There’s something uniquely eerie about the combination of a new home and mysterious neighbors. The thrill of moving into uncharted territory, coupled with the unsettling feeling of not truly knowing those who live around you, can make for a spine-chilling reading experience. If you’re a fan of the thriller genre and seek stories that will keep you on the edge of your seat, look no further.
You thought you’d always be safe there. Your new, dream home, the one you saved and sacrificed for. It’s perfect in everyway or so you thought. Perhaps it was too good to be true. From ominous messages left outside, missing children, murdered spouses, strange neighbors…nothing is what it seems. Your dream home has turned into a place of unspeakable nightmares and now you are desperate to leave, but can you?
These types of psychological thrillers can be downright terrifying. We all live somewhere and sometimes we may not really know who we are living with or who we are living next door to. These types of stories can make all of us feel uneasy, because they are so realistic.
If you want to feel afraid in your own home and suspicious of your neighbors, check out these books. They are guaranteed to make you question every strange occurrence on your street, be a little weary of your new neighbor and maybe even question the person you are living with. Some of the most beautiful house are harboring unspeakable horror.
If you like these books you may also like my post on Family Drama Thrillers about Dysfunctional Families.
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When No One Is Watching
by Alyssa Cole
The gentrification of a Brooklyn neighborhood takes on a sinister new meaning…
Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos are sprouting like weeds, FOR SALE signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she’s known all her life are disappearing. To hold onto her community’s past and present, Sydney channels her frustration into a walking tour and finds an unlikely and unwanted assistant in one of the new arrivals to the block—her neighbor Theo.
But Sydney and Theo’s deep dive into history quickly becomes a dizzying descent into paranoia and fear. Their neighbors may not have moved to the suburbs after all, and the push to revitalize the community may be more deadly than advertised.
When does coincidence become conspiracy? Where do people go when gentrification pushes them out? Can Sydney and Theo trust each other—or themselves—long enough to find out before they too disappear?
In Her Eyes (Kindle Version)
by Sarah Alderson
You’re at home with your family.
You think you’re safe.
You’re wrong…
Ava’s life is the kind other people envy: loving husband; great kids; beautiful house. Until the night a violent home invasion turns the dream into a nightmare, and leaves her beautiful daughter fighting to survive.
And then things get worse. Ava realizes that the attack wasn’t random. Someone is targeting her family. Why? Who could hate them enough to kill?
Ava must find out what really happened that night, to save those she loves from even greater danger. But when everyone around you has been lying, how do you decide who to trust?
And Ava has secrets of her own…
Safe Haven
by Patricia MacDonald
She finally had everything she ever wanted . . .
Dena returns to her hometown for a high school reunion. She gets together with Brian, her high school crush, and ends up pregnant.
She moves back to the small town where she grew up to start a new life with horse breeder Brian.
But behind closed doors, Dena’s perfect life becomes the perfect nightmare.
Heavily pregnant, Dena flees to her best friend’s place.
But someone out there wants to take that away from her too. Days later, Dena’s friend is found battered to death.
Did Brian do it?
We Live Next Door
by Laura Wolfe
You think you know the people next door… What if they know you better?
I always dreamed of moving back home to Ridgeview Pines, with its white fences and sloping lawns. I wish it had happened under different circumstances, but now I’m here I feel safe and ready for a fresh start with my little family.
The first thing I do every morning is pick up my phone and check The Neighbor List—our local message board. Maybe the people next door know a little too much about where their neighbors are and what they’re doing, but it’s safer that way, isn’t it? And my husband—he wouldn’t dare sneak behind my back with so many eyes watching.
Just when I’m beginning to relax, a woman I’ve known since I was small is found dead on the white tiles of her bathroom floor. I watch messages of condolence flood my screen. No one else suspects a thing.
But I know that among all these friendly people, watching out for one another, someone knows more than they’re sharing. And I wonder—how far back do they remember, and who’s next?
The Secrets We Share
by Edwin Hill
At first glance, Natalie Cavanaugh and Glenn Abbott hardly look like sisters. Even off-duty, Natalie dresses like a Boston cop, preferring practical clothes and unfussy, pinned-up hair. Her younger sister, Glenn, seems tailor-made for the spotlight, from her signature red mane to her camera-ready smile. Glenn has spent years cultivating her brand through her baking blog, and with the publication of her new book, that hard work seems about to pay off. But her fans have no idea about the nightmare in Glenn and Natalie’s past.
