#suspense book

[ashleyearley]

First Page of Heart of Skulls

Flicking the lighter, I brought the flame to the tip of my cigarette, watching the white paper burn. The paper darkened and flaked before falling to the gravel below. My mind was static, barely processing what my eyes followed. I tracked time by how many cigarettes I burned through, my eyes only blinking from the falling black flakes when a train raced past. I never heard the approach. The cars just suddenly appeared with the blare of a horn. 

Blindly watching the sunset over the tracks, I let the night air that bite through my hoodie. When the next train sped by, stifling my cigarette, I couldn’t help my shiver. I didn’t bother digging into my pocket for my lighter again. The trains had stolen four cigarettes from me already. 

Inhaling the smell of smoke and oil, I stood from the graffitied wall, ready to suck it up and get out of the cold. 

Though, my gut still twisted at the thought of going home. Being confined to chipped and dented walls made my organs gnarl like they were trying to kill me before I reached my front door. 

I walked across the gravel until my beat-up high tops hit pavement, the rubber scuffing along the road leading to my neighborhood. Keeping my head down, I only looked up when small, one-story homes popped up on either side of the street. Barred windows, locked doors with gates over them, leaf-covered yards—it was like the neighbors had banded together to create one massive shitfest.

My house was halfway down the street, six houses from the corner bus stop, and squished between two other trash-infested homes. I walked over uneven bricks to the front door, steeling myself as I yanked open the gate to the unlocked door behind it. 

The house was stale. The air was dry the moment the world was locked outside. Smoking was forbidden, a rule Mom had made, but heavy drinking was encouraged. The TV was always on, whether someone was watching, or it was on for background noise. Usually, there were at least eight empty beer bottles on the table beside the chair claimed by my pathetic excuse for a father. Old brown leather and stained, his ass was the only one allowed to slump in the crusty throne. 

Except he wasn’t sitting in it.

“Motherfuckers, where are yeh?” came a garbled voice from the back of the house. A cabinet banged shut. 

Copyright © 2023 by Ashley Earley

Heart of Skulls - coming October 3rd, 2023

[shotbyshe]

The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

Score: 4/5

Full review here.

[lightyearsandbeyond]

Tom Moore is back in BREAKDOWN

Tom Moore is back in a heart-pounding thriller that will keep readers on the edge of their seats, as they join the relentless journalist on a pursuit of the truth, facing unimaginable odds and risking everything for justice and love…. When a business superstar inexplicably begins dismantling her own legacy in a live televised press conference and is then abducted at the same press conference,…

[kitabayduakan]

Mystery and Crime Books for Thriller and Suspense Lovers - Kitabay

Find the perfect read for fans of suspense and intrigue. Shop now for the latest bestsellers and discover new crime authors. Join our mystery book club and get recommendations and reviews.

[rabid-transcendentalist]

Mexico when Texans have to start crossing the border for a better life good heathcare

[itsfullofstars]

It's official: I'm publishing my first work of fiction, the unhinged novella SKIN & BONES, on 10/22/24 (just in time for Halloween). Pre-order the ebook now!

A mind-bending psychological thriller told in first person by a broken man who submits to a bizarre medical experiment in an effort to redeem himself, and loses his mind in the process.

It's Fight Club meets The Parallax View meets E.R. meets Shutter Island... and utterly unique in its own right. A quick, propulsive, hallucinatory read, rich with supernatural elements and medical suspense, SKIN & BONES takes you on a journey into the labyrinth of one man's fractured psyche.

Skull art by @paul.hollingworth - and it's NOT AI!

[autism-alley]

hi originally posted this at the end of a long thread of back and forth, here’s the og post if you want full context but i feel like this needs to be its own post especially bc i keep seeing this argument being made—the argument that the kids (in this case it was annabeth) SHOULD just know the monsters are monsters and who they are and how to defeat them before ever encountering them, that it’s a problem if they don’t.

the problem is not if 12 year olds should recognize a trap when they see one, even if they’re smart 12 year olds, and if that’s realistic. that is entirely beside the point.

the problem is rick riordan wrote a book series whose formula is bringing myths to the modern age and he’s not sticking true to that in the show—percy jackson and the olympians’ Shtick is taking these classic, ancient threats and giving them a new face. these traps work because these kids are not walking into a cave marked with Get Out and getting ambushed by monsters—the monsters are disguised as harmless mortal human beings, in harmless mortal human being places (for the most part) and i think we—and more importantly, the show—are all forgetting the mist, the magic involved here. it’s not just that medusa is a “creepy lady with her eyes covered” it’s that there is ancient magic at work here, magic that, like the systems of abuse pjo exists to criticize, has been evolving and continuing its malevolence for millennia. it’s formulaic, that’s the point. it’s the same trap you’ve learned about all your childhood, the same trap a thousand children before you learned all their childhoods, and still, it works. you fall into the trap. because that’s how generational abuse works. it’s a trap. it isn’t enough to learn monsters exist, what they look like from a second hand story that originated thousands of years ago. if you want to escape alive, you have to adapt as quickly as they do, recognize their face, and ultimately, beyond any individual trap, the game itself has to change. real, generational change.

