Books like 24 Hours — picked by fans

Published in 1997, DeBecker offered something no one else I was reading came close to: an explanation of warning signs that precede violence that are so subtle they leave many people with a bad feeling about a situation, for example, with a stranger, but no idea why they feel that way. The temptation then is to override the gut feeling: “What is wrong with me? It’s the middle of the day and this nice man just wants to help me carry my groceries up to my apartment.”

DeBecker himself is a fascinating figure. He grew up with a heroin-addicted mother who waved a gun around frequently and finally shot his stepfather before committing suicide when he was 16. DeBecker learned to rely on small, subtle clues to tell when she was dangerous and when she was not. After her death, he was taken in by Rosemary Clooney, the mother of… show more.

This book messed with my head in all the right ways. I expected scares, but I didn’t expect the emotional gut-punch.

It’s not just about death; it’s about grief, denial, and how far someone will go to outrun the pain.

You feel the characters trying to escape what’s coming, running from fear, from loss, from truth, but it always catches up. The horror creeps in slowly, then hits like a truck, literally. Once the line between life and death is crossed, there’s no turning back. 

It’s one of the few books that left me genuinely unsettled because I understood the choices, even when they led straight into darkness.

When Chris, the main character of this novel, dies, he teeters between a majestic heaven and the depths of hell when he can’t let go of his life because of his wife’s descent into depression.

This is a love story about a spirit that cannot move on because his soul is so deeply connected to his wife in the human world even though the peace heaven offers is tempting. This is the first novel opened my mind to the connections between souls on earth and those in the afterlife.

I was working as a nanny in New York City when I discovered this wild novel, and I consumed it in short order. Marie, fresh from prison, is hired out of pity to watch a high school friend’s daughter. “The situation would’ve been humiliating had Marie any ambition in life. Fortunately, Marie was not in any way ambitious.” Marie is instead selfish, culpable, hungry, and smitten—first with her friend’s life, then her friend’s husband, and most dangerously, her friend’s daughter. Dermansky’s novel could easily slip into thriller territory, and while it is as fast-paced and compulsively readable, instead we discover unpredictably that Bad Marie is really a love story.

The Cellar will have you holding your breath at each turn! I felt like my skin was crawling while I was reading this book and I was thinking of ways to escape the nightmare. Natasha Preston did a fantastic job of making you feel like you’re living in Summer’s shoes. It’s a gripping story of a horrific kidnapping and the new life Summer finds herself living in. This book makes you glance twice over your shoulder when you’re walking alone at night and it is a reminder of how quickly something like this can happen. The Cellar opens your mind to both the kidnapper and the captives. Highly recommend this book!   

Although this is my fun pick, it is also a serious book that I use in the classroom. There have been countless attempts by modern authors to retell biblical stories. Horn’s book creatively transfers the biblical story of Joseph and his brothers to the modern period, with a feminist twist. This book is engaging and coherent enough that it can be read and enjoyed without any knowledge of the Bible or Jewish history, although such knowledge makes it all the better!

Early in his career, Stephen King wrote half a dozen books under the pen name “Richard Bachman,” and decades later, he revived Bachman for one last novel about a small-time crook who depends on advice from his deceased partner in crime when attempting to pull off the kidnapping of a millionaire’s baby.

It reminds me of Steinbeck, with its pairing of a hapless, brutish soul and a smarter, slicker partner who can’t save him from himself, and the windings of fate as King spins them out broke my heart.

Does a kidnapper deserve sympathy? No, but then again, yes, and the amazing thing is how powerfully Stephen King puts you in this unfortunate man’s shoes and makes you feel what he’s feeling. 

This memoir is both haunting and oddly inspirational.

On 10 June 1991, eleven-year-old Jaycee Dugard was abducted from a school bus stop within sight of her home in Tahoe, California. It was the last her family saw of her for over eighteen years. In 2009 an investigation discovered her living in a tent behind her kidnapper’s house.

I love this memoir for a whole lot of reasons, but in large part because there’s not a trace of self-pity in her account—despite her having had so much of her life “stolen” from her—and because of her determination to find faith in humanity again.

Laura McHugh writes about parts of the U.S. that are often either villainized or over-simplified. Instead of leaning into the cliches, she brings these landscapes and their people alive with compassion but without pity. From the first paragraph, I could feel the oppressiveness of the protagonist’s world but I could also see its wild beauty. This is a place where the air is “heavy as a sodden sponge” and insects buzz like an “unholy plague.” The darkness implied in the title has a layered meaning here: there’s the darkness of ignorance, the darkness of the human mind that is capable of justifying cruelty as salvation, and the darkness of hidden and ignored places. 

After much soul-searching, Charlotte Emory resolves to leave the motley cast of characters that make up her family in Clarion, Maryland. Her plans are foiled, however, by happenstance. When she goes to cash her getaway cheque, she becomes entangled with robber Jake Simms, who takes her hostage and spirits her south to Florida. Forks in the road abound in this novel, figurative and literal. In the end, however, and through sheer force of character, Charlotte bids farewell to Jake in particular and happenstance in general. She returns to her family, having made up her mind to take only those paths in life which reflect her true character and ensure that she is the wife and mother she should really be.