Twenty years ago, their father’s body was discovered in the woods behind their house. A trauma like that doesn’t fit with Glenn’s public image. Yet, maybe someone reading her blog does know something. There have been anonymous online messages, vague yet ominous, hinting that she’s being watched. And with unsettling coincidences hitting ever closer to home, both Glenn and Natalie soon have more pressing matters to worry about, especially when a dead body is found in an abandoned building . . .
Natalie is starting to wonder how much Glenn really knows about the people closest to her. But are there also secrets Natalie has yet to uncover about those she herself trusts? For two decades, she’s believed their father was murdered by their neighbor, with whom he was having an affair. But if those events are connected to what’s happening now, maybe there’s much more that Natalie doesn’t know. About their father. About their neighbors. About her friends. Maybe even about herself.
But there are no secrets between sisters . . . are there?
On A Quiet Street
by Seraphina Nova Glass
The perfect neighborhood can be the perfect place to hide…
Who wouldn’t want to live in Brighton Hills? This exclusive community on the Oregon coast is the perfect mix of luxury and natural beauty. Stunning houses nestle beneath mighty Douglas firs, and lush backyards roll down to the lakefront. It’s the kind of place where neighbors look out for one another. Sometimes a little too closely…
Cora thinks her husband, Finn, is cheating—she just needs to catch him in the act. That’s where Paige comes in. Paige lost her son to a hit-and-run last year, and she’s drowning in the kind of grief that makes people do reckless things. Like spying on the locals, searching for proof that her son’s death was no accident. And agreeing to Cora’s plan to reveal what kind of man Finn really is. All the while, their reclusive new neighbor, Georgia, is acting more strangely every day. But what could such a lovely young mother possibly be hiding?
When you really start to look beyond the airy open floor plans and marble counters, Brighton Hills is filled with secrets. Some big, some little, some deadly. And one by one, they’re about to be revealed…
The New Home
by Chris Merritt
Freya loves her new home on a quiet suburban street. And her beautiful neighbour Emily is everything she’s ever wanted in a best friend. Finally, she has somebody to share her secrets with over a glass of wine. But as Freya watches her new friend setting the table for dinner one evening, she sees something shocking that makes her think that Emily’s life might not be as perfect as it seems. Days later, Emily and her daughter vanish…
When you meet Emily’s husband, you will think you know what he’s hiding.
You will ask yourself whether Emily and Freya really did meet by chance.
You will think you know what happened to Emily and her little girl the night they went missing.
But when you discover the truth, it will shake you to your core and you will lie awake at night wondering if you can ever really trust the people in the house next door…
With My Little Eye
by Joshilyn Jackson
This is the hair-raising story of a mother who moves herself and her daughter across the country to lose a dangerous stalker—only to discover that it will take more than distance to escape him.
It started with the letters…
For actress Meribel Mills, disturbing fan mail is part of the price of fame. So when she starts getting creepy letters written in fruit-scented marker she is mostly unphased and diligently files them along with her other messages from unhinged fans. After all, she’s a single mom approaching forty, not the kind of hot young celeb who sparks dangerous obsessions. But there’s something different about Marker Man…
He’s been in her home…
Meribel’s sheets smell of unfamiliar cologne, and objects have gone missing around the house. Plus, the letters have become more perverse, with drawings of a naked Meribel tied up or chopped into pieces. While the police insist that stalkers hardly ever escalate to violence, Meribel has played the dead girl one too many times on TV to risk becoming her in real life. She and her daughter move from Los Angeles to Atlanta for a fresh start—but no distance is great enough.
He’s watching her…
Years of being in front of a camera have given Meribel a superpower—she can feel eyes on her, a creeping sensation like bees inside her skin. And someone definitely has her in their sights. Could Marker Man have followed her all the way across the country?
Who else might be watching—her ex-husband? The lover she left behind in LA? Her new neighbor? Suddenly, every man in her life is a suspect, but she can’t keep herself and her daughter safe from a monster she can’t identify. When the paths of all of these men collide, Meribel will find herself alone in the fight of her life, desperate to protect those she loves as danger closes in from all sides.
