Books like 'Smile'

Readers who enjoyed Smile by Matt Shaw also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.

horror  mystery  psychological  action / adventure  splatterpunk  family  drama

  • 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...
  • 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...
  • Criminal by Karin Slaughter

    Criminal by Karin Slaughter

    Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars
    · 30 ratings
    Karin Slaughter's new novel is an epic tale of love, loyalty, and murder that encompasses forty years, two chillingly similar murder cases, and a good man's deepest secrets. Will Trent is a brilliant agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Newly in love, he is beginning to put a difficult past behind him...
  • 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...
  • 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...
  • Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, Andy Weir

    Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, Andy Weir

    Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars
    · 87 ratings
    Jason Dessen is walking home through the chilly Chicago streets one night, looking forward to a quiet evening in front of the fireplace with his wife, Daniela, and their son, Charlie—when his reality shatters.- - -'Are you happy in your life?'Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious...
  • The Summer Children The Collector, Book 3 by Dot Hutchison

    The Summer Children The Collector, Book 3 by Dot Hutchison

    Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars
    · 26 ratings
    Series including The Butterfly...
  • The Dark Bones by Loreth Anne White

    The Dark Bones by Loreth Anne White

    Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    She’s come back to solve the mystery of her father’s death and confront her own dark past. When Detective Rebecca North left her rural hometown, she vowed never to return. Her father’s apparent suicide has changed that. The official report is that retired cop Noah North shot himself, knocked over a lantern, and set his isolated cabin ablaze. But Rebecca cannot believe he killed himself...
  • Mazie Baby by Julie Frayn

    Mazie Baby by Julie Frayn

    Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars
    · 12 ratings
    Mazie Reynolds is an abused woman who yearns for a normal life. But Cullen’s fists and her conditioned reaction to his anger keep getting in the way. Every day is a struggle against self-loathing and her growing hatred for a husband who used to adore her. When his attentions shift to their twelve-year-old daughter, Ariel, Mazie makes a frantic attempt to get them as far away from him as possible...
    Categorized as:
    drama  abuse  action-adventure  adult  book  dark  fiction  horror
  • Last of the Magpies by Mark Edwards

    Last of the Magpies by Mark Edwards

    Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    The chilling conclusion to the #1 bestseller The Magpies. Twelve months ago, Jamie Knight walked straight into Lucy Newton’s trap. Both Jamie and his ex-wife Kirsty barely survived. Now, with the police investigation into Lucy’s disappearance going nowhere, Jamie teams up with a true crime podcaster to track down his nemesis...
    Categorized as:
    drama  family  action-adventure  adult  audiobook  book  crime  fiction
  • Blood Memory by Greg Iles

    Blood Memory by Greg Iles

    Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    Forensic expert "Cat" Ferry has a stellar reputation until a panic attack paralyzes her at a New Orleans murder scene. Praying the attack is a one-time event, she continues working, but when the same killer strikes again - raising fears that a serial killer is at large - Cat blacks out over the victim's mutilated corpse...
  • Rubbernecker by Belinda Bauer

    Rubbernecker by Belinda Bauer

    Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    The dead can't speak to us, Professor Madoc had said. But that was a lie. The body Patrick Fort is examining in anatomy class is trying to tell him all kinds of things. But no one hears what he does, and no one understands when he tries to tell them. Life is already strange enough for Patrick - being a medical student with Asperger's Syndrome doesn't come without its challenges...
  • 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...
  • Deeper Than the Dead by Tami Hoag

    Deeper Than the Dead by Tami Hoag

    Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars
    · 26 ratings
    California, 1985. Four children, running in the woods behind their school, stumble upon a partially buried female body, eyes and mouth glued shut. Close behind the children is their teacher, Anne Navarre, shocked by this discovery and heartbroken as she witnesses the end of their innocence...
  • 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...
  • My Sister's Grave by Robert Dugoni, รอเบิร์ต ดูโกนี่

