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Thrillers

Spotlight on: Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey

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Sarah Gailey

I spend a lot of time thinking about what makes something scary. I think that there’s a lot to be said for danger, for the unknown, for hostility to life. Crocodiles are scary because they want to eat you. The dark is scary because it wants to hide things from you. Outer space is scary because it wants nothing from you at all, it is not even aware of you, and yet it can take everything from you with less conscious effort than you and I spend on a heartbeat. But the scariest thing, I think, is not a thing but a place; that place isn’t really a place so much as a relationship. The scariest thing is the space under your bed.” –Sarah Gailey, Letter to readers

 

 

Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey

What booksellers are saying about Just Like Home

  • Just Like Home is a splendidly twisted story that left me both delighted and disturbed in equal measure. Sarah Gailey checked all of the boxes with this one, and I couldn’t be happier. ―Kassie Weeks from Oxford Exchange in Tampa, Florida
    Buy from Oxford Exchange

  • Sarah Gailey leaned all the way into the truism that haunted house stories are a way to talk about how horrifying domesticity can be. How families can be a confusion of unkindness and violence and complicity. How home isn’t always something safe (that last one is something Gailey especially makes haunting amoeba strips from). Gorgeous; dark, and glistening. Like soul chemotherapy.
      ―Kyra Rathmann from Letters Bookshop in Durham, NC
    Buy from Letters Bookshop

  • Home is not always where the heart is! Gailey terrifies and amazes with the tale of Vera, who has been summoned back to her childhood home to watch her mother fade away from cancer. The old house is full of memories of Vera’s serial killer father and has become a shrine to his crimes, visited by gawkers, crime writers, and artists who want to get into the wicked mindset of a killer. Vera swore never to return but she just can’t escape the pull of home – and all that it contains. This is chilling and impossible to put down!  ―Andrea Richardson from Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia
    Buy from Fountain Bookstore

  • Sarah Gailey’s books are wildly imaginative and addictive. Just Like Home is a deeply twisted horror novel about the Crowder family and the symbiotic relationship they have with their house. The horror of the story lies in facts (Vera knows that her father was a serial killer) and in things too disturbing to be real (is there something living under Vera’s bed?) Where reality and the supernatural meet is the brilliance of this novel.  ―Jamie Southern from Bookmarks in Winston-Salem, South Carolina
    Buy from Bookmarks

About Sarah Gailey

Hugo Award Winner and Bestselling author Sarah Gailey is an internationally published writer of fiction and nonfiction. Their nonfiction has been published by Mashable and the Boston Globe. Their short fiction credits include Vice and The Atlantic. Their debut novella, River of Teeth, was a 2018 Hugo and Nebula award finalist. Their bestselling adult novel debut, Magic For Liars, was published in 2019. Their most recent novel, The Echo Wife, is available now. You can find links to their work at sarahgailey.com and on social media at @gaileyfrey.

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Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey

Sarah Gailey leaned all the way into the truism that haunted house stories are a way to talk about how horrifying domesticity can be. How families can be a confusion of unkindness and violence and complicity. How home isn’t always something safe (that last one is something Gailey especially makes haunting amoeba strips from). This is the kind of book that’s hard to summarize because ultimately very little happens; or a lot happens but it’s all hinted-at and spoilers. Just memories and remembrances looping around and around in both a slow lead-up to the past and a constant questioning. You spend a lot of time basically knowing what’s likely around the corner, but still being lured in by how twisty it gets – until you don’t know who to root for, or if you’re supposed to be rooting for anyone, or if the serial killer is the villain. Gorgeous; dark, and glistening. Like soul chemotherapy.

Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey, (List Price: $26.99, Tor Books, 9781250174727, July 2022)

Reviewed by Kyra Rathmann, Letters Bookshop in Durham, North Carolina

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Project Namahana by John Teschner

This is the best mystery/thriller I’ve read yet set in Hawaii. Instead of concentrating on Honolulu and all the other touristy places Mr. Teschner takes us into the out of the way places, the homesteads and small towns, where the locals live and depend on jobs offered by big corporations who put profit before people everyday. He introduces us to the people, their patois and, most of all, their closeness as they rely on each other, in this case after three boys die swimming in a supposedly clean stream, to do what the authorities won’t.

Project Namahana by John Teschner, (List Price: $27.99, Forge Books, 9781250827197, June 2022)

Reviewed by Pete Mock, McIntyre’s Books in Pittsboro, North Carolina

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The Kingdoms of Savannah by George Dawes Green

A July 2022 Read This Next! Title

I loved The Kingdoms of Savannah. It read like a dark, gothic Conroy novel, concerned as much with the grit of the city as the moonlight and magnolias. The Musgrove family are some rare birds. I really hope Mr. Green is planning to bring them back for more.

