Thriller

	The Murder of Roger Ackroyd	Gone Girl	The Silent Patient	The Hound of the Baskervilles	The Housemaid

"Veronal" crystals, a barbital. Dr James Sheppard, the story's narrator, lives with his unmarried sister, Caroline, in the English country village of King's Abbot. Telling the story in his own words, Dr Sheppard recounts being called to certify the death of a wealthy widow, Mrs Ferrars, who has committed suicide a year after her abusive husband's demise. Caroline speculates that Mrs Ferrars had poisoned her husband and has committed suicide out of remorse.
Roger Ackroyd, wealthy widower and owner of Fernly Park, tells Dr Sheppard that he needs to talk to him urgently and invites him to dinner that evening. In addition to Dr Sheppard, the dinner guests include Major Blunt, Ackroyd's sister-in-law Mrs Cecil Ackroyd, her daughter Flora, and Ackroyd's personal secretary, Geoffrey Raymond. Flora tells the doctor that she is engaged to Ralph Paton, Ackroyd's stepson, though the engagement is being kept confidential.
In his study after dinner, Ackroyd tells Dr Sheppard that he had been engaged to Mrs Ferrars for several months, and that she had admitted the day before that she had indeed poisoned her husband. She was being blackmailed, and promised to reveal the blackmailer's name within 24 hours. At this point Ackroyd's butler, Parker, enters with a letter that Mrs Ferrars had posted just before she killed herself. Ackroyd apologetically asks Dr Sheppard to leave so that he can read it alone.
Shortly after arriving back home, the doctor receives a phone call from Parker. Dr Sheppard tells Caroline that Ackroyd has been found dead and then returns to Fernly Park. Parker professes to know nothing about the phone call. Unable to get a response at the study door, Sheppard and Parker break it down and find Ackroyd dead in his chair, killed with his own dagger. The letter is missing and footprints are found leading in and out of the study through an open window.
Ralph disappears and becomes the primary suspect when the footprints are found to match shoes that he owns. Flora, convinced that Ralph is innocent, asks the recently retired detective Hercule Poirot to investigate. He agrees and visits the scene of the crime, asking Dr Sheppard to accompany him.
Parker notes to Poirot that a chair in Ackroyd's study has been moved. Poirot questions the guests and staff, including Ursula Bourne, the parlourmaid, who has no alibi. The window of opportunity for the murderer after Dr Sheppard's departure appears to have been quite short since Raymond and Blunt later heard Ackroyd talking in his study, and Flora says she saw him just before going up to bed.
Poirot unravels a complex web of intrigue, and presents the missing Ralph Paton – who was, it transpires, already secretly married to Ursula when Ackroyd had decided that he should marry Flora. The pair had arranged a clandestine meeting in the garden. Flora is forced to admit she never in fact saw her uncle after dinner, leaving Raymond and Blunt as the last people to hear Ackroyd alive. Blunt confesses his love for Flora.
Alone with Dr Sheppard, Poirot reveals he knows that Dr Sheppard himself is both Ferrars' blackmailer and Ackroyd's killer. Realising that Mrs Ferrars's letter would implicate him, Sheppard had stabbed Ackroyd before leaving the study. He left publicly through the front door, then put Ralph's shoes on, ran round to the study window and climbed back in. Locking the door from the inside, he set a desk dictaphone going, playing a recording of Ackroyd's voice, and pulled out a chair to hide it from the sightline of anyone standing in the doorway. To provide the excuse for returning to Fernly Park, he had asked a patient to call him at home. While Sheppard had the study to himself for a few minutes after the crime was discovered, he slipped the dictaphone into his medical bag, and put the chair back in place. These details were concealed from his narrative, which has also now been given to Poirot.
Poirot tells Dr Sheppard the matter will be reported to the police in the morning and suggests he spare his sister Caroline by taking his own life. Sheppard completes his account of Poirot's investigation – the novel itself – with the final chapter, Apologia, serving as his suicide note.

The narrative alternates between the point of view of Nick and Amy Dunne (née Elliott). Nick's narration begins shortly after arriving home on his fifth wedding anniversary to find Amy is missing from their home; there are signs of a struggle. Amy's narration comes in the form of her diaries and follows the earlier stages of their relationship.
The diary entries describe how Amy met Nick in New York City, where they both worked as writers. Nick was a journalist who wrote movie and TV reviews, while Amy wrote personality quizzes for women's magazines. After two years of dating, they married. The couple lived in a beautiful brownstone home in Brooklyn where they were happy.
In 2009, both Nick and Amy lost their jobs following the Great Recession. Amy's parents Rand and Marybeth, meanwhile, had written a successful children's book series called "Amazing Amy," based on Amy's life experiences. However, when sales from the books declined and Rand and Marybeth didn't curb their spending, they also started facing financial issues. Their solution was to ask Amy for money from her trust fund, which made Nick unhappy.
Eventually, Amy and Nick relocate to Nick's hometown of North Carthage, Missouri, to care for Nick's sick mother, Maureen. With permission, Nick uses what remains of Amy's trust fund to open a bar with his twin sister, Margo or "Go". Nick also finds work teaching journalism at a local college. Their marriage deteriorates; Amy describes how she hates being a housewife in the suburbs and resents Nick for making her move. Her diary comes to portray Nick as an aggressive, moody, idle, and threatening husband, and indicates that she fears for her life.
In Nick's narrative, he views Amy as a needlessly difficult, antisocial, controlling perfectionist, and an unwelcome obligation, but he is concerned about her disappearance. Nick becomes a suspect in the investigation, led by Detectives Rhonda Boney and Jim Gilpin, and Nick downplays their relationship issues. During the investigation, Nick faces intense media scrutiny, exacerbated by his lack of obvious emotion and apparent flippant attitude. It is also revealed by Amy's supposed best friend from the neighborhood, Noelle Hawthorne, that Amy was pregnant, which Nick was unaware of. Nick has serious credit card debt, which he claims to have been unaware of, and Amy's life insurance was recently increased by Nick, which he claims was her idea. It becomes apparent to Nick that his wife had hidden secrets from him.

The plot of the book focuses mainly on Theo Faber, a psychotherapist, and his patient Alicia Berenson. Michaelides describes Theo Faber's traumatic childhood in which Theo is exposed to a violent father and overall neglectful parents. In an attempt to fix and understand himself, Theo takes a degree in psychology and starts working as a therapist. Theo finds the love of his life in Kathy, an American actress who lives in London. Theo feels safe and his relationship means everything to him. While the plot unfolds, it becomes increasingly clear that Kathy is traitorous. The book switches back and forth between narrating Theo's life story, focused especially on his relationship and Alicia's treatment.
Alicia killed her husband six years previously by shooting him in the head five times. The couple seemed perfectly normal, content and happy before the incident. Alicia hasn't spoken a single word since and has thus been moved to a closed psychiatric facility, the Grove. Many therapists have attempted but failed to make her talk. It is evident that Alicia is perceptive to her surroundings, but the reason for her silence remains a mystery.
When Theo applies for a job at the Grove and is accepted, he convinces his superior to let him become Alicia's therapist. He has a profound interest in Alicia and wonders why she entitled a nude self-portrait she creates Alesctis.
Theo's therapy sessions don't show any results at first and Theo's superior contemplates putting an end to them because of the lack of results, but they gradually lead to revelations about Alicia's past. He interviews her relatives and learns that she feared her brother-in-law and used to paint all day long, and about her traumatic childhood after her mother died, her father violently abused her, and her entire family neglected her. In an attempt to let Alicia express herself and communicate, he collects her old art materials from her former best friend and provides Alicia with an art studio in the Grove. Alicia paints a sophisticated painting of the Grove with her and Theo standing beside it. Theo's superior interprets the painting as a sign of progress and allows Theo to continue the therapy sessions.
When Elif, another patient at the clinic who has had conflicts with Alicia in the past, vandalizes Alicia's artwork with the word "slut", Alicia stabs Elif in the eye with a pencil. This nearly puts an end to Theo's therapy sessions as the Grove management considers Alicia too dangerous for one-on-one sessions, but Theo convinces them otherwise, and soon after, surprisingly, manages to get Alicia to talk.
At the Grove, Theo receives accolades for inducing Alicia to speak again. Alicia tells Theo her life story, culminating in what happened on the night of the murder, though Theo and the Grove staff think she is lying about the events. The following morning, Alicia is found unconscious in her room and is found to have been injected with a lethal dose of painkillers by someone at the Grove. A police investigation is launched that turns up Alicia's diary.
The diary reveals that Theo is responsible for the murder of Alicia's husband. It details how Theo, driven by hatred, began stalking Kathy's lover, lingering outside his house. Once he discovered that the man was married, he decided to make his wife aware of her husband's infidelity. Theo put on a mask and broke into their house, where he found the wife, Alicia, and told her of the affair. After Theo left, the shock of Theo's intrusion and the revelation of her husband Gabriel's cheating lead Alicia to suffer a psychotic breakdown. She took Gabriel's gun and shot him five times. Afterwards, unable to accept that she had killed the love of her life, she attempts suicide and vows to never speak again.
The book ends abruptly after an investigator arrives at Theo's home with Alicia's diary and he begins to read aloud from her final entry, incriminating Theo.

In London, 1889, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson are visited by a Dr. James Mortimer, asking for the aid of Holmes, beginning by reading him a legend that has run in the Baskerville family since the time of the English Civil War, when Sir Hugo Baskerville kidnapped a farmer's daughter. When the girl escaped, Hugo pursued her, swearing a curse upon himself in his mad rage. Hugo's companions witnessed the girl dead of fear, and Hugo killed by a demonic hound, that is said to have haunted Dartmoor ever since, causing the premature death of many Baskervilles. Mortimer further explains that his friend, the philanthropic baronet Sir Charles Baskerville, who took the legend very seriously, and had a weak heart, who had resided at Baskerville Hall, after amassing a fortune in South Africa. When the baronet's body was found in a yew alley, with an expression of horror on his face, the death was attributed to cardiac arrest; however, Mortimer had secretly noticed large canine paw prints near the body. Sir Charles had been the eldest of three Baskerville brothers, and Sir Henry, the Canadian son of the deceased second brother, is Sir Charles' heir. The rather immoral third brother, Rodger, died of yellow fever in South America in 1876. Mortimer, the executor of Sir Charles's will, fears it might not be wise to bring Sir Henry to Dartmoor, in view of the possible supernatural dangers.
Though Holmes dismisses the legend as a fairy tale, he meets with Sir Henry when the new baronet arrives in London. It transpires that strange things are already happening to Sir Henry; one of his old boots has been stolen, he has received an anonymous letter warning him against the moor, and someone has been following him in a hansom. Mortimer reveals that Sir Henry's inheritance is about £740,000 (equivalent to £82,000,000 in 2025[6]); in view of these high stakes, Holmes asks Watson to act as Sir Henry's bodyguard, and to investigate things in Dartmoor. Upon arriving in Dartmoor, Watson, Mortimer and Sir Henry learn that Selden, a convicted murderer, has escaped from Princetown Prison and is loose on the moor. At Baskerville Hall, they are introduced to John and Eliza Barrymore, the married butler and housekeeper. Watson sends detailed accounts of his investigations to Holmes, particularly focusing on the neighbourhood residents. The Stapleton siblings stand out; Jack is over-friendly, drops hints about the hound, and warns Watson against attempting to cross the dangerous Grimpen Mire. His sister Beryl, without his knowledge, repeatedly tries to get Sir Henry to flee back to London. Another neighbour, Mr. Frankland, is a perpetual busybody and troublemaker, including threatening to bring a lawsuit against Dr. Mortimer for excavating nearby barrows. Sir Henry falls in love with Beryl Stapleton, though her brother strongly objects to the romance.
