female protagonist

a white man giving another white man CPR on a sidewalk on a snowy evening

These Cold Strangers by J. T. Ellison – A Dark Short Story

Addison Blake has moved far away from the home and the town she grew up in after her entire family and her boyfriend were murdered in their own home when she was a young girl, out partying with her friends. Initially, even the police blamed her. Even though she is far away now, she is still under medication and therapy and carries a massive survivor’s guilt. Call it fate or coincidence, but she is made to visit her past. How will that turn out?

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an old woman, holding a phone in her hand, staring outside the window

Slow Burner by Laura Lippman – Forgiving a Gaslighting, Cheating Partner Again?

Liz Kelsey is a high-school teacher, married to her partner Phil Kelsey, who is a venture capitalist for nearly twenty-five years. Nearly eighteen months before, Liz caught Phil in an emotional affair with a woman much younger than him, as he tried to use his power at work to give her career opportunities. After therapy and working on herself, she is convinced that their marriage is healthy, until she catches him trying to reconnect with that same woman again. Is there anything she can do to end that extramarital affair, especially when she can’t even confront him because she had promised not to check his phone?

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a staircase in somewhat dimly lit hall connecting two floors in a sophisticated villa

The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious Part-2) by Maureen Johnson – Is The Mystery Finally Solved?

In The Vanishing Stair, Stevie Bell reunites with her friends at Ellingham, he boyfriend and she break the awkwardness and their romance grows further, but she is still as anxious as she was earlier, still having to take medicines for anxiety when she needs. With the dark reality of one classmate who had died and one other classmate who went missing still looming in the air, she is still thinking about crime, like a determined detective would. Who is responsible for the Ellingham murders and who killed her classmate?

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a woman holds her newborn baby in her arms in a hospital bed, with her mother and the staff around her

Zikora by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – A Strong Feminist Fiction Short Story

In this short story, Zikora, an African American woman is a lawyer in Washington DC, in a relationship with the perfect man – Kwame. When she gets pregnant, her life unexpectedly falls apart. As she survives all those difficulties with nothing but the support of her mother and her female cousin in Nigeria, she comes to realize how unjust life is for women and unlearns internalized misogyny.

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a house in the middle of a forst at night

The Woman in The Cabin by Becca Day – An Unputdownable Psychological Thriller

Mary is stuck in a marriage with an abusive, controlling man, Cal. The problem is that she cannot leave him because they live in a remote place with no contact with the outside world, and she does not even know whom to go to or how to leave. And that’s when she discovers something chilling about his past and something important happens in her life. Nothing is really what it seems like.

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a young, blonde girl, looking tired

Good Girl, Bad Blood by Holly Jackson – Part 2 of AGGGTM Series

In part 2 of “A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder”, Pip has given up working on solving cases after all the pain it caused her and her family last time, so she runs a podcast with her boyfriend’s support. But a friend’s brother goes missing and out of empathy and consideration, Pip starts playing detective again. As she starts digging, more and more questions arise.

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a poster showing a middle-aged woman looking shocked, a amiddle-aged man, and a young girl

Then She was Gone by Lisa Jewell

An emotionally layered psychological thriller that mixes grief, memory, and unanswered questions about how a young girl went missing. The story unfolds gradually, focusing on how the past continues to shape the present in unsettling ways, especially for the mother who cannot think of anything except for her missing daughter. There is no purpose or anything interesting in her life until she meets a man her own age, who she starts dating, and to her surprise, his daughter looks very similar to her own.

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Girl, Alone by Blake Pierce

Girl, Alone by Blake Pierce – A Fast-Paced Detective Story from The Ella Dark Series

Ella Dark, anambitious, hard-working FBI data analyst who has been studying serial killers and their criminal profiles for as long as she remembers yearns for a field job. When an opportunity presents itself, she is excited but quickly learns that studying murders from a desk and watching dead bodies of victims of obsessive, psychopathc rage in person are not the same. A new serial killer is on the loose, so can Ella prove her worth to the department?

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