We’ve all spent far more time at home in recent months than we ever could have imagined. We’ve been wearing face masks and buying hand sanitizer by the gallon and disinfecting our groceries and shopping online all in an effort to make sure that our home remains a refuge from the unseen danger lurking all around us, a place where we can stay safe.
But what if our homes are not safe? What if the monster is already inside our house?
My new psychological suspense The Wicked Sister pits Rachel Cunningham and her sister Diana in a life-long game of predator and prey at the family’s luxurious log cabin home deep in the northern Michigan wilderness—a game Rachel has no idea they are playing until gradually she learns that the home she loves is also a place of unspeakable evil, and the bond she shares with her sister is the most poisonous of all.
In the tradition of Robert Bloch’s Psycho and Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, all of the thrillers on my list turn the characters’ homes from a place of safety into a place of mortal danger. But be forewarned: if you choose to read any of these while you’re sheltering at home, you might want to leave the lights on!
Out, by John Smolens
Del Maki is recovering from hip surgery when a very pregnant home health care nurse visits him at his isolated cabin in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula wilderness on the eve of an epic snowstorm. That this novel takes place in an area I know well and love isn’t the only reason it’s first on my list. Dangers from the storm, dangers from the unsavory characters who end up sheltering at the cabin—it’s clear from the first pages that this story is not going to end well.
The Turn of the Key, by Ruth Ware
My mother always said that when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is—an axiom Rowan Caine would have done well to consider before taking a job as a live-in nanny with a staggeringly generous salary in a luxurious “smart” home fitted out with all the technological conveniences she could imagine. If she had, she wouldn’t have found herself sitting in prison awaiting trial for the murder of one of the children in her care.
The Perfect Nanny, by Leila Slimani
This time it’s the person doing the hiring who should have known better. A quiet, polite, devoted woman who sings to your children, cleans your chic Paris apartment, stays late without complaint, and hosts enviable kiddie parties can’t possibly be as “perfect” as she seems.
Home Before Dark, by Riley Sager
“You can’t go home again” is the maxim Maggie Hold should have been taken to heart before she went back to her childhood home, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods—not the least because this is the home where her family lived for only three weeks before fleeing in terror in the dead of night.
Sometimes I Lie, by Alice Feeney
What can possibly be more claustrophobic than a story narrated by a woman in a coma? Helpless, completely at the mercy of those caring for her, Amber Reynolds doesn’t remember how she got into such an unenviable position, but she has a suspicion that her husband had something to do with it.
Into the Jungle, by Erica Ferencik
After the teaching job that brings scrappy, adventurous Lily Bushwold to Bolivia falls through, she follows the bush hunter who captures her heart to the last in a string of ever-more-isolated river towns deep in the jungle. Hoping to build a home here, she’s confronted with a ruthless world of lawless poachers, bullheaded missionaries, and desperate indigenous tribes driven to the brink of extinction, it takes all Lily’s courage and resourcefulness to survive. Rich, raw, and real, this is a rip-roaring adventure like nothing I’ve read, with a heroine I won’t soon forget.
The Cult on Fog Island, by Mariette Lindstein
When Sofia meets the handsome, charming leader of a mysterious New Age movement, she’s dazzled and intrigued. Struck by the peace and purposefulness of his followers, she decides to make their beautiful mansion on a small island off the coast of Sweden her new home. But as summer gives way to winter, and it becomes clear that the cult leader rules with an iron fist and that his word is law, Sofia begins to understand how very, very alone she is and that no one ever leaves Fog Island.
Room, by Emma Donoghue
No list of homebound thrillers would be complete without this shocking, riveting, and ultimately uplifting story that takes place in an eleven-by-eleven-foot space. If you haven’t yet read this terrifying and magnificent novel, what are you waiting for?
*
