School Thrillers

After all these years, Maya and Sandra have mixed feelings about seeing their high school classmates, but in one sense the evening promises to be something of a red carpet event. A shy wallflower in school, Alyssa Turner has blossomed into an Oscar-nominated actress—and she's coming to the reunion. To their surprise, before the event, Alyssa contacts Maya and Sandra. She's going to be playing a private eye and would like to hear about their experiences. When they meet, she confides she was bullied in school by cheerleader Tawny Bryce and her mean girls clique.

Isobel Swan, a sixth form student, has been murdered. First, her ring finger is severed, then her throat is cut. With the investigation going nowhere fast, Detective Inspector Nick Dixon is sent undercover as a trainee teacher into Isobel’s boarding school. But to find the killer, he must first confront his inner demons and lay to rest the ghosts lurking in his own past. If he can… As Dixon digs deeper, the stakes have never been higher and a murder has never felt so personal.

Ariana has a problem. Arachnophobia. This abnormal fear of spiders - big, little, any kind of spider - keeps her from living the life she wants to live. But then, Bobby Daniels appears in her life with a solution. He runs a spider school for people just like her. People who want to take control of their lives. People who want to laugh at their fears. Ariana, after much negative introspect, embraces the idea of the school - and Bobby Daniels. She is determined to rid herself of the dreaded phobia. But there is something sinister about the school. And it just may be too late for Ariana to kick the spider habit.

All Margie Majors ever wanted was the mythical American dream she was taught to want: a hard-working husband, a house in a place that had neighborhood BBQs, a white picket fence, two kids, and a dog. Instead, she got “destiny.” Hers was to be a plus-sized, day-drinking, foul-mouthed, bisexual, retired vampire slayer with crushing debt and no idea what to do with the rest of her life.

When Cal Ware wins a scholarship to an elite New England boarding school, he's thrilled to leave his past behind. Back home in Mississippi, he was the poor queer kid who never fit in. But at Essex Academy, he'll be able to reinvent himself. Or so he hopes… But at Essex, Cal's classmates only see his cheap clothes and old iPhone. They mock his accent and can't believe he's never left the country or heard of The Hamptons. Cal, at his breaking point, is about to give up and return to Mississippi when he learns about a secret society on campus—the key to becoming Essex royalty.

Kids can be so cruel. They'll call you names. Hurt your feelings. Push you to your death. In the garden of an abandoned house, Luke Connolly lies broken, dead. The night before, he and his friends partied inside. Nobody fought, everybody else went home safely. And yet, Luke was raped and pushed...

James Patterson has just created the most spine-tingling, creepy-crawling, giggle-producing kid’s detective club ever. That’s ever. Living in the luxurious Arcanum building—with its interior balconies perfect for playing tag, an elevator like an iron birdcage, and quirky neighbors...

When the organizing committee for her upcoming high school reunion needs a caterer, Halia agrees to help out. Soon she's serving up her signature macaroni and cheese and famous chicken wings to a host of appreciative ex-classmates. Some folks have blossomed since graduation. Others, like manipulative Raynell Rollins, currently married to a former football star, haven't changed nearly enough. When Raynell is found dead the morning after the reunion, the role call of possible suspects could fill the school gymnasium. Extramarital affairs, mega-church scandals and sports secrets...

In the tradition of Daphne du Maurier, Shari Lapena, and Michelle Richmond comes a new thriller from the bestselling author of The Lake of Dead Languages—a twisty, harrowing story set at a prestigious prep school in which one woman's carefully hidden past might destroy her future. Tess has...

I’m just another school mum, doing the school run, I’m certainly not a serial killer, well not in their eyes anyway.

Young attorney Abby Coleridge opens her home to a troubled law student after a fire destroys the woman's apartment. When the student disappears, leaving behind a blood-splattered note and a stash of cryptic flash-drives, Abby sets out to find her. Soon, a murderous arsonist threatens them both. Law student Victor Rutledge, a former Navy officer, knows more than he's telling. So much so that his offers to help Abby seem suspicious. When police reveal his scandalous past, Abby doesn't know who to trust. Trouble, the black cat detective, lands in Tallahassee in the nick of time.

Father Felix, head master and parish priest at St. Polycarp Church and School is on his way to Palermo, Sicily, with a wild bunch of teenage girls from St. Hilda's school. He is sharing chaperone duties with Amelia Johnston and Julia Hopwood, both teachers at St. Polycarp and incorrigible amateur detectives, or snoopy busybodies in father Felix's mind, who credit themselves with solving the recent murder of Ms. Pinkerton at St. Polycarp School. Ms. Johnston and Ms. Hopwood think their trip is just an exciting week away during the long summer break.

Retired music teacher Susan Wiles is enjoying Christmas dinner with her family, when she receives an unexpected phone call. Her birth mother, Audrey Stirling, has been arrested for killing her husband! Richard Stirling had no shortage of enemies, all with viable motives, but the evidence points directly at Audrey.

The Pothunters was Wodehouse's first published novel and the first of a number of early school stories. Life at the fictional St. Austin's public school is thrown into confusion when the cricket pavilion is burgled, and two of the school's silver sports trophies (or "pots" in the language of the schoolboys) are stolen. The hunt for the missing trophies piques the interest of the boys, their school masters, and even a Scotland Yard detective, and is played out against the idyllic background of Edwardian public school life.

The Purple School Bus Murders, Geza Tatrallyay’s latest murder mystery novel, has the protagonist narrator go on a walk in snowy rural Vermont late one winter afternoon. The sideroads take him past a purple school bus parked in a field that he has walked past many times before but never looked inside. This time he feels an inexplicable urge to do so and finds the corpse of an older woman in the back of the bus with a Bowie knife stuck in her chest.

A mass shooting has taken place at a prep school in Stockholm’s wealthiest suburb. Eighteen-year-old Maja Norberg is charged for her involvement in the massacre that left her boyfriend and her best friend dead. She has spent nine months in jail awaiting trial. Now the time has come for her to enter the courtroom. How did Maja — popular, privileged, and a top student — become a cold-blooded killer in the eyes of the public? What did Maja do? Or is it what she failed to do that brought her here?

Just as hapless med student Giovanni begins gearing up for the Boards, a supernatural crises sweeps the campus. Vampires have taken over the local coffee shops, and nobody can get any studying done! It’s up to Giovanni and his werewolf buddies to save finals in spite of rabid clowns, invading rats, and the very real fear of looking stupid in front of a girl!

When a massacre at an elite private high school leaves 17 dead and a city reeling with horror, Philadelphia assistant district attorney Jessica Black will stop at nothing to find justice for the victims. But doing so will require facing an adversary even more terrifying than the teenage shooter.

Treehouse branches are a series of horror stories told by a witch to kids whose lives are in great need of fun. A witch who is super beautiful to them all, with a mole on her nose. Her true appearance only shows in the sunlight, for which she looks like the town's old widow lady of anger and heartbreak. She finds joy in her little friends only.

Ava’s family has just moved into an abandoned school. The empty hallways are as lonely as Ava feared. When she finds a raggedy stuffed rabbit, she feels like she’s finally made a friend. But there are others within the eerie classrooms. They also want to be Ava’s friends. They’ve been in this old school a long time, and they have their own wicked ideas for Ava and her family…