The Best Thriller Books to Read Right Now - The New York Times

The Best Thrillers of 2025

Find recommendations for other genres you like

undefined

M.L. Rio’s Favorite Gothic Thrillers

The author of “If We Were Villains” recommends novels that will make you shiver with delight one moment and recoil in horror the next.

Rebecca
by Daphne du Maurier
The Keep
by Jennifer Egan
A Heart So White
by Javier Marías; translated by Margaret Jull Costa
Earthlings
by Sayaka Murata; translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori
Fledgling
by Octavia E. Butler
Sundial
by Catriona Ward
The Cement Garden
by Ian McEwan
The Historian
by Elizabeth Kostova
Child of God
by Cormac McCarthy
Our Share of Night
by Mariana Enríquez; translated by Megan McDowell
Read more about M.L. Rio’s favorite Gothic thrillers.

New and Noteworthy

Our latest thriller reviews.

Her Last Breath

by Taylor Adams

An aging detective tries to unravel the story of a young woman who went caving with a friend and emerged alone, with strange injuries.
One of Us

by Elizabeth Day

Day’s knack for peeling back the vicissitudes of the British upper classes illuminates this novel about an aristocrat, his striving friend and their secrets.
Warning Signs

by Tracy Sierra

A 12-year-old boy grieving the recent death of his mother is trapped on a ski trip with his cruel father’s rich friends, which soon turns deadly.
What Boys Learn

by Andromeda Romano-Lax

When the bodies of two teenage girls turn up in a tony Chicago suburb, a friendless local boy is an obvious suspect. But is he a criminal?
The Final Problem

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte; translated by Frances Riddle

Lovers of old films, locked room mysteries and Sherlock Holmes will revel in the cunning setup and elegant execution of Pérez-Reverte’s novel.
The Briars

by Sarah Crouch

In a sleepy lake town, the newly appointed game warden finds that her job includes not just tracking down cougars but also solving a human murder.
The Reckoning

by Kelli Stanley

A woman on the run from the F.B.I. lands in a seemingly sleepy Northern California town, which turns out to be laden with explosive secrets.
A Gift Before Dying

by Malcolm Kempt

In an Arctic Canadian town, an investigator and the younger brother of a murdered teenage girl team up to catch her killer.
Wildwood

by Amy Pease

Pease’s mother-son law enforcement team returns, this time tackling the disappearance of a young woman from Wisconsin lake country.
Nothing but Murders and Bloodshed and Hanging

by Mary Fortune

This collection cements the Australian author’s place as one of the detective story’s earliest, and finest, writers.
The Writing in the Water

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

This stylish Scandi-noir mystery follows a cop turned mystery novelist who, while researching her new book, finds herself investigating an actual crime.
The First Time I Saw Him

by Laura Dave

In the sequel to Dave’s smash hit “The Last Thing He Told Me,” Hannah’s shady tech exec husband reappears, and she and her stepdaughter hit the road.
Before the Fact

by Francis Iles

A young woman gradually realizes that her husband has murder on his mind — and that she is his intended victim.
To Catch a Thief

by David Dodge

To read the source material for one of Alfred Hitchcock’s more effervescent films is an absolute blast.
The Secret of the Saucer

by Kris Bertin, illustrated by Alexander Forbes

For the third installment in their Hobtown Mystery Stories series, Bertin and Forbes subject the unlucky town to an alien attack.
Cape Fever

by Nadia Davids

A young Muslim maid and her white, British employer tangle in an unnamed colonial town in the 1920s in this Gothic thriller.
Lit

by Tim Sandlin

Sandlin’s novel is bursting with quirky characters, including a divorced writer and a pastor with a penchant for book burning who suddenly turns up dead.
Murder at the Christmas Emporium

by Andreina Cordani

In this locked-room mystery, things go very, very wrong at a ritzy London store during a holiday shopping extravaganza.
Gone Before Good-bye

