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Thrillers

Article

Versions of a Murder

by Chris Kahn

Brace yourself…there’s a lot going on in this book, in the best way. Heidi Quick is a junior doctor in an understaffed English hospital. It’s the 1970s, and it’s not easy being a woman in any realm, but a woman doctor treating male patients is beyond the pale for many. After Heidi is struck by a male patient, she’s relieved to be offered a ride home by her coworker Dr. Preston. When he insists on being let into her home, she has no polite way out, and is murdered by him. That would seem to be the end of Heidi, until the next day when she wakes up in exactly the same situation, has the same conversation with her coworker, and must try to create a different route through the day so she’s not re-murdered (now there’s a word that’s normally not necessary). Over and over it goes, with Heidi slowly suspecting that Dr. Preston is a serial killer and longing to fix one of the tries at the situation so that she can make someone believe what’s going on. There’s quite the twist in one of Heidi’s later tries at life versus Preston, and with that twist, the fascinating do-overs, and the well-fleshed-out characters who populate Heidi’s strange roller coaster, this is one of the best books I’ve read in ages. Comparisons to Groundhog Day are inevitable, but this is more akin to the best time-travel dramas, such as Elly Griffiths’s The Frozen People.—Henrietta Thornton

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Article

What She Knows

by Chris Kahn

Book of the Week October 22, 2026

Franny admits to being quite the unreliable narrator—when in the throes of addiction, she only cared about her next fix. Now clean, she is starting life back up in tiny Orion, NY and things are going well. Shortly after moving to town, she met Joshua, handsome and steady, a widower with two girls, and soon married. When Franny takes over the pharmacy where Joshua’s wife was murdered when an attempted burglary went wrong, she begins to question her own memories of that very night. She didn’t pull the trigger, did she? With only her long-distance sister Jackie and local reporter Annette as support, her paranoia becomes justified when someone starts sending threatening messages to Franny and her new family. Joshua turns cold and it seems that their perfect love story is over. But small-town secrets don’t stay secret for long, and soon the local police have another murder on their hands. Feldman gifts readers with a tense and twisty tale that has all the feels—sympathy for a recovering addict, trust in friends and family, and finally, a bullseye on the killer. A debut that hits the mark.—Dodie Ownes

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Article

The Spring

by Chris Kahn

Shay hasn’t seen her sister Phoebe in person for years; she only sees Phoebe on her Instagram page. They sometimes text, but a summons from Phoebe is something out of the blue. She’s involved with Daniel, a wealthy, powerful man; living in a remote area in Northern California; and professing to have found peace and fulfillment. But the “save me” message cannot be ignored. Against logic, Shay uses the plane ticket she’s sent and is met by Liv, a strange and hostile young woman. The compound Phoebe’s living in has primitive accommodations, and she’s nowhere to be found, though it seems that she and the mysterious Daniel are married and have a child. The compound has little contact with the outside world, making it impossible to check the truth of what’s being said. Then Phoebe’s body is found and the police arrive. The story is told from multiple points of view and it’s hard to tell which one is reliable. The setting is atmospheric, the interplay of characters odd, and the outcome hard to predict. It would be easy for readers to get lost, but Shay remains a steadying force.—Danise Hoover

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Article

Animals of the French Species

by Chris Kahn
Book of the Week October 15, 2026 After the traumatic events of The Wonder Test, FBI agent Lina Connerly and her teenage son move from California to Paris, where she is posted to the American Embassy as a liaison between U.S. and French counterintelligence agencies. Mother and son are also dealing with their lingering grief over the death of Lina’s husband in a car accident two years ago. Still, the Paris they find is not a romantic refuge but a gritty and dirty metropolis (“you can almost smell the French Revolution”). The French present Lina with a 20-year-old unsolved case—the Train Fantôme—involving the bloody deaths of nine passengers in a single metro car. Could it be connected to a mysterious device found in a tunnel wall, which might be linked to a secret weapons program in Eastern Europe? Covertly, Lina is also tracking an Edward Snowden-like American intelligence agent who leaked classified documents, fled to Russia, and is now rumored to be hiding in France. Her need to find him becomes urgent when her sources start turning up dead. Richmond skillfully weaves two complex espionage plots into a touching family drama about rebuilding a life after a tragedy. Fascinating spycraft details are mixed with amusing observations about expatriate life and Franco-American cultural differences. Fans of Chris Pavone’s The Expats will enjoy this.—Willy Williams
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Article

The Midsummer Girls

by Chris Kahn

This book has so many twists and turns that it may not be possible to define. Allissa has been searching for her sister, Shannon, since her disappearance 12 years ago. The disappearance upended their family, shattering what had been a happy life. An unexpected message from a supposed friend of Shannon’s sets Alissa on a path that may lead to destruction and that involves a rich man, simple naïve young women, and a mysterious remote island somewhere near Gurnsey. The island, it seems, has spiritual control of those who come. Who is trustworthy, who is real? What has happened for all these years? Not an easy book, but starkly compelling to read.—Danise Hoover

