Mystery & Crime

John Grisham’s The Testament (1999) is part legal suspense thriller, part adventure story. It begins with the suicide of an elderly billionaire, Troy Phelan. After he leaves his inheritance to an unknown daughter, Rachel, a missionary somewhere in Brazil’s wetlands, his remaining children and their greedy lawyers wage a battle over his inheritance. Meanwhile, Nate O’Riley, a jaded litigator with an alcohol addiction, is sent to track down Rachel, almost losing his life but ultimately... Read The Testament Summary

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Published in 2016, The Trespasser is a crime fiction novel by Tana French. Set in contemporary Dublin, Ireland, the story follows Detective Antoinette Conway, the lone female member of the famous Murder Squad, whose routine domestic murder case turns out to be anything but. The Trespasser is the sixth novel in French’s Dublin Murder Squad series. Called the “First Lady of Irish Crime” by The Independent, French was born in the United States but resides... Read The Trespasser Summary

Maggie O’Farrell’s novel The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, published in 2006, is the author’s fourth novel and tackles the grim history of forced incarcerations of women and the devastating effects of family secrets. O’Farrell’s work often focuses on women trapped physically, emotionally, and psychologically by forces over which they have no control, and this novel is no exception. Through a twisted entanglement of three different perspectives, O’Farrell tells the story of not only Esme... Read The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox Summary

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The Whisper Man, released in August 2019, is a crime thriller by British author Alex North about the potential resurgence of a serial child murderer known as the Whisper Man and how it entangles various characters in a small town. North claims he got the idea for the book after his son mentioned “the boy in the floor.” Through criminal investigation and the lives of a father and son, North explores the nature of intergenerational... Read The Whisper Man Summary

Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger was published in 2008. Adiga’s first novel, The White Tiger won the Man Booker Prize and was adapted into a movie in 2021. Born in Chennai, India, Adiga has lived in India and Australia, and attended Columbia University in New York and Oxford University in England. A coming-of-age story told through a first-person narrator and letters addressed to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, The White Tiger examines the conflict between tradition... Read The White Tiger Summary

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The Witch Elm (2018) is a psychological crime thriller by best-selling American Irish author Tana French. The story follows Toby Hennessy, who unearths harmful family secrets while salvaging his identity after a traumatic assault. A standalone novel separate from French’s award-winning Dublin Murder Squad series, The Witch Elm appeared on NPR’s list of best books from 2018 and the New York Times’s notable books of 2018. Other works by this author include The Trespasser (2016)... Read The Witch Elm Summary

The Woman in Black (1983) by Susan Hill follows the gothic literary tradition. Hill explores traditional horror tropes, such as abandoned estates and ghost hauntings, set in an unspecified time in England’s countryside. The horror novella focuses on the first-person point-of-view of Arthur Kipps as he reflects on a ghost haunting he experienced as a young man. Hill explores themes of loss and mourning, the impact of holding onto the past, and the clash between... Read The Woman in Black Summary

The Woman in Cabin 10 is a 2016 mystery novel by Ruth Ware. The book opens with main character, Lo, experiencing a burglary in her basement flat in London. She is trapped inside her bedroom and has to fight her way out; after the event, she experiences severe insomnia and symptoms of post-traumatic stress that alter her view of her own safety and strength.After the burglary, Lo lashes out at her boyfriend, Judah, who is... Read The Woman in Cabin 10 Summary

The Woman in the Window, a psychological thriller published in 2018 by William Morrow. The novel was written by A.J. Finn, which is the pen name of American book editor and novelist, Dan Mallory. The novel tells the story from the first-person point of view of an unreliable female narrator, Dr. Anna Fox. The reader learns about Fox’s alcoholism, her agoraphobia, and the traumatizing events of her past, all of which take place in present-day... Read The Woman in the Window Summary

The Word Is Murder is a murder mystery by prolific author Anthony Horowitz, published in 2017. It is the first entry in the Hawthorne & Horowitz series, which combines the detective novel with metafiction. Horowitz functions as both author and character, accompanying the fictional Daniel Hawthorne on his investigations. Their investigation blends the mystery genre with meditations on the creative process, the nature of plot, and what makes a character likable or relatable.Horowitz first achieved... Read The Word is Murder Summary

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Cylin and John Busby’s The Year We Disappeared is a true crime memoir originally published in 2008. An expanded, 10th-anniversary edition was published in 2018. The book falls into both the memoir and true crime genres and is told from the perspective of the victims rather than a third party, such as a reporter. The Busby’s story was also featured on CBS’s newsmagazine, 48 Hours. It originally aired in 2010.Plot SummaryIn the summer of 1979... Read The Year We Disappeared Summary

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Trifles is a one-act play by Susan Glaspell. The play covers the aftermath of the murder-by-strangulation of a farmer named John Wright. During the play’s first run in 1916 at the Wharf Theater in Provincetown, Massachusetts, Glaspell appeared as the character Mrs. Hale. The play was loosely inspired by the real-life, 1900 murder of John Hossack, an Iowa farmer who died due to axe wounds he sustained while sleeping in bed. His wife, Margaret Hossack... Read Trifles Summary