School Thrillers

Thirteen-year-old Emily Poe has been given the opportunity of a lifetime: A chance to attend the exclusive Audyn School in Manhattan. But to win the scholarship, she has to pass a test like nothing she’s ever experienced before: A nearly bare room, a set of strange clues, a locked door. And a mysterious organization - the Leopold Foundation - that’s watching her every move.

Claudia Morgan is overwhelmed. She's a single parent trying the best that she can, but her four-year-old son, Henry, is a handful - for her and for his preschool. When Claudia hears about a school with an atypical teaching style near her Chicagoland home, she has to visit. The Hawthorne School is beautiful and has everything she dreams of for Henry: time to play outside, music, and art. But when Henry brings home stories of ceremonies in the woods and odd rules, Claudia's instincts tell her that something isn't quite right.

In Harvest, the book that introduced us to Tess Gerritsen's unique blend of medical expertise, harrowing suspense, and brilliantly crafted plot twists, the dark side of medical research is exposed. Harvest vividly portrays a young woman doctor challenging a world where medical miracles and greed fuel a lethal conspiracy - and the bright lights of the O.R. conceal the ultimate corruption of genius.

Shortly before her 17th birthday, Emma discovers she has a long-lost twin named Sutton Mercer. She contacts Sutton, who agrees to a rendezvous but never shows up. Curious at first, Emma slips into Sutton's ultra-glamorous life, assuming her identity. When it becomes clear that Sutton is not coming back, that someone made sure she never could, Emma plunges in to investigate who could have wanted her sister gone (a fairly long list, she discovers).

Lured into the most popular in-crowd imaginable, Cassie is intoxicated by her newfound strength. Caught between two members' consuming desires to use the coven's mysterious forces, Cassie turns to one of their boyfriends, Adam - and falls captive to her own dangerous love.

Every year, the reputable Queensland institution of St. Ignatius, affectionately called Iggy, hosts a Gala Day. This battle of brains and brawn, where eleven-year-olds vie for a spot inside those hallowed ivory walls, directly affects admissions and determines the path of each and every candidate. But in the cutthroat environment of elite academia, three mothers will stop at nothing to see their boys succeed.

Aspiring artist Fanny Price is an unwelcome guest at her uncle Sir Thomas Bertram’s estate. It’s his affection for Fanny that’s keeping her from being forced out by her cousins Tom and Maria and nasty Aunt Norris, back to a home to which she never wants to return. But then Sir Thomas dies in a tragic accident inside his art emporium, and Fanny finds evidence of foul play that, if revealed, could further jeopardize her already precarious position. Edmund, her best friend and secret crush, urges Fanny to keep quiet about her discovery, but Fanny can’t ignore the truth: a murderer is among them.

Wealthy young women are being murdered on Manhattan's exclusive Upper West Side, and the police aren't looking for answers in the right places. Enter Tandy Angel. The first case she cracked was the mystery of her parents' deaths. Now, while she's working to exonerate her brother of his glamorous girlfriend's homicide, she's driven to get involved in the West Side murder spree.

Fifteen-year-old Izzy Brannick was trained to fight monsters. For centuries, her family has hunted magical creatures. But when Izzy's older sister vanishes without a trace while on a job, Izzy's mom decides they need to take a break. Izzy and her mom move to a new town, but they soon discover it's not as normal as it appears. A series of hauntings has been plaguing the local high school, and Izzy is determined to prove her worth and investigate.

I’m Lucy, and I have a secret I have a beautiful home that I’m desperate to escape. But that’s not my secret. I tell my friends I’ve never wanted children when I always have. But that’s not my secret. My husband is a celebrated surgeon who tries to control me. But that’s not my secret. Adele knows. Once upon a time, I knew everything about her and she knew everything about me. Best friends forever. But now our secret is beginning to surface. I can trust her more than anyone. We made a pact. And she’s never do anything to hurt me. Would she?

Every October, the school where I work takes a trip to a local farm to pet the animals and search for the perfect Halloween pumpkin. This year is even more special, as my daughter, Claire, is coming. She’s so excited, and we really need some fun time together after what we’ve been through.

Three well-off young men - former students at Rome’s prestigious all-boys Catholic high school San Leone Magno - brutally tortured, raped, and murdered two young women in 1975. The event, which came to be known as the Circeo massacre, shocked and captivated the country, exposing the violence and dark underbelly of the upper middle class at a moment when the traditional structures of family and religion were seen as under threat. It is this environment, the halls of San Leone Magno in the late 1960s and the 1970s, that Edoardo Albinati takes as his subject.

Teddy Cannon isn’t your typical 20-something woman. She’s resourceful. She’s bright. She’s scrappy. She can also read people with uncanny precision. What she doesn’t realize: She’s actually psychic. When a series of bad decisions leads Teddy to a run-in with the police, a mysterious stranger intervenes. He invites her to apply to the School for Psychics, a facility hidden off the coast of San Francisco where students are trained like Delta Force operatives: It’s competitive, cutthroat, and highly secretive.

Eve Mallow is delighted when she’s asked to cater Founders’ Day at Southwood School. It’s the best–and most secretive–school for miles around, and Eve can’t wait to see what it’s really like. But when she arrives, the atmosphere is far from scholarly. Natalie Somerson, ex-pupil and professional gossip, is the guest of honor, but nobody seems to want her there...especially when her speech stirs up an old scandal about a secret love affair. So why was she invited?

England, 1817. Captain Lacey takes a post as a secretary at the Sudbury School in Berkshire, a school for sons of the wealthiest merchants and bankers in England. As soon as he arrives, Lacey discovers that he's been hired for more than his letter-writing skills. A series of disturbing pranks have kept the school in an uproar, and the headmaster expects Lacey to discover the identity of the prankster. The problems intensify when a groom from the school's stables turns up dead in a lock of the nearby canal.

A satire of teenage life follows cynical soon-to-graduate Flannery Culp on a raucous journey through high school in the 1990s, covering SATs, college applications, friends, boyfriends, tabloid journalism, and TV talk shows. A first novel.

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.

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.

I wasn't always like this, you know - paranoid, temperamental, vindictive. I mean, sure, I've always been a bit....high strung. But, I never used to stalk my therapist patients. Or yell at them. Or hold them captive in my garage. No, all of that started after the incidents at Lonesome Woods Boarding School. And I'm not talking about the school shooter. This was something far more insidious - something....infectious. Like a cancerous disease that tore through the student body, rotting young hearts one by one.