The Kingdoms of Savannah by George Dawes Green, (List Price: $27.99, Celadon Books, 9781250767448, July 2022)

Reviewed by Ashley Warlick from M Judson, Booksellers in Greenville, SC

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Spotlight on: Hide by Kiersten White

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Kiersten White

Anxiety is actually why I write. It’s why I started telling stories to myself as a child, because I found if I could feed my anxiety a story then it wouldn’t rip me apart, and so I always had a story going on in the back of my head to tell myself instead of going through worst case scenarios of my own life. Part of what makes a lot of people with high anxiety good storytellers is your brain is constantly coming up with the worst case scenarios and playing through things and replaying them and replaying them and replaying them, and that lends itself well to writing and storytelling. ”Kiersten White, interview, BookPeople

 

 

Hide by Kiersten White

What booksellers are saying about Hide

  • Hide is an absolute funhouse of a book about a not-so-harmless game of hide and seek in an eerily abandoned amusement park with an unexpected (but very much appreciated) dash of Greek mythology. White’s adult debut is sure to amuse and haunt. ―Kassie Weeks from Oxford Exchange in Tampa, FL
    Buy from Oxford Exchange

  • Get ready for one horrifying game of hide-and-seek… White’s vivid, razor-sharp, and terrifying story will sink its claws into you, and hold on tight. This book is shocking, heart wrenching, and beautiful, and I am now utterly obsessed with it!   ―Lucile Perkins-Wagel from Copperfish Books in Punta Gorda, FL
    Buy from Copperfish Books

  • Hide is a rollercoaster ride (pun intended) of a story that brings a few delightfully dark twists to the usual aspects of a horror novel. Mack, a young heroine with a terrifying past, is put in the position of fulfilling her destiny in a game of hide-and-seek where the stakes are life & death. White presents a diverse cast of characters and several are irredeemable… but there a few “rough-around-the-edges” outcasts that had me cheering for them the entire time. This is a great October-ish read that’s perfect for any season of the year.   ―Stuart McCommon from Novel in Memphis, TN
    Buy from Novel

  • Kiersten White is incredible, capable of capturing the fantasy of the contemporary world, and how you can build mythology into anything. Including a hide and seek competition at an abandoned theme park in the middle of nowhere. This entire book is the creeping feeling that you’re being watched, and you know who is watching you, and you know they’re going to stab you in the back, the question is just when and where. Hide has the perfect eerie, horrific atmosphere with a good helping of social commentary that fans of Until Dawn and Us will absolutely love.   ―Caitlyn Vanorder from Bookmarks in Winston-Salem, NC
    Buy from Bookmarks

About Kiersten White

Kiersten White is the New York Times bestselling, Bram Stoker Award-winning, and critically acclaimed author of many books, including the And I Darken trilogy, the Sinister Summer series, the Camelot Rising trilogy, and her adult debut, Hide. Her books have been published in over twenty territories, and her novel The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein is currently in development with Sony Pictures Television.

Kiersten lives with her family in San Diego, where she can regularly be found pressing her hands against the glass of her back door, furtively whispering I love you to her deeply ambivalent tortoise, Kimberly.

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Just Like Mother by Anne Heltzel

OMG this book a WILD ride! It is practically a guarantee that I will thoroughly enjoy just about any book that involves cults… but a cult centered out reproduction and motherhood? Holy moly count me in. What really stood out to me about Just Like Mother (and what I believe sets it apart from other reproductive-themed thrillers) was how it features a child-free protagonist and explores the many layers of being a woman who decides to not have children. To a cult of women who deify motherhood as the pinnacle of being, who is a woman that rejects motherhood? A radical, a traitor, and a threat to their entire identity and ethos. The sense of dread and tension that permeates and persists throughout the entire story really is fantastic. Every moment that I was listening to the audiobook, my stomach was turning with the feeling that some horrible, terrible, ever-worsening doom was just around the corner. I definitely recommend this one to fans of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Joanne Ramos’s The Farm, and to anyone who has been searching for a child-free perspective in the reproductive thriller genre!

Just Like Mother by Anne Heltzel, (List Price: $26.99, Tor Nightfire, 9781250787514, May 2022)

Reviewed by Caroline Barbee, Friendly City Books in Columbus, Mississippi

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Insomnia by Sarah Pinborough

I watched the Netflix Series Behind Her Eyes and loved the suspense and supernatural themes. So, when I saw that Sarah Pinborough wrote Insomnia I knew that I had to read it! The story itself reminded me of Behind Her Eyes and the movie Hereditary. You have a mother as the main character who is doing everything she can to find out about her estranged mother’s life as she tries to uncover family secrets to protect her family. But, is she protecting her family from the impending danger, or is she the danger her family needs protecting from? The whole story you are in just as much disbelief as the main character…she doesn’t know if she is awake or asleep, if she is sane or going mad like her mother, and as things twist and turn deeper into the story a mind-bending and time-bending twist is added!

Insomnia by Sarah Pinborough, (List Price: $27.99, William Morrow, 9780062856845,  April 2022)

Reviewed by Kait Layton, The Haunted Book Shop in Mobile, Alabama

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Razorblade Tears by S. A. Cosby

Fantastic thriller with a tender narrative running throughout as two ex-convict fathers come to terms with each of their sons’ homosexuality too late. Highly recommended!

