I Never Saw That Coming

Novels with surprise twists.

Bojhalien, Chris - The Double Bind
Fact and fiction become indistinguishable in The Double Bind, a story centering on a young social worker who survived a near-rape. She stumbles across photographs taken by a former homeless client and tries to understand how a man who'd taken snapshots of celebrities in the 50s and 60s might have wound up on the streets. As she seeks answers to his past she also must face dark events from her own.

Brown, Rita Mae - Southern Discomfort
A tale of two decades in Montgomery Alabama--a world where all is not what it seems. Hortensia Reedmuller Banastre is a beautiful woman entrenched in old money, white magnolia and a loveless marriage--until she meets an utterly gorgeous young prizefighter. Hortensia struggles to survive the emotions caused by her scandalous love. How she ultimately triumphs is a touching and beautiful human drama--an intense and exuberant affair of the heart.

Diehl, William - Primal Fear
After discovering the mutilated body of an archbishop in the rectory of a Chicago church, police find Aaron Stampler, a mild mannered runaway, cowering in a confessional, blood-soaked and gripping the murder weapon. Stampler’s attorney, is impressed by his client, and builds a maverick defense team to assist him. A psychiatrist blows the case wide open by unearthing a terrifying secret revealed in court. Diehl builds delicious tension, keeping the reader off balance right up to the gavel-pounding finale.

Lavender, Will - Obedience
At a Midwestern university, students are taking Logic and Reasoning 204, taught by enigmatic Professor Williams. They quickly learn this is a course like no other. Their single assignment is to find a missing 18-year-old girl in six weeks time—or else, Williams asserts, she will be murdered. As the students begin investigating the assignment they unearth clues that seem all too real. Is this merely an academic exercise?

Lehane, Dennis - Shutter Island
Lehane's novel carries an ending so shocking yet so faithful to the story that it is one of the greatest plot twists written. In summer 1954, two U.S. marshals arrive on Shutter Island to investigate the disappearance of a patient from the hospital for the criminally insane that dominates the island. As a major hurricane bears down on the island, inciting a riot among the insane and cutting off all access to the mainland, they begin to fear for their lives. There are mysteries within mysteries in this novel.

MCrumb, Sharon - Hangman's Beautiful Daughter
Three family members are killed, shot apparently by one of the sons, who took his own life. Two children survive. But when a deputy discovers that the two have disinterred their father's body from its grave, he wants to know what really happened on the night of the shooting. These plots twine around the knowledge of an old mountain seer whose gift adds to the haunting quality of the story and to its chilling suspense.

O'Connell, Carol - Judas Child
When two fifth-graders are kidnapped from their school, two adults afflicted by their own tragedies are drawn into the investigation. The killer in a 15-year-old murder was supposedly caught, but similarities between that case and the current one raise doubts. In the earlier case, the killer used a note from one captured child (the Judas child) to lure a friend; the reader knows that this is again the pattern, just as we know, or think we know, where the girls are being held.

Picoult, Jodi - Nineteen Minutes
An alienated teen brings weapons to his high school and opens fire, killing 10 people. Flashbacks reveal how bullying caused him to retreat into a world of violent computer games. The judge assigned to the case tries to maintain her objectivity as she struggles to understand her daughter who is one of the surviving witnesses.

Setterfield, Diane - The Thirteenth Tale
Margaret Lea, a biographer, is contacted by renowned aging author Vida Winter, who finally wishes to tell her own, long-hidden, life story. Margaret travels to Yorkshire, where she interviews the dying writer, walks the remains of her estate at Angelfield and tries to verify the old woman's tale of a governess, a ghost and more than one abandoned baby.

Turow, Scott - Presumed Innocent
Rusty Sabich, family man and assistant county prosecutor, is handed an explosive case- the brutal murder of a woman who happens to be his former lover. A shocking turn of events suddenly transforms him from the accuser into the accused and plunges him into a nightmare world where nothing seems real and no one can be presumed innocent.

Vachss, Andrew - The Getaway Man
Eddie, the narrator, is a quiet, not-too-bright loner who loves to drive cars. Joyriding and a few stints in juvenile prisons lead him to hard time and hardened thugs who see potential in his single-minded loyalty--when Eddie's out front in the car, he waits until his partners come out, whether the cops are coming or not. He finds himself partnered with a tough ex-con planning the ultimate noir cliche: one last big score so they can all retire. Watch out for the big surprise!