“I was too angry to take my own life,” muses the protagonist of Sharon Bolton’s Little Black Lies. “Unless, of course, I could take Rachel’s first.” Readers expecting a conventionally likable heroine may be taken aback by Catrin Quinn, a woman too consumed by grief to feel much empathy for anyone around her. Catrin is a wildlife conservation expert in the Falkland Islands, a remote 2,000-person settlement in the south Atlantic. Until three years ago, she was a married mother of two. Then her best friend, Rachel, left her sons unattended in a car by the side of a cliff, allowing them to roll to their deaths.  

The tragedy ended Catrin’s marriage, as well as her affair with sexy ex-soldier Callum Murphy. It also left Catrin bitter, hopeless and preoccupied with revenge. When a visiting tourist’s young son goes missing, joining in the search brings her anguish even closer to the surface. She believes the child simply wandered away from his parent and drowned—but this is the third such disappearance in three years, and islanders are starting to wonder if there could be a killer in their midst. Then Rachel’s son disappears, and Catrin’s neighbors start to wonder if that killer might be her.

Lies evokes the wild landscape of the Falklands—a place where whale and seal sightings are common, wrecked ships lurk just off the coast and abandoned mines from the ’80s-era war still pose a threat. It also deftly portrays the mental states of its three narrators: Catrin; Callum, the ex-lover who still hopes to win her back; and Rachel, the accidental killer who uses pills and alcohol to numb her guilt. Each is deeply damaged and difficult to love, but this fast-paced and expertly plotted thriller forces readers to question whether any of them are capable of murder.

In the chilling opening of Stephen King’s Finders Keepers, a sequel to his 2014 bestseller Mr. Mercedes, three words jolt elderly literary lion John Rothstein from a sound sleep, alerting him to the fact that he’s become the victim of a home invasion: “Wake up, genius.”

But these aren’t just any robbers. They’re led by Rothstein’s biggest (and baddest) fan, small-time criminal Morris Bellamy. Morris is unhappy that Rothstein has gone decades without publishing a new Jimmy Gold book (think John Updike’s Rabbit series), and he definitely doesn’t like that, in the last published novel, nonconformist Gold sold out to climb the corporate ladder at an advertising agency.

Morris kills Rothstein, stealing his money and his stash of notebooks—which, unbeknownst to him, include two more Jimmy Gold novels. But Morris is arrested for a different crime the next day, and the money and the notebooks are left to languish in a hiding place near his childhood home.

Fast-forward 35 years, and teenager Pete Saubers stumbles upon Morris’ treasure. The money comes in handy—Pete’s father is in chronic pain after being injured in the Center City Massacre, and the family is struggling financially due to medical bills and lost income—but the notebooks capture Pete’s imagination. Over the years, he falls in love with literature thanks to the story of Jimmy Gold. But when Morris is released from prison and realizes his hiding place has been discovered, Pete becomes his next target. 

Luckily, police detective Bill Hodges and his sidekicks, college student Jerome and tech-savvy but socially awkward Holly, who starred in Mr. Mercedes, are on the case, thanks to a call from Pete’s little sister, Tina, who’s worried about his strange behavior. 

At least one more novel featuring Hodges and the Center City Massacre victims is in the works. But the new characters shine as well: Pete is a worthy addition to King’s roster of memorable teen characters. He’s smart, brave and fiercely loyal to his family, especially Tina, but doesn’t always have the experience to make the right calls when it counts. Morris, on the other hand, is the sort of cold, calculating villain who will haunt your dreams. He’s spent decades waiting for those notebooks, and nothing is going to keep him from reading them.

King has long been interested in literary obsessions, and the divide between author and fan or creator and creation—think Misery, The Dark Half or Secret Window, Secret Garden. Finders Keepers continues to explore these ideas and adds another dimension: Pete and Morris are both willing to do a lot to hold on to Rothstein’s works. At what point does the hero become the villain? 

Readers will find themselves pondering this question and others at the close of this accomplished thriller.

In his second novel, Christopher Bollen brings a fresh perspective to the tale of a small town that hides secrets beneath its sleepy facade. With Orient, Bollen takes a real place—the North Fork of Long Island—and weaves a mesmerizing fictional web of characters and mysteries into a story that is as viscerally thrilling as it is intellectually precise. 

Orient is an isolated, quiet New York town, almost an island unto itself, but its peaceful facade is threatened by a cultural clash between the “year-rounders” who’ve called the place home forever and the wealthy newcomers who consider the town a refuge from the chaos of Manhattan. Even in its more peaceful moments, Bollen makes the place feel a bit like an idyllic powder keg waiting to burst into a firestorm. Things get more complicated when the body of a local caretaker is found floating in the water, followed shortly by the body of a creature that all the locals think might be from a research lab in the area. Rumors swell in the town, and many are centered on Mills Chevern, an orphan with a murky past who just arrived in Orient. More deaths follow, the town gets more fearful, and Mills ultimately joins a Manhattan transplant named Beth—who has problems of her own—in an effort to find out what’s really going on.

