Books like A Fatal Lie by Sally Chew

Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word. Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London. Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations–a search for the truth that threatens to consume him.

WICKED above her hipbone, GIRL across her heart Words are like a road map to reporter Camille Preaker's troubled past. Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, Camille's first assignment from the second-rate daily paper where she works brings her reluctantly back to her hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls.NASTY on her kneecap, BABYDOLL on her legSince she left town eight years ago, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed again in her family's Victorian mansion, Camille is haunted by the childhood tragedy she has spent her whole life trying to cut from her memory.HARMFUL on her wrist, WHORE on her ankleAs Camille works to uncover the truth about these violent crimes, she finds herself identifying with the young victims--a bit too strongly. Clues keep leading to dead ends, forcing Camille to unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past to get at the story. Dogged by her own demons, Camille will have to confront what happened to her years before if she wants to survive this homecoming.With its taut, crafted writing, Sharp Objects is addictive, haunting, and unforgettable.From the Hardcover edition.

"The perfect marriage? Or the perfect lie? Everyone knows a couple like Jack and Grace. He has looks and wealth, she has charm and elegance. You might not want to like them, but you do. You'd like to get to know Grace better. But it's difficult, because you realise Jack and Grace are never apart. Some might call this true love. Others might ask why Grace never answers the phone. Or how she can never meet for coffee, even though she doesn't work. How she can cook such elaborate meals but remain so slim. And why there are bars on one of the bedroom windows"--

Norrie had fallen disastrously in love with Bruno Denton four years ago, when he’d taken over her father’s newspaper. Unwittingly she’d given him everything he’d wanted—her body, her soul and the information he’d needed to destroy her father. Now that she’d succeeded in rebuilding her life, she couldn’t bear to sit idly by as history repeated itself—not when Bruno was trying to take control of more than just a newspaper. He was also trying to take control of her little nephew, as if he thought the boy belonged to him.

It’s winter in the Catskills and Mitchell’s Inn, nestled deep in the woods, is the perfect setting for a relaxing—maybe even romantic—weekend away. It boasts spacious old rooms with huge woodburning fireplaces, a well-stocked wine cellar, and opportunities for cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, or just curling up with a good murder mystery. So when the weather takes a turn for the worse, and a blizzard cuts off the electricity—and all contact with the outside world—the guests settle in for the long haul. Soon, though, one of the guests turns up dead—it looks like an accident. But when a second guest dies, they start to panic. Within the snowed-in paradise, something—or someone—is picking off the guests one by one. And there’s nothing they can do but hunker down and hope they can survive the storm.

The day before Halloween 2004 was the last day on Earth for respected, well-liked college professor Fred Jablin. That morning, a neighbor discovered his body lying in a pool of blood in the driveway of Jablin's Virginia home. Police immediately turned their attentions to the victim's ex-wife, Piper, a petite, pretty Texas lawyer who had lost a bitter custody battle and would do anything to get her kids back. But Piper was in Houston, one thousand miles away, at the time of the slaying and couldn't possibly have been the killer . . . could she?So began an investigation into one of the most bizarre cases Virginia and Texas law enforcement agencies had ever encountered: a twisted conspiracy of lies, rage, paranoia, manipulation, and savage murder that would ensnare an entire family—including two lethally close look-alike sisters—and reveal the shocking depravities possible when a dangerously disordered mind slips into madness.

One bitter cold morning a sixteen-year-old boy named Nicholas Elliot walked into his Virginia high school with a Cobray M-11/9 - touted by its manufacturer as "the gun that made the eighties roar" - stuffed in his backpack. By mid-morning he had killed one teacher and severely wounded another. Only sheer luck kept his rampage from becoming one of the worst in America's long and bloody infatuation with guns. By tracing the history of the Cobray from its design and manufacture to the final, illegal transaction that placed it in Elliot's hands, Lethal Passage provides a stunning expose that will completely reframe the debate surrounding America's gun crisis. Erik Larson immersed himself in America's gun culture. He learned to shoot and to appreciate the sheer fun of the sport, and he even acquired a federal gun-dealer's license. In following Elliot's gun, he uncovered the lax regulations and skewed interest that have perpetuated handgun violence, which has grown to account for 22,000 deaths and thousands more injuries every year. He questions the political and economic forces that allowed the Cobray - originally designed as a battlefield weapon - to be marketed to the public. And he explores the broader cultural forces that nurture our fascination with violence and make gunshot death a routine feature of American life . Compelling, balanced, and timely, Lethal Passage pinpoints one important source of the violence. The Brady Bill may help reduce firearms violence, but its recent passage is only a small step toward stemming the unimpeded flow of guns to America's new generation of killers. Erik Larson offers realistic solutions to a crisis that has now reached epic proportions.

The true story of the 1985 murder of an aristocratic Virginia couple and the subsequent implication of the victims' beautiful and manipulative daughter and her lover

"Including over 100 pages of new material, [this book] shares the latest theories and answers the questions that have left many people baffled [about the Skylar Neese murder]. After killer Shelia Eddy pled guilty to first degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison and Rachel Shoaf was sentenced to thirty years for second degree murder, family, friends, investigators, and other key sources reveal the facts [that would have been disclosed had] the case ... gone to trial"--