Ten essential literary thrillers

Rachel Eve Moulton earned her BA at Antioch College and her MFA in fiction from Emerson College. Her work has appeared in The Beacon Street Review, Bellowing Ark, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Bryant Literary Review, among others.

Tinfoil Butterfly is her first novel.

At Publishers Weekly she tagged ten "favorite literary thrillers, the ones that will wake up your brain and your heart," including:

Don't I Know You? by Karen Shepard

Shepard intriguingly presents one murder from three different perspectives in three different time periods, revealing an unparalleled exploration of character. Twelve-year-old Steven comes home to find his mother Gina stabbed to death, and so the book begins from Steven’s perspective in the aftermath of this horrible loss. A year later we follow Lily Chen, whose boyfriend may have a link to the murder. Finally, we jump forward 10 years to meet Louise, who wonders if her son might be mixed up in Gina’s murder. Lives cross, impacting each other in ways unknown to the characters, and it is Shepard’s investment in showing how people trip over each other, mend together, and rip apart again that gives the novel its compelling cast.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue