Summer Mystery Books & Beach Thrillers

Book Summary

Hazel’s mother disappeared years ago, and now her father – the local police detective – has passed away. Hazel is surprised to learn that she alone has inherited her childhood home, further straining her already rocky relationship with her brothers.

After having been away from her hometown for almost a decade, Hazel returns to discover that the town is experiencing a severe drought. As the water level of the lake drops, it uncovers evidence that may finally provide answers to explain why and how Hazel’s mother disappeared years ago.

Book Summary

Lyla’s career is in flux as her post-doctoral research has fizzled out, and her relationship with Nico, an actor, is also floundering. So, when Nico sees an opportunity to audition for a new reality TV show, The Perfect Couple, she decides to try out with him.

After a whirlwind process, Lyla and Nico are headed to a tropical paradise in the Indian Ocean to compete against four other couples. However, the first challenge leaves everyone upset. Then, an overnight storm strands the cast away from the production crew. They must band together for survival, but as water runs low, tensions reach new heights.

Book Summary

Take an armchair vacation to two different UK locations to uncover twenty years of secrets in this thriller from best-selling author Lisa Jewell. In East Yorkshire, you’ll meet single-mom Alice who finds a mysterious man on the beach outside her home. She invites him inside despite his confusion about how he even got there. 

Approximately 200 miles south in London (Surrey), Lily’s husband fails to come home from work one night. She’s only twenty-one, has only been married three weeks, and is new to London after moving there from Ukraine. When she calls the police to report her husband missing, the police don’t take her seriously.

Book Summary

As young girls, Jessica, Norah, and Alicia were rescued from terrible homes and constantly told how lucky they were to have been rescued by Miss Fairchild. They lived on her idyllic farming estate and, from the outside, had a happy family life.

But the truth was much different. Miss Fairchild was unpredictable and was never to be crossed. In desperation, the trio of girls managed to escape and believed they were free, though their foster mother always lingered in the back of their minds.

When a body is discovered under the old farmhouse, the foster sisters become key witnesses…or are they the suspects?

Book Summary

The call of the open road unites skilled pickpocket Summer and con artist Leo. They travel through California in a Land Cruiser and enjoy their freedom from ordinary life. However, they still have bills to pay, and it’s time to make some cash. 

Leo begins charming billionaire philanthropist Michael, and her efforts are rewarded with an invitation to Michaels’ exclusive private island. Summer can’t wait to hear about Leo’s night away and to see the pictures that can be sold to the paparazzi. However, Leo never returns from the island. 

Summer must now infiltrate the island to locate Summer, but with no way off the island most days, will she ever return?

Book Summary

Once upon a time on a particular stretch of the Georgia coast, there were the Saints and the Ain’ts. These terms delineated those who grew up spending their summers at the landmark St. Cecelia hotel and those who grew up on the “wrong” side of the river.

Traci was an Ain’t because her family wasn’t wealthy enough to summer at the hotel. But one fatefully summer she got a job at the hotel and ended up marrying the boss’s son. Years later, she is now the widowed owner of the historic hotel. Despite financial woes, staffing challenges, and a greedy brother-in-law who wants to see her fail, Traci is determined to return the Saint to its glory days.

With just one summer to turn things around, Traci hires a motley crew that includes her former best friend’s daughter. But will new information about a long-ago drowning at the hotel threaten everything? It will take everything she has to put past wrongs right in order to save the Saint.

Book Summary

Marine Biologist Emma and Obituary Writer Leo have been married for ten years and have a young daughter named Ruby. When Emma becomes seriously ill, Leo copes the only way he knows how – researching her life for her obituary. 

However, nothing he finds is what he expects, and nothing he knows about his wife is real. Her name isn’t even Emma. Despite her entire past being a dark secret-filled lie, she loves Leo and Ruby. Can she convince him that the love is real? 

This thriller is full of suspense if you’re looking for a book that will keep you up reading well past bedtime.

