Women

Relatives: you never know what they might be up to. Until you read the will. For Nina—whose beloved father recently died—it’s the discovery of a lavish home in the British Virgin Islands that he left her. Her father was a civil engineer and the home he created—where did he get the money?—is modern and marble, cool and glass. But there’s something a bit off about the house, which slowly begins to come alive. Like some massive escape room, it engages Nina in a game that starts playful but soon becomes terrifying. Then there’s the concurrent story of Maria, a former medical student who now works as a nanny for the immensely rich. She’s able to sock away thousands of dollars while living in gorgeous resort-like mansions. But at her most recent job, the children never show up; in fact, days go by and no one appears, just an electrician to fix a malfunction in the system. The only rule? Don’t enter a room in the basement, which Maria, naturally—after days of boredom—can’t help but do, setting off a life or death struggle that spreads over days. Steadman gets a 10 for creating a puzzle/pawn like novel of terror that starts fast, only to gain even more speed as the reader inevitably rips through the short, action-packed chapters. Prepare yourself for something very new and very disturbing.

Cleo, a student at NYU, has a tumultuous relationship with her mother, and that hatred gets tested in McCreight’s latest domestic thriller. Cleo’s mom, Kat, begs her to come for dinner, and Cleo reluctantly agrees. Arriving late, she finds food burning in the oven and on the stovetop and blood on a shoe, but no Kat. What happened to her mom? As she searches for answers from her father and friends, she quickly learns that everyone has secrets, and the mom she wanted to avoid was not the woman she thought. The story jumps between Cleo trying to find the truth and Kat, from two weeks before her disappearance, trying desperately to hide from her past and keep Cleo from discovering everything. Even the most jaded readers will not anticipate all the surprises here. McCreight, who knows how to keep the pages turning, has become one of the best in the psychological thriller genre. She has another bestseller on her hands.

Do you love books that take you to new places, especially if it’s unlikely you will ever visit them in person? Me too. And Downes’s thriller does exactly that, bringing us to the dramatic coastal highways of Western Australia and setting us down among the “vanlifers,” who are exploring the coast while living out of their souped-up vehicles. But this isn’t a Fodor’s Travel Guide. We’re following Katy Sweeney, who’s hit the road in hopes of finding her sister, Phoebe, a sort of solo travel influencer, who disappeared a year ago. The case has grown cold and the cops have all but given up when Katy meets Beth, another young woman who has her own reasons for disappearing into the anonymous van world, a world often hostile to women. The two pair up—Beth is pretty destitute—and use Phoebe’s social-media posts to retrace her steps along the coast. Documenting a true road trip from hell, this fast-moving suspense novel eventually arrives at a resolution that is both terrifying and shocking, turning everything we have come to believe inside out and upside down.

Lapena’s psychological thrillers never disappoint. In her latest, set in Fairhill, Vermont, a farmer investigating vultures over his field finds the dead body of a young woman. This kind of thing never happens in Fairhill, and when the horrified local police realize that the victim is a local teen, Diana Brewer, the town reels in shock and grief. “Trying to make sense of something that will never, ever make sense” are Diana’s bereft single mother, who worries others by telling them she still communicates with her daughter, and the young woman’s best friends, Riley and Kelly, who are determined to find the killer. But even in a small town, it’s not easy to figure out who could have done this awful thing, and readers will enjoy sleuthing along with the characters as suspects emerge, each with something dark to hide. Supernatural elements enter in several ways here, adding to the edginess and puzzlement. If you like Chris Bohjalian, this one’s for you, not just because of the Vermont setting but also the small-town drama.