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Getting Away with Murder by Shari Lapena: A deliciously entertaining domestic thriller

Sometimes you don’t need a novel that changes your life. Sometimes you just want a fast-paced thriller that grabs you from the first chapter and refuses to let go. Getting Away With Murder by Shari Lapena is exactly that kind of book—a thoroughly entertaining psychological thriller with an irresistible premise and enough twists to keep the pages turning until the very end.

Jill and Ted have built the perfect life—or at least the perfect image of one. Their gorgeous New York brownstone is more than just a home; it’s the centerpiece of the identity they’ve carefully constructed. When Ted loses the fortune that has been financing their lifestyle, they refuse to accept the possibility of losing everything they’ve worked so hard to acquire.

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Mr. and Mrs. Dixon Hide a Body: A wickedly funny thriller about the real corpse in the marriage

There are plenty of thrillers about hiding a body, but far fewer recognize that the real danger isn’t the corpse—it’s the person helping you bury it. Jennifer Holdich’s Mr. and Mrs. Dixon Hide a Body delivers exactly that kind of deliciously dark premise, blending domestic suspense with offbeat humor and an increasingly chaotic battle between two spouses who would each happily see the other behind bars.

The novel follows Daisy Dixon, a woman trapped in a twenty-year marriage to the controlling and deeply unpleasant James Dixon. Their once-grand manor house is literally falling apart, and so is Daisy’s life. She has finally decided to leave him when an accident changes everything. After Daisy injures a man, her first instinct is to call an ambulance. James, however, convinces her to bring the injured stranger home instead, insisting they can care for him themselves until he’s well enough to leave. Predictably, that plan goes spectacularly wrong.

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The Season of Sinking by Daphne Woolsoncroft: A haunting thriller about obsession, secrets, and the dangers lurking close to home

What if someone knew everything about you—but you had no idea they even existed? Daphne Woolsoncroft’s The Season of Sinking is the kind of psychological thriller that feeds on that unsettling possibility. Equal parts mystery, suspense, and creeping dread, this debut novel from the popular true crime podcaster transforms an idyllic lakeside town into a place where every glance feels suspicious and every memory hides something dangerous beneath the surface.

Set against the backdrop of a picturesque Washington community, The Season of Sinking follows Imogen Bly as she returns to her hometown of Lake Blair after her mother’s sudden death. Accompanied by her twin sister Amelia, Imogen expects a painful but straightforward task: sorting through their mother’s belongings and preparing the family home for sale. Instead, she finds herself confronted by old fears, strange occurrences, and the lingering sense that something has always been deeply wrong about the place she once called home.

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The Neighbors Are Watching by Aggie Blum Thompson: A sharp suburban thriller about privilege, secrets, and the lies neighbors tell

The pristine lawns, expensive homes, and carefully curated lives of Bethesda’s elite hide a surprising number of ugly secrets in The Neighbors Are Watching by Aggie Blum Thompson, a twisty suburban thriller that explores what happens when privilege, obsession, and desperation collide after a murder rocks an affluent community.

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Just outside Washington, D.C., the wealthy neighborhood of Eastbrook is still reeling from the unsolved murder of a nanny one year earlier. When nearly-empty-nester Caren wakes up after a graduation party with gaps in her memory and evidence suggesting she drank herself into oblivion, she suspects something much darker happened. As she begins investigating alongside a new neighbor determined to solve his best friend’s murder, long-buried secrets begin to surface—and someone is willing to kill to keep them hidden.

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Rules for Aging and Larceny by Julia London: A delightfully mischievous heist novel that proves older women are still a force to be reckoned with

The older we get, the more the world seems determined to overlook us—but Rules for Aging and Larceny by Julia London turns that assumption into its greatest weapon, delivering a funny, fast-paced caper about four women in their seventies who discover they’re far from finished with life, friendship, or causing trouble.

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Scheduled for release on June 30, 2026, this is exactly the kind of book you pick up when you’re looking for pure entertainment. It isn’t trying to reinvent the crime novel or deliver profound philosophical revelations. Instead, it offers an enjoyable, character-driven heist story full of humor, heart, and just enough suspense to keep the pages turning. I could easily imagine this becoming a movie starring actresses like Stockard Channing, Mary Steenburgen, Pam Grier, and Youn Yuh-jung.