A sense of dread, of creeping disaster, builds in Orient from the very first page, and even though it takes a while for the first body to show up, Bollen has a knack for building tension through character, pacing and a sure sense of place. If you’re just looking for a great murder mystery, Orient has it, but there’s so much more to savor. Through this prism of a doomed American town, Bollen examines everything from class to parenthood to sexuality to privacy, and it’s all embedded within a central plot so intoxicating that you can’t help but linger on every moment searching for meaning. That Orient achieves this is enough to make it a page-turner. That the meaning you find often deepens as it dawns on you makes it a must-read novel.

This article was originally published in the May 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Every Fifteen Minutes, best-selling author Lisa Scottoline’s latest page-turner, effectively draws readers in at two levels, both as gripping psychological suspense and as a vivid look into the tangled realms of the heart. The strength of Scottoline’s new standalone lies in its clever combination of tight plotting and a cast of believable characters. The spoiler in the life of Dr. Eric Parrish comes in the form of a dangerous sociopath, whose careful and deadly plan turns the psychiatrist’s life into the stuff of nightmares.

Parrish heads up a well-known and successful psychiatric unit in a big city hospital. He’s in the midst of a divorce, badly misses his 7-year-old daughter and is on the verge of a battle for custody. On the other hand, his professional life is going gangbusters, he’s respected and liked by the hospital staff and not a few women seemed tuned in his direction.

But Eric’s fortunes change—and mighty quickly—when he unexpectedly finds himself charged with sexual harassment, an unfounded claim that throws his custody fight into doubt. Then his latest private patient, a troubled 17-year-old named Max, suddenly flies out of control, throwing into doubt Eric’s belief that the boy’s not a danger to the public. After Max’s girlfriend is found murdered and the boy disappears briefly, Eric finds his career in jeopardy when he tries to exonerate his patient.

It doesn’t take long for readers, if not Eric, to figure out that there’s an outside force at work. Someone is pulling strings, intent on destroying the personal and professional life Eric’s worked so hard to secure. Scottoline provides a chilling and in-depth look at the narcissistic obsessions that inhabit the damaged mind of the sociopath, and keeps readers in suspense about the identity of the wrongdoer until the last spine-chilling moment.

The author is at her most compelling when she catches Eric realizing that, for all his careful training on how to deal with crazy situations, he’s failed to understand that one deeply disturbed person has set out to upend his life permanently, nor is he prepared for his role as intended victim. Drab title aside, Every Fifteen Minutes is filled with characters that are much more than one-dimensional cardboard cutouts, with a plot that’s disturbingly plausible, thus turning a familiar story into one full of razor-sharp suspense.

Brendan Duffy’s fantastic debut novel is gloomy, small-town Gothic horror in the vein of "Twin Peaks," Alan Wake and The Shining.

After a few rough years in Manhattan, a “semi-famous” author named Ben Tierney relocates his wife and sons to a remote village in the Adirondack Mountains. He hopes that renovating a sprawling, neglected estate called the Crofts and turning it into an inn will provide his family with a new sense of purpose. But isolated on a forested cliff overlooking town, it doesn’t take long for things to get thoroughly weird.

Deer carcasses appear on the Tierneys’ property, the remains ripped apart and barely recognizable. Strange artifacts turn up in the estate’s cavernous cellar, maps and letters and ancient books. Townspeople stare and whisper about “the winter families” whenever Ben ventures down into the valley. And one night, while Ben’s wife is cooking dinner, an explosive sound vibrates through the house. Ben finds a back door swinging open and shut in the wind, the lock smeared with tree sap.

“He turned on the exterior lights and looked out the glass. Placed in the center of the stoop like the morning’s newspaper was a severed deer’s head, staring at him with black, blood-flecked eyes.”

Most disturbing of all, Ben’s older son Charlie is convinced that someone, or something, is watching them from the woods. As a neo-Gothic horror novel, House of Echoes succeeds because it contains no familiar creatures. There are no ghosts here, despite some surface similarities to Chris Bohjalian’s The Night Strangers. There are no witches or werewolves. Duffy knows that true horror has neither name nor face. Grounded by emotional realism and nuanced characters, House of Echoes is intense, addictive and genuinely creepy.

The body of a newborn girl has been found in an idyllic New Jersey town. It’s not the best assignment for a newspaper reporter who so recently delivered a stillborn child, but Molly Sanderson wants to prove to her editor that she can cover hard news. So—despite her husband Justin’s trepidation that covering this story might cause Molly to lapse back into serious depression—she dives in, determined to find out how the child ended up abandoned beneath a bridge.

Was it a homicide? Could it have been a panic-stricken student at the town’s prestigious Ridgedale University? Is there a connection to another death under the bridge two decades before? What about the mysterious mother and daughter who recently returned to a rundown apartment on the edge of town?

As Molly tracks down leads and interviews anyone who might have a connection to the mystery, she becomes immersed in the intrigue and politics of a tight-knit community. But then things take a more menacing turn, with college officials watching her every move and seemingly unconnected people coming together. When a mysterious package appears in their home, Justin fears for her safety—and her sanity. And Molly has no way to know just how close to home the story will hit.

Author Kimberly McCreight is well known for her 2013 best-selling debut, Reconstructing Amelia. With Where They Found Her, she has delivered another eerie, harrowing read. Through flashbacks and multiple narrators—some more reliable than others—McCreight weaves a deeply satisfying spellbinder that unfolds deliciously to the very last chapter.

RELATED CONTENT: Read our web-exclusive Q&A with McCreight about Where They Found Her.

This article was originally published in the April 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.