Psychological Suspense

As Night Falls by Jenny MilchmanCentralia by Mike DellossoThe Gates of Evangeline by Hester YoungThose we Left Behind by Stuart Neville


As Night Falls by Jenny Milchman

After winning the Mary Higgins Clark award for Cover of Snow (2013), Milchman returns with her third stand-alone thriller set in upstate New York. The suspense starts building right from the get-go when we learn that Sandy, a therapist, and her husband, Ben, have built their dream home in a desolate area, which they share with their sullen teenage daughter and a sweet old dog. Meanwhile, Nick, who has been in prison for more than 20 years, has devised a brilliant plan for escape, and he takes fellow inmate Harlan along on the breakout. The pair end up invading Sandy's home. The story moves back and forth between the home invasion and Nick's childhood; often such flashbacks are intended to make the bad guy more sympathetic—but not in this case. The tense finale is fueled by a shocking twist involving a walloping secret Sandy has kept from her family. (Booklist Reviews)

Centralia by Mike Dellosso

Peter Ryan is still mourning the loss of his wife and daughter two months after they died in a tragic car accident he can't remember. However, he senses something is not right as flashes of memory call up scenes of a different existence he doesn't recollect. Friends chalk it up to post-traumatic stress disorder, but Peter's faith won't allow him to believe that his family is dead. When he finds a note from his daughter, indicating that she and her mother have been kidnapped and taken to a mysterious place called Centralia, Peter goes on the run. What he discovers forever changes how he sees himself. (Library Journal Reviews)

The Gates of Evangeline by Hester Young

In the first of a planned trilogy, a writer grieving the loss of her 4-year-old son becomes enmeshed with the subjects of her true-crime book-in-progress. Shortly after the tragic death of her only child, Keegan, from a brain aneurysm, Charlotte "Charlie" Cates changes careers. Leaving her job at a Cosmopolitan-like Manhattan magazine, she accepts an assignment from a true-crime publisher to chronicle the disappearance of toddler Gabriel Deveau nearly 30 years before from his home, a Louisiana estate called Evangeline.  Once ensconced in a guest cottage at Evangeline—the Deveau family thinks she's there to write a revisionist family history—Charlie begins digging. (Kirkus Reviews)

Those We Left Behind by Stuart Neville

Two brothers bound by love and need repeat the deadly pattern of a past crime. Ciaran Devine was only 12 when he was convicted of killing his foster father. Seven years later, he's being released from the Young Offenders Centre into a world he's ill equipped to handle. Paula Cunningham, the probation officer assigned to his case, consults with DCI Serena Flanagan, who established a rapport with the boy after the murder. At the time, Flanagan had her doubts about his confession. (Kirkus Reviews)

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