Leah Konen is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she studied journalism and English literature. She is the author of the new thriller,
You Should Have Told Me. Her debut thriller,
All the Broken People was a
Rolling Stone,
Marie Claire,
She Reads, and
Charlotte Observer best summer book pick.
At Electric Lit, Konen tagged seven of her "favorite thrillers that explore the darker side of motherhood," including:
Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage
Yet another tome where a mother has an intuitive feeling about her child and is quickly dismissed by her husband, Baby Teeth is a modern nod to the horror 
classic, The Bad Seed. The novel follows Suzette and her seven-year-old daughter Hanna, and their strained and oftentimes scary relationship. Hanna has been expelled from nearly every school she’s attended, and while she’s sweet and largely silent around her father, during homeschooling with her mother, she engages in increasingly sadistic games, to the point that Suzette begins to question whether her child wants to actually get rid of her. Is Suzette dreaming this up, as her husband seems to think, or does her own child actually have it out for her? Baby Teeth forces us to confront pressures and challenges of motherhood when the mother-child dynamic is anything but beatific.
Read about
the other entries on the list.
Baby Teeth is among
Rebecca Kelley's nine books featuring female villains who lean into their wickedness,
Amber Garza's five titles featuring (possibly) murderous children,
Christina Dalcher's seven crime books that challenge notions of inherent female goodness,
May Cobb's five psychological thrillers featuring single-minded villains & anti-heroes,
Jae-Yeon Yoo's top ten books about the promise & perils of alternative schooling,
Pamela Crane's five top novels featuring parenting gone wild,
Damien Angelica Walters's five titles about the horror of girlhood, and
Sally Hepworth's eight messed up fictional families.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
