February is for lovers...at least the first half is anyways.
With Valentine's Day around the corner most people can't help but have love, hearts, and chocolates on the brain.
Truth is, though, love isn't always everything those greeting cards and jewelry commercials make it out to be. Sometimes, love goes wrong...really wrong!
For those of us who are definitely NOT looking for love this February, we've put together a list of some excellent recommendations.
With great fictional thrillers and shocking true crime stories, we've compiled a collection of books that highlight the darker side of love and marriage as they highlight crimes of passion, both real and imagined.
So put down the candy hearts and settle down with one of these stories that promise love, horror, and betrayal.
- 'Till Death Do Us Part... - Thrilling Fictional Tales
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Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney (2021)
Think you know the person you married? Think again... Things have been wrong with Mr .and Mrs. Wright for a long time. When Adam and Amelia win a weekend away to Scotland, it might be just what their marriage needs. Self-confessed workaholic and screenwriter Adam Wright has lived with face blindness his whole life. He can't recognize friends or family, or even his own wife. Every anniversary the couple exchange traditional gifts--paper, cotton, pottery, tin--and each year Adam's wife writes him a letter that she never lets him read. Until now. They both know this weekend will make or break their marriage, but they didn't randomly win this trip. One of them is lying, and someone doesn't want them to live happily ever after. Ten years of marriage. Ten years of secrets. And an anniversary they will never forget
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The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling (2021)
Practical, unassuming Jane Shoringfield has done the calculations and decided that the most secure path forward is this: a husband, in a marriage of convenience, who will allow her to remain independent and occupied with meaningful work. Her first choice, the dashing but reclusive doctor Augustine Lawrence, agrees to her proposal with only one condition: that she must never visit Lindridge Hall, his crumbling family manor outside of town. Yet on their wedding night, an accident strands her at his door in a pitch-black rainstorm, and she finds him changed. Gone is the bold, courageous surgeon, and in his place is a terrified, paranoid man - one who cannot tell reality from nightmare, and fears Jane is an apparition, come to haunt him. By morning, Augustine is himself again, but Jane knows something is deeply wrong at Lindridge Hall, and with the man she has so hastily bound her safety to.
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A Slow Fire Burning by Paula Hawkins (2021)
When a young man is found gruesomely murdered in a London houseboat, it triggers questions about three women who knew him. Laura is the troubled one-night-stand last seen in the victim’s home. Carla is his grief-stricken aunt, already mourning the recent death of yet another family member. And Miriam is the nosy neighbor clearly keeping secrets from the police. Three women with separate connections to the victim. Three women who are – for different reasons – simmering with resentment. Who are, whether they know it or not, burning to right the wrongs done to them. When it comes to revenge, even good people might be capable of terrible deeds. How far might any one of them go to find peace? How long can secrets smolder before they explode into flame?
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The Serial Killer's Wife by Alice Hunter (2021)
Every marriage has its secrets... Beth and Tom Hardcastle are the envy of their neighborhood - they have the perfect marriage, the perfect house, the perfect family. When the police knock on their door one evening, Beth panics. Tom should be back from work by now - what if he's crashed his car? She fears the worst. But the worst is beyond imagining. As the interrogation begins, Beth will find herself questioning everything she believed about her husband. They're saying he's a monster. And they're saying she knew.
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The Trespasser by Tana French (2016)
Being on the Murder Squad is nothing like Detective Antoinette Conway dreamed it would be. Her partner, Stephen Moran, is the only person who seems glad she’s there. The rest of her working life is a stream of thankless cases, vicious pranks, and harassment. Antoinette is savagely tough, but she’s getting close to the breaking point. Their new case looks like yet another by-the-numbers lovers’ quarrel gone bad. Aislinn Murray is blond, pretty, groomed-to-a-shine, and dead in her catalog-perfect living room, next to a table set for a romantic dinner. There’s nothing unusual about her—except that Antoinette’s seen her somewhere before. And that her death won’t stay in its neat by-numbers box. Other detectives are trying to push Antoinette and Steve into arresting Aislinn’s boyfriend, fast. There’s a shadowy figure at the end of Antoinetteʼs road. Aislinnʼs friend is hinting that she knew Aislinn was in danger. And everything they find out about Aislinn takes her further from the glossy, passive doll she seemed to be.
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The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson (2015)
On a night flight from London to Boston, Ted Severson meets the stunning and mysterious Lily Kintner. Sharing one too many martinis, the strangers begin to play a game of truth, revealing very intimate details about themselves. Ted talks about his marriage that’s going stale and his wife Miranda, who he’s sure is cheating on him. Ted and his wife were a mismatch from the start—he the rich businessman, she the artistic free spirit—a contrast that once inflamed their passion, but has now become a cliché. But their game turns a little darker when Ted jokes that he could kill Miranda for what she’s done. Lily, without missing a beat, says calmly, “I’d like to help.” After all, some people are the kind worth killing, like a lying, stinking, cheating spouse. . . .
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Natsuo Kirino's novel tells a story of random violence in the staid Tokyo suburbs, as a young mother who works a night shift making boxed lunches brutally strangles her deadbeat husband and then seeks the help of her co-workers to dispose of the body and cover up her crime. The ringleader of this cover-up, Masako Katori, emerges as the emotional heart of Out and as one of the shrewdest, most clear-eyed creations in recent fiction. Masako's own search for a way out of the straitjacket of a dead-end life leads her, too, to take drastic action.
