Thriller premises can often bleed together, as the genre features many tried-and-true tropes for keeping mysteries propulsive and pages turning. In compiling this pulse-pounding baker’s dozen of fall titles, I was especially drawn to those that subverted expectations, whether in the book’s narrative blueprints or exceptional execution. That means Hollywood couples taking on stalkers, pop stars unwittingly drawn into true-crime narratives, dying marine biologists following missing-persons leads, and one book written entirely as epistolary coursework where pass/fail is more a matter of life/death. Plus spy psychodramas, suspicious nuptials, and deadly dating apps.
Read on for the most anticipated mysteries and thrillers to take you through the end of the year.
Madwoman by Chelsea Bieker
Release Date: September 3 from Little, Brown and Company
Why We’re Excited: For perfect wife and mom Clove, her “granola” style of parenting—organic products, healing crystals, meditation—is her coping mechanism: Compulsive shopping soothes the trauma of her abusive childhood in Waikiki, buried long ago so deep that neither her finance worker husband nor precious children have a clue as to who she used to be.
But when the #MeToo movement delivers a letter to her doorstep, Clove must contend with her past: Her mother Alma, convicted of killing her father despite how he terrorized them both, needs Clove to testify as to what really happened that night. Clove must decide if she will abandon Alma to the comforting lie of her new life, even as her obsessive new friendship with a woman named Jane pokes at the unraveling seams of her sanity.
Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner
Release Date: September 3 from Scribner
There are two espionage thrillers on this list, but they couldn’t be more different. Rachel Kushner’s new psychological novel has a steady, slow-burn focus on infiltrating the world of a mark—here, through the eyes of “Sadie Smith,” the alias for an American agent with no qualms about lying her way into a radical farming commune in rural France. Even as Sadie insinuates her way into Le Moulin via seduction and intercepted emails, what she finds in those messages undermines her mission: the writings of the commune’s leader Bruno Lacombe, hiding from humanity via an intricate underground cave system.
Sadie doesn’t seem the type to pledge allegiance to anyone, so the fact that she is so compelled by Bruno’s writings on Neanderthal consciousness makes for a fascinating double-cross of her own motivations.
The Examiner by Janice Hallett
Release Date: September 10 from Atria Books
Like weddings (see later in this list), a class or course setting is fertile ground for a thriller: Strangers with competing or conflicting motivations wind up crossing the line from academic collaboration to sabotage.
Author Janice Hallett loves challenging herself with a complex, quasi-epistolary format; The Appeal saw two lawyers sifting through a local theater company’s emails for evidence, while The Twyford Code was hidden in a children’s book, with that novel’s would-be sleuth recording his search via iPhone voice messages. Now, the titular Examiner has been tasked with determining the final grade in an experimental new arts multimedia course. Problem is, his tallying has produced some bizarre data that points to one student being in grave danger, or perhaps even dead already. Read through the message board posts, essay assignments, and other ephemera gathered from a group of artists, single parents, executives, and gallery owners, and figure out who’s flunked out in the most permanent fashion.
Once More from the Top by Emily Layden
Release Date: September 10 from Mariner Books
A surefire way to hook me into a thriller is to connect to something popular from an entirely different genre—here, it’s Daisy Jones & the Six crossed with a dead body.
For the past fifteen years, pop star Dylan Read’s image has been so carefully manufactured and maintained, yet her fans still believe they share in so many intimacies revealed via her lyrics. But the person who knew Dylan best was her childhood best friend Kelsey, who disappeared before the fame and fortune. Now Kelsey’s body has been discovered at the bottom of their hometown lake, raising all sorts of questions about the town and the life that Dylan left behind for superstardom, and what she had to do with ending her and Kelsey’s friendship.
The Last One at the Wedding by Jason Rekulak
Release Date: October 8 from Flatiron Books
I’ve been coming across a number of recent thrillers set at weddings: settings that bring together relative strangers, combining emotional baggage with an open bar. But what strikes me about Jason Rekulak’s latest is that it’s from the perspective not of the newlyweds potentially getting cold feet, but from the bride’s estranged blue-collar father, who seems to be the only one ready to speak up against this union.
It doesn’t help that UPS driver Frank Szatowski and daughter Maggie haven’t spoken in three years, when all of a sudden she wants him to walk her down the aisle; that pressure for reconciliation wars with his suspicions about her fiancé Aidan Gardner and his tech billionaire father. The fact that the three-day wedding takes place on the Gardners’ New Hampshire estate, where the locals clearly despise them, has Frank wondering more and more what Maggie’s gotten herself into. When one of the guests winds up dead, Frank has to go searching for skeletons in the proverbial closet (or under the dock…).