Book Summary

Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore lived a life as large as her name implies. As a child, she was the victim of a famous kidnapping. As an adult, she married and was widowed four times over. By the end of her life, she was not only North Carolina’s richest woman but also its most notorious. When she died, she left everything to her adopted son, Camden, including her estate in the Blue Ridge Mountains, her nine-figure fortune, and her complicated legacy.

Cam wants nothing to do with the house or the money, so he rejects the inheritance and instead takes a teaching job in Colorado. There, he marries a woman named Jules, who is just as eager to escape her own messy past.

When his uncle dies a decade later, Cam finally returns home to North Carolina, only to be quickly reminded of all the reasons he left. Jules, however, thinks it’s finally time for Cam to claim everything that Ruby wanted him to have all those years before.

But they quickly learn that it’s not as simple as claiming the home and the money. Cam and Jules are quickly confronted with many rumors and questions about Ruby. What really happened to all of her husbands who died under mysterious circumstances? And how did she come to adopt Cam in the first place?

Book Summary

Movie star and philanthropist Hugh is respected in Hollywood and provides stability for actress Nora. However, she’s also in love with Hollywood bad boy Trent. This would be complicated enough if Hugh and Trent weren’t twins!

When Trent and another woman are found dead, it appears to be a murder-suicide. However, there’s much more to this story, and Hollywood detectives must figure out who is telling the truth and who isn’t what they appear.

Book Summary

When Lee’s restaurant fails, she finds herself unexpectedly living out of her Toyota Corolla. She parks near the beach to lay low. Early one morning, she sees a sobbing woman throw herself into the ocean. Lee jumps into action and saves the woman, Hazel, who is furious that she is still alive. 

Hazel shares that she’s in an abusive marriage and hopes to escape her toxic life. Hazel returns to her home, but then comes back to the beach the next morning and begins an unlikely friendship with Lee. Eventually, she begs Lee to help her disappear. However, things are often not what they seem. If you love a dramatic twist, pick up this one!

Book Summary

This book works as a stand-alone but is also the beginning of a new mystery series. After a long career, police detective Moira is ready to retire in paradise. She moves to a luxury retirement community, The Homestead, where things aren’t as peaceful as she hoped. 

Moira finds a dead young woman, surrounded by cash, floating in one of the community pools. Detective skills and instincts don’t shut down at retirement, so Moira finds herself investigating. Three of her new neighbors, also former officers, join her cause and are soon frustrating both the murderer and the local police.

Book Summary

This page-turning thriller is also a heartfelt story about siblings that will quickly draw you out of your own life and into the lives of the well-written characters. 

The main characters in Castaways are two sisters, Lori and Erin, who are traveling together to an island resort in Fiji after Lori separates from her husband. The night before their flight to the resort, the sisters get into an argument, and Erin doesn’t show up when it’s time to board. 

Lori gets on the plane anyways, but something feels off beyond her MIA sister. Her gut was right…the plane disappears before reaching its destination. When Erin hears this, she uses her experience as a journalist and tries to figure out what happened to Lori and the other passengers.

Book Summary

The Scarmado family has a glamorous new ship, and it’s setting sail from England to New York. Belle is aboard with her new, wealthy husband and new adult stepchildren who aren’t fans of her. She reaches out to her estranged friend Emily to join her on the voyage so she can have an ally in her corner.

The first night is great, but on the second night Emily is left wondering who sent her threatening notes. And on the third night, someone will die.

Book Summary

Anna’s artist husband, Henry, is mild and predictable and would never hurt a fly. Or so she thought until he called her and confessed to a murder. Then, the police find his body washed up on the banks of the Rio Grande River.

Desperate to make sense of it all, Anna checks into The Sycamores, the run-down motel turned apartment where Henry rented space to use as his art studio. As she gathers gossip from the eclectic mix of residents around the motel pool, she begins to see a very different picture of Henry than the man she married.

It also seems that Henry wasn’t the only one with secrets. The more Anna learns, the more determined Cass, the motel manager, is to keep her in the dark.

When she begins receiving threatening letters, Anna has to decide whether she’s more interested in the truth or her own safety.

