Jeremy Bates, White Lies

Katrina Burton picks up a hitchhiker one night while driving through a storm to her new home in small-town Washington State.

This sounds like a really bad idea, of course, and things do go horribly wrong, but not in the way we might expect.

To get the creepy guy she's picked up out of her passenger seat and off her scent—the scene in her car is realistically scary—she lies about where she lives. Pretty soon, her white lie spirals horribly out of control. Katrina is caught up in a series of ever-worsening crises, making perhaps flawed but not unreasonable decisions—like lying to the hitchhiker—at each step.

Eventually, things escalate very quickly, maybe too quickly to be quite believable. The ending is a little over the top and probably not necessary, but White Lies is nonetheless a quick nail-biter and a fun read.