10 Thrillers you can’t miss this Summer

“Like a child, I picture opening her skull, unspooling her brain and sifting through it, trying to catch and pin down her thoughts. What are you thinking, Amy?” Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl.

It’s almost midnight. You hear loud screeches of an old lady from that abandoned house next door. Your throat is choked. Creepy rattling of a series of events. Chills. Creeps. Get on board to enter an aura where you won’t be able to help yourself bite your nails as you unravel the stories, unable to resist turning onto the next page. Loathe into the atmosphere of thrill to get some goosebumps and a lot of heart-pounding.

So sit tight and get goofy about what’s going to happen because here are 10 thrillers- from The Silent Patient to The Girl on the Train with their impeccable narratives and surprises, to make you skip a heart beat and take you on a roller coaster ride this summer, scaring the bejesus out of you:

1. GONE GIRL BY GILLIAN FLYNN

Nick and Amy dated each other for 2 years before getting married.

It’s North Carthage, Missouri. Nick and Amy along with their friends and family are all set to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary.Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River. With all that Amy had written in her diary about Nick being aggressive, moody, angry and a threatening husband, makes him a suspect in her disappearance. As the cops close in, every couple in town is soon wondering how well they know the one that they love. With his twin sister, Margo, at his side, Nick stands by his innocence.

Trouble is, if Nick didn’t do it, where is his wife? And what was in that silvery gift box hidden in the back of her bedroom closet? Is Desi Collings, Amy’s ex-boyfriend involved in this?

2. THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN BY PAULA HAWKINS

This is a story about 3 women- Rachel, Anna and Megan. Rachel takes the same train to London everyday, which stops at a signal where she watches the ‘Jess and Jason’ of her life, who actually are Megan and Scott, happily living, unlike the divorced life she has with Tom, who now lives with Anna. One day after heavy drinking, Rachel awakens to find herself bloody and injured, with no memories of the night before. She learns that Megan is missing, and is being interrogated by the police after Anna reports having seen her drunkenly staggering around the night of Megan’s disappearance.

Rachel was drunk that night. Was she behind Megan’s disappearance? Did she commit more harm than any good?

3. THE SILENT PATIENT BY ALEX MICHAELIDES

Alicia, an eminent painter was married to Gabriel, an in-demand fashion photographer. Their life in London was flawless until one day Alicia shoots Gabriel five times in his face and never speaks a word ever again, becoming the silent patient. From then on, she never said anything to anyone, and only painted a single painting of herself naked in her studio with the word Alcestis. The media tried to figure out her motive as she was found guilty of the murder. Thanks to Diomedes, however, Alicia was found insane and put into an asylum called the Grove. Theo faber is a criminal psychotherapist who takes over as Alicia’s doctor. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path. Reading Alicia’s diary he finds out about her mysterious stalker. Later we learn that this stalker was Theo.

Who killed Gabriel? Was Alicia mentally unfit? Or was it all revolving around the mysterious stalker?

4. THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO BY STIEG LARSSON

It is the first book of the Millennium series published by Stieg Larsson.

Harriet Vanger, Henrik Vanger’s grandniece of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families disappeared in 1966, over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander, a brilliant but deeply troubled researcher and computer hacker. Together they tap into a vein of unfathomable impropriety and astonishing corruption.

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5. THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS BY THOMAS HARRIS

A young FBI trainee Clarice Starling is asked to present a series of questionnaires to Hannibal Lecter, an ingenious forensic psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer, serving nine consecutive life sentences in a Maryland mental institution for a series of murders. Starling calls on Lecter for help stopping the murder spree of ‘Buffalo Bill’, a killer who targets women in a disturbing fashion. Lecter offers to trade his criminal profiling skills in exchange for details about Starling’s troubled childhood. Convinced that Lecter knows the killer’s true identity, Starling is forced to trade her worst lingering childhood memory, the screaming of lambs before their slaughter, for information that ultimately leads her to Buffalo Bill.

But that’s not all what Lecter makes her do. What’s more to this trade?

6. AN ANONYMOUS GIRL BY GREER HENDRICKS AND SARAH PEKKANEN

Love, money, and obsession collide with deadly results as psychiatrist Dr. Lydia Shields sets out to test the fidelity of her estranged husband, Thomas. In order to test her hypothesis, Shields hones Jessica “Jess” Farris, a troubled young woman who participates in one of Shields studies, ‘seeking women ages 18–32 to participate in a study on ethics and morality’, to serve as bait for Thomas. Shields does not anticipate that Jess and Thomas will meet outside the parameters of her experiment and have a sexual encounter before they are aware of their relationship to Shields. The resulting triangle threatens to destroy them all.

What more conspiracies does Dr. Shields hold?

7. THE TURN OF THE KEY BY RUTH WARE

Rowan Caine does not want to miss an opportunity which seems too good to be real for her. She sees an ad for a live-in nannying post with a startling generous salary, at Heatherbrae House alongside the Scottish Highlands. What she doesn’t know is that she’s stepping into a nightmare — one that will end with a child dead and herself behind the bars, awaiting trial for murder. She was left alone for weeks at a time, with no adults around apart from the enigmatic handyman, Jack Grant. Her behaviour towards the children wasn’t always ideal.

But Rowan pleads being innocent — atleast not of the murder. If she’s not the murderer, then who is? Is it Jack Grant? Or is someone else handling this from the outside?

8. THE LOST MAN BY JANE HARPER

Nathan, Cameron and Bub are the three Bright brothers. At a remote graveyard, under the scorching sun, Nathan and Bub are gathered around Cameron’s dead body. The Bright family’s quiet existence is thrown into grief and anguish. This compelling book revolves around the ideas of isolation leading to deaths and the many, many family secrets the Brights hold. Amidst the grief of losing their brother, Nathan begins wondering whether the rest of his family members are at risk of meeting the same fate as Cameron due to being isolated.

And the most important question- did Cameron commit suicide or was he killed? Who is the lost man — Nathan or Cameron? What more secrets do the Brights have?

9. MY SISTER, THE SERIAL KILLER BY OYINKAN BRAITHWAITE

Korede and Ayoola live with their widowed mother in Lagos, Nigeria. Korede is the elder of the 2 sisters and works as a nurse at a local hospital. Ayoola has murdered 3 different men in the past few years, all of the men she used to be dating. Korede, due to the bond she shared with Ayoola and the familial onus she holds with her, has always helped Ayoola dispose off the bodies and cover up the crimes. Braithwaite has articulately set the characters to create suspense and laughter for the readers. Korede has secret romantic feelings for Tade, a contemporary doctor at the hospital where she works. The twist begins when Ayoola and Tade begin dating after Ayoola visits the hospital one day.

Will Ayoola murder Tade as well? Or will they end up somewhere else? Meanwhile Femi’s murder, the most recent of Ayoola’s victims is being investigated. Will the cops find out about the 2 sisters crime and perjury?

10. MY LOVELY WIFE BY SAMANTHA DOWNING

Millicent and her husband have a simple love story. They meet, date, get married, have kids and then move to the suburbs. They share their darkest secrets and biggest dreams with each other. And then, they get bored, their life gets boring. They have to find something more than interesting and indulging to keep their marriage alive and the spark maintained.

To reboot their marriage and the empty, idle life they believe to have been living, they resort to murdering people on date nights.

These books throw out the tired cliché genre of thriller and suspense to something more than that. They’ve pushed the boundaries of this genre with staggering turns and twists of plots and characters. Such genius books! With every author having an ear for the dialogues to creating richly atmospheric scenes, these books are on the must-read list of yours for this summer.