so. the problem is rick riordan wrote a series with a formula for action that perfectly captures the overarching, systemic conflicts he was commentating on, and then threw that formula out in the show because it was “unrealistic”. i don’t give a damn about realism when it works to the detriment of the story. this is a story about generational abuse, yes, but it’s told through ‘a tale as old as time’ and that’s why it works so fucking well. and when it comes to basic storytelling, if your characters know the threat before they even walk in and you do practically nothing to then make up for the stakes you have removed, that’s a flaw. now you’ve lost the entertainment value for your audience, on top of also lessening your themes.

something else that is so. honestly soul-crushing as a writer and a creative, is that to me this is reflective of the way we are now afraid to tell earnest stories. stories where we care not for listening to the people who want to pick apart fictional, mythical, fantasy stories for not being “realistic” instead of aligning with our target audience who acknowledges reality is not what makes a story. think of your favorite movie, show, book, comic, what have you—has the reason for your favoritism ever been because it is the most reasonable, the most grounded, the most practical out of any you’ve seen? or is it because of the emotion? the way it speaks to you, to your life and the person you are? the journey it takes you on? is the percy jackson and the olympians book series so good because it’s inherently realistic?

the secret to storytelling is, very simply, focus on your story. everything else is secondary. if it’s written well, it doesn’t matter to me that the characters walk into a trap that, to the audience, is obviously a trap. because i can understand how the characters don’t know it, and how the story falls apart if the narrative just tells the characters it’s a trap from the jump. that’s what dramatic irony is—first used in greek tragedies! this is literally a tale as old as time in every sense except for the end—where it’s happy. and it’s not earned if we don’t first see, over and over, the status quo as a tragic trap.

it’s not about if annabeth (or the other kids) is “smart enough” to not walk into a trap, or about if she’s just too prideful to not walk into what she knows is a trap (or any reason that could apply to the other characters), it’s that annabeth, at the end of the day, is a character. she is a storytelling tool for the messages of the narrative. that doesn’t make her any lesser. in fact ignoring it reduces her, because it reduces what she represents. it’s about how rick riordan, or whoever else at disney, has fumbled the storytelling bag so ridiculously hard that they can’t take the simple, effective formula outlined from start to finish (by good ol 2009 rick himself) and adapt it to the screen without answering the most unimportant, derailing, anti-story questions.

[wheres-hoid]

This is an RE: Dracula (Bloody FM) appreciation post 💕💕

[i-dare-say]

You know what I love about Binghe's character? His role in the story and the way it changes our perception of him through the narrative.

We first meet him as this poor boy and we, just like Shen Qingqiu, get swept by the image of the white lotus. He's a teenager, and we're told that at this age he didn't have any of the darkness that would reign over his life after the Abyss. We're only shown an obedient and sweet Luo Binghe. He is the "young and innocent protagonist".

But we know about his future. Shen Qingqiu tells us so many times that the Abyss will corrupt him irreversebly, that he will come back and take his revenge on the scum villain. The problem is that we see the story through Shen Qingqiu's point of view, he is our protagonist, making Binghe our villain. So we read about the disciple days with the constant thought that this boy will one day become the antagonist.

And see, there's a slight difference between villain and antagonist. A villain is perceived as someone with bad intentions, while an antagonist is just someone who opposes the protagonist.

When Luo Binghe comes back from the Abyss, he is both villain and antagonist. He goes against Shen Qingqiu (antagonist), and the story tells us he wants to kill him like the original PIDW (villain).

Then it's revealed that it may not be exactly like that. First, we're shown that Binghe has romantic feelings for Shen Qingqiu (which, yeah, it's obvious to everyone but him, but still), giving Binghe a new possible role in the story: love interest. This immediately reduces the perceived danger of his actions. It brings him closer, it makes him a safer character.

Yes, there are stories with villainous love interests that do horrible shit, but we're dealing with the most common way narratives treat this type of character: generally, the love interest is good. And so, the moment this role is put upon Luo Binghe by the narrative itself, it also influences the reader.

But Shen Qingqiu, and consequently we, don't lower our guard. Despite being the love interest now, we also know that Luo Binghe has conspired to take down his master and organized the sower plague. He's attacked Huan Hua Palace, killed Gongyi Xiao and many others, putting the blame on Shen Qingqiu. By the end of book 2 he's villain, antagonist and love interest.

But it all gets proven wrong. That almost everything that happened to Shen Qingqiu was not because of Luo Binghe. We discover that there are other villains in the shadows.

The sower plague and the the attack at Huan Hua Palace was caused by Tianlang-Jun and Zhuzhi-Lang. Qiu Haitang's involvement and Shen Qingqiu's imprisonment was one of the Old Palace Master's schemes. All of this destroys Binghe's role as villain and antagonist.

This is the moment Shen Qingqiu decides to trust Binghe, pushing the reader to do the same. Because he's just "love interest" now and by the standard conventions, he's good. We trust him to be. Shen Qingqiu himself starts to project onto him that same image of white lotus. Since our image of Luo Binghe was so bad previously, this makes it jump way higher. It lulls us into this much better perception of his character.

