Books like 'My Absolute Darling'

Readers who enjoyed My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.

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  • Different Seasons by Stephen King

    Different Seasons by Stephen King

    Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars
    · 67 ratings
    From the Magical Pen of Stephen King, Four Mesmerizing Novellas…“Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption”An unjustly imprisoned convict seeks a strange and startling revenge…the basis for the Best Picture Academy Award nominee The Shawshank Redemption...
  • Our Stolen Pieces by James Hunt

    Our Stolen Pieces by James Hunt

    Rated: 4.44 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    When the morning after a slumber party reveals two missing girls, a newly minted Detective and a young veteran are assigned the case. Recently partnered, the pair of detectives must set aside their troubled pasts to recover the pair of girls who may have been coerced by a stranger who had kidnapped before...
  • Heartbreak Bay by Rachel Caine

    Heartbreak Bay by Rachel Caine

    Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    They’re hunting a killer so silent, so invisible, that his unspeakable crimes are the only proof he exists.A car submerged in a remote pond. The bodies of two girls strapped into their seats. The mystery of their mother, vanished without a trace, leads Gwen Proctor and Kezia Claremont into dangerous territory...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  family  suspense  thriller  action-adventure  adult
  • Finding Claire Fletcher by Lisa Regan

    Finding Claire Fletcher by Lisa Regan

    Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    In the first book in bestselling author Lisa Regan’s new series, a one-night stand sets a detective on the trail of a terrifying unsolved crime.With his career on thin ice and fresh ink on his divorce papers, Sacramento PD Detective Connor Parks goes searching for solace at the bottom of a bottle…and winds up in the arms of a beautiful woman...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  family  survival  suspense  thriller  abuse
  • Billy Summers by Stephen King

    Billy Summers by Stephen King

    Rated: 4.27 of 5 stars
    · 59 ratings
    Billy Summers is a man in a room with a gun. He’s a killer for hire and the best in the business. But he’ll do the job only if the target is a truly bad guy. And now Billy wants out. But first there is one last hit. Billy is among the best snipers in the world, a decorated Iraq war vet, a Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done...
  • After the Fire by Will Hill

    After the Fire by Will Hill

    Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    The things I've seen are burned into me, like scars that refuse to fade.Before, she lived inside the fence. Before, she was never allowed to leave the property, never allowed to talk to Outsiders, never allowed to speak her mind. Because Father John controlled everything—and Father John liked rules. Disobeying Father John came with terrible consequences...
  • Bitter Falls by Rachel Caine

    Bitter Falls by Rachel Caine

    Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    She’s investigating a cold case no one else could—by going places no one else would dare.In spite of a harrowing past still haunting her, Gwen Proctor is trying to move forward. Until a new assignment gives her purpose: the cold-case disappearance of a young man in Tennessee. Three years missing, no clues. Just Ruth Landry, a tortured mother in limbo...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  family  north-america  suspense  usa  thriller
  • Fallen by Karin Slaughter

    Fallen by Karin Slaughter

    Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars
    · 30 ratings
    There's no police training stronger than a cop's instinct. Faith Mitchell's mother isn't answering her phone. Her front door is open. There's a bloodstain above the knob. Her infant daughter is hidden in a shed behind the house. All that the Georgia Bureau of Investigations taught Faith Mitchell goes out the window when she charges into her mother's house, gun drawn...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  family  suspense  thriller  action-adventure  adult
  • The Moonlight Child by Karen McQuestion

    The Moonlight Child by Karen McQuestion

    Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars
    · 33 ratings
    A gripping and emotional novel that will leave you wondering about the neighbors next door...On a cold January night, Sharon Lemke heads outside to see a lunar eclipse when she notices something odd at the house behind her backyard. Through her neighbor's kitchen window, she sees what appears to be a little girl washing dishes late at night...
  • Killman Creek by Rachel Caine

    Killman Creek by Rachel Caine

    Rated: 4.18 of 5 stars
    · 34 ratings
    Every time Gwen closed her eyes, she saw him in her nightmares. Now her eyes are open, and he’s not going away.Gwen Proctor won the battle to save her kids from her ex-husband, serial killer Melvin Royal, and his league of psychotic accomplices. But the war isn’t over. Not since Melvin broke out of prison. Not since she received a chilling text…You’re not safe anywhere now...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  family  survival  suspense  thriller  abuse
  • The Institute by Stephen King

