Tag: Thriller Novel

Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

The Sunshine Man by Emma Stonex explores how trauma shapes who we become

Mandy Webster

The Sunshine Man by Emma Stonex isn’t a fast-paced thriller—it’s a quietly devastating exploration of trauma, memory, and how early wounds can echo through a lifetime. Stonex’s latest novel begins with a startling line—“The week I shot a man clean through the head began like any other”—but what follows is less a story of vengeance than a study of how people are shaped by pain and circumstance.

Get your copy of The Sunshine Man from my independent online bookstore today!

When Birdie Keller learns that Jimmy Maguire, the man who killed her sister eighteen years earlier, has been released from prison, she sets out for London to confront him. What she finds is not closure, but a confrontation with the ghosts of her past.

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Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

The Burning Library by Gilly Macmillan: A brilliantly constructed thriller about power, secrets, and rivalry

Mandy Webster

From the very first chapter of The Burning Library by Gilly Macmillan, I was hooked. What begins with the discovery of Eleanor Bruton’s body on a frigid Scottish shore quickly spirals into an intricately woven mystery of rival secret societies, centuries-old manuscripts, and the dangerous pursuit of knowledge and power. This is one of those rare novels that manages to be both an intelligent thriller and a deeply thematic exploration of women’s ambition, rivalry, and connection.

Get your copy of The Burning Library from my independent online bookstore today!

The story alternates between Dr. Anya Brown, a rising academic star recruited by a shadowy group of scholars in St. Andrews, and Detective Constable Clio Spicer, who’s quietly investigating Eleanor’s suspicious death. What unfolds is a dark academic thriller that stretches across generations and ideologies. Macmillan deftly layers each clue and character revelation, creating a sense of elegant complexity that never tips into confusion.

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Call for Submissions

Call for Submissions: Mother Monster/Father Fiend

Mandy Webster

Elderfly Press is now accepting submissions for Mother Monster/Father Fiend, a new anthology exploring the shadowed edges of parenthood. We’re looking for short fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and black-and-white artwork that reveal the monstrous, misunderstood, or mythic aspects of motherhood and fatherhood.

This anthology invites you to challenge the cultural scripts of what a “good” parent looks like. Sometimes the monster is real—a parent whose choices hurt, haunt, or unravel the lives of those in their care. Other times, the monster is only a mask placed by society:

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Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

Searching for truth and redemption in Nina by Louise Phillips

Mandy Webster

Louise Phillips’s upcoming novel Nina (releasing November 18, 2025) is an emotional, tightly woven crime story about trauma, motherhood, and the resilience of a woman who refuses to be silenced or dismissed. Elizabeth Harte has already lived through the worst thing a parent can imagine: the disappearance of her daughter Nina twenty-five years ago. On the eve of her sixty-first birthday, she decides she’s done being treated like a fragile relic by her daughter and son-in-law. Haunted by grief and determined to find answers, Elizabeth leaves home and sets out to track down Nina—and, perhaps, reclaim herself in the process.

Get your copy of Nina from my independent online bookstore today!

Her journey intertwines with the story of Nick, a disgraced detective revisiting cold cases once investigated by his father, whose failure to solve Nina’s disappearance drove him to suicide. As new murders surface and old wounds resurface, their paths converge in a way that forces both to confront the past.

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Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

The Forest of Missing Girls by Nichelle Giraldes: A haunting story of magic, perfection, and the woods that watch us

Mandy Webster

Lia Gregg always feared the forest around her childhood home, a dark expanse whispered about in local legends and haunted by disappearances of girls like her. When a breakup forces her back into her family’s house, those fears take on a chilling immediacy: a teenage girl goes missing from their backyard, and Lia’s younger sister could be next. At first glance, The Forest of Missing Girls by Nichelle Giraldes seems like a straightforward thriller. But that expectation is misleading—and that’s both the book’s biggest marketing misstep and its hidden strength.

Get your copy of The Forest of Missing Girls from my independent online bookstore today!

The publisher’s description positions this as a standard thriller: a suspenseful story about a lurking danger in the woods, complete with disappearances and secrets. In reality, the story leans heavily into magical realism and science fiction, creating an experience far more complex and atmospheric than a typical thriller. The forest itself is a fully realized character—alive, watchful, and mysterious. Girls vanish and reappear across impossible distances, and the trees seem to hold their own consciousness, communicating with both the missing girls and those left behind.

