Books like Descent by Tim Johnston

The Goldfinch chronicles the life of thirteen‑year‑old Theo Decker, who survives a museum attack that kills his mother and carries an art piece that becomes a lifelong obsession, exploring loss, identity, and art in contemporary America.

A tense Dutch family drama in which two brothers and their wives confront the moral dilemma of protecting their children after the kids are implicated in a crime.

When their teenage sister Julia disappears 25 years ago, sisters Claire and Lydia are united again by new tragedies—Claire’s husband is murdered and a missing child case resurfaces. Together they confront family secrets, grief, and the possibility of redemption and revenge.

In “Corsair,” ex‑CIA ship captain Juan Cabrillo commandeers the Oregon to recover a missing U.S. Secretary of State in Libya, uncovering a plot that ties a historic naval battle and ancient Islamic scrolls to a looming international crisis.

A contemporary family drama in which a mother‑child relationship is complicated by a companion chimpanzee, raising questions of identity, secrecy and moral responsibility.

A former lover’s passion turns to obsession when a college professor discovers the truth behind his ex’s vanished life, forcing him to confront a mystery that endangers his own existence.

Alex Cross is charged with murdering followers of his nemesis, thrust into a legal battle that threatens his career and freedom while he, with former partner John Sampson, investigates a series of missing young girls linked to a dangerous internet cult.

Nola Brown, presumed dead after a mysterious plane crash, is revealed alive by former Navy SEAL Jim "Zig" Zigarowski, forcing them to evade a secretive U.S. military conspiracy while uncovering hidden truths.

17‑year‑old Haley McWaid’s disappearance from suburban New Jersey thrusts her family, a determined reporter and a social worker into a race to uncover the truth and confront the hidden dangers in their community.

When a teenage girl vanishes and her parents are murdered, a death‑row inmate claims innocence while his sister hires a grieving PI to uncover the truth.

An exhausted mother of three discovers her daughter's friend has vanished, setting off a tense search and a mystery that forces her to confront family secrets.

When a Hawaiian landowner’s wife falls into a coma and must be taken off life support, his two daughters and his high‑maintaining wife’s lover force a family on a road trip across the islands, where humor, grief, and an unexpected journey of truth intersect.

An ordinary snapshot leads to a suburban mother's unraveling world as she tries to shield her children from her husband who has been found dead with a family photograph in his possession, and the revelation of a ruthless killer who will stop at nothing to find Jack and the photo.

"I very much need to be dead." These are the chilling last words left by a man who had everything to live for but took his own life. In the void that remains stands his widow, FBI agent Jane Hawk, surrounded by questions destined to go unanswered unless she does what all the grief and fury inside her demand: Find the truth, no matter what. People of talent and accomplishment, people seemingly happy and sound of mind, have recently been committing suicide in surprising numbers. A disturbing pattern is beginning to emerge. Jane is determined to give up everything to find out why. And if that means going rogue and becoming America's Most Wanted, then so be it. Those arrayed against her are legion, and devoted to protecting something profoundly important-or terrifying-enough to exterminate any and all in their way. But Jane is as clever as these enemies are cold-blooded, as relentless as they are ruthless. And she is driven by a righteous rage they can never comprehend. Because it is born of love.

When Justin Campbell reappears four years after his disappearance, his return shatters the fragile peace of his Southport, Texas family and forces them to confront the hidden wounds of loss, grief, and psychological trauma.

FBI agent Vince Leone uses cutting‑edge profiling to investigate a chilling kidnapping in the idyllic California town of Oak Knoll, unearthing secrets that challenge even the most seasoned investigators.

National Magazine Award-winning author Moira Johnston tells the dramatic story of a "perfect" American family destroyed when a daughter's "flashbacks" of incestuous rape by her father turned to accusations and lawsuits - and of the explosive landmark trial in Napa Valley that gave a father, for the first time, the right to strike back legally at the therapists he believed had planted false memories of sexual abuse in his daughter's mind. Johnston sets the story of Gary, Stephanie, and Holly Ramona in the context of a broader concern over the destructive impact of uncorroborated memories of childhood sexual abuse, a controversy that has embroiled parents, adult children, and family therapists throughout the country and has stirred debate among feminists, psychologists, memory scientists, and lawyers.

A former child survivor of incest and dissociative identity disorder recounts the terror of a childhood threat and the decades of silence that followed, culminating in the emergence of five distinct personalities speaking for the first time.

Melanie, a 18‑year‑old witness in the protection program, returns to her hometown of Silver Bay to confront the killer who murdered her parents, risking everything to find her estranged father before he finds her.