Suspense writer Joseph Finder examines the art of twists and shocking endings as he discusses the element of surprise in five novels with endings he never saw coming. There’s a paradox to being a suspense writer. We writers get into this business because we love reading—but the more we read, the more we write, […]
Category Archives: Blog Article
A Bible of Bad Men and Other Mob Tales
After growing up hearing mob tales and names from the Five Families, William Boyle reflects on what drew him to the mob genre and inspired some of his projects, such as his newest novel A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself. I grew up on the border of Bensonhurst and Gravesend in Brooklyn, and the […]
Can Good Writing Be Taught?
To celebrate the release of her newest novel, Last Night, Karen Ellis reflects on what makes great fiction writing and how to discover and unleash the voice within. It’s an old question and generally the answer is “No.” And yet I’ve been teaching creative writing for twenty-five years—teaching, or leading, workshops in basic fiction writing, suspense, […]
Top 10 Hipster Thrillers for Your List
To celebrate the release of her new novel, Andrea Bartz shares her top 10 hipster thrillers you need to add to your list. In my new novel, The Lost Night, a woman is forced to confront what really happened back in 2009, when she and her postgrad friends turned Brooklyn into a playground—going to wild […]
A True Event Can Make Riveting Fiction
A True Event Can Make Riveting Fiction Glen David Gold’s novel Carter Beats the Devil (2001) opens with President Warren G. Harding gamely getting up on stage in a San Francisco theater to participate in a conjuring trick. Hours later, he’s dead. Were the two events connected? Suddenly the conjurer—the real-life Joseph Carter, a household name in […]
DVD Review: The Americans Season 6
DVD Review: The Americans Season 6 (Warning: Oblique spoilers for previous seasons of The Americans follow.) The Americans is a high-concept television series in which the initial premise could have led to any point on the spectrum of quality. In lesser hands, the tale of two Russian spies living undercover as subversives in the United States could […]
10 Thrillers That NEED a TV Series Adaptation
10 Thrillers That NEED a TV Series Adaptation Like a lot of people these days, I’m addicted to book-to-television thrillers. Every time I learn that another novel I love has been green-lighted for a series, I devour every detail about its production until it’s finally on-screen. With the recent success of shows like Big Little […]
Gone! Top 10 Nail-Biting Thrillers Featuring the Search for a Missing Child
GONE! TOP 10 NAIL-BITING THRILLERS FEATURING THE SEARCH FOR A MISSING CHILD A missing child is every parent’s nightmare. A tidal wave of emotion descends and often the situation can very quickly turn negative with the finger of blame being readily pointed, often specifically at the child’s mother. The missing child may be an overused […]
Top 10 Scary Families in Fiction
In my new novel, The Hiding Place, Joe Thorne’s eight-year-old sister returns after disappearing for forty-eight hours. But something about her isn’t the same. What happened to Annie Thorne? And why is Joe scared to death of his own little sister? Here are my top 10 of other scary families in fiction! Top 10 […]
Read an Excerpt from What Doesn’t Kill Her by Christina Dodd
“What’s your new book about?” An author can write 100,000 words, create an insightful tale of terror, humor, adventure, romance, and mystery, yet when someone—in this case, a writer-friend—asks, “What’s your new book about?” all the insightful words dry up. All that’s left is babble. I told my friend What Doesn’t Kill Her is a thriller. […]
Ten Books Featuring Complex Mother-Daughter Relationships
Ten Books Featuring Complex Mother-Daughter Relationships Of all human relationships, the mother-daughter one is perhaps the most complicated and unique. Mothers tend to view their daughters through a prism of shared history. Yet, as they grow, daughters become their own person with a locked vault of secrets that are completely inaccessible to their mothers, […]
The Mysterious Robert E. Clarke
The Mysterious Robert E. Clarke Every family has a mystery. Mine concerned the identity of my great-grandfather, Robert E. Clarke. In his teens, my father’s father was legally adopted by his mother’s second husband, a man he always called “Mr. Tuttle.” My grandfather grew up knowing nothing of his natural father; he was only five […]