    My Sister's Grave by Robert Dugoni, รอเบิร์ต ดูโกนี่

    Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars
    · 42 ratings
    Tracy Crosswhite has spent twenty years questioning the facts surrounding her sister Sarah’s disappearance and the murder trial that followed. She doesn’t believe that Edmund House — a convicted rapist and the man condemned for Sarah’s murder — is the guilty party...
  • Blue Labyrinth by Douglas Preston

    Blue Labyrinth by Douglas Preston

    Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars
    · 39 ratings
    Special Agent Pendergast-one of the most original, compelling characters in all of contemporary fiction-returns in Preston and Child's new exhilarating novel Blue Labyrinth.A long-buried family secret has come back to haunt Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast...It begins with murder. One of Pendergast's most implacable, most feared enemies is found on his doorstep, dead...
  • Devil's Pocket by John Dixon

    Devil's Pocket by John Dixon

    Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars
    · 6 ratings
    The follow-up to the critically acclaimed Phoenix Island, which reads like "Lord of the Flies meets Wolverine and Cool Hand Luke" (F. Paul Wilson, creator of Repairman Jack) and inspired the CBS TV show Intelligence.With a chip in his head and hundreds more throughout his body, sixteen-year-old Carl Freeman was turned from an orphan with impulse control issues into a super-soldier...
  • 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...
  • 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...
  • The Treatment by Mo Hayder

    The Treatment by Mo Hayder

    Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    Midsummer, and in an unassuming house on a quiet residential street on the edge of Brockwell Park in south London, a husband and wife are discovered. Badly dehydrated, they've been bound and beaten, the husband is close to death. But worse is to come: their young son is missing...
  • Cape Fear by John D. MacDonald

    Cape Fear by John D. MacDonald

    Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    How far would you go to save your family? In John D. MacDonald's iconic masterwork of suspense, the inspiration for not one but two Hollywood hits, a mild-mannered family is tormented by an obsessed criminal--and with the authorities powerless to protect them, they must take the law into their own hands...
  • The Retreat by Mark Edwards

    The Retreat by Mark Edwards

    Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars
    · 26 ratings
    A missing child. A desperate mother. And a house full of secrets. Two years ago, Julia lost her family in a tragic accident. Her husband drowned trying to save their daughter, Lily, in the river near their rural home. But the little girl’s body was never found—and Julia believes Lily is somehow still alive.Alone and broke, Julia opens her house as a writers’ retreat...
  • 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...
  • From the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz, Stephen Lang

    From the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz, Stephen Lang

    Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars
    · 28 ratings
    Twelve cassettes, 21 hrs.Read by Stephen Lang Bartholomew Lampion is born in Bright Beach, California, on a day of tragedy and terror, when the lives of everyone in his family are changed forever. Remarkable events accompany his birth, and everyone agrees that his unusual eyes are the most beautiful they have ever seen...
  • Cross by James Patterson

    Cross by James Patterson

    Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars
    · 34 ratings
    Alex Cross was a rising star in the Washington, DC, Police Department when an unknown shooter gunned down his wife, Maria, in front of him. The killer was never found, and the case turned cold, filed among the unsolved drive-bys in D.C.'s rough neighborhoods.Years later, still haunted by his wife's death, Cross is making a bold move in his life...
  • 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...
  • The Woods by Harlan Coben

    The Woods by Harlan Coben

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 40 ratings
    Twenty years ago at summer camp, Paul Copeland's sister died in the woods, the alleged victim of a serial killer. Her body was never found. Now, Paul is the prosecutor for Essex County, New Jersey, immersed in one of the biggest cases of his career-a case that will change everything he believes about the past...and the truth...
  • Never Look Away by Linwood Barclay

    Never Look Away by Linwood Barclay

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    In this tense, mesmerizing thriller by Linwood Barclay, critically acclaimed author of Fear the Worst and Too Close to Home, a man’s life unravels around him when the unthinkable strikes. A warm summer Saturday. An amusement park. David Harwood is glad to be spending some quality time with his wife, Jan, and their four-year-old son...
  • The Perfect Husband by Lisa Gardner