by Harlan Coben and Reese Witherspoon

In Coben’s 39th novel — his first with Witherspoon — a surgeon who’s lost her license gets an offer to operate on a sketchy oligarch in the Russian countryside.
Listen

by Sacha Bronwasser; translated by David Colmer

A Dutch au pair fleeing a dark past gets entangled with a Parisian family with their own web of secrets.
Other People’s Fun

by Harriet Lane

Ruth — recently divorced, underemployed and facing down a bleak midlife moment — reunites with her #blessed former classmate in this prickly thriller.
Cry Havoc

by Jack Carr

The Navy SEAL Tom Reece continues to kick ass, take names and unravel bloody conspiracies in Carr’s latest military thriller.
Midnight in Memphis

by Thomas Dann

Dann’s evocative debut novel catapults readers back to 1950s Memphis, where a detective and his newbie trainee investigate a series of murders.
Boom Town

by Nic Stone

In Stone’s pacey, racy adult debut, a dancer at a strip club in Atlanta must search for her peers who have disappeared.
Murder in Constantinople

by A.E. Goldin

This historical mystery stars a Jewish tailor’s son in Victorian London who’s itching to see the world, and finds himself in the middle of a deadly conspiracy.
Fox and Furious

by Rita Mae Brown

The 16th installment of Brown’s longrunning series finds “Sister” Jane Arnold trying to mediate a violent conflict between her sons, which soon escalates to murder.
The Dentist

by Tim Sullivan

A crossover from the U.K., where the series is already a hit, this police procedural stars a neurodivergent Bristol detective and his partner.
Remain

by Nicholas Sparks with M. Night Shyamalan

Rattled by his sister’s deathbed confession, Tate is living on sunny Cape Cod when he meets a mysterious and alluring young woman who upends his life.
The Glass Eel

by J.J. Viertel

The colorful underworld of the illegal eel trade is at the heart of this unusual mystery, set on a remote Maine island.
Guilty by Definition

by Susie Dent

A group of dictionary editors get embroiled in a series of literary puzzles after a letter arrives with clues about the unsolved disappearance of one staffer’s sister.
Clown Town

by Mick Herron

In this darkly comic thriller — the ninth in Herron’s Slough House series — an MI5 officer gets caught up in a blackmail scandal and assassination plot.

4 Thriller Novels We Recommend

Our columnist Sarah Lyall recommends some of her all-time favorites.

In the Woods
by Tana French
The Anomaly
by Hervé Le Tellier
Fatherland
by Robert Harris
Presumed Guilty
by Scott Turow

Love Tana French? Try These Novels

Case Histories

by Kate Atkinson

When the Edinburgh-based detective Jackson Brodie is called to work a grisly murder, the case draws him into a complex web of events dating back three decades.
Cover Her Face

by P.D. James

Adam Dalgliesh is summoned to an Essex manor house to investigate the murder of a young maid who seems to have made enemies upstairs, downstairs and everywhere in between.
The Fatal Touch

by Conor Fitzgerald

All six books about Commissario Alec Blume, an American expat turned homicide cop in Rome, are brooding, intelligent mysteries, but this one — about the murder of an art forger — is the best.
A Great Deliverance

by Elizabeth George

This first book starring the Scotland Yard detective inspector Thomas Lynley, our reviewer wrote, “offers the grimly fascinating peeling away, layer by layer, of Gothic family secrets.”
Raven Black

by Ann Cleeves

The murder of a teenage girl sets off paranoia and suspicion in a close-knit island community in Scotland’s Shetland archipelago.
The Dry

by Jane Harper

This swift, dazzling murder mystery is set in a desperately parched town in rural Australia, where nothing is what it seems.
Beautiful Animals

by Lawrence Osborne

On a Greek island, two beautiful, moneyed young vacationers encounter a handsome Syrian refugee, whom they endeavor to help — with disastrous results.
Knife

by Jo Nesbo

Devastated by a breakup, the mordant Oslo police officer Harry Hole’s life spirals out of control in this twisty Scandi serial killer noir.
Devil’s Day

