"The Universe doesn't like secrets. It conspires to reveal the truth, to lead you to it."
~ Lisa Unger
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Lisa Unger, a master of suspense and psychological intrigue, has established herself as a powerhouse in the world of thriller fiction. Born and raised in New Jersey, Unger's love for storytelling blossomed at a young age, inspired by her fascination with the mysterious and the unknown.
With a background in English literature and creative writing, Unger embarked on her writing journey, honing her craft and developing her signature style of suspenseful storytelling. Her debut novel, "Angel Fire," published in 2002, introduced readers to her talent for crafting complex characters, twisty plots, and atmospheric settings that keep readers on the edge of their seats.
Since then, Unger has gone on to produce a string of bestselling novels, including "Beautiful Lies," "In the Blood," and "Under My Skin," each earning critical acclaim and a devoted following of fans. Known for her ability to delve deep into the minds of her characters, Unger's novels explore themes of identity, memory, and the dark secrets that lurk beneath the surface of everyday life.
Unger's writing style is characterized by its atmospheric prose, intricate plotting, and skillful manipulation of tension and suspense. She has a knack for building suspense from the first page and keeping readers guessing until the very end, with unexpected twists and turns that leave them breathless.
Readers are drawn to Unger's novels for their immersive storytelling, richly drawn characters, and spine-tingling suspense. Whether it's the gripping plot, the complex relationships, or the chilling sense of unease that permeates her stories, Unger's books have a universal appeal that keeps readers coming back for more.
While Unger has received numerous accolades throughout her career, including nominations for the Edgar Award and the Goodreads Choice Awards, her greatest accomplishment is undoubtedly the connection she has forged with her readers. Her ability to tap into universal fears and desires, and to explore the darker corners of the human psyche, has earned her a devoted following of fans who eagerly anticipate each new release.
For those seeking a heart-pounding thrill ride filled with twists, turns, and unforgettable characters, Lisa Unger's novels are a must-read. With their gripping plots, atmospheric settings, and relentless suspense, her books offer a riveting escape into a world of secrets, lies, and the darker side of human nature.
As for upcoming projects, readers can look forward to Unger's next novel, "The Stranger Inside," slated for release later this year. While details about the plot remain under wraps, anticipation is high among fans eager to see what chilling tale of suspense and intrigue Unger will unleash upon the world next.
Lisa Unger Best Quotes
“When you start to really know someone, all his physical characteristics start to disappear. You begin to dwell in his energy, recognize the scent of his skin. You see only the essence of the person, not the shell. That's why you can't fall in love with beauty. You can lust after it, be infatuated by it, want to own it. You can love it with your eyes and body but not your heart. And that's why, when you really connect with a person's inner self, any physical imperfections disappear, become irrelevant.” ― Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies “I think most people are just trying to be happy, and that most of their actions, however misguided, are in line with that goal. Most people just want to feel they belong somewhere, want to be loved, and want to feel they're important to someone. If you really examine all the wrongheaded and messed-up things they do, they can most often be traced back to that basic desire. The abusers, the addicted, the cruel and unpleasant, the manipulators --these are just people who started this quest for happiness in the basement of their lives. Someone communicated to them through word or deed that they were undeserving, so they think they have to claw their way there over the backs of others, leaving scars and creating damage. Of course, they only create more misery for themselves and others.” ― Lisa Unger, Sliver of Truth “I can get my head turned by a good-looking guy as much as the next girl. But sexy doesn't impress me. Smart impresses me, strength of character impresses me. But most of all, I am impressed by kindness. Kindness, I think, comes from learning hard lessons well, from falling and picking yourself up. It comes from surviving failure and loss. It implies an understanding of the human condition, forgives its many flaws and quirks. When I see that in someone, it fills me with admiration.” ― Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies “The Universe doesn't like secrets. It conspires to reveal the truth, to lead you to it.” ― Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies “When you love someone, it doesn't really matter if they love you back or not. Having love in your heart for someone is its own reward. or punishment, depending on the circumstances.” ― Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies “It's strange how memory gets twisted and pulled like taffy in its retelling, how a single event can mean something