Domestic

On a family trip to New York City, Michael Hart returns to their hotel from a pizza run only to find his wife and children gone, with only a left-behind teddy bear showing they were ever there. Readers will viscerally feel Michael’s panic and incredulity as he frantically searches the hotel and realizes they are …nowhere. Soon we switch to his wife, Natalie’s, point of view. She and Michael see these events very differently, but readers can’t be sure whether her story is accurate or a product of the terrible insomnia she’s endured for months. What if Natalie’s narrative is all a delusion? What if Michael’s is all a lie? Maybe they’re both lying, or maybe neither is and someone else is behind the terrible events that unfold in the present—a coworker of Natalie’s is murdered—and are revealed as part of one partner’s past. Palmer deftly combines perhaps-unreliable narratives with twists and a heart-tugging chase with children in tow; the explosive ending is both unexpected and satisfying. The author is the son of the late medical-thriller author Michael Palmer, and their work has the same just-one-more-chapter-even-though-it’s-2 am quality. This is a great read for any thriller fan, but is especially recommended to those who enjoyed Alice LaPlante’s Turn of Mind, in which a murder may have been committed by a woman with Alzheimer’s disease.

One of the best books I’ve read this year and a brilliant example of how sophisticated and meaningful a thriller can be while still ratcheting up the suspense and anxiety. Imagine you are accompanying your partner on a business trip to Lisbon. After a night of great food and even better sex, you wake up to find that they are gone—no note, laptop and belongings left behind, phone calls going straight to voicemail. What would you do? For Ariel Price, it’s time to mobilize. She starts by quizzing the hotel employees, eventually goading the staff in the American Embassy to help her search for John, her newish husband. But it turns out that to save John, Ariel needs to go far into her past. This novel delves deeply into sexual violence and its life-long ramifications—a rape is graphically described—while continuously upending what the reader believes to be the truth. Hold on to your hat, your head will be spinning. Librarians: purchase multiple copies.

This is one of the best-plotted thrillers I’ve read in ages; it’s also a great portrayal of why women experiencing domestic violence are stuck. We meet Leah Dawson during her carefully choreographed routine of visiting a different liquor store every day. She hides the booze from her violent husband, Liam, a lawyer who has coercive control down to an artform. Leah’s legal career came to an end recently because her husband didn’t like her reading a work email at dinner, and took action. At the liquor store, something compels Leah to follow a fellow shopper, pediatrician McKenna Hawkins. Soon Leah’s routinely watching the woman, who’s also needlessly unemployed, from the street outside McKenna’s clinically clean home. The reason Leah felt drawn to McKenna is quickly apparent: McKenna is just like Leah, or rather McKenna’s husband, Zach, is just like Leah’s Liam. Both have ego to spare, enjoy speaking slowly to their wives to make them feel stupid, and are financially abusive. These guys have it all, until they don’t. No spoilers here, but get this book for the very original storyline, true-to-life characters, and a searing look at the pain and mind games endured behind too many closed doors. For more on why “she can leave any time” is ridiculous and insulting, read the afterword by Murphy, an attorney who’s represented survivors of intimate partner violence.