Skeletons in the Literary Closet: Five Novels That Dangle Family Secrets Before the Reader

“Where are you from?” you ask when you meet someone to find common ground (“Alaska? I’ve been there!”) and connect over shared experiences (“Have you seen a bear? Gone deep sea fishing? Gazed at the midnight sun?“). You ask about their families (“What do your parents do? Do you have siblings?“) and generally trust them to tell you the truth. But sometimes they don’t. And that’s when it gets really interesting.

People keep family secrets for all sorts of reasons. Maybe they want to swindle or betray you; maybe they’re ashamed of something from their past; or maybe, as was the case with me, they mislead you unwittingly, because I can’t tell you the truth if it was kept secret from me.

I was drawn to books about skeletons in the family closet long before I knew I had some in mine, but once they tumbled out, I became obsessed! My 2025 novel Letters from Strangers is fiction but portrays the real life betrayal I felt when I found out my father was not who he pretended to be. Am I attracted to books about family secrets because I was embroiled in one for most of my life? Or are family secrets inherently tantalizing?

If you are in camp tantalizing, allow me to share my favorite books about family secrets—books that not only kept me flipping pages deep into the night, but also inspired me to write a book about mine.

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Lisa Jewell, The Family Upstairs

Let me start by saying I will read anything by Lisa Jewell. Her characters are so well-drawn, her villains so deliciously devious, I will follow them to the seediest corners of the earth. Her 2020 release, The Family Upstairs, begins with a twenty-five-year-old Londoner named Libby receiving a letter informing her that she has inherited a mansion from her birth parents who, until that very moment, were unknown to her.

What starts out as titillating wish-fulfillment (Um, hello! I’d like a Chelsea mansion!) quicky devolves into a terrifying tale of parents behaving very badly. As the sordid family history comes to light, we start to wonder if maybe Libby would have been better off not knowing who her parents were. But don’t decide until you read the sequel, The Family Remains, also a favorite of mine!

Laura Dave, The Night We Lost Him

Nora’s father fell off a cliff. That’s not a spoiler; it happens on page four. But was it an accident? Nora’s half-brother Sam thinks not. And soon Nora becomes suspicious, too. The police aren’t interested in stirring up dust, so it’s up to the two of them to ferret out the truth. And so they go digging, not just at the crime scene, but into their father’s past.

And wouldn’t you know, there’s a mysterious woman at the center of it. His greatest love, and his greatest secret. Who is she and how is she connected to his untimely death? Like Nora, I was ravenous to know!

Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Nearly a decade after its publication, this New York Times bestseller is still captivating readers with its pitch perfect descriptions of old Hollywood. Evelyn Hugo is a true movie star, with all the drama that comes with being in the spotlight. As the title promises, she has many husbands. But who was her true love?

As she approaches the end of her life, she calls on small-time magazine reporter Monique Grant to write her bibliography. But why her? Turns out underneath the glitz and glamour is a dark, family secret meant only for Monique…if she can figure it out.

Celeste Ng, Everything I Never Told You

Celeste Ng has written buzzier books (see: Little Fires Everywhere) but this one has quiet gravitas that moved me deeply. The family secrets were subtle but pervasive, reverberating not just through this nuclear family, but also across generations.

The story begins when Lydia, the high-achieving high school age daughter of Chinese-American parents, is found dead in the lake near their home. Was she murdered? Or was it the long gestating family secrets that killed her?

Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

It’s 1968 in the deep south. After their father dies in a lynching, identical twins Stella and Desiree flee their rural Louisiana town to start fresh in New Orleans. As light-skinned black women, they find themselves facing a unique opportunity to remake themselves as whoever—and whatever—they want.

Desiree chooses to lean into her blackness, marrying a dark-skinned man and having a daughter who is “black as tar.” But Stella, after discovering she can pass as white, “vanishes,” reappearing in Boston as the wife of a white man living in a whites-only neighborhood. The tension of her high-stakes secret pulses through the narrative.

Will her new family discover her ancestry? I found myself rooting both for and against.

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Do you have a family secret? You can whisper it to me, I won’t tell….

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Letters from Strangers by Susan Walter is available via Lake Union.