I love Michael Connelly’s crime thrillers featuring Harry Bosch and legal thrillers centering on Mickey Haller, but let’s not forget his thrillers focusing on journalist Jack McEvoy, especially this third one.

What gripped me so much while reading this story is how the villain knows more about the protagonist than the other way around, along with the horrifying consequences of genetic information getting into the wrong hands. Combine that with not knowing yet who the villain is, and you have a thriller that is no doubt heart-pounding.

I loved this book because it made me confront how fractured my own attention had become without realizing it. While reading, I kept noticing how often I felt the urge to check something else, which made the experience deeply personal. Hari’s writing pushed me to reflect on how distraction is not a personal failure but a systemic condition of modern life. I appreciated how the book encouraged me to slow down and notice what I had been sacrificing in the name of productivity. Long after finishing it, I found myself rethinking how I protect my focus and what kind of life that focus helps me build.

Former investigative reporter Rick Atwood is the go-to guy for the chief of police whenever crime strikes Seaside Cove, but Rick’s precocious eleven-year-old daughter is the real star of this series. Alex is a Nancy Drew for the 21st century. Her diary entries put a smile on my face as they brought back memories of my own childhood. Her upstaging of the adults in her life made me chuckle throughout the book. Terry Ambrose is a true master at capturing what it’s like to be a young girl yearning to be taken seriously by the adults in her life, a difficult task for any author but even more so for a male author.

Bad City: Peril and Power in the City of Angels, written by investigative reporter Paul Pringle is another gem of this literary genre.

What began as Pringle’s investigation of a young woman’s overdose, led him to the prominent dean of the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California (USC). Once on this trail, he uncovered the corruption at USC, the incompetence of the Pasadena Police Department, and a coverup at the Los Angeles Times.

After reading the first few pages, I was forced to cancel all meetings and plans. Pringle investigative reporting not only helped to uncover the toxic mix of money and power, but the mechanics and drudgery of getting to the bottom of things.

A haunting and memorable classic of biographical fiction. The real-life Nellie Bly arrives in New York, keen to make her name as a journalist, and willing to do almost anything. Daringly, astonishingly, she agrees to pretend to be mad, and is incarcerated in a terrifying and notorious insane asylum. The horrors of the place are almost unspeakable as she descends into the darkest depths. The fact that this is a true story, and that her report helped to change the system for the better, makes it all the more powerful.

How do we tell our own story? What are the lies we tell ourselves? How do we change the narrative?

In this memoir, Casey Parks unpacks growing up gay in the rural south, navigating a challenging relationship with her on-again, off-again addict mother, and unraveling the mystery of Roy Hudgins, a self-proclaimed misfit whose life challenged every preconceived notion about the south.

Diary of a Misfit is a deeply honest and sometimes uncomfortably revelatory memoir deeply rooted in place, and I loved it, especially the audiobook, read by the author. I’m working on my own memoir now, and Parks’ example inspires me to lean into the parts of my own story that hurt the most.

I’m drawn to characters whose emotional wounds from childhood affect their determination as adults to make the world a more caring place.

I found Jenna Stone, a dedicated investigative journalist in this book, a particularly appealing character. Abandoned as an infant in an apartment building’s hallway, Jenna doesn’t want any child to experience the same fate and doggedly works to uncover the identity of a mother who has left her abandoned baby in a “safe haven” at her local fire station.

Alarmed by the note the mother left indicating that her baby is “in danger,” Jenna hopes to unravel the mystery of what led the new mom to fear for her infant’s safety and reunite her with her child. This is yet another psychological thriller that I had trouble putting down!

This was the first book I’ve read from the point of view of an investigative journalist, and I really enjoyed this angle. And I really loved the character of Ingrid, a very strong female lead who will stop at nothing to get to the truth. Ingrid delves deeper into the story of 8-year-old Kelly Doherty’s murder, believing that there's a chance the man convicted is innocent. But she's soon warned off by someone who’ll do anything to keep the past buried.   

Claire's writing style is entertaining and engaging. This atmospheric story is told from multiple viewpoints, which keeps the pages turning quickly. It's dark and chilling with a plot that builds and builds and kept me guessing until the climactic ending that I totally didn’t see coming. 

Thriller writer and contemporary ‘queen of crime’ Val McDermid draws deeply on her own years as a tabloid journalist to bring fictional reporter Allie Burns to life during the winter of discontent. This unputdownable tale of a newspaper investigation into matters of life, death, and corruption is so evocative of a 1970s Glasgow newsroom that I could practically smell the fags and taste the whisky. More Allie Burns stories are promised, and I for one can’t wait.