This year is already looking incredibly strong on the mysteries and thrillers front, especially from women writers. In honor of Women’s History Month, I’ve pulled a list of some of the upcoming releases I’m most excited about. Explore the list to find your next mind-bending thriller!
A high-stakes hide-and-seek competition turns deadly in this dark supernatural thriller from New York Times best-selling author Kiersten White.
The challenge: spend a week hiding in an abandoned amusement park and don’t get caught.
The prize: enough money to change everything.
Even though everyone is desperate to win - to seize their dream futures or escape their haunting pasts - Mack feels sure that she can beat her competitors. All she has to do is hide, and she’s an expert at that.
It’s the reason she’s alive, and her family isn’t.
But as the people around her begin disappearing one by one, Mack realizes this competition is more sinister than even she imagined, and that together might be the only way to survive.
Fourteen competitors. Seven days. Everywhere to hide, but nowhere to run.
Come out, come out, wherever you are.
Jason Bennett is a suburban dad who owns his owns a court-reporting business, but one night, his life takes a horrific turn. He is driving his family home after his daughter’s lacrosse game when a pickup truck begins tailgating them, on a dark stretch of road....
From the New York Times best-selling author of Mexican Gothic and Velvet Was the Night comes a dreamy reimagining of The Island of Doctor Moreau set against the backdrop of 19th-century Mexico.
One of the Most Anticipated Books of 2022 - She Reads
Carlota Moreau: A young woman growing up on a distant and luxuriant estate, safe from the conflict and strife of the Yucatán peninsula. The only daughter of a man who is either a genius or a madman.
Montgomery Laughton: A melancholic overseer with a tragic past and a propensity for alcohol. An outcast who assists Dr. Moreau with his scientific experiments, which are financed by the Lizaldes, owners of magnificent haciendas and plentiful coffers.
The hybrids: The fruits of the doctor’s labor, destined to blindly obey their creator and remain in the shadows. A motley group of part human, part animal monstrosities.
All of them live in a perfectly balanced and static world, which is jolted by the abrupt arrival of Eduardo Lizalde, the charming and careless son of Dr. Moreau’s patron, who will unwittingly begin a dangerous chain reaction.
For Moreau keeps secrets, Carlota has questions, and, in the sweltering heat of the jungle, passions may ignite.
A woman stops at nothing to find her husband’s murderer in this psychological thriller about twisted marriages, fractured families, and deadly obsessions - from the number one New York Times best-selling author of the “brilliantly chilling” (Ruth Ware, New York Times best-selling author) The Family Upstairs.
When Rachel Rimmer’s phone rings in the early morning, she is shocked when she hears her husband’s housekeeper sobbing on the line. Her husband, Michael, has been found dead in the cellar of his house in France and all signs point to murder.
The French police conclude that Michael was killed by his gangster associates. They have no idea that the real killer is still out there: his ex-wife, Lucy. A year later, she and her children are happily living in London, unaware that Rachel is on the hunt for her. She may have never met this woman, but Rachel knows Lucy was the last person to see her husband alive. And there is nothing that is going to stop her from discovering the truth.
With her signature “electrifying, chilling, and unputdownable” (Sarah Pekkanen, New York Times bestselling author) prose, Lisa Jewell weaves another twisty, suspenseful thriller in the vein of Paula Hawkins and Liane Moriarty.
March 15. What happens when an aquited prime suspect becomes friendly with a crime blogger dedicated to exposing the truth?
In this twisty, mind-bending thriller from the best-selling author of Behind Her Eyes, Emma Averill worries that her sudden insomnia is a sign that she’s slowly going insane - like the mother she’s worked so hard to leave in her past.
Emma Averill loves her life - her high-powered legal career, her two beautiful children, and her wonderful stay-at-home husband - but it wasn’t always so perfect. When she was just five years old, Emma and her older sister went into foster care because of a deeply disturbing incident with their mother. Her sister can remember a time when their mother was loving and "normal", but Emma can only remember her as one thing - a monster. And that monster emerged right around their mother’s 40th birthday, the same age Emma is approaching now.
Emma desperately wants to keep her dream life separate from her past, so she’s always hidden her childhood trauma. But then she stops being able to sleep, and now she’s losing time during the day - also one of the first symptoms her mother showed. Is the madness in her blood, just as her mother predicted? Could she end up hurting her family in her foggy, half-awake state? Or is there another explanation for the strange things that keep happening around her? Emma must unravel the dark strands of her past to protect the people she loves...or risk ending up just like her mother.
Two identical twin sisters and former child actors have grown apart — until one disappears, and the other is forced to confront the secrets they've kept from each other in this twisty suspense novel from the New York Times best-selling author of Pretty Things.
“You be me, and I’ll be you,” I whispered.
As children, Sam and Elli were two halves of a perfect whole: gorgeous identical twins whose parents sometimes couldn’t even tell them apart. They fell asleep to the sound of each other’s breath at night, holding hands in the dark. And once Hollywood discovered them, they became B-list child TV stars, often inhabiting the same role.
