on a whole new meaning in Collecting the Dead, a debut thriller by Spencer Kope, who brings street cred as a crime analyst for a county sheriff’s office in Washington state and a former intelligence operations specialist for Naval Intelligence.

The shine in this book manifests solely to Magnus Craig, part of a special FBI tracking team concerned with missing persons. Craig has a special ability, almost a second sight, enabling him to read traces left behind at a scene by any person, whether in footsteps or handprints. Craig doesn’t need special lighting techniques to pick up a person’s shine, it’s an invisible gift—or curse—that allows him to pick up the slightest evidence unaided, each one sticking out, he says, like a “neon billboard.”

This odd but crucial ability is known to only a few people, including Craig’s partner, Jimmy, and the two have perfected their own way of working with mainstream law enforcement, adding a layer of scientific patter to their distinctly unscientific tracking abilities that would hardly be admissible in court.

In Collecting the Dead, the first in a series, Craig and his team search for a serial killer who kidnaps and kills young women, leaving behind his own special signature—a line drawing of a frowning face, with eyes, nose and down-turned mouth, left at each crime scene, unmistakably colored (for Craig) with the killer’s individual shine. The race is on to find and save some of Sad Face’s kidnap victims before it’s too late.

Craig seems to possess a formidable skill, but he obsesses about his failure to locate many of the missing in time to save their lives, and he suffers nightmares or insomnia with each person lost. He can’t help keeping albums containing photos of those he’s found, with a grimmer version cataloguing those that were never located. The team’s unspoken motto, “We save the ones we can,” seems to be the mantra that keeps them going.

The narrative is speckled with insider info about the FBI’s forensic skills and methods of operation. The author has mastered a conversational, dryly humorous tone that works well, and it usually—though not always—compensates for his tendency for over-wordiness.

Just when you think you’re home-free, though, the author leaves a new killer lurking in the wings, ready for tracking in the next installment.

Getting or becoming a new roommate is a spin on the lottery wheel of life. Sometimes you hit the jackpot, and sometimes you lose everything. Quinn Collins can’t believe how lucky she is to have Esther as her roommate. Sure, one time Esther became practically feral when Quinn borrowed her spices without asking. And if she’s a bit bossy, it’s only because she has Quinn’s best interests at heart, right?

Until the night Esther disappears, Quinn thinks she’s just a wonderful person and even fondly calls her Saint Esther. However, as Quinn searches for clues to Esther's unexplained departure, she uncovers disturbing facts that make her rethink all her previous impressions of Esther. Not content to idly wait the police-recommended 72 hours before searching for a missing person, Quinn scours Esther's room, only to find an ominous letter signed by EV, her roommate’s initials. The note is a love letter of sorts to a mystery person, but includes stalker-like content. Quinn also discovers that Esther advertised for a new roommate—a replacement for her. Saddened, she enlists the aid of a mutual friend to help her solve the mysteries surrounding Esther's disappearance and the facts behind the letter.

Another plotline develops when a strange young woman arrives in a town about an hour away from the girls’ apartment. Told by an adolescent obsessed with the new arrival, readers assume the girl must be Esther—or is she?

In her third novel, Don’t You Cry, Mary Kubica follows a trajectory of warmth, suspense and fear. Her skill as an author is apparent in this novel that successfully aligns opposing attributes and astonishes readers with multilayered intrigue. Readers take a sinister tour of family and personal dynamics in this tortuous, well-tempered novel of suspense.

You won’t want to close the book on this one. The new thriller by Michael Robotham, Close Your Eyes, is reason to stay up late.

Clinical psychologist Joseph O’Laughlin is reluctant to once again take on the role of detective—after seven previous adventures, he thought he’d given it up to live out a peaceful retirement—but when a former student, Milo Coleman, calling himself “the Mindhunter,” begins to jeopardize the police investigation, he can no longer stand by idly. With his reputation in danger, Joe sets out to smooth over the ruffled feathers of the police and to calm a groundswell of public anger over the brutal unsolved murders of a mother and her teenage daughter.

Joe soon discovers why police are having such a difficult time as a bevy of suspects, each with possible motives and opportunity, present themselves in the case. The further his investigation carries him, the more dark secrets and potential victims of a ruthless criminal come to light, giving rise to a possible serial murderer in the town’s midst.

The mystery and suspense is reason enough to keep reading, but Robotham ups the ante with a rousing family drama that adds an emotional complication to his lead’s life. Joe, who already must deal with his own bout of Parkinson’s disease, learns his former wife has cancer and must undergo surgery, leaving him to care for his two young daughters. Perhaps unwisely, he even takes his eldest daughter, teenager Charlie, under his wing while investigating the murders.

Robotham drafts brilliantly descriptive passages that paint vivid scenes and sweep readers along in the narrative. It’s easy to sympathize with Joe both in the course of his investigation, and more importantly, in his family life.

The entire novel comes cascading down to a thrilling climax and reveal of the true villain in typical Robotham fashion.