    The Institute by Stephen King

    Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars
    · 69 ratings
    In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window...
  • A Killer's Mind by Mike Omer

    A Killer's Mind by Mike Omer

    Rated: 4.16 of 5 stars
    · 32 ratings
    A chilling thriller of serial murder and dark secrets that will leave you wondering, is the past really in the past?Three Chicago women have been found strangled, embalmed, and posed as if still alive. Doubting the findings of the local PD’s profiler, The FBI calls on forensic psychologist Zoe Bentley to investigate...
  • Find Her by Lisa Gardner

    Find Her by Lisa Gardner

    Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars
    · 31 ratings
    Lisa Gardner's runaway New York Times bestseller--a fast-paced thrill ride featuring Detective D. D. Warren. Seven years ago, carefree college student Flora Dane was kidnapped while on spring break. For 472 days, Flora learned just how much one person can endure...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  family  survival  suspense  thriller  abuse
  • These Silent Woods by Kimi Cunningham Grant

    These Silent Woods by Kimi Cunningham Grant

    Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    No electricity, no family, no connection to the outside world. For eight years, Cooper and his young daughter, Finch, have lived in isolation in a remote cabin in the northern Appalachian woods. And that's exactly the way Cooper wants it, because he's got a lot to hide. Finch has been raised on the books filling the cabin’s shelves and the beautiful but brutal code of life in the wilderness...
  • The Last Thing to Burn by Will Dean

    The Last Thing to Burn by Will Dean

    Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    A woman being held captive is willing to risk everything to save herself, her unborn child, and her captor’s latest victim in this claustrophobic thriller in the tradition of Misery and Room. On an isolated farm in the United Kingdom, a woman is trapped by the monster who kidnapped her seven years ago...
    Categorized as:
    crime  suspense  dark  thriller  drama  survival  fiction  mystery
  • Small Spaces by Sarah Epstein

    Small Spaces by Sarah Epstein

    Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars
    · 14 ratings
    We don’t pick and choose what to be afraid of. Our fears pick us.Tash Carmody has been traumatised since childhood, when she witnessed her gruesome imaginary friend Sparrow lure young Mallory Fisher away from a carnival. At the time nobody believed Tash, and she has since come to accept that Sparrow wasn’t real. Now fifteen and mute, Mallory’s never spoken about the week she went missing...
  • Stillhouse Lake by Rachel Caine

    Stillhouse Lake by Rachel Caine

    Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars
    · 43 ratings
    Gina Royal is the definition of average—a shy Midwestern housewife with a happy marriage and two adorable children. But when a car accident reveals her husband’s secret life as a serial killer, she must remake herself as Gwen Proctor—the ultimate warrior mom.With her ex now in prison, Gwen has finally found refuge in a new home on remote Stillhouse Lake...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  family  north-america  survival  suspense  usa
  • When Smiles Fade by Paige Dearth

    When Smiles Fade by Paige Dearth

    Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    Alternate cover edition.ASIN: B00B8XPVL6Young Emma Murphy kills people, but only if they deserve to die.Emma's father's coldblooded beatings and the ultimate abuse to which he subjects her, lays the foundation of the person she becomes. As she matures into a resourceful teenager, she is unwilling and unable to stifle her desire for revenge...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  family  survival  suspense  abuse  action-adventure
  • The Memory Wood by Sam Lloyd

    The Memory Wood by Sam Lloyd

    Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    THE MUST-READ RICHARD & JUDY BOOK CLUB PICK. Chilling, moving and unputdownable, The Memory Wood is a thriller like no other. 'Beautifully told, with two superbly drawn young protagonists, Lloyd is a rare new thriller talent' Daily Mail'Superbly creepy, with an unexpected twist' Guardian'Brilliant writing, a terrifying story, and characters so real it feels like you know them...
  • Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

    Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

    Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars
    · 79 ratings
    It follows the experiences of an unnamed protagonist struggling with insomnia. Inspired by his doctor's exasperated remark that insomnia is not suffering, the protagonist finds relief by impersonating a seriously ill person in several support groups. Then he meets a mysterious man named Tyler Durden and establishes an underground fighting club as radical psychotherapy...
  • The Kept Woman by Karin Slaughter

    The Kept Woman by Karin Slaughter

    Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars
    · 33 ratings
    Husbands and wives. Mothers and daughters. The past and the future. Secrets bind them. And secrets can destroy them. The author of Pretty Girls returns with an electrifying, emotionally complex thriller that plunges its fascinating protagonist into the darkest depths of a mystery that just might destroy him...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  family  north-america  suspense  usa  thriller
  • The Whisperer by Donato Carrisi

    The Whisperer by Donato Carrisi

    Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    A gripping literary thriller and smash bestseller that has taken Italy, France, Germany and the UK by storm.Six severed arms are discovered, arranged in a mysterious circle and buried in a clearing in the woods. Five of them appear to belong to missing girls between the ages of eight and eighteen. The sixth is yet to be identified...
  • Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton

    Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton

    Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars
    · 25 ratings
    The extraordinary new novel everyone is talking about from the Sunday Times best-selling author of SisterThree hours is 180 minutes or 10,800 seconds.It is a morning's lessons, a dress rehearsal of Macbeth, a snowy trek through the woods.It is an eternity waiting for news. Or a countdown to something terrible.It is 180 minutes to discover who you will die for and what men will kill for...
  • Blood of My Blood by Barry Lyga

    Blood of My Blood by Barry Lyga

    Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars
    · 21 ratings
    Jazz Dent has never been closer to catching his father.Jazz has been shot and left to die in New York. His girlfriend, Connie, is in the clutches of Jazz's monstrous father, Billy--the world's most notorious serial killer. And his best friend, Howie, is bleeding to death on the floor of Jazz's new home...
  • Wolfhunter River by Rachel Caine

    Wolfhunter River by Rachel Caine

    Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars
    · 26 ratings
    A Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller.She can’t ignore a cry for help. But in this remote hunting town, it’s open season.Gwen Proctor escaped her serial-killer husband and saved her family. What she can’t seem to outrun is his notoriety. Or the sick internet vigilantes still seeking to avenge his crimes. For Gwen, hiding isn’t an option...
  • No Exit by Taylor Adams

    No Exit by Taylor Adams

    Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars
    · 44 ratings
    A brilliant, edgy thriller about four strangers, a blizzard, a kidnapped child, and a determined young woman desperate to unmask and outwit a vicious psychopath.A kidnapped little girl locked in a stranger’s van. No help for miles. What would you do?On her way to Utah to see her dying mother, college student Darby Thorne gets caught in a fierce blizzard in the mountains of Colorado...
  • The Last Child by John Hart

    The Last Child by John Hart

    Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars
    · 28 ratings
    Thirteen year-old Johnny Merrimon had the perfect life: a warm home and loving parents; a twin sister, Alyssa, with whom he shared an irreplaceable bond. He knew nothing of loss, until the day Alyssa vanished from the side of a lonely street. Now, a year later, Johnny finds himself isolated and alone, failed by the people he'd been taught since birth to trust...
  • Invisible by James Patterson, David Ellis

    Invisible by James Patterson, David Ellis

    Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars
    · 28 ratings
    Everyone thinks Emmy Dockery is crazy. Obsessed with finding the link between hundreds of unsolved cases, Emmy has taken leave from her job as an FBI researcher. Now all she has are the newspaper clippings that wallpaper her bedroom, and her recurring nightmares of an all-consuming fire...
  • The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter

    The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter

    Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars
    · 42 ratings
    Two girls are forced into the woods at gunpoint. One runs for her life. One is left behind.Twenty-eight years ago, Charlotte and Samantha Quinn's happy small-town family life was torn apart by a terrifying attack on their family home. It left their mother dead. It left their father—Pikeville's notorious defense attorney—devastated...
  • Game by Barry Lyga