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Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

The Missing Half by Ashley Flowers: A story of sisterhood, loss, and a twist that left me stunned

Mandy Webster

In The Missing Half, two women connected by tragedy team up to uncover the truth about their missing sisters—and what they find is far darker than either expected. Ashley Flowers, best known as the host of the Crime Junkie podcast, delivers another haunting mystery in The Missing Half, a New York Times bestseller that blends emotional depth with a compelling, small-town suspense plot.

Get your copy of The Missing Half from my independent online bookstore today!

The story follows Nicole “Nic” Monroe, a twenty-four-year-old still reeling from the disappearance of her older sister, Kasey, seven years earlier. When Jenna Connor, whose own sister vanished under eerily similar circumstances, reaches out, the two women form an uneasy bond rooted in shared grief—and a mutual determination to find answers.

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Writers on Writing

Creepy characters we love to hate (and secretly can’t)

Mandy Webster

There’s something fascinating about a character who creeps you out, makes you uneasy, or shocks you with their actions—but somehow, you can’t bring yourself to hate them completely. These are the villains and morally gray characters who blur the line between right and wrong, forcing readers to wrestle with their own sense of judgment. They unsettle us, intrigue us, and make our hearts race, which is why they are perfect companions for October reading.

Sure, she’s pretty. But there’s also something uncanny about her. Do you trust her?

In thrillers and suspense novels, some characters are written to be frighteningly clever, ruthless, or unpredictable, yet their motivations or circumstances make their actions feel, at least in part, understandable. In How to Kill Men and Get Away with It by Katy Brent, the protagonist’s cunning and dark choices are chilling, but her perspective invites empathy and even admiration for her ingenuity. Bad Men by Julie Mae Cohen and This Girl’s a Killer by Emma C. Wells present characters whose morally questionable or violent actions are layered with complexity—making you uneasy, yet unable to fully condemn them.

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Call for Submissions

Call for Submissions: Be My Weird/Wyrd Valentine

Mandy Webster

Love has always had a dark side—and we want to see yours. Elderfly Press is now accepting submissions for Be My Weird/Wyrd Valentine (working title), an anthology exploring the uncanny, unsettling, and sometimes downright horrifying side of romantic relationships.

We’re looking for stories, poems, essays, and black-and-white art that dive into the strange corners of love and desire—where passion turns perilous, intimacy hums with unease, and devotion blurs the line between beauty and terror. Whether it’s romance that defies reality, affection tinged with dread, or longing that transforms into something unrecognizable, we want work that lingers in the mind and twists the heart. Let the strange, the eerie, and the passionate collide—show us the love that frightens, bewilders, and enthralls.

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Call for Submissions

Now accepting book-length submissions

Mandy Webster

At Elderfly Press, we are committed to publishing bold, literary works that unsettle, provoke, and linger long after the final page. We seek book-length fiction and creative nonfiction that confronts the hidden violence of the world—psychological, social, or supernatural—and gives voice to stories that challenge the patriarchal status quo.

We are especially drawn to:

  • Literary thrillers and suspense novels with a sharp edge.
  • Horror fiction that unsettles through atmosphere, voice, or psychological depth.
  • Creative nonfiction—including memoirs—that could be read with the intensity of a thriller or horror novel.
  • Works that expose the dark underbelly of the patriarchy, pulling back the veil on power, violence, and survival.
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Writers on Writing

The psychology of fear in literature and why we can’t look away #spooktober

Mandy Webster

There’s something irresistible about a story that makes our hearts race and our palms sweat, even when we know we’re perfectly safe on our couch. Fear in literature taps into a deep part of our psyche, and understanding why we seek it out can make us appreciate the stories that haunt us even more.

Why do we love to read spooky stories, especially in October?

Fear works in books because it connects to emotions we experience in real life: anxiety, uncertainty, and the unknown. When we read a thriller like Her One Regret by Donna Freitas, we feel the suspense of a character navigating danger and deception, our brains mirroring their tension as if it were our own. Horror, on the other hand, like Salt Bones by Jennifer Givhan or Something in the Walls by Daisy Pearce, introduces us to scenarios that feel uncanny or impossible. Our minds grapple with the unknown, the supernatural, and the morally unsettling, creating a lingering sense of dread.

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