Book Summary

Beth and her family get the opportunity to swap their wintery UK cottage for Amber’s sunny Italian villa for a two-week holiday. While Beth’s home is cozy, Amber’s is fancy and everything a dream vacation is made of, complete with an infinity pool. Or rather it looked like a dream before it became a nightmare. 

The book is told from alternating perspectives between Beth and Amber. We will say that this qualifies as a beach murder mystery, but outside of knowing that, we recommend not reading even the publisher’s synopsis because reviewers say it gives away something that doesn’t happen until pretty far into the book. 

Book Summary

Gabrielle has what many would consider a dream life. From her ideal job in publishing to her handsome fiance, her life is the perfect mix of brains and beauty. Everything changes after encountering the “Underground Killer,” who takes his victims from London Tube platforms. 

Although she’s a survivor, she struggles to return to her everyday life. She hopes that getting out of the city to run a tiny bookshop in Cornwall will make her nightmares stop. It seems perfect, but has she just entered a different kind of nightmare?

Book Summary

After six years of not speaking to her best friend, plus-size influencer Daphne is shocked when she’s suddenly asked to attend her big society wedding. On top of that, her former friend begs her to be maid-of-honor.

The prospect only tempts Daphne because the offer comes with a weekend in a Cape Cod mansion and might help her business. The friends have changed over the years, but will the wedding finally help them reunite as best friends?

We don’t want to tell you what happens after she arrives at the mansion because that would be a spoiler, but trust us that this book has a strong mystery component.

Book Summary

From an outsider’s view, no one would expect a murder at the annual summer block party on the exclusive Alton Lane. However, the problems actually started the summer before. 

The book takes you through the large cast of characters and their interactions between last summer’s block party and this year’s. Fifteen families from the block attend the party, and three are no-shows. Is the culprit someone who was present at the gathering or someone who skipped it? Throughout the book, you’ll constantly be guessing which neighbors from last year are MIA the year of the murder.

Book Summary

Set on the coast in Beaufort, South Carolina, Carolina Moonset is as moving as it is mysterious. Joey takes a trip to his hometown to help his father so his mom can take a break. His dad’s dementia is advancing, and his short-term memory is almost nonexistent. However, his longest-term memories are flooding back, and he’s often reliving his time as a young boy in Beaufort. 

While this is nice at first, his dad soon begins having hallucinatory arguments with people from his past. Long-buried secrets and scandals begin to re-emerge, causing Joey to question everything. The past was problematic enough, but now the police have arrived to discuss a new murder.

Book Summary

This gripping psychological thriller begins with three sets of friends gathering for a Thanksgiving retreat in Jamaica. But they are each hiding something – painful childhood memories, an affair, alcohol abuse, and a string of devastating miscarriages.

As their secrets are revealed, they threaten to destroy them. Things only get worse when Rose and Brandon’s three-year-old daughter goes missing from her bed in the vacation villa.

Book Summary

The Scarmado family has a glamorous new ship, and it’s setting sail from England to New York. Belle is aboard with her new, wealthy husband and new adult stepchildren who aren’t fans of her. She reaches out to her estranged friend Emily to join her on the voyage so she can have an ally in her corner.

The first night is great, but on the second night Emily is left wondering who sent her threatening notes. And on the third night, someone will die.

Book Summary

Mary Kay Andrews has been called the Queen of Beach Reads, and this is no expectation. Letty’s sister Tanya made her promise that if anything happened to her, Letty would take Tanya’s daughter Maya and run.

When Letty finds Tanya dead, she knows the murderer is Tanya’s ex, Evan, so she follows Tanya’s instructions to get out of town. Tanya left behind a go-bag of cash, and massive diamond ring, and a faded magazine article about a small mom-and-pop hotel in a Florida beach town.

She heads south to Florida with four-year-old Maya, trying to comfort the child and unravel her sister’s secrets while keeping a low profile among the locals, including the handsome police chief Joe. Sisterhood, romance, and mystery intertwine throughout almost 500 pages, which is great if you’re looking for a longer option.