    Game by Barry Lyga

    Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars
    · 26 ratings
    Billy grinned. “Oh, New York,” he whispered. “We’re gonna have so much fun.”I Hunt Killers introduced the world to Jazz, the son of history’s most infamous serial killer, Billy Dent.In an effort to prove murder didn’t run in the family, Jazz teamed with the police in the small town of Lobo’s Nod to solve a deadly case...
  • Along Came a Spider by James Patterson

    Along Came a Spider by James Patterson

    Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars
    · 79 ratings
    What have we got? A missing little girl named Maggie Rose . . . a family of three brutally murdered in the projects of Washington, D.C. . . . the thrill-killing of a beautiful elementary school teacher . . . a psychopathic serial kidnapper/murderer who is so terrifying that the FBI, the Secret Service, and the police cannot outsmart him - even after he's been captured...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  family  realistic  suspense  thriller  20th-century
  • Devils Within by S.F. Henson

    Devils Within by S.F. Henson

    Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars
    · 12 ratings
    Killing isn’t supposed to be easy. But it is. It’s the after that’s hard to deal with.Nate was eight the first time he stabbed someone; he was eleven when he earned his red laces—a prize for spilling blood for “the cause...
  • The Woodcutter by Reginald Hill

    The Woodcutter by Reginald Hill

    Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    "Thefertility of Hill's imagination, the range of his power, the sheer quality ofhis literary style never ceases to delight." —Val McDermid,author of Fever of the BoneIn a stand-alone psychological thrillerfrom acclaimed mystery master Reginald Hill, a mysterious ex-con returns to hisremote childhood home on a deadly hunt for revenge...
  • This Is Our Story by Ashley Elston

    This Is Our Story by Ashley Elston

    Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars
    · 20 ratings
    Five went in. Four came out.No one knows what happened that morning at River Point. Five boys went hunting. Four came back. The boys won’t say who fired the shot that killed their friend; the evidence shows it could have been any one of them...
  • Trespassing by Brandi Reeds

    Trespassing by Brandi Reeds

    Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    In a novel of mounting psychological suspense, a young mother follows a dangerous path to find her missing husband.Veronica Cavanaugh’s grasp on the world is slipping. Her latest round of fertility treatments not only failed but left her on edge and unbalanced. And her three-year-old daughter, Elizabella, has a new imaginary friend, who seems much more devilish than playful...
  • The Blackhouse by Peter May

    The Blackhouse by Peter May

    Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars
    · 28 ratings
    A brutal killing takes place on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland: a land of harsh beauty and inhabitants of deep-rooted faith.A MURDERDetective Inspector Fin Macleod is sent from Edinburgh to investigate. For Lewis-born Macleod, the case represents a journey both home and into his past.A SECRETSomething lurks within the close-knit island community. Something sinister...
  • Never Lie by Freida McFadden

    Never Lie by Freida McFadden

    Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars
    · 40 ratings
    Newlyweds Tricia and Ethan are searching for the house of their dreams.But when they visit the remote manor that once belonged to Dr. Adrienne Hale, a renowned psychiatrist who vanished without a trace four years earlier, a violent winter storm traps them at the estate… with no chance of escape until the blizzard comes to an end...
  • Room by Emma Donoghue

    Room by Emma Donoghue

    Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars
    · 85 ratings
    To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world....Told in the inventive, funny, and poignant voice of Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience—and a powerful story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible.To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play...
  • I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh

    I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh

    Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars
    · 40 ratings
    A tragic accident. It all happened so quickly. She couldn't have prevented it. Could she?In a split second, Jenna Gray's world descends into a nightmare. Her only hope of moving on is to walk away from everything she knows to start afresh...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  family  realistic  survival  suspense  thriller
  • The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith

    The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith

    Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars
    · 75 ratings
    Private investigator Cormoran Strike returns in a new mystery from Robert Galbraith, author of the #1 international bestseller The Cuckoo's Calling.When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs. Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself for a few days—as he has done before—and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home...
  • One Fear by Belle Brooks

    One Fear by Belle Brooks

    Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars
    · 8 ratings
    “My one fear is now my reality.” He didn’t offer his name when he fulfilled his need to include me as a player in his game. I’m number thirteen. Just a number given to the bitches who wronged him. I was blindsided. Stolen from my life. In his devilled eyes, I have a debt to pay…he wants my final breath to see us even...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  suspense  thriller  abuse  action-adventure  adult  book
  • The Tywi Estuary Killings by John Nicholl

