In Eastern Tennessee where I grew up, lakes are as much a part of the landscape as the rolling mountains and endless smoky skies. Almost all of these lakes are manmade, murky waters controlled by a series of locks and dams, which means their currents are both ice-cold and volatile. Stunning on the surface, but I’ve spent enough time puttering across their waters or sunning on their docks to know what lurks underneath.
Snapping turtles. Venemous snakes. Catfish, as big as a toddler and with teeth sharper than razors. Broken bottles lodged in the squishy clay bottom, one wrong step and they’ll slice your foot right open. Murder weapons, flung from a bridge.
And not all that occasionally: bodies. Murdered. Dumped. Drowned. They bob to the surface often enough you’d think they would scare swimmers off. But it’s like diving into the ocean—so much more fun if you don’t open your eyes to all the sharks.
To me, it’s exactly this polarity between natural beauty and looming danger that makes a lake the ideal setting for a suspenseful story. The lakes I know are beautiful, cold-hearted killers, starting with the towns the Tennessee Valley Authority sacrificed to their waters. There’s just something ominous about swimming above homes, roads, schools, graveyards, and in water so black you can’t see your toes. The plotlines practically write themselves.
And then there’s the water itself. Cold. Deep. Unpredictable. A place of heightened fears and underlying menace. As an author, all you have to do is place your story along its shores and you’ve created a silent villain. The lake becomes a character—a killer, a monster. You just know something bad will happen there.
It took me six books to set one on a lake, but not for lack of inspiration. Lakes are deep and dark and dangerous, and clearly, I’m not the only writer who thinks so. So many of my fellow author have used lakes in their stories to up the ante for their characters. Here are a few of my favorites.
The Marsh King’s Daughter by Karen Dionne
You can’t have a list of sinister lake books and not include this bestseller about the daughter of a kidnapped woman and her abductor in the marshlands of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Dionne gives us all the ingredients for maximum creep factor: a cold, unforgiving climate, monsters both inside the house and out. An intense, atmospheric, and gorgeously written book that I couldn’t put down.
Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman
There’s no one better at literary noir than Laura Lippman, and she bumps things up a notch by weaving this tale around a real-life murder in a Baltimore park lake. And it’s not just that a woman was killed there; it’s how her body was found, after people complained about the lights not working in the lake’s fountain. When city workers go to investigate, they discover the grim cause: the woman’s decomposing body had shorted out the wiring. A fresh and original take on the dual-timeline creeper.
Leave No Trace by Mindy Mejia
Ten years ago, a man and his son trekked into the Boundary Waters, hundreds of miles of glacial lakes and untouched forests in Minnesota, and disappeared. Search teams found their campsite ravaged by what looked like a bear, and the two were presumed dead until a decade later, when the son reappears. With her dark and atmospheric prose and palpably vivid details, Mejia put me smack in the Minnesota wilderness. A spellbinding page-turner you’ll want to swallow in one sitting.
Stillhouse Lake by Rachel Caine
A stay-at-home mom’s life is turned upside down when a car crash reveals her husband’s sinister secret: he’s been killing women for years right under her nose, in their home’s attached garage. After the trial, she finds a fresh start on a quiet, Tennessee lake…until a body bobs to the surface. She recognizes the markings as her husband’s MO, which means not only has he found her, he’s coming for her and their kids. A terrifying, claustrophobic tale, the first in a series that will have you one-clicking your way through all three.
The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager
What’s better than a lake story? A lake story crafted around a decades-old, summer-camp tragedy. A woman haunted by memories of her three friends’ disappearance returns to the scene of the crime: Camp Nightingale with its spooky woods, remote cabins, and eerie lake full of secrets. Digging deeper means sorting through cryptic clues from the past, while fighting off threats in the present. I’m a sucker for a camp story, and this one is a nonstop twisting ride.
Not A Sound by Heather Gudenkauf
Granted, this story is set on a river and not a lake, but the creepiness factor still applies in spades. A deaf woman and her dog make a gruesome discovery: the body of a fellow nurse in the dense bush by the river, deep in the woods near her cabin. The remote setting, the wild waters, the main character’s inability to hear the villain crashing through the woods behind her…they all lend the story mystery and intrigue. I barely breathed for the last half of this book, a fantastic and enthralling read.
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