    The Perfect Husband by Lisa Gardner

    Rated: 3.99 of 5 stars
    · 31 ratings
    What would you do if the man of your dreams hides the soul of a killer? Jim Beckett was everything she'd ever dreamed of...But two years after Tess married the decorated cop and bore his child, she helped put him behind bars for savagely murdering ten women. Even locked up in a maximum security prison, he vowed he would come after her and make her pay...
  • The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier

    The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    By chance, John and Jean--one English, the other French--meet in a provincial railway station. Their resemblance to each other is uncanny, and they spend the next few hours talking and drinking - until at last John falls into a drunken stupor. It's to be his last carefree moment, for when he wakes, Jean has stolen his identity and disappeared...
  • The Girl Who Lived by Christopher Greyson

    The Girl Who Lived by Christopher Greyson

    Rated: 3.97 of 5 stars
    · 33 ratings
    Ten years ago, four people were brutally murdered. One girl lived. No one believes her story. The police think she’s crazy. Her therapist thinks she’s suicidal. Everyone else thinks she’s a dangerous drunk...
  • Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz

    Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz

    Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars
    · 28 ratings
    In the dazzling new thriller from the master of dark suspense, the hand of fate reaches out to touch an ordinary man with greatness. So long as he is ready. So long as he is, above all, afraid.Jimmy Tock comes into the world on the very night his grandfather leaves it...
  • No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay

    No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay

    Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars
    · 28 ratings
    Fourteen-year-old Cynthia Bigge woke one morning to discover that her entire family, mother, father, brother had vanished. No note, no trace, no return. Ever. Now, twenty-five years later, she'll learn the devastating truthSometimes better not to know. . . Cynthia is happily married with a young daughter, a new family. But the story of her old family isn't over...
  • Dead Girls Don't Lie by Jennifer Shaw Wolf

    Dead Girls Don't Lie by Jennifer Shaw Wolf

    Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    Rachel died at two a.m . . . Three hours after Skyler kissed me for the first time. Forty-five minutes after she sent me her last text. Jaycee and Rachel were best friends. But that was before. . .before that terrible night at the old house. Before Rachel shut Jaycee out. Before Jaycee chose Skyler over Rachel. Then Rachel is found dead...
  • See How They Run by Tom Bale

    See How They Run by Tom Bale

    Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    How far would you go to save your family? In the dead of night, new parents Alice and Harry French are plunged into their worst nightmare when they wake to find masked men in their bedroom. Men ruthless enough to threaten their baby daughter, Evie. This is no burglary gone wrong. The intruders know who they’re looking for – a man called Edward Renshaw...
  • Dead Woman Walking by Sharon J. Bolton

    Dead Woman Walking by Sharon J. Bolton

    Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    In Dead Woman Walking, from master of suspense Sharon Bolton, the sole survivor of a hot-air balloon crash witnesses a murder as the balloon is falling.Just before dawn in the hills near the Scottish border, a man murders a young woman. At the same time, a hot-air balloon crashes out of the sky. There's just one survivor. She's seen the killer's face - but he's also seen hers...
  • Someone We Know by Shari Lapena

    Someone We Know by Shari Lapena

    Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars
    · 37 ratings
    AN INSTANT #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER No one does suburban paranoia like Shari Lapena. --Ruth Ware, internationally bestselling author of The Woman in Cabin 10Maybe you don't know your neighbours as well as you thought you did . .
  • The Boy from the Woods by Harlan Coben

    The Boy from the Woods by Harlan Coben

    Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars
    · 35 ratings
    Thirty years ago, Wilde was found as a boy living feral in the woods, with no memory of his past. Now an adult, he still doesn't know where he comes from, and another child has gone missing.No one seems to take Naomi Pine's disappearance seriously, not even her father-with one exception...
  • Sinners and Saints by Eileen Dreyer

