Best 2026 Thrillers and Mystery Books to Read

Book Summary

Edward is a broke and desperate gambling addict living in Tokyo. The British ex-pat expects that he’ll be killed once it’s discovered that he can’t pay what he owes, and he fears that his creditors will go after his wife and daughter next.

Then he comes across a job opportunity as a private chef for a high-profile businesswoman, offering one million yen per day. He has prior experience as a sous chef, so he leaves the city behind and accepts the position at an opulent, remote mountain estate. His reclusive boss, a disgraced socialite named Hazeline Yamamoto, is a certified gourmand. Cost is no barrier, which has her continually seeking out strange and forbidden options.

In exchange for his loyalty, Hazeline continues to offer Ed a brighter and brighter future. But along the way, he begins to learn the chilling truth about her altruism and discovers monsters far scarier than the two-bit gangsters to whom he owed gambling debts.

The wind blowing through Hazeline’s home carries the sound of screaming, and Ed finds himself feeding all kinds of beasts.

Book Summary

After high school, best friends Allie and Tess have begun drifting apart as their lives diverged. Allie is now a self-made travel influencer, while Tess is working as a legal assistant, trying to work her way through law school. But, after years of excuses, claustrophobic Tess has finally agreed to go on a caving adventure with Allie.

As they travel deeper into the cave, they encounter a stranger who claims to be a fellow caver. When he harasses them, Allie insults him, and things take an even darker turn. Soon, Tess is trapped in a narrow crawl space hundreds of feet underground.

Twenty-four hours later, she’s in a hospital recounting the story to a detective who shares a shocking secret about Allie’s past. The seemingly random attack in the cave might not have been so random after all. And Tess might not be as out of harm’s way as she thought.

Book Summary

Within months of the 1928 discovery of a massive waterfall in the middle of a mountain in Chattanooga, visitors can buy tickets to see the sight for themselves. Ada Smith often sneaks into the caves at night, drawn in by the natural beauty and the freedom she feels in the underground world.

Soon, the Great Depression began to dry up tourism at natural wonders around the country. A shrewd public relations ploy is drummed up in an effort to save Ruby Falls. A famous mystic agrees to launch himself into the Ruby Falls caverns, where he’ll locate a tiny hidden hatpin using only his psychic abilities. Joining him are his manager, his wife, a guide, a businessman, and a reporter from the Chicago Times. What they don’t know is that Ada and another guide have been asked to secretly follow the mind reader’s party as a safety precaution.

Before the end of the day, one of them is dead. Faced with the reality that someone in the cave is a killer, Ada needs to get everyone above ground before their lights and time run out.

Book Summary

Best friends Joy and Benny cohost a beloved podcast where they share a new survival story each week, finding life-affirming humor in near-death experiences. Not only does everyone want to be their friend, but it’s a lucrative empire thanks to the business-savviness of their manager, Xander, who is also Joy’s husband.

One morning, Benny arrives at Joy and Xander’s to find shattered glass and an empty house. The only clue he can find is a previously unseen first draft of Joy’s memoir. As time passes, the odds seem unlikely that the couple will be found alive, and police have Benny at the top of their suspect list. Millions of listeners feel like they know everything about Joy and Benny, but what secrets have they hidden from their fans, and each other?

Book Summary

Hannah was invited to spend spring break at a gorgeous resort in Mexico with her best friend’s family. It’s the perfect escape from the stress of their senior year, but she’s been crushing on Emmy’s older brother as long as she can remember, which makes things a bit awkward.

When Emmy meets a guy at the beach, Hannah suddenly feels like a third wheel to her friend’s vacation romance. Eager to impress Emmy, the wealthy new boyfriend charters a sailboat and invites both girls, as well as Jackson, to join him for their last day in paradise. But with dark clouds rolling in, their boat is the only one leaving the marina. Out on the open water, Hannah feels even more unsettled. Soon, there’s a storm brewing on board that’s even more deadly than the weather.

Book Summary

While Lillian and Henry can’t get enough of each other (especially in bed), her best friend tries to make it clear that this seems to be a “situationship” more than a real relationship. Lillian wants more and will do whatever it takes to make him fall in love with her. But when being overly accommodating doesn’t work, and Henry ends things anyway, Lillian drunkenly hexes him.

She hopes that he’ll come crawling back to her when he understands what he’s given up, but instead, Henry is found dead. Now, she’s a murder suspect and heartbroken. Not only is Henry gone, but he also had another serious girlfriend. Lillian is determined to get to the truth, clear her name, and claim her spot as primary mourning girlfriend…whatever it takes.

Book Summary

Natalie projects the picture-perfect life and tradwife values to her 8 million followers online from her Idaho farmhouse. Her husband is a handsome cowboy born into a conservative political dynasty, and her six children are a delight…or so she tells her audience. Behind the scenes, she’s building an empire based on her Christian pioneer lifestyle, so no one needs to know that her house is really full of nannies, producers, and industrial-grade fridges and ovens to make her content possible. She’s also a common target of online critics who label her as anti-feminist.

One morning, instead of waking up in the fake life she represents, she wakes up in 1805, and everything is so much harder. Her home is heated by fire instead of electricity, her children are dirty, and her husband seems to be an actual farmer now. Suddenly, life depends on hauling firewood and handwashing clothes. She has no idea how she ended up in this alternate life, but after she is injured in the woods, she knows she has to escape.

