Here are 100 books that Her Mother's Grave fans have personally recommended if you like
Her Mother's Grave.
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I’ve read everything I could lay my hands on since I was young, and like so many others, I’ve always preferred to read about unusual characters, uncommon situations, or both simultaneously. The books I described here fulfill those requirements for me, even though they are superficially very different from one another. Now that I write my own novels, my over-arching goal is for each of my books to be better than the one that precedes it. I do my best to offer my readers interesting characters in compelling situations, and if my readers think I’ve succeeded, I will be a very happy author.
I have a soft spot for stories in which animals play a prominent role, and this book does that very well. Jerry McNeal is a police officer with a special talent. He senses when something bad is about to happen, and when he follows his intuition, he’s always right. When he runs off the road in a snowstorm, a large dog climbs into his car and keeps him warm until he’s rescued. Only later does he learn he was saved by a police dog who had died in the line of duty.
I love the partnership that develops between Jerry and the dog, especially since Jerry’s adjustment to having a ghostly partner is amusing. The book is short but well-written, with humor adding sparkle to the story.
Call it a premonition. Call it intuition. Call it anything you like, but Pennsylvania State Trooper Jerry McNeal simply thinks of it as "that feeling."
That feeling may come on without warning, so intense he can't breathe.
Or, it may be a gentle nag that pulls at him until he decides to do something about it. He never quite knows what "it" is until he gets there, but when he arrives, he always knows he's found what he is looking for.
During one of the biggest snowstorms of the year, Trooper McNeal feels that familiar stir. An unease that grows…
Rusty Allen is an Iraqi War veteran with PTSD. He moves to his grandfather's cabin in the mountains to find some peace and go back to wilderness training.
He gets wrapped up in a kidnapping first, as a suspect and then as a guide. He tolerates the sheriff's deputy with…
I never dreamed I would write books about the Amish, and now I have over thirty to my credit. In researching my books, I have fallen in love with the varied culture the Amish represent. I’m a romance writer at heart, and sort of fell backward into writing mysteries. And I’m so thankful I did! What I love the most is how the cultures (ours and theirs) must work together (or not, depending on the people in the story) to solve the crime. Trouble sets many more obstacles than a regular mystery. More denial that someone could be guilty.
I love Patricia Johns’ romances, so I knew when I started this book I would love it too. The Amish community of Blueberry is very conservative (much more than other communities I have written and read about), but it makes for an exciting escape.
It’s also quaint and filled with fabulous characters, like Petunia, our amateur detective, and the victim, Ike Smoker. Ike is particularly fascinating, as a secret life is revealed as the book continues. Most of us feel that the Amish live pure and wholesome lives, and for the most part, I believe they do. But there’s always a black sheep to shake things up.
The mystery was captivating, with a number of plausible suspects that kept me guessing until the very end.
The quiet Amish lifestyle isn't all that it seems in this debut cozy mystery series, for fans of Amanda Flower and Wanda E. Brunstetter.
Petunia Yoder is Blueberry, Pennsylvania’s youngest old maid, at twenty-two years of age, and completely unmarriageable. But she’s determined to celebrate her friends’ weddings with joy and a full heart. Unfortunately, Petunia’s best friend, Eden Beiler, is playing a dangerous game with a man who is ruining her reputation.
Ike Smoker is the community’s iceman—the one who cuts, stores, and sells the ice—and when Petunia discovers him dead with an ice pick in his chest, Eden…
I used to get in trouble (nightly) for eating with my book propped against my plate. Yet with all the books I devoured, there was never one about a kid that looked like me with a family like mine. The single anomaly was Blubber, which absolutely thrilled me to see a supporting character named Tracy Wu. And while the YA world has thankfully become more diverse, BIPOC authors and protagonists are still the exception in adult literature. I’m excited to share this list of badass female AAPI authors who write equally strong protagonists because, though we’ve come a long way since Tracy Wu, we still have further to go.
I’m a sucker for any book that dangles codes for me to solve, so that’s what immediately drew me into this novel. In it, the clues are in poetry form, taken from the diary of a murdered patient of the protagonist, Dr. Lydia Weston. But beyond the tantalizing codes, I appreciated that this novel stayed true to the style and attitudes of the late 1800s, something that doesn’t always happen with historical fiction.
Ritu Mukerji is also adept at bringing a sophisticated nuance to her exploration of racism, classism, and sexism. An added bonus is that rather than merely playing one on TV, Mukerji is also an actual physician and clearly knows her medicine without overwhelming a layperson like me.
For fans of Jacqueline Winspear and Charles Todd, Murder by Degrees is a historical mystery set in 19th-century Philadelphia, following a pioneering woman doctor as she investigates the disappearance of a young patient who is presumed dead.