But as adults, their lives have splintered. After leaving acting, Elli reinvented herself as the perfect homemaker: married to a real estate lawyer, living in a house just blocks from the beach. Meanwhile, Sam has never recovered from her failed Hollywood career, or from her addiction to the pills and booze that have propped her up for the last 15 years.
Sam hasn't spoken to her sister since her destructive behavior finally drove a wedge between them. So when her father calls out of the blue, Sam is shocked to learn that Elli’s life has been in turmoil: her husband moved out, and Elli just adopted a two-year-old girl. Now she’s stopped answering her phone and checked in to a mysterious spa in Ojai. Is her sister just decompressing, or is she in trouble? Could she have possibly joined a cult? As Sam works to connect the dots left by Elli’s baffling disappearance, she realizes that the bond between her and her sister is more complicated than she ever knew.
I’ll Be You shows Janelle Brown at the top of her game: a story packed with surprising revelations and sharp insights about the choices that define our families and our lives — and could just as easily destroy them.
The number one New York Times best-selling author of the “claustrophobic spine-tingler” (People) One by One returns with an unputdownable mystery following a woman on the search for answers a decade after her friend’s murder.
April Clarke-Cliveden was the first person Hannah Jones met at Oxford.
Vivacious, bright, occasionally vicious, and the ultimate It girl, she quickly pulled Hannah into her dazzling orbit. Together, they developed a group of devoted and inseparable friends - Will, Hugh, Ryan, and Emily - during their first term. By the end of the second, April was dead.
Now, a decade later, Hannah and Will are expecting their first child, and the man convicted of killing April, former Oxford porter John Neville, has died in prison. Relieved to have finally put the past behind her, Hannah’s world is rocked when a young journalist comes knocking and presents new evidence that Neville may have been innocent. As Hannah reconnects with old friends and delves deeper into the mystery of April’s death, she realizes that the friends she thought she knew all have something to hide…including a murder.
“The Agatha Christie of our generation” (David Baldacci, number one New York Times best-selling author) proves once again that she is “as ingenious and indefatigable as the Queen of Crime” (The Washington Post) with this propulsive murder mystery that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
The New York Times best-selling Queen of Twists returns...with a family reunion that leads to murder.
After years of avoiding each other, Daisy Darker’s entire family is assembling for Nana’s 80th birthday party in Nana’s crumbling gothic house on a tiny tidal island. Finally back together one last time, when the tide comes in, they will be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours.
The family arrives, each of them harboring secrets. Then at the stroke of midnight, as a storm rages, Nana is found dead. And an hour later, the next family member follows....
Trapped on an island where someone is killing them one by one, the Darkers must reckon with their present mystery as well as their past secrets, before the tide comes in and all is revealed.
With a wicked wink to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, Daisy Darker’s unforgettable twists will leave listeners reeling.
“Wow! Echoes of Christie's And Then There Were None but turned into something wonderfully original and wrapped in a genuinely creepy dysfunctional family fairy-tale of a novel, this takes Feeney to the next level. I LOVED IT!” (Sarah Pinborough, best-selling author of Behind Her Eyes and Insomnia)
A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books.
From the New York Times best-selling author of The Drowning Kind comes a genre-defying new novel, inspired by Mary Shelley’s masterpiece Frankenstein, that brilliantly explores the eerie mysteries of childhood and the evils perpetrated by the monsters among us....
“Twisty, dark, and packs a punch. . . . Gripping and genuinely nail-biting.” — SARAH PEARSE, New York Times bestselling author of The Sanatorium
In this pulse-pounding thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of The Nanny, a group of women travel to the most remote place in England for a weekend escape, only to discover a startling note that one of their husbands will be killed before they return home - perfect for fans of Ruth Ware and Lucy Foley.
Three couples
Two bodies
One secret
Dark Fell Barn is a “perfectly isolated” retreat, or so says its website when Jayne books a reservation for her friends. A quiet place, far removed from the rest of the world, is exactly what they need.
The women arrive for a girls’ night ahead of their husbands. There’s ex-Army Jayne, hardened and serious, but also damaged. Ruth, the driven doctor and new mother who is battling demons of her own. Young Emily, just wed and insecure, the newest addition of this tight-knit band. Missing this year is Edie, who was the glue holding them together, until her husband died suddenly.
But what they hoped would be a relaxing break soon turns to horror. Upon arrival at Dark Fell Barn, the women find a devastating note claiming one of their husbands will be murdered. There are no phones, no cell service to check on their men. Friendships fracture as the situation spins wildly out of control. Betrayal can come in many forms.
This group has kept each other’s secrets for far too long.
