- dark fiction
- some dystopian
- reads like Gone Girl
Mary Kubica
MYSTERY KUBICA
In this tale of a kidnapping gone wrong, Mia, the black-sheep daughter of prominent Chicago judge James Dennett, impulsively decides to go home with Colin, a young man she meets in a bar. The one-night stand quickly turns into a nightmare when Colin forces her into his car in the middle of the night, and Mia learns he’s been sent to abduct her for ransom. But just before the drop-off point, Colin, for reasons unknown, decides not to hand her over to the man who has hired him and instead takes her to a remote cabin in Minnesota. Back at home, Mia’s mother, Eve, cannot understand why James doesn’t seem to take the news of his daughter’s disappearance as seriously as she does. Gabe, the detective assigned to the case, wonders the same thing. The narrative unfolds in four different perspectives—from Mia, Eve, Gabe, and Colin, in alternating chapters—which are also structured as “before” and “after.”
A.S.A Harrison
MYSTERY HARRISON
Jodi has led a quietly ordered and opulent life with her partner, Todd, for the past 20 years. She considers herself to be a flexible and understanding better half, who reacts to Todd's indiscretions by cooking him his favorite meal to remind him of their stable home life. A psychiatrist, she perceives an insurmountable difference between herself and her clients, whom she thinks would benefit from accepting the low points of their lives along with the high ones. But the events that Todd is about to set in motion will test Jodi's limits to a harrowing degree and cause a secret that she buried long ago to resurface. Told in the alternating voices of Jodi and Todd, Harrison's novel is the story of what happens when the life we've worked so hard to achieve is exposed as an illusion.
Elizabeth Little
F LITTLE
Former celebrity Janie Jenkins gets out of jail on a technicality after serving 10 years for killing her high-society mother. She doesn’t remember doing it, but she didn’t like her mother very much; still, once out of jail, she’s determined to determine what really happened. Janie is smart, but she has a smart mouth, too, which tends to put people off. Her attorney, Noah, is on her side, but she has a hard time telling him—or anyone else—the truth. Meanwhile, tabloid reporter Trace is after her, convinced she’s guilty and willing to put his money where his mouth is, offering a large reward for her whereabouts. Janie digs into her mother’s past, which leads her to Ardelle, South Dakota, a small town filled with small-town secrets and a cast of quirky, sketchy characters, including a suspicious police chief; but Janie keeps them all guessing. It seems that the more she finds out, the more she needs to know as the mystery continues to deepen.
Lauren Oliver
YA F OLIVER
Heather and Dodge live in Carp, N.Y., a down-on-its-heels town where graduating seniors can participate in a secret annual game called Panic. Everyone contributes to the pot, with winner take all when the game begins. Players have died in the past, and Dodge’s older sister was paralyzed two years earlier; this year’s prize is $67,000. This is a purported return to realistic fiction for Oliver following her popular Delirium books, and it’s realistic in the way that Before I Fall was: in her setting and characters, if not the situations they face. The stakes of Panic are extraordinarily high; an early challenge has competitors crossing between two water towers on a narrow plank, and things only escalate.
Amy Kathleen Ryan
YA F RYAN Sky Chas #1
With Earth no longer viable, two pioneer spaceships have been on the road for years—and have more than 40 to go before arriving at their goal. The two spaceships are complete habitats, raising crops and families to prepare for colonizing New Earth. On board, the families have grown, and the first generation is nearing marriageable age. Unbeknownst to those on the Empyrean, all the women on board the other spaceship, the New Horizon, are sterile. So the New Horizon stages an attack and kidnaps all the girls, from 16-year-old Waverly to the youngest toddler, to harvest their eggs. Ryan’s depiction of religion—the charismatic but evil Anne Mather, of the New Horizon, is clearly Christian—explores the differences that can exist between the content and implementation of faith. This one is also told in alternating narrators.