Book Summary

Each summer, sisters Esme, Piper, and Regina vacation at their remote summer house on Lake George in the Adirondacks. But this summer, things are shaping up to be tense thanks to drama within their own families. The oldest sister, Esme, recently discovered her husband’s infidelity but is desperate to keep it secret from the others. Piper, the middle sister, is typically the peace-keeper, but this year she has a newborn and is too tired for that responsibility. The youngest sister, Regina, is the rule breaker, and she has a secret to hide that could cost her everything.

Tensions boil over during an argument, and the sisters go their separate ways for the night. They all expect that the others will cool off overnight, and the next day they’ll resume their vacation on good terms as usual. But the morning light reveals a young woman’s body in the lake. The criminal investigation narrows in on the family home when it becomes clear that the sister’s web of lies are intertwined with the woman in the lake.

Book Summary

In 1992, 17-year-old Quinn is trying to break up a fight when someone nearly dies. Quinn is from the wrong side of the tracks, so he ends up arrested even though his actions were innocent. On the same night, Jules survives an attack by the May Day killer, who has been terrorizing small towns each year on May 1st.

A year later, Jules is still struggling with survivor’s guilt, and Quinn has just been released from juvenile detention back into a world even worse than the one he was taken from. His mother has been murdered, his home went to auction, and his brother, who has special needs, was placed in a care facility.

Over the next ten years, we see each of their lives on May 1st, and the paths of Quinn and Jules collide.

Book Summary

Back in 2010, Carrie and Johan married on a beach in Thailand after a five-month whirlwind romance. It was uncharacteristic for Carrie, a British surgical intern, to act so impulsively, but she was madly in love. Before the night was over, armed men swarmed the beach and arrested Johan for unstated crimes. Once in police custody, Johan refused to speak to Carrie, and she hasn’t seen him since.

Now, Carrie is married to a new man in England, and she’s stepped away from her medical career to care for their 6-year-old twins. One day in 2022, she comes across an online post and realizes that Johan has been out of prison for years. Flooded with the memories of their passionate relationship, she becomes obsessed with learning the truth about what happened a decade earlier – even if doing so means putting her marriage and her family in jeopardy.

Book Summary

For the past three years, Fletcher has been working 70 hours a week as the assistant to a demanding magazine CEO. She’s thrilled when she’s finally offered a spot at Cartwright Media’s annual corporate retreat on their luxurious private island. Rumor has it that her billionaire boss’s safari park island is the place to be if you want a promotion.

Fletcher dreams of moving up from assistant to travel magazine photographer, but the competition turns out to be even more cutthroat than she expected. Her boss turns up dead, and his will reveals that whoever survives the week on the island will inherit the company.

Now she’s surrounded not just by wild animals but also by wild coworkers who have swapped coffee and briefcases for machetes and hunting rifles. Lions, and tigers…and marketing executives. Oh my!

She’ll need an ally to stay alive, and she may have found one in her boss’s gorgeous son, Waylon Cartwright. They have a hostile history, but Fletcher is at least 80 percent sure he won’t try to kill her.

Book Summary

A year ago, Jordyn’s foster sister was killed in a hit-and-run after leaving a book club meeting. Now Jordyn has moved to the affluent Saratoga Springs neighborhood and has been invited to attend the same tight-knit book club. She is convinced that the members had serious motives, and she’s determined to learn their secrets and find her sister’s killer.

When the book club hosts a murder mystery party, secrets begin bubbling to the surface–and the murder part of the game becomes stranger than fiction.

Book Summary

After her recent divorce, Frankie relocates to an upscale London neighborhood with pastel-colored facades. It seems like the perfect place for her and her Persian cat, Blue, to start their new chapter. But then one night, Blue, who often slips into places he shouldn’t, returns home with the unsettling words “HELP ME” scratched roughly into his collar.

Frankie attaches an old “cat cam” to Blue, and thus begins a voyeuristic fascination with her neighbors and the secrets they’re hiding. But this quest for the truth will soon bring untold terrors right to Frankie’s doorstep.

Book Summary

Jane and her four dogs live an isolated life on a large English estate. When she finds a white dog named Hugo on her property and can’t locate the teen girl who had been staying nearby with him, she decides to return him to his registered owner, whose address is hours away in Hampstead, London.

When Jane arrives, she is unsettled to discover that she personally has a dark connection to the house. The man who answers the door immediately makes her feel unsettled. He says that the dog must have been stolen, but Jane doubts this story. Through the window, she catches a glimpse of a haunted-looking woman, and the deeper she looks, the more she senses that something dangerous is hiding beneath the surface.

Book Summary

Wurimbirra is the rambling, decaying estate owned by Fiona’s family in eastern Australia. At the end of the millennium drought, she is intent on restoring it to its former grandeur, even against her mother’s objections. Under the crumbling plaster, Fiona begins to uncover long-buried secrets. She also finds a book, The Midnight Estate, which seems to mirror her own life, complete with love, loss, and betrayal.

Fiona assumes this is a coincidence, but as she continues reading, the lines between fiction and reality become blurred. Does she really know her family at all?