Alice LaPlante books

Standalone Novels

Alice LaPlante teaches creative writing at Stanford and brings a literary sensibility to her fiction that sets it apart from standard thriller fare. Turn of Mind, her breakthrough, is narrated by a surgeon whose Alzheimer’s disease makes her an unreliable witness to a murder she may have committed — the novel uses the medical condition not as a gimmick but as a genuine exploration of identity and memory.

Her subsequent novels have continued to blend literary fiction with suspense elements. A Circle of Wives investigates a polygamist’s murder through multiple perspectives, and Half Moon Bay follows a grieving woman in a coastal California town where children keep disappearing. LaPlante writes the kind of fiction that satisfies both literary readers and thriller fans, anchoring her plots in psychological depth.