different to everyone present.” ― Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies “The universe conspires to reveal the truth and to make your path easy if you have the courage to follow the signs.” ― Lisa Unger “Many people believe that evil is the presence of something. I think it's the absence of something.” ― Lisa Unger, Sliver of Truth “We may say we're looking for love, following dreams, chasing the dollar, but aren't we just looking for a place where we belong? A place where our thoughts, feelings, and fears are understood? - Ridley Jones” ― Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies “I loved him so much. It didn't change all the reasons we couldn't be together, but it kept me returning to his body, kept my skin seeking his skin over and over again in the sad dance we did.” ― Lisa Unger, Sliver of Truth “Others of us are lost. We're forever seeking. We torture ourselves with philosophies and ache to see the world. We question everything, even our own existence. We ask a lifetime of questions and are never satisfied with the answers because we don't recognize anyone as an authority to give them. We see life and the world as an enormous puzzle that we might never understand, that our questions might go unanswered until the day we die, almost never occurs to us. And when it does, it fills us with dread.” ― Lisa Unger, Sliver of Truth “Everyone always talks about how well mothers know their children. No one ever seems to notice how well children know their mothers.” ― Lisa Unger, Fragile “People who stay in the same town with the same friends for their entire lives never get a chance to find out who they can really be, because they will always be considered as who they were.” ― Lisa Unger, Fragile “How many people can you claim truly care about you? I mean, not just the people in your life who are fun to hang out with, not just the people who you love and trust. But people who feel good when you are happy and successful, feel bad when you are hurt or going through a hard time, people who would walk away from their lives for a little while to help you with yours. Not many. I felt that from Jake and I wasn’t sure how to handle it. Because there’s another side to it, you know. When someone is invested in your well-being, like your parents, for example, you become responsible for them in a way. Anything you do to hurt yourself hurts them. I already felt responsible for too many people that way. You’re not really free when people care about you; not if you care about them.” ― Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies “Just because people treat you like shit, just because you may feel like shit sometimes, doesn't mean you are shit. You can make something of your life. You can give of yourself in this world to make it a better place." - Jake quoting his mentor, Arnie Coel” ― Lisa Unger “Writers are first and foremost observers. We lose ourselves in the watching and then the telling of the world we find. Often we feel on the fringes, in the margins of life. And that's where we belong. What you are a part of, you cannot observe.” ― Lisa Unger “The truth has not so much set us free as it has ripped away a carefully constructed facade, leaving us naked to begin again.” ― Lisa Unger “Motherhood was an ever widening circle of good-byes.” ― Lisa Unger, Fragile “Depression is not dramatic, but it is total. It’s sneaky - you almost don’t notice it at first. Like a cat burglar, it comes in through an open window while you’re sleeping. It takes little things at first; your appetite, your desire to return phone calls. Then it comes back for the big stuff, like your will to live. Then next thing you know, your legs are filled with sand. The thought of brushing your teeth fills you with dread, it seems like such an impossible task. Suddenly you’re living your life in black and white – nothing is bright, nothing is pretty anymore. Music sounds tinny and distant. Things you found funny seem dull and off-key.” ― Lisa Unger, Sliver of Truth “Love accepts. Forgiveness comes in time.” ― Lisa Unger, Die for You “And we stood like that. The joining of hands is highly underrated in the acts of intimacy. You kiss acquaintances or colleagues, casually to say hello or good-bye. You might even kiss a close friend chastely on the lips. You might quickly hug anyone you knew. You might even meet someone at a party, take him home and sleep with him, never to see him or hear from him again. But to join hands and stand holding each other that way, with the electricity of possibilities flowing between you? The tenderness of it, the promise of it, is only something you share with a few people in your life.” ― Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies “What does it mean to forgive someone? It only means that you release the anger, the hatred. It doesn't mean that you’re saying it’s all right now, or that you've forgotten the wrong. It just means that you've drained the boil. When you touch it, it doesn't hurt as much. That's all.” ― Lisa Unger, In the Blood “Hope is good. Without it, well, you do the math. But hope has to be like a prayer. Putting it out there to something more powerful than yourself.” ― Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies “...in the end it's not just the big and small events that make you who you are, make your