Razorblade Tears by S. A. Cosby, (List Price: $17.99, Flatiron Bookss, 9781250252715,  April 2022)

Reviewed by Laura Taylor, Oxford Exchange in Tampa, Florida

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The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas

Ah southern gothic, my dearest friend, you’ve done it again. Isabel Cañas has joined hands with the spookiest of ghosts and written a tale of romance, mystery, and horror that would have even the stoutest individual shaking in their boots, wondering who would survive, if any at all. I loved every single second of The Hacienda, and am remiss that it ever ended, considering how desperately the author makes you crave more. This book is absolutely perfect for fans of Crimson Peak and Mexican Gothic, but most importantly, it’s perfect for the adults who were once teens in love with the supernatural romances of the ’00s and early ’10s.

The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas, (List Price: $27, Berkley, 9780593436691,  May 2022)

Reviewed by Caitlyn Vanorder, Bookmarks in Winston-Salem, North Carolina

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Book of Night by Holly Black

Holly Black has returned with a darkly enthralling new world where shadows are more than just a trick of the light, and magicians are the thing that go bump in the night. With everything from a kick-ass female lead, grand heists and blood magic, this is an urban fantasy that comes with a bite and leaves with a door slam to the face. I can’t wait to see where Black takes the rest of the series. Readers with a taste for the macabre won’t be able to put this one down. Black’s foray into adult fiction feels like a breath of fresh air for the modern fantasy reader, with a dash of dark academia and a new magic system that begs us to ask the question: what really is a human soul?

Book of Night by Holly Black, (List Price: $27.99, Tor Books, 9781250812193,  May 2022)

Reviewed by Emma June Wood, Main Street Reads in Summerville, South Carolina

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The Younger Wife by Sally Hepworth

The twists, the turns, the traumas! A family tale of suspense that hooks the reader from page one. Hepworth creates a world of privilege and ease where nothing is what it seems including your own perceptions.

The Younger Wife by Sally Hepworth, (List Price: $28.99, St. Martin’s Press, 9781250229618,  April 2022)

Reviewed by Susan Williams, M Judson Booksellers and Storytellers in Greenville, South Carolina

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The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart

A crazy time-travel novel that is also a meditation on loss. The main character is mourning the loss of her lover as she tries to hold on to her job as “time cop” that is also frying her brain. I really loved this story with its many and varied villains and exploration of what regular time travel would do to the human brain. The protagonist keeps up her work to catch glimpses of the woman she loves in the form of kind of time-ghosts in the hotel where she works for wealthy people who go back in time and try to mess it up for sport and profit. Sometimes our biggest villains are ourselves as she learns while pushing away the people remaining in her life who wish to help.

The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart, (List Price: $20, Ballantine Books, 9781984820648, February 2022)

Reviewed by Kelly Justice, Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia



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The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb

There are so many captivating things about this novel…the insight the reader gets as to what it takes to be a classical musician, the background on the history of violins (and one violin in particular) and how they’re made, the main character’s determination in the face of struggle, family dynamics and expectations, racial issues that rear their ugly heads, and a mysterious theft of a priceless instrument…I could go on and on. Put all this together, and you get a beautiful story about a boy who loved his grandmother more than anyone in the world…one who persevered to become a classical violinist and prove to everyone that he could do it. Brendan Slocumb effortlessly keeps his story flowing, leaving the reader rooting for Ray McMillian while trying to put the pieces of the theft together. Such a great read!

The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb, (List Price: $28.00, Anchor, 9780593315415, February 2022)

Reviewed by Mary Patterson from The Little Bookshop in Midlothian, Virginia


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A History of Wild Places by Shea Ernshaw

This twisty thriller gave me similar vibes as The Village and absolutely kept me on my toes! Shea Ernshaw really hit it out of the park with this brilliant adult debut.

A History of Wild Places by Shea Ernshaw, (List Price: $27.00, Atria Books, 9781982164805, December 2021)

Reviewed by Kassie Weeks, Oxford Exchange in Tampa, Florida

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Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner

Greenwich Park is a fabulous debut novel. The book starts off with a letter to Helen from someone in prison wanting her to know the truth. So, you know from the beginning that something bad is going to happen, but you don’t know who wrote the letter. Told from three points of view–Helen’s, who hopes to finally be bringing a baby to term after many miscarriages; Serena’s, who is Helen’s college friend and now married to her brother Rory; and Kate’s, Helen’s child hood friend who is her brother Charlie’s on again and off again girlfriend–the story takes time to develop but once it starts going it seems to go in lots of different directions at once. The ending will surprise you, and then the rest of the ending will surprise you even more – and then the last sentence on the last page happens.

Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner, (List Price: $27.00, Gallery Books, 9781982150310, January 2022)

Reviewed by Nancy McFarlane, Fiction Addiction in Greenville, South Carolina

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