The Running Bibliophile

The Stranger You Seek by Amanda Kyle Williams is set in Atlanta, Georgia, and the story begins as local media outlets receive chilling letters from a serial killer who promises to strike again. With each message, the pressure mounts on the Atlanta Police Department to identify the killer before another life is lost. Enter Keye Street, a former FBI profiler who now works as a private investigator and bail enforcement agent. As she digs deeper into the case and searches for connections between the victims, Keye begins to realize that the killer may be far closer to her than she ever imagined. This is a gripping debut suspense novel that I couldn’t put down from the very first page. It’s one of those rare books that pulls you in so completely that you wish you could call in sick just to finish it in one sitting. Sadly, I’m far too responsible to actually do that, so I had to settle for squeezing in chapters during my lunch break and every spare moment I could find. Before I gush too ...

It seems as though The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins was the undeniable smash hit of 2015. Everywhere I turned, someone was recommending it, and it consistently appeared on must-read lists, especially for fans of Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. Much of The Girl on the Train unfolds aboard a commuter train heading into London, where we’re introduced to one of the main characters, Rachel. She’s unemployed, struggling with alcoholism, and hiding the truth about her job status from her flatmate. During her daily train rides, Rachel passes by her old townhouse ... the home she once shared with her ex-husband, who now lives there with his new wife and their baby. A few doors down lives a seemingly perfect married couple, relatively new to the neighborhood. Rachel becomes fixated on them, creating imagined stories about their happy life. But when the wife Megan suddenly goes missing, Rachel believes she holds key pieces of the puzzle though the police dismiss her due to her unreliable s...