- First Comes Love, Then Comes...Murder - Shocking True Crimes
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She Kills Me: The True Stories of History's Deadliest Women by Jennifer Wright (2021)
In every tragic story, men are expected to be the killers. There are countless studies and works of art made about male violence. However, when women are featured in stories about murder, they are rarely portrayed as predators. They’re the prey. This common dynamic is one of the reasons that women are so enthralled by female murderers. They do the things that women aren’t supposed to do and live the lives that women aren’t supposed to want: lives that are impulsive and angry and messy and inconvenient. Maybe we feel bad about loving them, but we eat it up just the same. Residing squarely in the middle of a Venn diagram of feminism and true crime, She Kills Me tells the story of 40 women who murdered out of necessity, fear, revenge, and even for pleasure.
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In The Perfect Father, New York Times bestselling author John Glatt reveals the true story of a Colorado family whose storybook life turned into a nightmare. In the early morning hours of August 13th, 2018, Shanann Watts was dropped off at her Frederick, Colorado home by a colleague after returning from a business trip. It was the last time anyone would see her alive. By the next day, Shanann and her two young daughters, Bella and Celeste, had been reported missing, and her husband, Chris Watts, was appearing on the local news, pleading for his family's safe return. But Chris Watts already knew that he would never see his family again. Less than 24 hours after his desperate plea, Watts made a shocking confession to police: he had strangled his pregnant wife to death and smothered their daughters, dumping their bodies at a nearby oil site.
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A Perfect Husband by Aphrodite Jones (2019)
Michael Peterson was a decorated war veteran and bestselling novelist, his wife Kathleen a high-powered executive and devoted mother. They seemed to be the perfect couple—until the tragic night Michael found Kathleen at the bottom of the stairs in a pool of blood. He claimed her death was an accident. The prosecution put him behind bars. Then in a stunning reversal, a judge gave him another chance to stand trial. Aphrodite Jones draws on exclusive interviews and disturbing new evidence to update this classic real-life thriller of marriage, manipulation, and murder.
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Conviction: The Untold Story of Putting Jodi Arias Behind Bars by Juan Martinez (2016)
Juan Martinez, the fiery prosecutor who convicted notorious murderess Jodi Arias for the disturbing killing of Travis Alexander, speaks for the first time about the shocking investigation and sensational trial that captivated the nation. Through two trials, America watched with bated breath as Juan Martinez fought relentlessly to convict Jodi Arias of Murder One for viciously stabbing her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander to death. What emerged was a story wrought with sex, manipulation, and deceit that stunned the public at every turn. Arias, always playing the wronged and innocent woman, changed her story continually as her bizarre behavior surrounding the crime and its aftermath came to light. Unwavering, Arias and her defense team continued to play off the salacious details of the case, until she was finally found guilty and "controversially" sentenced to life behind bars.
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Every once in a great while a genuine murder mystery unfolds before the eyes of the American public. The tragic story of Susan Powell and her murdered boys, Charlie and Braden, is the only case that rivals the Jon Benet Ramsey saga in the annals of true crime. When the pretty, blonde Utah mother went missing in December of 2009 the media was swept up in the story - with lenses and microphones trained on Susan's husband, Josh. He said he had no idea what happened to his young wife, and that he and the boys had been camping in the middle of a snowstorm. Over the next three years, bombshell by bombshell, the story would reveal more shocking secrets. Josh's father, Steve, who was sexually obsessed with Susan, would ultimately be convicted of unspeakable perversion. Josh's brother, Michael, would commit suicide. And in the most stunning event of them all, Josh Powell would murder his two little boys and kill himself with brutality beyond belief.
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Dance with the Devil: A Memoir of Murder and Loss by David Bagby (2007)
Dave and Kate Bagby's son Andrew, a young doctor, was murdered in November 2001. His body, lying in a blood-soaked gravel grave, was discovered in Keystone State Park outside Latrobe, Pennsylvania, by a homeless man searching dumpsters. The murderer was his ex-girlfriend Shirley Turner - also a doctor. Dr. Turner, knowing charges would be filed against her, fled to Canada. While fending off extradition efforts by US law enforcement, Dr. Turner discovered she was pregnant with Andrew's son Zachary. Dr. Turner murdered 13-month-old Zachary in September 2003 and then killed herself.
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Kiss Me, Kill Me by Ann Rule (2004)
The dark side of love is no fairy tale...and while we may like to believe that crimes of the heart only victimize those who aren't careful, this page-turning collection of must-read accounts will convince you otherwise. America's #1 true-crime writer, Ann Rule, reveals how lovers become predators, how sex and lust can push ordinary people to desperate acts, and how investigators and forensics experts work to unravel the most entangled crimes of passion. Extracting behind-the-scenes details, Rule makes these volatile relationships utterly real, and masterfully re-creates the ill-fated chains of events in such cases like the ex-Marine and martial arts master who seduced vulnerable women and then destroyed their lives...the killer whose calling card was a single blood-red rose...the faithless wife who manipulated and murdered without conscience...the blind date that set the stage for a killer's brutality...and more.
Can't get enough true crime? Want to chat with others who love true crime too? Then the My Favorite Crime Book Club is for you!
Join the club every second Tuesday at 2 p.m. in the Headquarters Library courtyard to read and discuss some of the best true crime books in the library's collection. The next club meeting is February 13!
Descriptions adapted from the publisher.