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Review

Nothing Human Left

by Dodie Ownes

Book of the Week October 8, 2026

Gracie is constantly under her mother’s surveillance. If it weren’t for her cousin Desi and her brother Kit, she would have no friends—or protection—at school, where most consider Grace and Marge weirdos. But Marge is sure that there are enemies out there, whom she calls People Faces, waiting to hurt them. Moving through dual timelines, readers meet grown up Gracie, now a social worker with friends and a job she enjoys, trying hard to put her past behind her—a past that includes her mother murdering her best friends in the most horrific ways. When Marge is given early release because she is dying and asks to see Gracie once again, the memories come flooding back. As her mother denies the murders, the events of 20 years ago start to come into focus, and even though she thought Marge completely insane, incidents begin to make Gracie think otherwise. The flips between past and present serve to build incredible tension as each unknown is teased out and the psychological twists become more and more tangled. When Gracie decides to visit her former home, the murder scene, she is no longer sure whom she can trust, including herself. The monsters that Hart has created will leave readers gasping at their cruelty, intent, and complete lack of humanity. Can old wounds still heal?—Dodie Ownes

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Review

Dead Med

by Henrietta Thornton

DeWitt Medical School has a drug problem. In recent years, students have overdosed, a history that students are very aware of. This year’s newbies just know they’d never do drugs, even to cope with the ultra-high pressure anatomy class that’s the center of their first-year fears. Heather is the first we spend time with. She’s trying so hard in the class but can’t seem to succeed. She sees her roommate hanging out and having a good time; surely she can’t be getting good grades from tough Dr. Conlon? As the chapters fly by, the pressure increases and we meet other students, each with pressures to bear in addition to the anatomy hell they’re enduring: a father who died too soon; tuition bills that necessitate a sketchy job that turns out much worse than expected; a famous surgeon to live up to. When the students start to crack and behave in increasingly unhinged ways, readers will be rapt and shocked by the twists revealed. Medicine is here a much more prominent element than in McFadden’s previous books, but as a former physician, she has the background to back it up. What’s no different is the stellar dark psychological suspense and characterization. Get this on your TBR.—Henrietta Thornton

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Article

Before I Disappear

by Chris Kahn

It’s everyone’s worst nightmare: waking up in a strange room, with injuries, a new name and hair color, and being told by an undercover cop that you are in a witness-protection program. Academic criminologist April can’t remember anything that has happened for the last several months. All Hollister, the cop, can fill her in on is that bad folks are looking for her, and if she can’t remember what how occurred before she was brought into the ER with a bullet in her head, the case against her attackers won’t fly. Bit by bit, conflicting memories come back—a fiancé, Chris, who secretly put a tracking device in her purse; a room full of bodies and red threads coming down on her; her Aunt Dahlia, who raised April after her parents and brother were killed in a car accident. Quinn (The Bridesmaid) spools out small details that build the story and keep readers guessing about Chris’s possible involvement with the mob, April’s mysterious injuries, and secrets about her family. As the trial grows near, the pressure for memories to return mounts, as does the speed and pace of the book. Triggered by flashbacks, April’s recollections begin to unravel and a desperate cross-country race to get to the evidence ensues. Quinn has built a breathless cinematic psychological thriller that leans into dissociative identity disorder, with revenge and subterfuge on the front burners.—Dodie Ownes

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Article

Dead Matters

by Chris Kahn

Book of the Week October 1, 2026

A man is found dead in his home, his body devoured by some kind of animal. Bank surveillance footage from nearby captures what looks unmistakably like a zombie, a detail that, if real, matches the wounds on the victim. FBI Agent Ella Penrose heads the Paranormal Crimes Unit and handles cases that defy science and logic, and this one lands squarely on her desk. The strangeness only deepens as extinct beetles turn up, a severed arm surfaces belonging to a second victim, and another attack follows, leaving Ella and her partner, Holden, questioning everything they thought they knew. Meanwhile, the pair are fighting a personal battle, too: helping Ella’s relative Celest win parole for a killing that was self-defense—but someone is determined to keep her locked away. Berman’s debut novel blends the eerie mystery of The X-Files with the procedural rigor of CSI, and it succeeds on both fronts. The author spent years as a writer and producer on CSI, which shows in the book’s richly detailed forensic work, but he also understands when to hold back and let a mystery stay unexplained. Berman’s characters are sharp and memorable, and readers will be eager to see them in future installments.—Jeff Ayers

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Article

Accidents Never Happen

by Chris Kahn

What do Blondie, Edgar Allan Poe, and Amontillado sherry have in common? These are all key to solving Zang’s atmospheric and creepy mystery. In 1985 Baltimore, sisters Annabel and Madeline (Mad) run Goldie’s, a dive bar with a Poe connection—it’s so like many southside bars, each with its own schtick. Their father not only named his daughters after Poe characters, he also is suspected of being the infamous Poe Toaster, who leaves roses and sherry at the grave on Poe’s death anniversary. After he disappears, a string of murders, all of bartenders, strikes the city. Before long, Mad is pulled into it, not knowing whom to suspect—Tim, who runs “spirit” tours around the city; Martin, a burly chef who takes a shine to her; or maybe even her own father. When she makes a gruesome discovery in a hidden room in the basement and Annabel is nowhere to be found, Mad knows she must do something to find her sister and protect herself, her cousin Piper, and Goldie’s. Zang cranks up the tension deliciously as more grisly connections are made, leaving Mad to come to a terrifyingly awful conclusion as to who is responsible for the killings. Poe and ‘final girl’ fans, this one’s for you!—Dodie Ownes

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