life what it is, it's how you choose to react to them-that's where you have control over your life.” ― Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies “Bored people looked for drama and caused trouble.” ― Lisa Unger, Heartbroken “It's a little known fact, but parents are like superheroes. With just a few magic words they can make you feel ten feet tall and bulletproof, they can slay the dragons of doubt and worry, they can make your problems disappear. But of course they can only do this as long as you're a child. When you've become an adult, become the master of your own universe, they're not as powerful as they once were. Maybe that's why so many of us take our time growing up.” ― Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies “In the end, I cared about him so much that I just thought he deserved someone who loved him more than I did.” ― Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies “People didn’t fall in love with other people. They fell in love with how other people made them feel about themselves. And so, it was easy to get someone to love you—if you knew how they wanted to feel.” ― Lisa Unger, Confessions on the 7:45 “I think we draw people into our lives. It’s as though we broadcast our deepest needs, and certain people hear the signal somewhere in their own subconscious and heed the call. For better or worse, we attract our teachers, our allies, and sometimes even our nightmares. Some of us have louder signals.” ― Lisa Unger, In the Blood “The past is history. The future is a mystery. The present is a gift.” ― Lisa Unger, Fragile “You [meaning mothers] said good-bye a little every day -- from the minute they left your body until they left your home.” ― Lisa Unger, Fragile “We have more patience for girls who act like boys than boys who act like girls. A tomboy is considered cute. One day she’ll shuck her muddy jeans and put on a dress, and everyone will gasp at her beauty. They’ll all laugh about her tree-climbing, frog-catching days. But there’s no such tolerance for the boy who puts on a dress, who wants a toy kitchen or a baby doll to love. Jung would say that this is because, even culturally, our anima is repressed, hated, derided. We hate our female selves. A boyish girl is perfectly acceptable. A girlish boy? Not so much. In certain places, you’d get your ass kicked, find yourself "gay-bashed." You might even get yourself killed. That's how much we hate our anima.” ― Lisa Unger, In the Blood “We can’t hold on to anyone or anything, you know. We lose everything except that which we carry within us.” ― Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies “It was a strange lightness, a drifting feeling. Zero gravity. I understood that everything that once seemed solid and immovable might just float away. And that this was a truth of life, not an illusion in the grieving mind of a child. Everything that is hard and heavy in your world is made up of billions of molecules in constant motion offering the illusion of permanence. But it all tends toward breaking down and falling away. Some things just go more quickly, more surprisingly, than others.” ― Lisa Unger, Die for You “But did you know that eyewitness testimony is often totally unreliable? The human memory only records events through the filter of its own frame of reference. We try to fit the information we receive into schemas, units of knowledge that we possess about the world that correspond with frequently encountered situations, individuals, ideas, and situations. In other words, we often see things as we expect to see them, or want to see them, and not always as they are.” ― Lisa Unger, In the Blood “Parenthood wasn’t about blood or biology, he found; it was about a joyful willingness to give yourself over, to subordinate your own needs for someone else’s. When you loved your kids, you’d give up everything to keep them safe and make them happy, and you didn’t care about the other things, the ones that went away.” ― Lisa Unger, Heartbroken “There have been plenty of chances to close my eyes and go back to the sleep of my life as it was, but I hadn't taken any of them. Do I wish now that I had? It's hard to answer that question, as the wraiths move closer.” ― Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies “They don’t find peace. It’s pure bullshit. When something unspeakable happens, or when you do something unspeakable, it changes you. It takes you apart and reassembles you. You are a Frankenstein of circumstance, and the parts never fit back quite right and the life you live is a stolen one. You don’t deserve to walk among the living, and you know it.” ― Lisa Unger, In the Blood “I didn’t see the point of judging and analyzing a single moment in someone’s life.” ― Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies “When our actions and choices are based on fear and denial ... Well, nothing good can come of that. Ever.” ― Lisa Unger, Sliver of Truth “For what other reason might we cling to objects, old photographs, tarnished jewelry, yellowed letters? They’re charms, little pieces of magic. When we touch them, we regain for a second what time has stolen or worn away.” ― Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies “What is the difference between justice and revenge?" he asked....Revenge seeks chaos, he said. "Justice seeks balance. That's