02 August,2026 09:58 AM IST | Mumbai | Isha Ganesan
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Gracie serves a sentence for a crime at Limehouse (an all-women's prison) that she hasn't really committed. But what she has done is kill her entire family. You did not read that wrong, and now she writes of these murders to occupy her time and our minds through How to Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie (The Borough Press, 2021). Grace's story is one of revenge against her father's name, Simon Artemis, whom she never knew, who was one of the wealthiest men in London. She plots against the Artemis family for abandoning her and her mother, who died due to cancer. This book plays with the reader's moral compass, as we know what she has done, yet we seem to fault the dead.
The language of violence was not unknown to Alex Craft. In The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis (Katherine Tegen Books, 2016), Anna, her younger sister, was raped and murdered, and the killer walked away without a scratch on his neck. She uncaged this language and knows how to kill someone without feeling guilty. She now has a violent streak, which may not be great for the curious boy in her senior class who has a crush on her. And then comes Peekay, a character who dreams about killing the girl who stole her boyfriend. So as the book goes on, one starts understanding that a similar feature in most animals is that the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
My Sister, the Serial Killer (Doubleday Books, 2018) is a thriller written by Oyinkan Braithwaite that follows Korede, a nurse, who simultaneously cleans up her sister's mess every time she commits a crime. Her sister Ayoola's crimes are considered as defence against her boyfriends, which she escapes because of her beauty. But when the killer targets Tade, a doctor who worked with Korede, things take a grim turn.
Sweetpea by CJ Skuse (HarperCollins, 2017) is a tale that follows Rhiannon Lewis, a 27-year-old editorial assistant who quietly works through her "kill list" of people who annoy her, that even includes the driver who cuts her off on her way to work. Although her childhood was haunted by a crime, it doesn't follow her into adulthood. You will have a blast trying to follow this woman and the entertainment that follows when she slips into madness.
They Never Learn by Layne Fargo (Gallery/Scout Press, 2020) is a thriller with feminist themes. The novel is narrated by a college freshman Carly Schiller and a English professor Dr Scarlett Clark. Spoiler alert - they are the same. Carly was a freshman at the college, and returned as Scarlett 16 years later to kill. She now kills men who sexually abuse women and go scot-free. But one wrong move led to her getting caught, or maybe not.