by Andrew Michael Hurley

After the death of the family patriarch, John Pentecost returns with his new wife to the Endlands, a strip of harsh Northern moorland where evil – or is it madness? – is an everyday companion.
The Secret History

by Donna Tartt

At a small New England college, a new student is inducted into a secretive group of privileged aesthetes whose grasp of morality grows ever more tenuous.
The Black Echo

by Michael Connelly

Connelly introduced the jazz-loving Los Angeles homicide detective Hieronymus (“Harry”) Bosch in this police procedural about the murder of a heroin addict.

Lucy Foley’s Favorite Marriage-Gone-Bad Thrillers

The author of “The Guest List” picks some of her favorite matrimonial thrills, recent and vintage.

The List
by Yomi Adegoke
Rebecca
by Daphne du Maurier
Things We Do in the Dark
by Jennifer Hillier
Wife
by Charlotte Mendelson
Gone Girl
by Gillian Flynn
The Last Thing He Told Me
by Laura Dave
Adèle
by Leila Slimani; translated by Sam Taylor
The Marriage Act
by John Marrs
Read more about Lucy Foley’s favorite marriage thrillers.

Dark Academia: A Starter Park

New in Paperback

Tinier, but just as mighty.

The Three Lives of Cate Kay
by Kate Fagan
Finlay Donovan Digs Her Own Grave
by Elle Cosimano
Kills Well With Others
by Deanna Raybourn
Cross My Heart
by Megan Collins
Heartwood
by Amity Gaige
I Was a Teenage Slasher
by Stephen Graham Jones
Vantage Point
by Sara Sligar
The Human Scale
by Lawrence Wright
The Night Guest
by Hildur Knútsdóttir
Nobody’s Hero
by M.W. Craven
The Note
by Alafair Burke
The Couple Next Door
by Shari Lapena
Vengeance
by John Banville
Havoc
by Christopher Bollen
The God of the Woods
by Liz Moore
Deadly Animals
by Marie Tierney
Bright Objects
by Ruby Todd
The Bog Wife
by Kay Chronister
Ring Shout
by P. Djèlí Clark
On the Savage Side
by Tiffany McDaniel
Blood Test
by Charles Baxter
Model Home
by Rivers Solomon
The Sequel
by Jean Hanff Korelitz
The Blue Hour
by Paula Hawkins
The Hitchcock Hotel
by Stephanie Wrobel
Tell Me Everything
by Elizabeth Strout
The Nature of Disappearing
by Kimi Cunningham Grant

S.A. Cosby’s Favorite Serial Killer Thrillers

The author of “All the Sinners Bleed” recommends books about the human monsters that wait for us in the dark.

These Women
by Ivy Pochoda
Heartsick
by Chelsea Cain
Darkness, Take My Hand
by Dennis Lehane
Jar of Hearts
by Jennifer Hillier
The Killer Inside Me
by Jim Thompson
Red Dragon
by Thomas Harris
Read more about S.A. Cosby’s favorite serial killer thrillers.

The Essential Patricia Highsmith

Mary Kubica’s Favorite Cabin Mysteries

The author of “The Good Girl” and “It’s Not Her” recommends chilling thrillers with isolated, log-bound settings.

Still Missing
by Chevy Stevens
The Cabin at the End of the World
by Paul Tremblay
In a Dark, Dark Wood
by Ruth Ware
The Overnight Guest
by Heather Gudenkauf
Nice Girls
by Catherine Dang
The Quiet Tenant
by Clémence Michallon
These Silent Woods
by Kimi Cunningham Grant
Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six
by Lisa Unger
What Wild Women Do
by Karma Brown
Misery
by Stephen King
Read more about Mary Kubica’s favorite cabin mysteries.

Still Haven’t Found What You’re Looking For?

Tell us what kind of thrillers you want to read. We may feature them on this page or in an upcoming story.