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It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell: A thriller that proves why she remains the genre’s best storyteller

A missing teenager, a mysterious house, and a woman forced to confront the darkest corners of her past collide in It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell, a gripping and emotionally rich thriller that reminds me exactly why she remains my favorite author working in the genre today. Releasing June 23, 2026, this latest novel begins with a seemingly simple mystery involving a lost dog before spiraling into something far more layered, unsettling, and deeply personal.

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Thriller novels often follow familiar patterns. There’s a reason readers keep coming back to them. Like a favorite comfort food, the genre offers recognizable tropes, satisfying twists, and reliable entertainment. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Not every book needs to reinvent literature, and sometimes readers simply want an engaging story that delivers exactly what it promises.

But Lisa Jewell has never been that kind of writer.

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Dead Weight by Hildur Knútsdóttir: A chilling Icelandic horror thriller about friendship, violence, and the cost of letting someone in

Dead Weight by Hildur Knútsdóttir, translated by Mary Robinette Kowal, releases May 26, 2026, and it wastes no time pulling the reader into a Reykjavík night where loneliness, affection, and something far more dangerous blur together. An Icelandic night may hide secrets and affairs—or even bodies—in this gruesomely cathartic horror thriller from the author of The Night Guest, where a black cat’s arrival quietly unspools a chain of choices that can’t be undone.

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Unnur is living a small, contained life until she’s chosen—almost accidentally—by what can only be described as the cat distribution system. When she finally lets the stray into her home, she doesn’t realize she’s also opening the door to Ásta, the cat’s owner, or to everything that follows. Ásta arrives like a cold wind off the harbor: compelling, damaged, and carrying trouble that clings tighter than either woman initially understands.

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The Counting Game by Sinéad Nolan: A haunting debut where myth and fear blur in the Irish woods

Two children walk into the woods, and only one returns. From that chilling premise, The Counting Game by Sinéad Nolan unfolds into an atmospheric psychological mystery that lingers long after the final page. Releasing April 7, 2026, this debut crime novel turns a rural Irish legend into something far more unsettling: a story where the real danger might be human—or something else entirely.

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Set in southwest Ireland in 1995, the novel opens with the disappearance of thirteen-year-old Saoirse Kellough. She vanished while playing the so-called “Counting Game” in the forest with her younger brother, Jack. The rules are simple: go into the woods, count to ten, and stay hidden. The problem is that only Jack comes out. Worse still, he refuses to speak about what happened.

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Missing Sister by Joshilyn Jackson: A twisty Southern thriller about sisterhood, guilt, and revenge

What if the person avenging your sister’s death isn’t you—but someone who knows more than you ever did? In Missing Sister, Joshilyn Jackson delivers a chilling, character-driven thriller that explores the razor-thin line between justice and obsession. The novel follows Penny Albright, a rookie cop still reeling from the tragic death of her twin, Nix, five years earlier. Born three minutes apart, the sisters were inseparable—until Nix’s sudden death and a cryptic voicemail left Penny drowning in guilt and unanswered questions.

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Now working in law enforcement to honor Nix’s dream of making the world safer, Penny is called to her first murder scene and comes face-to-face with Danny Bowery, one of the three men she’s long blamed for her sister’s death. He’s sprawled in a pool of blood outside an upscale Atlanta shopping center, as if conjured by Penny’s long-harbored anger. And then there’s the blonde woman in blood-soaked clothes gripping a box cutter—a woman who hints that Bowery’s murder is only the beginning of a larger story about sisters before vanishing into thin air.

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How to Get Away with Murder by Rebecca Philipson: A police procedural that refuses to play by the rules

How to Get Away with Murder by Rebecca Philipson, out February 24, 2026, starts with a wink and a dare—“If you picked up this book because you truly want to get away with murder…”—and initially feels like it might settle into familiar police-procedural territory. It doesn’t. What begins as a fairly standard investigation quickly mutates into something sharper, stranger, and genuinely hard to put down.

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Detective Inspector Samantha Hansen returns to Scotland Yard after a six-month medical leave, determined to prove she hasn’t lost her edge. Her reentry point is grim: the murder of fourteen-year-old Charlotte, whose backpack contains a copy of a self-help book titled How to Get Away with Murder. The book’s author, Denver Brady, claims to be a serial killer so successful no one knows his name—and as its contents go viral, it becomes disturbingly clear that someone is taking its lessons to heart.

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