    The Tywi Estuary Killings by John Nicholl

    Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars
    · 10 ratings
    Is it revenge or is it justice?DI Gravel is supposed to be on mandatory leave, but when a severed head washes up on the estuary beach his holiday is cut short. Back on the job, he’s shocked when the case leads him to the victim from an old caseSeventeen years ago, the system failed Rebecca. They let the abuser of a six-year-old girl walk free...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  family  suspense  thriller  action-adventure  adult
  • Either Side of Midnight by Tori de Clare

    Either Side of Midnight by Tori de Clare

    Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    WHAT IF THE BEST DAY OF YOUR LIFE TURNED INTO YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE? When nineteen-year-old Naomi Stone is snatched from her husband at knifepoint on the night of their wedding and taken to a deserted cemetery, she knows her life is finished. Drugged and disorientated, she loses consciousness as she lies in an open grave with a gun to her head...
  • Down the Darkest Road by Tami Hoag

    Down the Darkest Road by Tami Hoag

    Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    Four years after the unsolved disappearance of her 16-year-old daughter, Lauren Lawton and her younger daughter Leah move to idyllic Oak Knoll in search of a fresh start. But when Lauren's suspect turns up in the same city, it feels to all the world that history is about to repeat itself...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  family  suspense  thriller  action-adventure  adult
  • In the Dark by Loreth Anne White

    In the Dark by Loreth Anne White

    Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    A secluded mountain lodge. The perfect getaway. So remote no one will ever find you.The promise of a luxury vacation at a secluded wilderness spa has brought together eight lucky guests. But nothing is what they were led to believe. As a fierce storm barrels down and all contact with the outside is cut off, the guests fear that it’s not a getaway. It’s a trap.Each one has a secret...
  • The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die by April Henry

    The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die by April Henry

    Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    “Take her out back and finish her off.”She doesn’t know who she is. She doesn’t know where she is, or why. All she knows when she comes to in a ransacked cabin is that there are two men arguing over whether or not to kill her.And that she must run.In her riveting style, April Henry crafts a nail-biting thriller involving murder, identity theft, and biological warfare...
  • Dear Child: A Novel by Romy Hausmann

    Dear Child: A Novel by Romy Hausmann

    Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars
    · 26 ratings
    A woman held captive finally escapes—but can she ever really get away?Gone Girl meets Room in this page-turning, #1 internationally bestselling thriller from one of Germany’s hottest new talentsA windowless shack in the woods. A dash to safety. But when a woman finally escapes her captor, the end of the story is only the beginning of her nightmare.She says her name is Lena...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  family  survival  suspense  thriller  abuse
  • Finders Keepers by Stephen King

    Finders Keepers by Stephen King

    Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars
    · 66 ratings
    Wake up, genius. The genius is John Rothstein, an iconic author who created a famous character, Jimmy Gold, but who hasn’t published a book for decades. Morris Bellamy is livid, not just because Rothstein has stopped providing books, but because the nonconformist Jimmy Gold has sold out for a career in advertising...
  • The Stillwater Girls by Minka Kent

    The Stillwater Girls by Minka Kent

    Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars
    · 29 ratings
    Two sisters raised in fear are about to find out why in a chilling novel of psychological suspense from the author of The Thinnest Air.Ignorant of civilization and cautioned against its evils, nineteen-year-old Wren and her two sisters, Sage and Evie, were raised in off-the-grid isolation in a primitive cabin in upstate New York...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  family  realistic  survival  suspense  thriller
  • The Naturalist by Andrew Mayne

    The Naturalist by Andrew Mayne

    Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars
    · 45 ratings
    Professor Theo Cray is trained to see patterns where others see chaos. So when mutilated bodies found deep in the Montana woods leave the cops searching blindly for clues, Theo sees something they missed. Something unnatural. Something only he can stop.As a computational biologist, Theo is more familiar with digital code and microbes than the dark arts of forensic sleuthing...
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