Saturday, September 19, 2026

Six great thrillers about mothers and daughters and sisters

USA Today bestselling author Hank Phillippi Ryan is the author of more than seventeen thrillers including All This Could Be Yours, One Wrong Word, and The House Guest which have won every major mystery award in the industry and have been translated into multiple languages throughout the world. Her fiction is inspired by a lifetime of groundbreaking true-crime cases from a storied career as an on-air investigative journalist for Boston’s WHDH-TV for which she was awarded multiple journalism honors, including thirty-seven Emmy Awards. A TedX speaker and in-demand literary moderator, she has been called a “master of suspense” (Publishers Weekly). A native of Chicago with roots in Indianapolis, Ryan lives in Boston.

Her latest novel is Mother Daughter Sister Stranger.

At CrimeReads Ryan tagged six favorite thrillers about mothers and daughters and sisters, including:
Gone Tonight by Sarah Pekkanen.

Mother and daughter are oh-so-close. Inseparable. Completely suffocatingly inseparable. When the daughter wants to leave, the mother has other ideas. With gripping and gaslighting twists, and revelations of the secrets each of them was keeping, this is a riveting high wire act about the shattering of trust and family history.
Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue