96 books like At the Quiet Edge

Many heroic characters are not flashy. This is the way I like to cast them in my novels. The principal characters in this fast-moving SiFi novel are that way. The story is revealed using a first-person approach, each chapter being in the voice of a particular character. I like the breezy nature of the dialog that allows emotional depth to gradually make an impact without getting bogged down in psychoanalysis. While the earth is frosting over with a new ice age and civilization grinds towards an uncertain future, national alliances are forming with the associated grasping and competition for limited resources. A genius scientist is tasked to find an answer and the author rightly avoids a deep dive, instead taking broad leaps across technological chasms. However, this novel gets you thinking about what you might do under similar circumstances.

This book is relevant today. Our country is going through the turmoil of distress caused by the breakdown of civil order and the looming scarcity of basic necessities like energy, food, and water. The scenario here is about the intersection of several groups of people and how well they prepared for surviving the first several days of a catastrophic event. There is good survival preparation information embedded in the text that can be augmented by the many real survivalist organizations. In crafting the story, the author does the same thing I do…layering useful, real-world information into the fictional narrative. Another real-world question is considered here. If there were no police, National Guard, FEMA, or aid groups, what would you be able to do for you and your family? The message in this book leaves us hopeful. 

I write in the speculative fiction genre where an overwhelming event, seemingly beyond the control of the main characters, underpins what happens to those characters. This particular drama uses such an event which literally paints a canvas for a murder mystery. The typical resources available to law enforcement are stripped away leaving people to depend upon themselves. All the human emotions and prejudices are on display. You might find yourself rooting for one character before moving on to another as the plot twists. A bit distracting was that much of the dialogue and description about what someone was feeling was clichéd. The cataclysmic event itself was almost a sidebar in this volume, the first of the series, to the point where the murder mystery could stand on its own. That said, this story is a thought-provoker on a societal and individual level.

I like to write stories where the protagonist is thrown into situations where they don’t know the extent of what they don’t know. This requires the character to be creative, courageous, and if they can, fearless or at least grow into this state of being. This is the exact case in Executive. The arc of the lead character grows from timid to confident over some twists and turns as malicious corporate personalities exert their influence over her. She slowly begins to realize her own power. The blend of real-world high-tech military hardware development provides a steady and interesting backdrop for the increasingly hostile life and death office politics. The story resolves as you’d expect so there is not a great moment of surprise revelation, but it is satisfying.

I fell for this book because of the main character’s voice, which is earthy, believable, and funny. “Hard times are a penny for plenty,” Abilene says after hopping off the train in dusty Manifest, Kansas in 1936. “They call it a Depression, but I’d say it’s a downright rut and the whole country’s in it.” Carrying her daddy’s compass and not much else, Abilene boards with a preacher with a “jigsaw life” and seeks to discover her missing daddy’s past. Following her quest, I learned about things like bootlegging, the flu epidemic of 1918, the Great Depression, xenophobia—and a bit about magic elixirs.  

I should perhaps be concerned about how much I liked the main character in C.J.Skuse’s Sweetpea given that she’s a murdering psychopath. She’s very normal on the surface but, oh the things she does to men who follow women on dark canal paths… I’m sure we’ve all had little fantasies about doing the same (I hope it’s not just me). She’s rude, funny, and extremely violent!

While technically a novella, this profoundly disturbing story takes inspiration from the notorious BTK killer of the 1970s. BTK, alias Dennis Rader, killed at least ten people, yet his wife of 34 years denied ever knowing anything about his murderous exploits. Stephen King develops the story to show what it would be like for a happily married wife to discover suddenly that her husband has a hitherto unknown, sinister hobby. A chilling and thought-provoking read.

This is a book told from the point of view of Mother Rob and her daughter Callie.

It deals with topics of child psychopathy and innate evil and is beautifully written. I’m a huge fan of Catriona Ward’s and was torn between this book or The Last House On Needless Street but I really enjoyed the exploration of motherhood and childhood here and found myself rooting for the characters long after I turned the last page.

Like all of Ward’s books, Sundial has strong horror vibes and the world we are drawn into is full of lush descriptions but it is the characters that really stand out to me. This book also has some really good twists.

In this romance, the author doesn’t gloss over the raw, ugly lies of the heroine’s depression. She also touches on an issue we don't often see in fiction—body dysmorphia in men. Ultimately, two broken souls step outside their comfort zones to be together. That’s where the good stuff happens…

Rachel Howzell Hall keeps the reader guessing in These Toxic Things. Her protagonist Mickie Lambert creates digital scrapbooks, but when her latest client ends up dead, she's determined to find out why someone wants the peculiar objects the woman had given Mickie to preserve. To find the answers, she ends up crossing paths with a serial killer. It's twisty fun, and Hall's characters are ones you won't forget.