The Guilty Heart Parsons, Julie

A Dublin psychotherapist's carefully ordered life shatters when a new client walks in—a man she recognizes instantly, though he doesn't seem to know her. Twenty years earlier, he was convicted of murdering her father. Now he's out, and he's sitting across from her, talking about his dreams. Julie Parsons builds a taut psychological thriller around obsession, memory, and the moral weight of revenge. The question isn't whether our protagonist will cross a line—it's how far she'll go, and whether she can live with what she finds on the other side. Parsons writes grief and rage with surgical precision, and the Dublin setting adds a layer of claustrophobic intimacy. For fans of Ruth Rendell's darker work and anyone who likes their thrillers laced with moral ambiguity.