the difference.” ― Lisa Unger, The Red Hunter “When we narrate our experience, we take control of it. And in controlling the story of our past, we can create a better future.” ― Lisa Unger, Confessions on the 7:45 “Is the prey complicit in its own demise? Are we not seduced in some small way by the beauty, the grace, even the dangerous soul of the predator?” ― Lisa Unger, In the Blood “Emily looked into his eyes. They were blank, unreadable. That was the worst kind of person, the scariest—the one who’d learned to keep his feelings out of his eyes. Or who didn’t feel anything at all. Emily had known people like that; they were the destroyers. They took things— everything you worked for, all your silly dreams—and smashed them beneath their boots for no reason at all.” ― Lisa Unger, Heartbroken “It sounded to him like the noise of too many mouths that talk and too few minds that think.” ― Lisa Unger, Heartbroken “What we think of as our “gut instincts” are really a very complex mosaic of past experiences, deep-seated hopes, fears, desires.” ― Lisa Unger, In the Blood “We had a great friendship, good sex, a shared passion for the dinosaur room at the Museum of Natural History and Haagen-Daz French Vanilla ice cream. But love is more than the sum of its parts, isn't it?” ― Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies “Every couple starts off loving each other, don't they? It's how a relationship ends that really defines its nature.” ― Lisa Unger, In the Blood “an awareness of your own worth is the most attractive quality in the world.” ― Lisa Unger, Sliver of Truth “I mean—are some men just flawed by nature? Or do we enable their bad behavior, make it worse in a way because we hide it, and don’t demand better from them?” ― Lisa Unger, Confessions on the 7:45 “I thought about my brother. I hated him. Hated him like a child hates a fallen hero. I hated him for his unlimited potential and his failure to realize it. I hated him because I could see everything that was wonderful about him, how brilliant, how beautiful he was, and how he had turned his back on everything he could have been, cast it off like a designer suit for which he’d paid an obscene sum and never wore.” ― Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies “Shock is the stepsister of denial. It cushions the blow to your psyche when really fucked up things happen.” ― Lisa Unger, Sliver of Truth “All women are mysteries.” “Only men think that,” said Pearl. “Largely because they’re not paying attention.” ― Lisa Unger, Confessions on the 7:45 “But that’s the thing about mental illness; there’s no such thing as a cookie-cutter diagnosis. We’re all crazy in our own special way. Some of us just have it worse than others.” ― Lisa Unger, In the Blood “He'd been raised to give women what they wanted. 'You can fight,' his father told him. 'You can bitch. If you're a real prick, you can overpower. But the pain over the long haul ... just not worth it, son. Surrender young and happily with fewer scars.' The old man was right about that.” ― Lisa Unger, Die for You “But in the end, it’s not just the big and small events that make you who you are, make your life what it is, it’s how you choose to react to them. That’s where you have control over your life.” ― Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies “Maybe that’s all life was, this impossibly complicated helix of choice and accident, things you could control and couldn’t. And when the day was done, the only measure of success was how happy you were, how much you loved and were loved.” ― Lisa Unger, The Red Hunter “Each of us extracted different people from our parents by our personalities and hence we had different experiences growing up.” ― Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies “Houses are like people. They have memories, and energy. They wait. They wilt from neglect. They sicken and decay. They haunt, and they are haunted.” ― Lisa Unger, Last Girl Ghosted “Nobody told you that wen you became a parent, you became a child again; it was early bedtimes and grilled cheese sandwiches for all. Every date night was a negotiation, every invitation that you actually had the desire or energy to accept became a strategic maneuver that may or may not work out after all.” ― Lisa Unger, Confessions on the 7:45 “Life is an impossible twist of choice and circumstance. One rarely exists without the other.” ― Lisa Unger, Ink and Bone “Those of us who come alive in the pages of books, and struggle with the “real” world—we recognize each other.” ― Lisa Unger, Christmas Presents “Uselessness, she thought, was the permanent condition of parenthood.” ― Lisa Unger, Fragile “You can put on a mask and a costume for the rest of the world, but you can't hide from the people who changed your diapers.” ― Lisa Unger, In the Blood “It was fear. Fear that, after all the years of protecting his health, his heart, his mind, setting bedtimes and boundaries, giving warnings about strangers and looking both ways before crossing the street, it wouldn't be enough. Fear that, as he stood on the threshold of adulthood, forces beyond their control would take him down a path where they could no longer reach him. Fear that he'd be seduced by something ugly and would choose it. And that there would be nothing they could do but let him go.” ― Lisa Unger, Fragile “When you’re young it's easy to confuse passion for love.” ― Lisa Unger, Heartbroken “grief is not linear. It’s not a slow progression forward toward healing, it’s a zigzag, a terrible back-and-forth from devastated to okay until finally there are more okay patches and fewer devastated ones.” ― Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies “You didn't wind up on a pole without a lot of help from your family.” ― Lisa Unger, Die for You “The woman I was seems hopelessly naive. I envy her.” ― Lisa Unger, Sliver of Truth “I should have been sending up flares, instead I was offering smiles.” ― Lisa Unger, In the Blood “Why did people think that was okay, to kill something and stick its head on your wall?” ― Lisa Unger, Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six “Beware that, when fighting monsters,you yourself do not become a monster.” —Friedrich Nietzsche” ― Lisa Unger, Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six “There was no undoing the bad without losing the good. That was the trick of it all.” ― Lisa Unger, Confessions on the 7:45 “I started thinking about how to draw her, how I’d capture all the things I saw in just those few moments that our lives intersected. Faces are so hard because they are more than lines and shadows. They are about light, but a light that comes from inside and shines out.” ― Lisa Unger, The Burning Girl “As parents, we must accept that our children are who they are. We can’t make them into something we want, or be disappointed in them because they don’t meet our artificial expectations.” ― Lisa Unger, In the Blood “It’s never one thing that leads to a tragic accident, she was sure she’d read once—though she couldn’t say where. It’s usually seven things—seven mistakes, or errors in judgment, or acts of negligence. If you reverse engineer any major disaster—oil spill or train derailment or airplane crash—there are usually seven things that had to go wrong in order for them to occur. Claudia” ― Lisa Unger, The Red Hunter “You were never so acutely aware of your own flaws as you were in the presence of your child. Why was that?” ― Lisa Unger, The Red Hunter “When someone we love dies suddenly and tragically, it’s like seeing the curvature of the earth. You always knew it was round, a contained sphere floating in space. But when you see the bend in the horizon line, it changes your perspective on everything else.” ― Lisa Unger, In the Blood “I didn’t understand depression, how it was a con and a thief of joy. How it lured people away, making them believe that the world was better off without them.” ― Lisa Unger, Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six “Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can break your heart.” ― Lisa Unger, In the Blood “IF YOU REALLY let life take you, if you release control and stop clinging to sameness, you can’t imagine the places you’ll end up. But most people don’t do that. Most people get this death grip on what they know, and the only thing that loosens their grasp is some kind of tragedy.” ― Lisa Unger, Sliver of Truth “There was something eternal about loss, something endless. You could always lose the things you had, but you couldn't always get back the things you lost.” ― Lisa Unger, Heartbroken “We hate our parents for having their own lives, don’t we, for making decisions for themselves that don’t seem to take us into account. They’re not people, not really. They’re parents; how dare they live and love and die without us?” ― Lisa Unger, In the Blood “Kindness, I think, comes from learning hard lessons well, from falling and picking yourself up. It comes from surviving failure and loss. It implies an understanding of the human condition, forgives its many flaws and quirks.” ― Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies “Most of us don’t live in the present tense. We dwell in a mental place where our regrets and grudges from our past compete with our fears about the future. Sometimes we barely notice what’s going on around us, we’re so busy time traveling.” ― Lisa Unger, Black Out “Privilege. A word that suddenly inspired jealousy, resentment, rage. Some people were born with it, that beautiful ease, that aura of never worrying about making it, surviving. Some stood on the other side of the glass, watching. Even if tireless effort or extraordinary achievement opened the door to that shining universe, its always felt like a mirage. People born to privilege just didn't know anything else. And the destroyer was always waiting, wasn't he?” ― Lisa Unger, Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six “Never forget those first five minutes, when you thought how much you loved each other was the only thing that mattered. Because in truth it is the only thing that matters. That love is what gets you through all the other stuff.” ― Lisa Unger, Crazy Love You “Even though we can’t always have affection for every person we meet, we can always treat every person with kindness.” ― Lisa Unger, Last Girl Ghosted “It’s all these choices that we could have made, the things we might have done. We see them with perfect clarity only long after the moment has passed. Just thirty seconds either way, and I wouldn’t have this story to tell you. I wouldn’t be the same person telling it.” ― Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies