Bella Wright

Bella Wright blogs about books, film and media.

Watching You, a Brilliant Psychological Thriller by Lisa Jewell

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The Bottom Line: Rear Window meets The Woman in the Window. Highly recommended. What’s creepier than a peeping Tom? How about an obsessive, socially dysfunctional teenager who spends all his free time watching and cataloguing the movements of his neighbors? He even has nicknames for them, like “red boots.” Oh, did I mention that his biggest dream is to become a spy? Melville Heights is […]

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The Killer Collective, a New Spy Thriller by Barry Eisler

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The Bottom Line: The best Eisler thriller in years. Over the past two decades, former intelligence operative-turned-novelist Barry Eisler has created some of the genre’s most compelling characters, most notably John Rain and Livia Lone. Eisler brings them together with great effect in The Killer Collective. When a joint FBI–Seattle Police investigation of an international child pornography ring gets too close to certain powerful people,

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Skyward, a Promising Sci-Fi Thriller Series by Brandon Sanderson

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The Bottom Line: The brilliant first entry in a promising new YA adventure series. What do you get when you cross Star Wars with Top Gun and The Hunger Games?  The answer is Skyward, a sci-fi military thriller that even Tom Clancy fans may love. In the action-packed Skyward, a girl dreams of becoming a pilot in a dangerous world at war for humanity’s future.

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The Best Thriller Books of 2018

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Our 2018 fall list of the best mystery and thriller books so far is incredibly diverse, ranging the gamut from political thrillers to crime thrillers and everything in between. If there’s one thing that distinguishes this excellent batch of books, it’s character development. While losing sleep is practically guaranteed with any of our mid-year picks, each is a fast-moving tapestry of emotionally-driven art that you’ll

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Outside Of Normal, an Engrossing Crime Thriller by James Shay

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The Bottom Line: Fans of serial killer fiction will find plenty of diabolical suspense in this engrossing thriller. Tailor-made for fans of Jo Nesbo and John Sandford. Somewhere in a corrugated metal shed, Washington University grad student Dina Levins wakes up from a chemically induced sleep. She recalls the horror of being taken from her car at a service station. She’s vaguely aware of the

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Encore: A Contemporary Love Story of Hypnotic Abduction, One of the Year’s Best Thrillers

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The Bottom Line: Magical, mysterious, sensual and utterly profound. One of the year’s best thrillers. When the dying star of a famous performance troupe goes missing right before show time, her standby, Miriam, prepares to take her place in the performance. As is their custom, Dune, the troupe’s leader, hypnotizes her before the curtain rises. In her trance, she believes she is Susan, the leading

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The Fisherman’s Daughter, a Mesmerizing FBI Thriller by Robin Barefield

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The Bottom Line: A mesmerizing FBI thriller set in the Alaskan wilderness. After the bodies of four murdered women are found on Alaska’s Kodiak Island, FBI Special Agent Nick Morgan flies to Kodiak to aid in the investigation. Morgan’s local contact, Alaska State Trooper Dan Patterson, fears a serial killer is at work. But finding the perpetrator won’t be easy. The victims have very little

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The Reckoning, a New Legal Thriller by John Grisham

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The Bottom Line: One of Grisham’s finest. The release of a new John Grisham book is like an annual holiday – reliable, full of intense strife, and in the end, sheer pleasure that you look forward to repeating.  As usual, Grisham embraces his trademark southern gothic style here, packing the book with just enough courtroom drama to keep the attention of hardcore legal thriller fans,

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Game Piece, One of the Year’s Best Thrillers

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The Bottom Line: One of the year’s best thrillers. When Texas detective Barry Marshall receives an anonymous tip on a stolen Chevy truck, he knows that something is off. The caller urges him to come quickly, claiming to fear for his own life, and the truck description matches an active case Marshall is working. But when Marshall arrives, there’s no truck in sight – just

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The Girl Next Door, One of the Year’s Best Thrillers

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The Bottom Line: One of the year’s best thrillers, The Girl Next Door had me at “donuts and high heels.” This cheeky, stylish and sophisticated novel is a must for anyone who loves unreliable narrators. Lisa Aurello’s The Girl Next Door begins with a murder, then rewinds a few weeks to eavesdrop on a conspiratorial café conversation between her likely killers. But in a clever

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