7 Fantastic Crime Novels Written by Women

What the Dead Know, a gripping tale of deception and delusion, wounds and betrayals, centers around a 30-year-old unsolved mystery which is exposed along with the shocking fissures in the foundation of a seemingly solid family.

The End of Everything follows 13-year-old Lizzie and her insperable next-door neighbor Evie. When Evie suddenly disappears, everyone in town comes to Lizzie to find answers. Haunted by dreams of her lost friend and titillated by her own new power at the center of the disappearance, Lizzie uncovers secrets and lies that make her wonder if she knew her best friend at all.

Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family — and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate.

Tana French is skilled at creating richly drawn, complex worlds and makes her novels not mere whodunits but brilliant and satisfying novels about memory, identity, and loss. In Faithful Place, we meet Frank Mackey as he wrestles with his own past and the family, the lover, and the neighborhood he thought he'd left behind for good.

On a fateful summer morning in 1986, two 11-year-old girls, Kirsty and Amber, meet for the first time. By the end of the day, they will both be charged with murder. Twenty-five years later, a series of familiar sickening attacks on young women occurs. Will Kirsty and Amber, now adults with vastly different lives, be able to keep their wicked secret hidden in The Wicked Girls?

Can a stranger share your memories? That's the question that haunts Brenna Spector in Into the Dark when she first sees footage of missing webcam performer Lula Belle. Brenna takes the case — and in her quest for Lula Belle, unravels a web of obsession, sex, guilt, and murder that could regain her family . . . or cost her life.

In Case Histories, private investigator Jackson Brodie is reopening three different, seemingly separate, cold cases from decades ago. During his investigation, he discovers startling connections and revelations that heat up and intertwine these long-forgotten mysteries.

Here are more great book recommendations from our friends at Off the Shelf: