7 Books that You Can Read in One Sitting
If you’re an avid bookworm, you’ve likely lied to yourself with these six words: “I’ll just read one more chapter.” But the next thing you know, you’ve read an entire novel in one sitting! What better way to spend an evening than with a gripping page-turner?
Whether you get a break or not for spring, here’s a few books you’ll read in just one or two sittings. Promise.
1. The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami
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From internationally acclaimed author Haruki Murakami—a fantastical illustrated short novel about a boy imprisoned in a nightmarish library.
Opening the flaps on this unique little book, readers will find themselves immersed in the strange world of best-selling Haruki Murakami’s wild imagination. The story of a lonely boy, a mysterious girl, and a tormented sheep man plotting their escape from a nightmarish library, the book is like nothing else Murakami has written. Designed by Chip Kidd and fully illustrated, in full color, throughout, this small format, 96 page volume is a treat for book lovers of all ages. It’s deliciously dark.
2. The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena
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How well do you know the couple next door? Or your husband? Or even—yourself?
People are capable of almost anything. . .
Anne and Marco Conti seem to have it all—a loving relationship, a wonderful home, and their beautiful baby, Cora. But one night when they are at a dinner party next door, a terrible crime is committed. Suspicion immediately focuses on the parents. But the truth is a much more complicated story.
Inside the curtained house, an unsettling account of what actually happened unfolds. Detective Rasbach knows that the panicked couple is hiding something. Both Anne and Marco soon discover that the other is keeping secrets, secrets they’ve kept for years.
What follows is the nerve-racking unraveling of a family—a chilling tale of deception, duplicity, and unfaithfulness that will keep you breathless until the final shocking twist.
3. The Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins
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The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins brings mystery to the life of Rachel Watson, who could very well be any one of us. This is what makes this book so appealing, the humanity of the characters. Hawkins manages to create an exciting story line using characters that the general public can relate too.
While murder may not resonate with most people’s daily lives, the underlying problems of the characters are those that can be well understood. Most people know an alcoholic or someone with a cheating spouse. Hawkins not only brings these characters to life, but presents those in a way that makes the reader can find a way to sympathize with each one of them at some point during the story. The reader can easily put themselves in their shoes. Hawkins’ characters represent the general public with problems echoing those of the reader.
Hawkins then takes these characters through a well woven web of deceit and self-doubt. The mystery unwinds slowly enough to savor and fast enough to keep the reader interested. The characters are introduced by chapters depicting their names and the reader gets to know them each a little at a time and piece the story together themselves. The layout is enticing and unique.
The Girl on the Train presents characters we start to care about and feel for. The mystery gives the excitement one hopes to find in a book of this genre while still appealing to the reader’s humanity. The characters are not who they seem and even the good guys have flaws. The book leaves one thinking about the characters and their lives long after the book is back on the shelf.
4. The Lost Girls by Heather Young
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A haunting debut novel that examines the price of loyalty, the burden of regret, the meaning of salvation, and the sacrifices we make for those we love, told in the voices of two unforgettable women linked by a decades-old family mystery at a beautiful, decaying lake house.
In 1935, six-year-old Emily Evans vanishes from her family’s vacation home on a remote Minnesota lake. Her disappearance destroys the family — her father commits suicide, and her mother and two older sisters spend the rest of their lives at the lake house, keeping a decades-long vigil for the lost child.
Sixty years later, Lucy, the quiet and watchful middle sister, lives in the lake house alone. Before her death, she writes the story of that devastating summer in a notebook that she leaves, along with the house, to the only person who might care: her grandniece, Justine. For Justine, the lake house offers freedom and stability — a way to escape her manipulative boyfriend and give her daughters the home she never had. But the long Minnesota winter is just beginning. The house is cold and dilapidated. The dark, silent lake is isolated and eerie. Her only neighbor is a strange old man who seems to know more about the summer of 1935 than he’s telling.
Soon Justine’s troubled oldest daughter becomes obsessed with Emily’s disappearance, her mother arrives to steal her inheritance, and the man she left launches a dangerous plan to get her back. In a house haunted by the sorrows of the women who came before her, Justine must overcome their tragic legacy if she hopes to save herself and her children.
5. The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
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In this tightly wound story, Lo Blacklock, a journalist who writes for a travel magazine, has just been given the assignment of a lifetime: a week on a luxury cruise with only a handful of cabins. At first, Lo’s stay is nothing but pleasant: the cabins are plush, the dinner parties are sparkling, and the guests are elegant. But as the week wears on, frigid winds whip the deck, gray skies fall, and Lo witnesses what she can only describe as a nightmare: a woman being thrown overboard. The problem? All passengers remain accounted for—and so, the ship sails on as if nothing has happened, despite Lo’s desperate attempts to convey that something (or someone) has gone terribly, terribly wrong…
With surprising twists and a setting that proves as uncomfortably claustrophobic as it is eerily beautiful, Ruth Ware offers up another intense read.
6. Behind Closed Doors by B. A. Paris
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Everyone knows a couple like Jack and Grace. He has looks and wealth; she has charm and elegance. He’s a dedicated attorney who has never lost a case; she is a flawless homemaker, a masterful gardener and cook, and dotes on her disabled younger sister. Though they are still newlyweds, they seem to have it all. You might not want to like them, but you do. You’re hopelessly charmed by the ease and comfort of their home, by the graciousness of the dinner parties they throw. You’d like to get to know Grace better.
But it’s difficult, because you realize Jack and Grace are inseparable.
Some might call this true love. Others might wonder why Grace never answers the phone. Or why she can never meet for coffee, even though she doesn’t work. How she can cook such elaborate meals but remain so slim. Or why she never seems to take anything with her when she leaves the house, not even a pen. Or why there are such high-security metal shutters on all the downstairs windows.
Some might wonder what’s really going on once the dinner party is over, and the front door has closed.
7. The Girls in the Garden by Lisa Jewell
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Imagine that you live on a picturesque communal garden square, an oasis in urban London where your children run free, in and out of other people’s houses. You’ve known your neighbors for years and you trust them. Implicitly. You think your children are safe. But are they really?
On a midsummer night, as a festive neighborhood party is taking place, preteen Pip discovers her 13-year-old sister Grace lying unconscious and bloody in a hidden corner of a lush rose garden. What really happened to her? And who is responsible?