Philadelphia, 1875: It is the start of term at Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. Dr. Lydia Weston, professor and anatomist, is immersed in teaching her students in the lecture hall and hospital. When the body of a patient, Anna Ward, is dredged out of the Schuylkill River, the young chambermaid’s death is deemed a suicide.…
Liza O’Connell was a horror buff in every sense of the word. But there was one deadly nightmare she would never be able to talk about … her own. A friend murdered. A business in trouble. A marriage struggling to survive. And that’s just the beginning.
I’m a backpacker at heart, a high school English teacher, and a bestselling author with an eye on what’s really happening under the surface and what people are really thinking. My mum taught me early to "watch the quiet ones," and I’ve always been fascinated by the way people can promote a very public self while maintaining something totally different on the inside. Perhaps that’s why I love a good twist! I also think that in the current climate of extremely savvy thriller readers, it’s impressive to wrongfoot readers and stay true to the clues hidden in the pages.
This book took my breath away. I thought I had it all figured out and how wrong I was. Gillian McAllister is the queen of the smart, well-threaded twist, and she layers her plot with moral dilemmas that make her lead characters so relatable.
The plot centres around a policewoman and a terrible choice she must make, but for almost half of the book, I had no idea how tricked I was, and I feel like that’s hard to pull off in the thriller genre.
THE HEART-STOPPING NOVEL OF A MISSING PERSON'S CASE WITH A TWIST FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR
'A cleverly crafted, emotional and thought-provoking thriller with one of the best twists I've read. Superb' CLAIRE DOUGLAS
'Extraordinary...a plot that takes the breath away' DAILY MAIL
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OLIVIA. 22 years old. Last seen on CCTV, entering a dead-end alley. And not coming back out again. Missing for one day and counting . . .
Julia is the detective heading up the case. She knows what to expect. A desperate family, a ticking clock, and long hours away from her husband and daughter.…
I love delving into a world unlike my own and navigating along with a young hero of a story. Sometimes rooting and sometimes cringing at the decisions they make. A story that challenges a young boy resonates with me, and what makes the coming-of-age description in a book is having the young hero deal with grown-up problems, often before he is prepared. All decisions have consequences, and all problems, no matter how seemingly trivial, have significance to the user. I enjoy stories that capture just this type of world and ones that do it in a manner where it is not forced.
I was riveted in a world of young boys searching for more than just a body. So much of coming-of-age stories delve deep into the minds of these kids as they navigate both the familiar and unfamiliar. I was lifted to a time and place that resonates with my desire for nostalgia.
#1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King’s timeless novella “The Body”—originally published in his 1982 short story collection Different Seasons, and adapted into the 1986 film classic Stand by Me—is now available as a stand-alone publication.
It’s 1960 in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine. Ray Brower, a boy from a nearby town, has disappeared, and twelve-year-old Gordie Lachance and his three friends set out on a quest to find his body along the railroad tracks. During the course of their journey, Gordie, Chris Chambers, Teddy Duchamp, and Vern…
As a former school counselor, I helped students navigate the ups and downs of friendships daily. As I mended relationships as part of my day job, my nights consisted of listening to true crime podcasts, reading murder mysteries, and watching enough thrillers on the Lifetime network to write a book about it. So, I did. Well, not literally, but I am the author of YA thrillers where friendships take centerstage. Now, I help fictional characters navigate friendships—this time, with disastrous results.
Monday Charles is missing, so why is only her best friend looking for her? The answer had my jaw dropping to the floor. Tiffany D. Jackson is the queen of twists and turns, and this thriller is her twisty-est yet.
I love a thriller with heart, and the friendship between Monday and the protagonist, Claudia, definitely broke mine.
"Jackson's characters and their heart-wrenching story linger long after the final page, urging readers to advocate for those who are disenfranchised and forgotten by society and the system." (Publishers Weekly, "An Anti-Racist Children's and YA Reading List")
From the critically acclaimed author of Allegedly, Tiffany D. Jackson, comes a gripping novel about the mystery of one teenage girl's disappearance and the traumatic effects of the truth.
Monday Charles is missing, and only Claudia seems to notice. Claudia and Monday have always been inseparable-more sisters than friends. So when Monday doesn't turn up for the first day of school, Claudia's worried.…
Looking back, I was surprised at the things I'd done and the distance I'd traveled from my lower-middle-class upbringing in an industrial town. Destined for a life on the hot beds at the steel mill, I worked my way through college, found a job as a cub copywriter, learned documentary filmmaking, won an EMMY Award, moved to Hollywood, and started my 'sho biz' career.
