The Most Anticipated Mystery & Thriller Books of Summer 2025

In seven days Jet Mason will be dead. The #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder — now a hit Netflix series — returns with her first novel for adults: A twisty thriller about a young woman trying to solve her own murder.

It’s not dust she’s looking for … it’s dirt. Esmie is meant to be invisible. A cleaner for an exclusive gated neighborhood in Ireland, Esmie fades into the background, slipping in and out of kitchens and closets, quietly observing her clients’ perfect domestic lives. But Esmie is not a cleaner. She’s come to this neighborhood for one purpose and one purpose only. Revenge.

One train. No stops. A deadly game of survival and revenge. In 1942, six people destroyed Anna Matheson’s family. Twelve years later, she’s ready for retribution. Under false pretenses, Anna has lured those responsible for her family’s downfall onto a luxury train from Philadelphia to Chicago, an overnight journey of thirteen hours. But Anna’s plan is quickly derailed by the murder of one of the passengers. With time running out before the train reaches its destination, Anna is forced to hunt the killer in their midst while protecting the people she hates the most. In order to destroy her enemies, she must first save them — even though it means putting her own life at risk.

Another instant classic from Carl Hiaasen — laugh-out-loud funny, tackling the current chaotic and polarized American culture (following in the path of Squeeze Me), with two wonderful Hiaasen heroes.

A brilliant graphic adaptation of the classic Raymond Chandler novella featuring detective Philip Marlowe. Los Angeles, 1930s. A rich old man who knows trouble when he sees it hires a detective agency to scare off a young woman who seems to be making his adopted son hemorrhage cash. Fortunately for the detective, a hard-drinking man named Philip Marlowe, trouble is his business.

From the co-editor of the bestselling anthology Never Whistle at Night, a semi-autobiographical novel that follows a group of teenage gang members as they trek across Chicago to a momentous meeting, inspired by the cult classic The Warriors.

When a beloved wife and mother disappears, a luxurious condo building transforms into a potential crime scene, and the investigation begins: Can the detectives find her before it’s too late? The new gripping novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Couple Next Door.

A twisty and prescient new thriller in the #1 New York Times bestselling Avery Keene series, by nationally renowned author and leader Stacey Abrams, Coded Justice follows Avery down a dark rabbit hole into the breathtaking — and dangerous — use of AI in the medical industry.

On a trip to the tropical paradise where her fiancée died, a young woman begins to suspect the death was no accident — and the killer’s still on the island — in this twisty thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Reese’s Book Club pick We Were Never Here.

Retired nurse, avid gardener, and renowned cake maker Miss Hortense has lived in Bigglesweigh, a quiet suburb of Birmingham, England, since she emigrated from Jamaica in 1960. Her career in nursing has left her as an expert in deciphering other people’s secrets with just a glance. When a man turns up dead, Miss Hortense must solve a mystery that will see her and the community she loves pushed to their limits. The first novel from a bold, brilliant new voice, A Murder for Miss Hortense introduces a fearless sleuth whom readers will never forget.

After rage quitting her job, Mavis finally has time to get all the rest she’s been putting off. Or she should have the time. Hypothetically. Except she’s taken on a new role: Supermom. Her hours are filled with chauffeuring her daughter, Pearl, around to her extracurricular activities, somehow ending up class mom, and…investigating another mystery? A clever and hilarious new mystery about a mother who thinks she has to do it all — even solve a murder.

From the bestselling author of The Quiet Tenant comes a propulsive new thriller: Fifteen years ago, Frida and her brother escaped a cult. Now her brother is the prime suspect in a murder investigation — and it isn’t the first time.

A twisty and ingenious stand-alone classic Japanese murder mystery from the author of The Decagon House Murders. Can the brilliant Kiyoshi Shimada solve the mystery of this bizarre house before all those trapped in its labyrinth are dead? Can you guess the solution before he does?

In this twisted psychological thriller from the New York Times bestselling co-author of the Reese’s Book Club pick The Last Mrs. Parrish, a woman is tormented by nightmarish visions of her future — and then they start to come true.