The Old Palace Master was a villain and he died, as villains are often destined to. The only obstacle remains Tianlang-Jun, who doesn't harm Shen Qingqiu because of Zhuzhi-Lang's wishes (not an antagonist), but also wants to merge the realms (villain).

So our protagonist and love interest move toward the action, the big battle against the final boss. The villains get defeated easily and after the truth of what happened to Su Xiyan, Tianlang-Jun gives up his plan. His role as villain ends there. But the story has more antagonists to reveal.

Luo Binghe has never stopped being one. The narrative only hid his real motivations and let him cover himself with the role of love interest. And at this moment, he drops the mask and lets all of his feelings out, everything he didn't tell Shen Qingqiu nor the readers. He becomes the final antagonist, the one we've had since the very beginning.

The thing that saves him is his status as love interest, because no, he's not the only one to blame for what is happening. There's Xin Mo, who has fed on his insecurities and negative feelings, and Shen Qingqiu himself. He is the one who has constantly pushed Binghe to the side, believing himself to do the right thing, first by giving Binghe his death and then by trying to keep him "protected" from his father.

In the end, Luo Binghe wasn't a villain. Shen Qingqiu was, and he dies. But since he's not a real villain, he's allowed to come back.

When everything is over, their story comes to an end. The narrative itself leaves them free, to be whoever they want to be.

[anchoredgalaxy]

i do hate how much acotar discourse revolves around trying to pretend the story isn't plotted like garbage. the entire second book of this series is a giant retcon and characters are constantly changed on the fly. anytime someone tries to defend this series as if the characters are real people capable of making decisions and as if the plotting is at all organic i just can't take that seriously.

[driveintheaterofthemind]

5 Random Alfred Hitchcock Paperbacks

[carriehobbs]

if i can be honest here this is really one of my least favourite parts of the way the romances are written. the idea that you can only really fall in love once (and both the related ideas that, if this love is real, then every other relationship you've had must not have really been love and that, if you have been in love before, your previous love somehow cheapens the current love) is so completely juvenile. it's the kind of line of thought you'd expect to see in a young adult novel marketed exclusively to 12- to 16-year-olds for whom every emotion feels like the most intense, ultimate feeling they could ever have, and who do not yet have the life experiences to understand (or appreciate) the complexities of love. "i've only ever loved this one person this way, every other feeling i've thought was love has just been a poor imitation" is a pretty thought but is ultimately a fantasy (and one that i, personally, find incredibly disrespectful towards people who have been in love and then fall in love again).

it would be one thing if this idea was espoused by only one of the characters. if only n (just as an example) bought into the idea that only one love can be your true love, then that would say something about n's character, their romantic and life history, the way they view and interpret the world, etc. but instead all of the ros seem to follow this line of thought - they've all never been in real love before, if they and the detective broke up they'd never experience this kind of love again, they're all soulmates, etc. and in that way this idea is not a characterization choice for particular characters, but an idea perpetuated by the work as a whole. and in my (biased and personal) opinion, it's a childish and unrealistic idea.

[jessica-leatherman]

Surreal short stories from the Fore Square book series. A sampling of stories told from different times and settings.

5th book to be published January 29,2024-Kansas Day. All books available on Amazon.

What happened to Rose Manleather and her sons?

Some things belong and others do not. Can you decide which or can you come to your own Double Cola Talk epiphany and get the answers?

A curious life’s journey of the character Rose Manleather, sorted and collected together in fragmented framed form. All for a reader to enjoy piecing back together through the Fore Square series of short stories, riddles, metaphors, language, codes, innuendos, humor and interpretation.

Our main character is dyslexic and her stories and journal are unedited. Are you smart enough to figure out wha shes telling you and solve the mystery?

More FREE surreal stories HIDDEN in writers Instagram ProFile jessica_leatherman

[writing-to-survive]

#170

"You did it? You created all the horrors I went through?" The book character quivers.

"Yes," the author sighs.

Tears trickle out of the book character's eyes. "Why?"

"Plot. Suspence. Charater development," the author answers. "People do like to read it."

"You're sick."

The author smiles. "Maybe I am. But that sickness created you, your world. And, better yet, people pay to read it." The author gets close to their book character, "you only exist because of me."

[alainaxavenue]

Daughters of Evelyn - now available on Apple Books, Kindle, and Barnes & Noble!

Immerse yourself in a tale that beautifully blends our rich Gullah-Geechee culture with supernatural fantasy, creating a unique and mesmerizing experience.

This short story serves as a prequel to our novel series, set in the enchanting city of Charleston, SC.

Check it out, share with friends, and leave a review—your feedback means the world to us.

Thank you. 🤍

Follow us on IG: thesgcollective_

[shu-bullshit]

Another series for AARP, illustrating Mary Higgins Clark's novel "I've Got You Under My Skin"

There are 12 illustrations in total, I've put some of my favorites here, you could find all of them on my website!

AD: Josef Edmonds