Books like Never Let You Go — picked by fans

The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins centers around Jane who, penniless, arrives in Alabama and begins to walk dogs in an upscale, gated community. Jane hates her job, is no dog lover, and has resorted to sliding client’s valuables into her pockets. Life is a bit grim for Jane who wanted so much more for herself. Things begin to appear more hopeful when Jane meets Eddie Rochester and she begins to fall for the wealthy widower whose wife died in a boating accident. Jane even begins to develop a fondness for her dog clientele – especially Adele, a sweet Irish setter puppy, Eddie buys expressly for Jane to walk.

I thoroughly enjoyed meeting Jane’s canine clientele: Bear, a collie; Mary-Beth, a dalmatian; Major and Colonel, shih-tzus; Harper, a lab; and of course, Adele. Dog heaven, right? But as with all great thrillers, nothing is as it seems. Can Jane trust… show more.

I’ve been a fan of Crais’s Elvis & Joe series for years, so I was delighted to see that he brought a dog into a new series as a main character. Another book with traumatized characters, this one demonstrates the redemptive power of canine love.

LAPD officer Scott James is recovering from an assault in which his partner was killed, and he almost lost his life. He’s barely fit to return to duty until he’s paired with his new partner Maggie, a bomb-sniffing German shepherd that lost her handler in Afghanistan. Their partnership offers healing for both, and I love this book and A Borrowing of Bones because they reflect redemption.

My first experience with a Dean Koontz book was Intensity and wow, did that thriller live up to its title. The same goes for Koontz’s, suspense-packed Devoted – the perfect descriptor for Kipp, a loyal golden retriever who has that magical innate ability dogs seem to have of communicating wordlessly with their humans. At the beginning of the book, we meet Woody, an eleven-year-old non-verbal child with autism who is confident that his father’s untimely death was no accident, but an evil entity that is now after him and his mother. While Woody’s terror grows, Kipp begins his tireless search for Woody, knowing that he could be the only one who can deliver the boy to safety. 

Told with Koontz’s signature page-turning suspense, Devoted is a heart-tugging, immersive thrill-ride, best experienced with your canine best friend snuggled up right next to you. 

Ryder Creed brings his canine handling skills to potential crime scenes and smuggling operations. He works as a team with his Jack Russell Grace. Dog and man communicate in non-verbal ways to assess situations and aid law enforcement in uncovering evidence. The typical crime scene dog is taught for the job they will perform from birth. Ryder’s dogs are rescued from the street, animal shelters, or retrained after their owners are killed during military actions. The characters’ back stories are thoroughly crafted and distributed throughout the plot. As you learn more about each character, you understand their canine companions’ vital role in their lives.

Freitas wrote one of the first memoirs documenting gender-based violence in higher education. One of only three I've found.

Reading how she tried to avoid the problem for so long to protect her career resonated deeply with me. The stalking and triangulation she described felt all too familiar.

I went through my own version of this, and the subsequent university failures and career derailment she recounts. All of this hinges on the troubling power dynamics embedded in academia's gatekeeping and letter-of-recommendation system, where a predator's endorsement can make or break a career.

Is there anything Dolly can’t do?

In 2022 she teamed with best-selling thriller author James Patterson on a novel about an aspiring country musician with a troubled past. AnnieLee hitchhikes her way to Nashville, but just as her musical career starts to gain traction, the demons from her past start to catch up.

Knowing Dolly co-wrote the story makes it hard to avoid reading her voice into the experiences of the youthful main character, but also into the voice of the older country music legend Ruthanna, who takes the struggling newcomer under her wing.

This book reminds you that Dolly, at her core, is a skillful storyteller.

I am a huge fan of Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, and this book is an homage to that film—but in the form of a domestic thriller.

A mysterious stranger on the train, a wife troubled by her husband’s infidelity, a missing nanny: each has her own story to tell that eventually intersects with the others and kept me guessing until the end.

This was my favorite book the year I read it, and I will read it again, with no doubt the same result. The narrator is an anonymous 18-year-old woman navigating family, community, and romantic relationships in the midst of the Irish Troubles.

Almost every character is identified by a local nickname, part town culture and part a way to keep both authorities and rebels off track. I loved the strong writing and the surprising but always plausible twists. I’ve recommended it to every reader I know.

Zoe commutes to her job every day on a crowded train on the London underground. She discovers that someone is posting advertisements in a local paper saying which women take which trains. And there's a photograph of herself, claiming she's up for some "discreet casual action." Who is behind this and why? Zoe becomes suspicious of everyone in her life—her boss, her significant other—wondering who is cruel enough to set up unsuspecting women that commute by train. She's shocked when she finds out the truth, part of which she never discovers. A final zinger.

Ok, so this is not technically midcentury (it was published in 1977), but I had to include one of those amazing 1970s yarns. I chose this one because I remember reading this as an adolescent and feeling it was sort of like a more adult, sophisticated Nancy Drew book, replete with cliffhangers at the end of each chapter.

This global potboiler, about a beautiful pharmaceutical heiress marked for murder, has enough twists and turns to keep anyone reading way past bedtime. I think it also planted the seed for me to write my own novels of courageous, Grace Kelly-style heroines caught up in the throes of romantic mystery and adventure.