Category Archives: Mystery & Thriller

The Debutantes by Olivia Worley

For the New Orleans elite, the Les Masques Ball is sure to be the social event of the season—if they can avoid another dead Queen. When debutante Margot Landry was found dead the morning after her reign at last year’s ball, it was a tragedy, but not a shocking one. Margot was a wild child with a self-destructive streak, nothing like this year’s Queen, Lily LeBlanc. With a perfectly poised debutante on the throne, everything is going according to plan…until the ball is hijacked by a mysterious figure in a Jester costume. That night, Lily sends a text to three of the Maids on her royal court—her best friend, Vivian; her boyfriend’s… Read more,

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism, classism & misogyny
  • Infidelity
  • Adult-minor relationship
  • Sexual assault
  • Suicide
  • Alcohol consumption & drug use
  • Blood depiction
  • Murder
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Fire

Don’t Tell Me How to Die by Marshall Karp

I had it all: a fantastic husband, two great kids, an exciting career. And then, at the age of forty-three, I found out I would be dead before my next birthday. My mother also died at forty-three. I was seventeen, and she warned me that women would flock to my suddenly single father like stray cats to an overturned milk truck. They did. And one absolutely evil woman practically destroyed his life, mine, and my sister’s. I am not letting that happen to my family. I have three months, and I plan to spend every waking minute searching for the perfect woman to take my place as Alex’s wife, and mother to Kevin and Katie… Read more,

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcohol consumption & drug use
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder mentioned

You Deserve to Know by Aggie Blum Thompson

Neighbors Gwen, Aimee, and Lisa share more than playdates and coffee mornings on their tranquil street in East Bethesda. They confide their deepest secrets, navigate the challenges of motherhood together, and provide a support system that seems unbreakable. Then Gwen’s husband is found murdered after one of their weekly Friday night dinners, and the peaceful quiet of their cul-de-sac shatters. The seemingly idyllic world of the three close-knit friends becomes a web of deception, betrayal, and revenge.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Death of a spouse
  • Blackmail

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, eighteen and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, seventeen, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; nine-year-old Orly, obsessed… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Adult-minor relationship
  • Infidelity
  • Death of a spouse from cancer
  • Drowning
  • Wildfire
  • Animal cruelty recounted

Nobody’s Fool by Harlan Coben

Sami Kierce, a young college grad backpacking in Spain with friends, wakes up one morning, covered in blood. There’s a knife in his hand. Beside him, the body of his girlfriend. Anna. Dead. He doesn’t know what happened. His screams drown out his thoughts—and then he runs. Twenty-two years later, Kierce, now a private investigator, is a new father who’s working off his debts by doing low level surveillance jobs and teaching wannabe sleuths at a night school in New York City. One evening, he recognizes a familiar face at the back of the classroom. Anna. It’s unmistakably her. As… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Human trafficking
  • Drug use (off-page)

Claire, Darling by Callie Kazumi

Claire is excited to drop off a surprise workday lunch for her fiancé, Noah. It’s their anniversary, after all. But when the receptionist tells her that no one with Noah’s name works there, Claire thinks there must be a mistake. Noah isn’t picking up her calls. Her texts go unanswered. It turns out Noah has a different life . . . one with a beautiful girlfriend, a beautiful house. Claire was never really in the picture. Desperate to unpack all of Noah’s lies, Claire plunges into a nightmarish journey of obsession that submerges her deeper into the murky waters of her own past—a past dominated by a manipulative mother who shattered…. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse recounted
  • Infidelity
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Murder
  • Stalking

You Are Fatally Invited by Ande Pliego

When renowned anonymous author J. R. Alastor hires former aspiring writer Mila del Angél to host a writing retreat at his private manor off the coast of Maine, she jumps at the chance—particularly since she has an ax to grind with one of the invitees. The guest list? Six thriller authors, all masters of deceit, misdirection, and mayhem. Alastor and Mila have masterminded a week of games, trope-fueled riddles, and maybe a jump scare or two—the perfect cover for Mila to plot a murder of her own. But when a guest turns up dead—and it’s not the murder she planned—Mila finds herself trapped in a different narrative altogether…. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Murder
  • Gun & knife violence
  • House fire

Scythe and Sparrow by Brynne Weaver

Doctor Fionn Kane is running from a broken heart, one he hopes to mend in small-town Nebraska, far away from his almost-fiance and his derailed surgical career. It’s a simpler head down, hard work, and absolutely no romantic relationships. He wants none of the circus he left behind in Boston. But then the real circus finds him. Motorcycle performer Rose Evans has spent a decade on the road with the Silveria Circus, and it suits her just fine, especially when she has the urge to indulge in a little murder when she’s not in the spotlight. But, when a kill goes awry and she ends up with an… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Graphic mutilation
  • Murder

Prima Facie by Suzie Miller

Tessa Ensler loves her job. She’s worked her way up to being a top criminal defense barrister against all the odds, and fights to defend those pleading not guilty. Tessa believes in the law, believes in the system. Her quick-witted cross-examinations and intelligence in the courtroom see her clocking up win after win – including securing freedom for men accused of rape and sexual assault. Innocence until proven guilty is, after all, the bedrock of a civilized society. But when Tessa is raped by a coworker, she struggles to find the strength to bring him to justice in the face of the barriers and opposition within that same system… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Graphic rape (discussed, theme)

Whiteout by R.S. Burnett

It’s been four months since glaciologist Rachael Beckett left her husband and daughter to join an urgent research trip to a remote field station deep in the Antarctic. But after losing all communication with her crew at base camp, she’s trapped and alone – and running out of supplies. The only information she has about what’s gone so catastrophically wrong is an emergency radio broadcast playing on a a nuclear war has broken out, and Rachael might be the last survivor on Earth. Abandoned and starving, all she… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • House fire