Tag: Psychological thriller books

An orphaned eighteen-year-old arrives at a decaying college outside Salem and learns that four wealthy heirs are the last of a cursed coven, and that she may be the female witch they have waited three centuries for. Atmospheric, sexy and cleverly built, with a mystery that barely moves.

A sequel in which the sardines are gone, the canneries are silent, and Doc cannot work out what is wrong with him. It opens with a character from the previous book complaining about how that book was written, and then does everything he asks.

An unnamed country is occupied by an unnamed army in forty-five minutes, and the town takes a year to make the occupiers wish they had never come. Written as wartime propaganda, attacked at home for being too fair to the enemy, and smuggled across occupied Europe at risk of death.

A gunshot at 7.26 on a Monday morning, a shuttered marina café and five people inside, one of whom is holding the gun. Heidi Perks turns a hostage siege into a guessing game played across a single morning, and mostly wins it, though the middle stretch circles before the end lands.