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Silent Partner
Jonathan Kellerman
This is a personal favorite of mine from the many, many Alex Delaware novels (now over 30 of them), all of which are amazing if you’re a fan of psychological thrillers. This particular one…you really, really won’t see the twist coming, because you’ll have been trained so far in advance not to even think of it. The book starts out with Alex, a psychologist who gets involved a little more often than is plausible with police matters (but who cares, that’s what suspension of disbelief is for) meeting an ex who asks for his help, which he’s reluctant to give, since his relationship with his seriously awesome girlfriend is already running through hard times. The next day, his ex is dead. Uh-oh.
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When We Were Orphans
Kazuo Ishiguro
The famous British writer who authored The Remains of the Day knows how to weave a psychologically scintillating tale. Sent to England to be raised by an aunt after his parents disappeared, a detective, Christopher Banks, is ready to try to solve that ultimate mystery of his life: where did his parents go? Back to Shanghai, the scene of their disappearance, he goes, obsession leading the way and unreality dogging his steps. Where do what he know and what he fancies he knows meet in the real world? Do they at all?
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Damage Done
Amanda Panitch
A complex, dark YA thriller, Damage Done, Amanda Panitch’s debut (she’s written another unrelated thriller that hit shelves in June of 2016) revolves around Lucy Black, a girl who once had another name, another life. All of that changed when she was left as the sole survivor of a killing spree at her school where she watched her best friend and her boyfriend die right in front of her eyes, along with all the others that her brother, her twin, chose to keep alive. The novel starts after these events, when Lucy is settling into her life, trying to get past losing so much so quickly. But it’s not easy, especially when that past suddenly becomes very dangerously present.
We love psychological thrillers for a whole host of interesting reasons: we’re drawn to the mysteries they include; the characters’ minds we can wrap ourselves into or stare at from the outside, horrified; the sense of insecurity we have when reading them, never quite sure what’s on the next page or around the next corner or through the next plot twist; the way we teeter at an edge of understanding that either pays off by proving us correct or veers off a cliff and proves us entirely wrong. This bookshelf is for those of you who, like us, enjoy the twisty-turns of the minds that bring the psychology and thrill to the psychological thrillers.
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