Barrymore repeatedly sends candlelight signals to someone on the moor. Following Barrymore one night, Watson and Sir Henry discover that Selden is Mrs. Barrymore's younger brother, and that she and her husband have been leaving food out for him. During an unsuccessful attempt to catch Selden, Watson sees a strange man standing on a tor.

On parole, Millie Calloway is hired by Nina Winchester as a live-in maid. She joins Nina's wealthy husband Andrew and daughter Cece at their mansion in Great Neck, Long Island, and is given an attic bedroom with a sealed window and a door that can only be locked from the outside. Nina is hiring because she claims she is pregnant and needs help around the house. Millie is desperate to keep her job as a condition of her parole. One morning, Nina erupts at Millie, accusing her of throwing away her meeting notes. Andrew deescalates the situation and reassures Nina that she can still rework her notes. One night, Nina finds Andrew watching Family Feud with Millie; though innocuous, Nina threatens to fire Millie and tells her to stay away from Andrew. Millie learns that Nina lost her parents in a suspicious house fire, can't have more children due to premature ovarian insufficiency, takes antipsychotic medications, was institutionalized for trying to drown Cece, and attempting suicide by overdose.
At Nina's instruction, Millie books Broadway musical tickets and a hotel for the Winchesters; however, Nina then denies having given her these instructions, as the schedule overlaps with Cece's ballet camp. While Nina takes Cece to ballet camp, Andrew and Millie secretly attend the show, enjoy dinner together, and check into the hotel. Receiving a flood of angry texts from Nina, Millie is comforted by Andrew. The two have sex and return home. Nina tells Millie she knows she spent ten years in prison for killing a rapist classmate in high school.
Nina finds out about their affair and threatens Millie, but Andrew defends her and demands that Nina leave. Andrew and Millie continue their romance. Millie decides to serve Andrew breakfast on an heirloom china plate from his controlling mother, but the presence of the groundskeeper Enzo outside the door frightens her and causes her to drop the plate, breaking it. Andrew fires Enzo and tells Millie to pick up the pieces. That night, Andrew brings Millie to the attic room, drugs her, and locks her inside. When she wakes up, she demands he let her out, but he refuses.
In a letter that Nina plans to give to her daughter when she's grown, Nina explains that she had nothing to do with her parents' death. A married law professor got her pregnant, and she fell for Andrew while raising Cece as a single mother. Early in their marriage, Andrew requested that Nina dye her brunette locks blonde. When she missed an appointment to touch up her roots, he locked her in the attic room until she pulled out one hundred hairs from her scalp, including the follicles; he forced her to do it again after claiming that one strand was missing a follicle. He then drugged her, framed her for attempting to kill Cece by drowning and drugging herself, and continued to torment her with confinement in the psychiatric hospital and the attic. Enzo tried to help her and Cece escape Andrew's abuse to no avail. Finally, Nina hired Millie, accurately predicting that Andrew would leave her for Millie.
As punishment for breaking the china, Andrew gives Millie a shard and demands that she cut her stomach once for each of the plate's pieces, a total of 21 cuts. After doing so, Millie falls asleep on the bed. When Andrew enters the attic to check on Millie, she stabs him with a knife hidden for her by Nina and locks him in the attic room. Millie orders Andrew to pull out one of his front teeth with pliers. Millie forces him to comply by breaking many pieces of his mother's china and threatening to burn the attic. When Nina picks up Cece from camp, Cece suggests that Nina save Millie. Nina sneaks into the house and unlocks the attic door, believing that Millie is still inside. Andrew attacks Millie and Nina, but Millie escapes. Andrew tries to kill Nina, but Millie returns and pushes him into the house's stairwell, killing him. Nina drops a lightbulb to make it appear that Andrew fell while trying to install it.
A policewoman, Jessica Connors, notices that the evidence casts doubt on Nina's explanation for Andrew's death. Jessica mentions that her sister was once engaged to Andrew, which was a traumatic experience for her. Jessica decides to describe his death as a freak accident. After Andrew's funeral, Nina gives Millie a $100,000 check, then leaves with Cece to start a new life. Nina recommends Millie's services to her friend Lisa, who implies that her husband is abusive. Millie asks when she can start.