Culture March 7, 2011

For a certain swath of American female thirty-somethings, the literary thriller comes with an odd set of associations. In addition to the windswept heaths of Wuthering Heights and Manderley, such books will likely conjure the pine-lined hiking trails of New Mexico, the fiercely policed social boundaries of classrooms and high school cafeterias, and beachy redoubts where teenagers would do well to avoid slippery black rocks.