    Sinners and Saints by Eileen Dreyer

    Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars
    · 6 ratings
    Forensics specialist Chastity Byrnes is trying to put the past behind her. It has been ten years since Chastity made accusations against her father that shattered her family...and ten years since she's seen her sister, Faith.First, Chastity gets a call from Dr. Max Stanton, the brother-in-law she never knew she had. Then she finds out that her long-lost sister is officially missing...
    Categorized as:
    drama  family  action-adventure  adult  book  fiction  horror  medical
  • You're Next by Gregg Hurwitz, Scott Brick

    You're Next by Gregg Hurwitz, Scott Brick

    Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars
    · 20 ratings
    Mike Wingate, abandoned by his father at four and raised in foster care, is finally living the life he always dreamed of — he’s happily married with a precocious 8-year-old daughter, and his construction company is about to finish a “green” housing development that will secure a solid future for them all...
  • The Doll House by Phoebe Morgan

    The Doll House by Phoebe Morgan

    Rated: 3.89 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    You never know who’s watching…Corinne’s life might look perfect on the outside, but after three failed IVF attempts it’s her last chance to have a baby. And when she finds a tiny part of a doll house outside her flat, it feels as if it’s a sign.But as more pieces begin to turn up, Corinne realises that they are far too familiar...
  • The Bad Place by Dean Koontz

    The Bad Place by Dean Koontz

    Rated: 3.89 of 5 stars
    · 28 ratings
    Frank Pollard is afraid to fall asleep. Every morning when he awakes, he discovers something strange--like blood on his hands--a bizarre mystery that tortures his soul. Two investigators have been hired to follow the haunted man. But only one person--a young man with Down's Syndrome--can imagine where their journeys might end. That terrible place from which no one ever returns...
  • A Simple Plan by Scott Smith

    A Simple Plan by Scott Smith

    Rated: 3.89 of 5 stars
    · 28 ratings
    Two brothers and their friend stumble upon the wreckage of a plane–the pilot is dead and his duffle bag contains four million dollars in cash. In order to hide, keep, and share the fortune, these ordinary men all agree to a simple plan...
  • The Things That Keep Us Here by Carla Buckley

    The Things That Keep Us Here by Carla Buckley

    Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars
    · 30 ratings
    How far would you go to protect your family?Ann Brooks never thought she’d have to answer that question. Then she found her limits tested by a crisis no one could prevent. Now, as her neighborhood descends into panic, she must make tough choices to protect everyone she loves from a threat she cannot even see...
  • Silence of the Grave by Arnaldur Indriðason

    Silence of the Grave by Arnaldur Indriðason

    Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars
    · 25 ratings
    Inspector Erlendur returns in this gripping Icelandic thriller When a skeleton is discovered half-buried in a construction site outside of Reykjavík, Inspector Erlendur finds himself knee-deep in both a crime scene and an archeological dig. Bone by bone, the body is unearthed, and the brutalizing history of a family who lived near the building site comes to light along with it...
  • Cold Cold Heart by Tami Hoag

    Cold Cold Heart by Tami Hoag

    Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    #1 New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag delivers a shocking new thrillerDana Nolan was a promising young TV reporter until a notorious serial killer tried to add her to his list of victims.  Nearly a year has passed since surviving her ordeal, but the physical, emotional, and psychological scars run deep...
    Categorized as:
    drama  family  abuse  action-adventure  adult  amnesia  audiobook  book
  • Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee by Mary G. Thompson

    Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee by Mary G. Thompson

    Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars
    · 12 ratings
    A bittersweet homecoming holds dark secrets in this heart-wrenching story of loss, love, and survival for readers of Room. When sixteen-year-old Amy returns home, she can’t tell her family what’s happened to her. She can’t tell them where she’s been since she and her best friend, her cousin Dee, were kidnapped six years ago—who stole them from their families or what’s become of Dee...
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