"Fast-paced and incredibly compelling . . . this book will not let you put it down." — SHARI LAPENA, New York Times bestselling author of The Couple Next Door
“Thrilling and deeply moving, gorgeously written and intricately plotted...bold and brilliant." (Elizabeth McCracken)
Set in a wealthy Parisian suburb, an emotionally riveting debut told from the point of view of six women, and centered around a group of au pairs, one of whom is arrested after a sudden and suspicious tragedy strikes her host family - a dramatic exploration of identity, class, and caregiving from a profoundly talented new writer.
Paris, 2015. A crowd gathers outside the Chauvet home in the affluent suburban community of Maisons-Larue, watching as the family’s American au pair is led away in handcuffs after the sudden death of her young charge. The grieving mother believes the caretaker is to blame, and the neighborhood is thrown into chaos, unsure who is at fault - the enigmatic young foreigner or the mother herself, who has never seemed an active participant in the lives of her children.
The truth lies with six women: Géraldine, a heartbroken French teacher struggling to support her vulnerable young students; Lou, an incompetent au pair who was recently fired by the family next door; Charlotte, a chilly socialite and reluctant mother; Nathalie, an isolated French teenager desperate for her mother’s attention; Holly, a socially anxious au pair yearning to belong in her adopted country; and finally, Alena, the one accused of the crime, who has gone to great lengths to avoid emotional connection, and now finds herself caught in the turbulent power dynamics of her host family’s household.
Set during the weeks leading up to the event, The Caretakers is a poignant and suspenseful drama featuring complicated women. It’s a sensitive exploration of the weight of secrets, the pressures of country, community, and family - and miscommunications and misunderstandings that can have fatal consequences.
“A deep, enthralling pleasure, as wise as it is lovely. I read it voraciously, desperate to discover the fates of its unforgettable characters.... Magnificent.” (Robin Wasserman)
Most Anticipated Books of 2022 by Bustle
Best Thrillers by Library Journal
"Engrossing, character-rich, powerful. Sten is on a roll." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Crimson Peak meets The Sanatorium in The Resting Place, a heart-thumping, unforgettable novel of horror and suspense by international sensation Camilla Sten.
Deep rooted secrets.
A twisted family history.
And a house that will never let go.
Eleanor lives with prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize a familiar person's face. It causes stress. Acute anxiety.
It can make you question what you think you know.
When Eleanor walked in on the scene of her capriciously cruel grandmother, Vivianne’s, murder, she came face to face with the killer - a maddening expression that means nothing to someone like her. With each passing day, the horror of having come so close to a murderer - and not knowing if they’d be back - overtakes both her dreams and her waking moments, thwarting her perception of reality.
Then a lawyer calls. Vivianne has left her a house - a looming estate tucked away in the Swedish woods. The place her grandfather died, suddenly. A place that has housed a chilling past for over fifty years.
Eleanor. Her steadfast boyfriend, Sebastian. Her reckless aunt, Veronika. The lawyer. All will go to this house of secrets, looking for answers. But as they get closer to uncovering the truth, they’ll wish they had never come to disturb what rests there.
Praise for Camilla Sten
"Come for the mounting horror and scares." - New York Times Book Review
“Pays homage to Shirley Jackson." - South Florida Sun-Sentinel
"Impossible to stop reading." - Ragnar Jonasson
A Macmillan Audio production from Minotaur Books.
In Korina Moss’ cozy series debut, Cheddar Off Dead, cheesemonger Willa Bauer discovers that her new home in a small Sonoma Valley town is ripe for murder...something here stinks to high heaven, and Willa knows it’s not the cheese.
Cheesemonger Willa Bauer is proving that sweet dreams are made of cheese. She’s opened her very own French-inspired cheese shop, Curds & Whey, in the heart of the Sonoma Valley. The small town of Yarrow Glen is Willa’s fresh start, and she’s determined to make it a success - starting with a visit from the local food critic. What Willa didn’t know is that this guy never gives a good review, and when he shows up, nothing goes according to plan. She doesn’t think the night can get any worse...until she finds the critic’s dead body, stabbed with one of her shop’s cheese knives. Now a prime suspect, Willa has always believed life’s problems can be solved with cheese, but she’s never tried to apply it to murder....
A gripping debut domestic suspense novel, Nora Murphy's thrilling The Favor explores with compassion and depth what can happen when women pushed to the limit take matters into their own hands.
Staying is dangerous. Leaving could be worse.
Leah and McKenna have never met, though they have parallel lives.
They don’t - ever - find themselves in the same train carriage or meet accidentally at the gym or the coffee shop.
They don’t - ever - discuss their problems and find common ground.
They don’t - ever - acknowledge to each other that although their lives have all the trappings of success, wealth, and happiness, they are, in fact, trapped.
Because Leah understands that what’s inside a home can be more dangerous than what’s outside. Driving past McKenna’s house one night, she sees what she knows only too well from her own marriage: McKenna’s “perfect” husband is not what he seems. Leah decides to keep watch over McKenna, until one night, she intervenes, and sets into motion events that will change both their lives forever.
Leah and McKenna have never met. But they will.
