Female Con Artists Deliver Thrill Power

I recently watched the all-star female cast romp through "Ocean's 8," and it put me in the mood for more girl-power heist action. The thief/con artist protagonist is popular in fiction and film because we are willing to root for the lawless if they are clever and sympathetic--and if the target is especially unsympathetic, such as a wicked rich person, criminal or corrupt institution. It is especially satisfying when the erstwhile Robin Hood represents the powerless--and I think being female qualifies. When it comes to female-heist books, Bustle Digital Group conveniently put together some suggestions. For example, here's a timely novel from 2016: The Assistants by Camille Perri is about a band of executive assistants who take on their bosses and plot to skim money from their employers to pay off their student loans! In last year's The Ultimatum by best-selling author Karen Robards, Bianca St. Ives has been a con artist prodigy in her scammer father's "family business" but seeks to turn over a new leaf when her father is killed on the job. Alas, the U.S. government thinks he's alive, and Bianca is trapped in a new, dangerous game. A similar plot is featured in Heist Society by best-selling author Ally Carter: Katarina Bishop has been stealing and scamming from childhood but is trying to leave that life behind by enrolling in boarding school--only to be snared in new trouble when a powerful mobster's art is stolen, and her father is the main suspect. Now if you want to be inspired by real-life lady scammers, check out this Mental Floss post about 10 famous female con artists. Some come to a bad end (hanged, beheaded, dying in prison, etc.), but others end up with fame and fortune like the phony "Princess Carabou." And a select few jog the course of history, such as doomed Queen Marie Antoinette's "Affair of the Diamond Necklace" nemesis and Ronald Reagan's iconic "Welfare Queen." See http://mentalfloss.com/article/61868/10-exceptionally-clever-female-con-artists

Top Psychological Thrillers Have a Feminine Face

Best-selling mystery-thrillers like Paula Hawkins' The Girl on the Train, Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl and Liane Moriarty's Big Little Lies have won fans and movie renditions because of cleverly deceptive psychological plotting. There's an interesting trend in these novels: To create their surprise twists, the authors rely on the unreliable narration of troubled female protagonists and a claustrophobic domesticity that is distinctly feminine. Forensic evidence, genius detectives, and serial killer foes do not power these story lines. Instead, they turn inward to the dark places of the female psyche and relationships, and maybe it is precisely because of today's #MeToo female empowerment and growing emancipation from female stereotypes (damsel in distress, romantic ingenue, wise-old-lady sleuth) that this female psychological warping has come out of the shadows in the mystery world. If you are a reader who grabs a book when the blurb says "if you loved The Girl on the Train...," check out Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll, a debut novel inspired by Knoll's own life, about a magazine editor forced to unearth her teenage memory of a traumatic assault and confront the mysteries in her own psyche. You may also like What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman, which starts when a woman taken in by the police after a hit-and-run car accident claims to be the victim of a famous missing person's case from decades earlier. Lippman approaches the cold case police procedural in an inventive way that explores the deeper mysteries of human nature. With the sexual predation scandals of women's gymnastics in the news, there's something very topical about You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott, in which the sudden death of a young man in a car accident plunges a tight community of women gymnasts and their parents and coaches into crisis. For more options, see https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/books-like-girl-on-the-train-mysteries-thrillers