The People Next Door
by Keri Beevis
Her new house has a mysterious past—and her new life in the English countryside is about to take a dark turn . . .
When Ellie and Ash move into a beautiful old house in rural Norfolk, England, they believe they’ve found their perfect home. Intrigued by the people next door, Ellie befriends shy but sweet Benjamin, and as time goes by, becomes ever more curious about his elusive sister, Virginia.
But when she discovers that her new home has a darker past and that Ash has been keeping secrets, what she thought was a perfect life in the countryside begins to unravel. Is her best friend to be trusted, are the new neighbours all that they really seem, and why is her new puppy so obsessed with the cellar? Most worrying of all is the mystery of what happened to the former occupants of the house.
When Ash goes away on business and strange things begin to happen, Ellie’s paranoia goes into overdrive. But are these all coincidences—or is she really in danger?
The Killer Next Door
by Alex Marwood
No. 23 has a secret. In this bedsit-riddled south London wreck, lorded over by a lecherous landlord, something waits to be discovered. Yet all six residents have something to hide.
Collette and Cher are on the run; Thomas is a reluctant loner; while a gorgeous Iranian asylum seeker and a ‘quiet man’ nobody sees try to stay hidden. And watching over them all is Vesta – or so she thinks. In the dead of night, a terrible accident pushes the neighbours into an uneasy alliance. But one of them is a killer, expertly hiding their pastime, all the while closing in on their next victim…
As a cloying heatwave suffocates the city, events build to an electrifying climax in this dark, original and irresistibly compelling thriller.
Lock The Doors
by Vincent Ralph
Tom’s family has moved into their dream home. But pretty soon he starts to notice that something is very wrong – there are strange messages written on the wall and locks on the bedroom doors. On the OUTSIDE.
The previous owners have moved just across the road and they seem like the perfect family. Their daughter Amy is beautiful and enigmatic but Tom is sure she’s got something to hide. And he isn’t going to stop until he finds the truth behind those locked doors. . .
Will their dream home become a nightmare?
The Forever Home
by Sue Watson
You thought you’d always be safe there… you were wrong.
Carly had thought they’d always live there. The beautiful Cornish cliffside house they’d taken on as a wreck, that Mark had obsessively re-designed and renovated – a project that had made him famous. It was where they’d raised their children, where they’d sat cozily on the sofa watching storms raging over the sea below. It was where they’d promised to keep each other’s secrets…
Until now. Because Mark has fallen in love. With someone he definitely shouldn’t have. Someone who isn’t Carly. And suddenly their family home doesn’t feel like so much of a safe haven.
Carly thinks forever should mean forever though: it’s her home and she’ll stay there. Even the dark family secrets it contains feel like they belong to her. But someone disagrees. And, as threats start to arrive at her front door, it becomes clear, someone will stop at nothing. Because someone wants to demolish every last thing that makes Carly feel safe. Forever.
What The Neighbors Saw
by Melissa Adelman
Desperate Housewives meets The Couple Next Door in a chilling story of murder and intrigue set in a well-to-do DC suburb.
Sometimes the darkest acts occur in the most beautiful houses…
When Alexis and her husband Sam buy a neglected Cape Cod house in an exclusive DC suburb, they are ecstatic. Sam is on the cusp of making partner at his law firm, Alexis is pregnant with their second child, and their glamorous neighbors welcome the couple with open arms. Things are looking up, and Alexis believes she can finally leave her troubled past behind.
But the neighborhood’s picture-perfect image is shattered when their neighbor Teddy – a handsome, successful father of three – is found dead on the steep banks of the Potomac River. The community is shaken, and as the police struggle to identify and apprehend the killer, tension in the neighborhood mounts and long-buried secrets start to emerge.
In the midst of the turmoil, Alexis takes comfort in her budding friendship with Teddy’s beautiful and charismatic widow, Blair. But as the women grow closer, the neighborhood only becomes more divided. And when the unthinkable truth behind Teddy’s murder is finally uncovered, both Blair and Alexis must reexamine their friendship and decide how far they are willing to go to preserve the lives they have so carefully constructed.