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Mystery/Thriller

Sleep With All the Lights On: A Round-Up of Freaking Good Thrillers

Rebecca Joines Schinsky

Chief of Staff

Rebecca Joines Schinsky is the executive director of product and ecommerce at Riot New Media Group. She co-hosts All the Books! and the Book Riot Podcast. Follow her on Twitter: @rebeccaschinsky.

This edition of the Riot Recommendation is sponsored by Freak by Jennifer Hillier from Gallery Books.

Suspense magazine chose Jennifer Hillier’s “truly frightening” debut, Creep, as one of 2011’s best novels, while #1 bestselling author Jeffery Deaver cautioned “you better call in sick—you’re not going anywhere until you finish reading.” Now, Hillier returns to the Pacific Northwest college town where one killer’s stranglehold has ebbed . . . but another sick mind has waited for the perfect moment to pick up where the terror left off.

 

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Earlier this week, we asked for your favorite, most heart-pounding, so-scary-you-had-to-sleep-with-all-the-lights-on thrillers. Here’s a round-up of the books you suggested in the comments and on Facebook and Twitter. Add more in the comments here!

Room by Emma Donoghue

Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

Swan Song by Lee Hanson

The Small Hand by Susan Hill

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris

The 7th Victim by Alan Jacobson

The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson

It by Stephen King

anything by Chelsea Cain

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

The Shining by Stephen King

Pet Sematary by Stephen King

Tell No One by Harlan Coben

anything by Lisa Jackson

Intensity by Dean Koontz

Criminal by Karin Slaughter

Dare Me by Megan Abbott