New and Notable Suspense Novels

by Susan Roberts

As the dog days of summer stretch on, it is too hot to do much more than sit in the air conditioning with a book you won't want to put down. 

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The Felons' Ball by Polly Stewart

July 2025; Harper; 978-0063412064
audio, ebook, print (240 pages); suspense

An edge-of-your-seat thriller about a powerful Southern family whose dark secrets set in motion a chain of events with deadly consequences.

This exciting new thriller is at times a real page turner about events and at times a look back at the criminal history of a couple of friends.

Natalie Macready and her sister Katlyn are yoga instructors and start off the novel.  Their father, Trey, and his best friend Ben were distributors and enforcers for the local distillers who made their small hamlet in Virginia the moonshine capital of the world. The only tie to their criminal past is Trey's annual birthday party called the Felons' Ball.  This year, right after the party, Ben is found dead.  Despite the age difference, Natalie and Ben were lovers so she decided to find out who killed him.  This story was full of twists and turns as the past collided with the present, and Natalie began to wonder if the past should be left in the past.

Buy The Felons' Ball at Amazon

A Mother Always Knows by Sarah Strohmeyer

July 2025; Harper Perennial; 978-0063351509
audio, ebook, print (336 pages); psychological thriller

An electrifying novel of psychological suspense that explores the way our pasts shape our futures in so many unexpected ways.

This book is a suspenseful look at cults and the effects that they can have on people for years.  It is a dual time line story that looks at the main character when she was young and part of a cult with her mother and in current times when she had to live under an assumed name to hide from the cult.

Stella lived in a cult that her mom, Rose, had joined when Stella was a toddler. Rose enjoyed her time in the cult but was beginning to get disillusioned.  When Stella was 10, she saw her mom murdered and her dad (not part of the cult), took her home to his normal life.  For years, Stella has lived under an assumed name.  She knew that the cult leaders wanted to kill her.  They knew that she knew who killed her mom and wanted to make sure that she never remembered the truth.   When her real identity is revealed on a podcast, Stella knows that she and her family are in trouble.  She has people following her almost as soon as her name became public and when her father got hurt in a car accident, she knew that their lives were in danger.  The plot moves quickly and the suspense ramps up making this book a real page turner.  The ending was a surprise that I didn't see coming but was very satisfying.

My main problem with this book is that I don't enjoy books with supernatural events as part of the story line so this really wasn't a good match for me.  The reviews by people who enjoy supernatural suspense are very good so give it a try if you like this genre.

Buy A Mother Always Knows at Amazon

Last Seen by J. T. Ellison

August 2025; Thomas & Mercer; 978-1662520372
audio, ebook, print (447 pages); psychological thriller

Come here. Come closer.

Halley James knows her marriage is over. But she’s not prepared for the rest of her life to fall apart too.

No one can hear you. No one can help you.

 This was a well-written suspense novel that kept me turning pages until the surprise ending.  The book really stayed with me, and thinking about it kept me awake part of the night.

Halley James has a lot of negatives in her life right now -- her marriage is ending, and she is fired from her job on the same day she thinks that she's getting a promotion.  When she finds out that her dad was in an accident, she decides that she needs to go home to take care of him, plus it will give her a chance to figure out what to do with her life.  Her mom and sister were killed in a car accident when she was 6 years old, and she and her dad had a close relationship.  When looking for some paperwork at her childhood home, she finds some files and realizes that her dad has lied to her for her entire life -- her mom and sister did not die in a car accident, but her sister had murdered her mom.  She was shocked at what she found out and was very angry at her dad. He lied to her because he thought that the truth would be difficult, and personally, I thought that she could have been more understanding.  She impulsively decides that she needs to find out if her sister is still alive and to try to find her.  Her search for her sister takes her to a small town full of secrets and puts her life in danger. 

This book is full of suspense, and trying to figure out where the next twist and turn is going to take the main character.  I enjoyed the book and definitely the ending, but I had a few problems with it -- mostly with Halley.  For an ultra-smart person, she sure did do some dumb things.  At times, I didn't like her at all and wondered why she took some of the chances that she did, knowing that she was on dangerous ground.  This isn't my favorite book by this author, but it's definitely worth reading!

I have nothing to hide from you. Are you hiding something from me?

Buy Last Seen at Amazon

Susan Roberts grew up in Michigan but loves the laid-back life at her home in the Piedmont area of North Carolina where she is three hours from the beach to the east and the mountains in the west.  She reads almost anything but her favorite genres are Southern Fiction and Historical Fiction.   

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