January Has the Most Thrilling Books on Our Reading List

A mysterious heiress is the focus of this new novel by best-selling gothic thriller author Hawkins. When Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore dies, she leaves her fortune to her adopted son Camden, who refuses it, instead becoming a teacher and marrying Jules. After his uncle dies a decade later, the couple arrives at the family estate. Family secrets are exposed, including the circumstances of Cam’s mother’s kidnapping as a child, what happened to her four husbands and how Cam came into her life.

Belén is just trying to get through high school in East Oakland and maybe get a boyfriend, but it’s complicated. Her father has left, she might not graduate and her best friend Leti is pregnant by a secret boyfriend. To rebel, Belén helps Leti, hangs out with an older guy and cuts class, but she realizes her peers are moving on without her. Leti is becoming a mom and her classmates are off to college. Can Belén create her own path forward and break generational cycles?

On the eve of Hurricane Harvey, Jia needs to find shelter for her and her son, Ishaan. The family has been going through it, with a recent divorce and a school suspension on their minds. They flee to Jia’s sister Seema’s house, despite Seema’s overly-friendly husband, Vipul. Then Vipul's brother and wife arrive. Before the end of the night, the storm is raging and there’s been a murder in the house. Jia must protect herself and her son from the storm, as well as the killer in their midst.

Eliot is here to tell you the lurid tale of a Greek island, an ex-movie star and her friends and a murder. He knows because he was there. In this suspense novel, a narrator tells of an Easter holiday gone wrong, with hatred, revenge and twists and turns at the core.

In this comedy of manners and tense character study, Millie, a senior resident assistant at the University of Arkansas, jumps at a unique opportunity for betterment with visiting professor Agatha. A group of unruly students and a tragic prank threaten everything Millie has worked for.

Lucy and Margot are an unlikely pair – Lucy, charismatic and popular; Margot, shy and in the shadows. They form an alliance with a pair of other girls and live off-campus together, becoming close friends. Then, one of the frat boys next door is murdered and Lucy is missing in this taut thriller.

A meeting for the Australian Mystery Writers' Society aboard a train goes off the rails when one of them is murdered. It’s up to the other writers to put their detective hats on and solve the case in this locked-room mystery.

India Allwood has risen through the ranks from awkward teen to Broadway ingenue to TV superhero, but when she publicly criticizes her new trite but prestige film about adoption, she sets off a media storm and wave of public criticism. India just has to look at her own family to know that as an adoptive parent, no matter what the public is saying, the truth is always more nuanced and complicated than it seems.

Set in a futuristic surveillance state in Botswana, this techno-punk horror novel tells the story of Nelah, monitored by her husband via tracking chip and waiting for her daughter to be grown in a lab. A night of bad decisions leads to a crime that Nelah attempts to hide, but the ghosts of Nelah's deeds hunt Nelah down and threaten to expose her and harm her loved ones. She must help unravel a political conspiracy if she wants to save everyone else.

Soon to be a major motion picture starring Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell and Henry Cavill, this spy novel follows agent Argylle, who may be the key to saving the world from chaos. Word on the street is this novel was actually penned by Taylor Swift, but it’s probably just meta-promotion for the film, and a clever one at that.