Literary Thriller – Write on the World

There’s a particular kind of danger attached to reinvention, especially when it happens far from home. In Salomé by Leslie Baird, that danger arrives wrapped in heat-soaked French afternoons, magnetic attraction, conspiracy, and the seductive promise that maybe death itself can be outwitted. Releasing May 19, 2026, this gothic-tinged literary thriller moves like a fever dream, gradually tightening from atmospheric travel fantasy into something deeply unsettling.

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One of the novel’s greatest strengths is its setting. Baird captures northwestern France so vividly that even the oppressive heat and lack of air conditioning somehow feel intoxicating. The small-town atmosphere is lush, languid, and quietly claustrophobic, creating the perfect backdrop for Courtney’s growing obsession with Salomé and her family. The relationship between Courtney and Salomé mirrors that setting beautifully at first—warm, inviting, almost innocent in its intensity. Their connection feels youthful and sincere, the kind of intimacy that blooms quickly when you’re untethered from your ordinary life.

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In If You Knew Me by S.P. Miskowski (out September 23, 2025), the lines between journalist and subject blur in a story that feels part true-crime, part literary thriller. Parker Dillon is a novice reporter whose career is already teetering—her aunt has sold the website where she works, and the new owner is keen to swap human writers for AI. But when she discovers a buried cold pitch from a woman named Ann Mason, her luck seems to change. Ann claims she once did something terrible and got away with it, and she’s strangely obsessed with a washed-up TV star. Parker pursues the story, chasing Ann from Seattle to Arizona, only to find herself in a dangerous game where she may be more prey than hunter.

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What makes this book especially compelling is how much it reads like one of those binge-worthy Netflix docudramas (Inventing Anna comes to mind). Miskowski weaves together Ann’s unsettling narrative and Parker’s journalistic pursuit with the same fascination those shows inspire—watching an extraordinary crime unravel while peering into the lives it warps. There’s even a late-chapter epilogue styled like a “Where Are They Now?” segment, the kind you’d expect to see at the end of a documentary.

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