Curtis Wilson is a cello prodigy, growing up in the Southeast D.C. projects with a drug dealer for a father. But with the loving support of his father’s girlfriend, Larissa, Curtis claws his way out of his challenging circumstances and rises to unimagined heights in the classical music world. And then, suddenly, his life disintegrates. His father, Zippy, turns state’s evidence, implicating his old bosses. Now the family — Curtis included — must enter the witness protection program if they want to survive. But when Zippy’s bosses prove too elusive for law enforcement, Curtis, Zippy, and Larissa realize their only chance of survival is to take on the criminals themselves … A propulsive and moving story about sacrifice, loyalty, and the indomitable human spirit, The Dark Maestro is Brendan Slocumb at the height of his powers.

Two women meet on a train. Each is running from a deadly secret. When one disappears, the other decides to take her place — for better, or for worse. But both women have ghosts in their pasts. Though unaware of the rot lurking beneath the shiny veneer of her new life, one woman will do whatever it takes to make sure she never goes back.

A dedicated journalist unearths a generations-old family secret — and a connection to a string of missing girls that hits way too close to home — in this gripping debut novel. Delving into family, community, secrets, and motherhood, We Don’t Talk About Carol is a gripping and deeply emotional story about overcoming the rot at the roots of our family trees — and what we’ll do for those we love.

A deliciously dark horror reimagining of a Greek tragedy, by Ivy Pochoda, winner of the LA Times Book Prize. Ecstasy is a riveting, darkly poetic, one-sitting read about empowerment, desire, and what happens when women reject the roles set out for them.

A sly, funny, action-packed thriller introducing an instantly iconic spy duo, from the author of the New York Times bestseller 2034. Globe-trotting and page-turning, full of heart and humor, Sheepdogs is a uniquely perceptive, wild ride through the underbelly of modern war and intelligence.

In this fresh and immersive murder mystery that riffs on crime classics, the reader is put in the role of the Great Detective, reinvestigating an infamous never-before-solved case from 1970s England.

The New York Times bestselling master of suspense returns to his beloved series, adapted for TV (CBS’s Tracker, starring Justin Hartley) as reward seeker Colter Shaw races against the clock to save a flooding town from a full-fledged disaster, where the culprit lurks in plain sight.

The young adult debut from the award-winning author of Arsenic and Adobo! When a high school tarot reader’s latest client goes missing after a troubling reading, she must apply everything she’s learned from her private investigator mother to solve a case of her own.

Nancy Drew meets P-Valley as an Atlanta reporter investigates the gruesome ritualistic murder of a dancer at the female-owned strip club where she herself worked years before. Acclaimed author L. Divine makes her adult debut in this thrilling, sexy new series for fans of My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, Kirstin Chen’s Counterfeit, and All Her Little Secrets by Wanda M. Morris.

Gorgeous, charismatic Paige White has always lived a picture-perfect life. Her meticulously curated social pages exude an old-fashioned, wholesome lifestyle set against a picturesque town in Australia. But when a dark, brooding image pops up on Paige’s page, where she appears waterlogged and disheveled — and shortly after she’s discovered drowned — alarm bells go off. The Last Illusion of Paige White is a smart, introspective, impeccably-plotted mystery that will have readers second-guessing what is truth and what is illusion, and their own obsessions with their online worlds.

Lisbeth Salander returns in this chilling new installment of the multi-million-copy bestselling Millennium series. Lured back to a lawless town full of predators disguised as saviors and foes disguised as friends, forced to face down their own troubling pasts and those of their loved ones, Salander and Blomkvist must untangle a history of violence before it’s too late. The Girl with Ice in Her Veins is a twisty, vertiginous, hard-hitting thriller that breathes new life into Stieg Larsson’s epic series and unforgettable characters.

Fiji, 1915: When a purported sighting of Germans on the run from WWI turns deadly, Sergeant Akal Singh must (reluctantly) take up the investigation in this vibrant follow-up to A Disappearance in Fiji.

The groundbreaking Korean phenomenon that Entertainment Weekly called “The Hunger Games meets Squid Game” continues with even more dark secrets and shocking surprises. The temperature is rising and the truth at the center of Chobahm’s frozen world will be revealed in the final installment of this epic dystopian saga.

The discovery of an oil field off the coast of Guyana plunges Jack Ryan, Jr. into a cauldron of lies in the latest entry in this New York Times bestselling series.