The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2024 edited by S.A. Cosby
Release Date: October 22 from Mariner Books
Of course, if you’re not sure where to start, you can’t go wrong with Best American’s annual collection of thrilling short fiction. S.A. Cosby (All the Sinners Bleed) has hand-picked new work from my personal favorite Megan Abbott, plus genre crossover stars Alyssa Cole and Tananarive Due, mainstays like Lisa Unger, and many more.
The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins
Release Date: October 29 from Mariner Books
While Paula Hawkins’ debut thriller The Girl on the Train crafted a mystery along the mundanity of a daily commute, her latest explores the rarefied world of a reclusive artist on an isolated Scottish island.
When human bone is discovered in one of Vanessa Chapman’s celebrated sculptures, it raises questions about this piece’s provocative provenance. Only problem is that Chapman is dead, so this posthumous mystery will instead draw together strangers touched by her art, including the manager of her estate and her longtime companion. But with mainland access only available twelve hours a day, they may regret stepping onto Chapman’s island during the eponymous most dangerous hour of the day.
Deadly Animals by Marie Tierney
Release Date: November 12 from Henry Holt and Co.
Eerily precocious children messing with dead animals is usually the first sign of psychopathy, but twelve-year-old Ava Bonney isn’t looking to kill; she’s simply interested in studying the decomposition rates of roadkill. But she knows that her community won’t understand her dark fascination, especially when her nighttime jaunts turn up a human body—her classmate, Mickey Grant.
Marie Tierney’s macabre debut looks to tackle the familiar tropes of working-with-and-against-police in a fresh way, by having the protagonist be someone still figuring out who she is.
Big Breath In by John Straley
Release Date: November 12 from Soho Crime
What makes a more compelling amateur sleuth than someone with nothing left to lose?
Exhausted from years of fighting terminal pancreatic cancer, retired marine biologist Delphine unintentionally gets tangled up in a mystery involving a missing child. Grappling with her own anxieties about being a burden on her son and his children, Delphine taps into the PI skills she absorbed from her late husband, trading whale studies for busting a human trafficking ring and making some quirky allies along the way.
The Collaborators by Michael Idov
Release Date: November 19 from Scribner
Like Mr. & Mrs. Smith, this globe-trotting spy adventure takes into account the uniquely Millennial perspectives of CIA agent Ari Falk and heiress Maya Chou Obrandt, on an ersatz mission of her own. Both are grieving a loss; his asset has been killed, and her father has disappeared.
As their personal and professional motivations tangle, espionage gives way to romance, while author Michael Idov balances modern-day intrigue with Cold War flashbacks, tracing spy bloodlines from the former Soviet Union into today.
The Close-Up by Pip Drysdale
Release Date: December 3 from Gallery Books
Zoe and Zach sound like a ready-made couple down to the cutesy alliteration, but they seem to keep missing each other: First, she’s a debut novelist and he’s an aspiring actor; then her book flops right as his career takes off. Years later, she’s struggling through writer’s block when they start dating in secret, with her the “normal girl” that Hollywood’s latest hottie is wooing.
But once the spotlight catches Zoe, it brings new fans of her forgotten first book—as well as the eye of Zach’s stalker. The fame that she thought she wanted is less thrilling when a stranger is pulling scenarios straight from her novel—that’s right, it’s a cult hit about a stalker—endangering their romance and Zoe’s life.
The Rivals by Jane Pek
Release Date: December 3 from Vintage
I’ve been leaning more toward standalone stories on this list, but Jane Pek (The Verifiers) has an excellent setup for a modern detective agency: Veracity, in which digital sleuths like Claudia Lin vet online dating profiles for cynical New Yorkers.
At first, it seems as if the only consequence would be minor embarrassment to be courting a bot, but Veracity’s latest client complains about his ex potentially pulling his personal information to create a fake account. Then he winds up murdered, setting Claudia and co-owner (and love interest) Becks on a trail that matches them up with captivating target Amalia Suarez, and a potential larger conspiracy that could threaten Claudia’s brother and Veracity itself.
Buried Road by Katie Tallo
Release Date: December 3 from Harper Paperbacks
Another sequel that reads like a standalone, Katie Tallo’s latest has amateur sleuth Gus Monet and preteen daughter Bly reopening a heartbreaking missing persons case: the disappearance of Gus’ partner and Bly’s surrogate dad Howard. Though they had spent the past three years holding out hope that journalist Howard might be alive after pursuing a dangerous story, his obituary drags them back to the scene of their final trip together to Prince Edward County.
When Bly and Gus discover evidence that the police missed, they pick up Howard’s trail, even if it means meeting with sinister sources and running afoul of the small-town locals.