It's not that thrillers need updating, but if you think they did, the novel PINES will fulfill your darkest wishes. This modern-day thriller took off like an irresistibly good bad dream and kept me shivering with page-turning anticipation all the way to the end.
I liked the clean storytelling–action-packed yet full of questions about what’s coming next.
The one-million copy bestseller that inspired the Fox TV show.
Secret service agent Ethan Burke arrives in Wayward Pines, Idaho, with a clear mission: locate and recover two federal agents who went missing in the bucolic town one month earlier. But within minutes of his arrival, Ethan is involved in a violent accident. He comes to in a hospital, with no ID, no cell phone, and no briefcase. The medical staff seems friendly enough, but something feels...off. As the days pass, Ethan's investigation into the disappearance of his colleagues turns up more questions than answers. Why can't he get any…
I’m an autistic writer with a passion for neurodiversity representation in fiction. As a child, I struggled to get into reading because I couldn’t see myself in any of the characters. That changed when I discovered Calvin and Hobbes, a comic strip about a precocious boy with a big imagination who struggles with making friends and is always getting in trouble for his poor self-control. Finally, I thought—a character just like me! For people who are neurodivergent, discovering fictional characters who resemble themselves can be a powerful experience. That’s why I think neurodiversity representation in fiction is incredibly important.
This book is about Aza Holmes, a character who struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder. While I don’t personally have OCD, this book helped me understand what it’s like. Aza’s anxious thoughts are so well-described that they made me feel anxious by proxy. That’s something only a master can pull off.
The plot sees Aza attempting to solve what happened to a childhood friend’s missing father, but to me, it is less about that external struggle and more about Aza’s internal struggle with her own mind. And it portrays that struggle as well as I’ve ever seen it done.
The critically acclaimed, instant #1 bestseller by John Green, author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and The Fault in Our Stars
"A tender story about learning to cope when the world feels out of control." -People
"A sometimes heartbreaking, always illuminating, glimpse into how it feels to live with mental illness." - NPR
John Green, the award-winning, international bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed, returns with a story of shattering, unflinching clarity in this brilliant novel of love, resilience, and the power of lifelong friendship.
Aza Holmes never intended to pursue the disappearance of fugitive billionaire Russell Pickett, but there's a…
I have always loved crime fiction, especially those where justice is served. I love crime stories where ordinary people doing their jobs triumph over evil. But so many crime stories are riddled with profanity, sex, and gratuitous violence. Over the last few years, I’ve searched for books that satisfy my need to read about justice but do it cleanly and in such a way that the story is not compromised. Oh, by the way, I’m also a writer of crime fiction and try to stay true to both justice over evil and telling stories in a clean but realistic way.
I love complex, multi-threaded mysteries that keep me guessing, and this book is one of those that was hard to put down.
This mystery kept me enthralled from beginning to end. And I did not figure it out until Ms. Clark wanted me to. Ms. Clark paints fascinating characters caught up in difficult circumstances. There are several twists, the biggest being at the end, which I immensely appreciated.
I usually have things figured out halfway or three-quarters of the way through. Not this one.
From the “Queen of Suspense” Mary Higgins Clark, a gripping and twisting mystery featuring a television news reporter who finds herself drawn into a terrifying web of treachery, where nothing is as it seems and the truth may be too devastating to pursue...
The murdered woman could have been her double. When reporter Meghan Collins sees the sheet-wrapped corpse in a New York City hospital, she feels as if she's staring into her own face. And Meghan has troubles enough already without this bizarre experience. Nine months ago, her much-loved father's car spun off a New York bridge. Now, investigators…
As a suspense thriller author and retired police detective, I’ve seen how ordinary people can hide the darkest secrets. That’s why I love small-town mysteries. They show the endless ways people cover up what they don’t want others to see, and they remind me of the unsettling truth I’ve witnessed firsthand: behind every neat house and familiar smile, there can be lies, betrayal, or danger and nothing is ever as safe as it looks.
I couldn’t put 214 Palmer Street down. It was such a page-turner.
I kept telling myself just one more chapter, but I had to know what was going to happen. I really thought I knew who was trouble, and I was so sure I had it figured out. I was wrong, and I loved being surprised.
I felt completely pulled into the story, and I couldn’t stop reading until the very end.
Dark secrets are revealed and new neighbors aren't who they appear to be in this psychological thriller from a #1 bestselling author—perfect for fans of The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl.
The woman who answers the door tells a convincing story. She's the house-sitter. Just here for a month. An old friend of Cady's who needed a place to stay. She's pleasant and warm, and Maggie wanders back to her house thinking she might have made a new friend.
But when Sarah closes the door she knows she must do something about Maggie. She didn't want anyone to…
