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The editors of The New York Times Book Review bring you books our editors love, novels with Tana French vibes, our latest reviews, classic espionage fiction, new paperbacks, thrilling historical mysteries, feminist revenge tales, dark and stormy thrills, private-eye mysteries and more! Updated May 22, 2026.

The editors of The New York Times Book Review bring you books our editors love, novels with Tana French vibes, our latest reviews, classic espionage fiction, new paperbacks, thrilling historical mysteries, feminist revenge tales, dark and stormy thrills, private-eye mysteries and more! Updated May 22, 2026.
Books our editors love
I’d like to read the novel everyone is talking about

I want a time-traveling psychological thriller

I love small-town drama and dark secrets

I’m in the mood for a complex riddle

I like thrillers set in the wilderness

Give me a brainy, nervy, fingernail-biter

How about a stormy, Scottish, literary whodunit?

I want a border-hopping spy thriller

How about a delightful locked-room whodunit?

I’d like a slow-burn mystery and coming-of-age tale

I’d like to revisit a midcentury classic

Give me a page-turning twist on a literary classic

A crime-solving duo with prickly chemistry? Yes, please!

I want a big-city mystery with murder, lust and wealth

How about a mesmerizing psychological thriller?

I like small-town crimes and fraught adventures

Give me an elegant mystery set in turn-of-the-century Venice

I want a cozy mystery with a charming protagonist

I love historical thrillers that surprise me in every way

Who is the most appealing amateur detective around?

I’d like an ingenious and charming 1920s mystery

Give me a great campus crime novel

Take me to a New Zealand village with a murky past

I’d like a tense, slow-burn story of a vacation gone wrong

How about an academic whodunit with satirical bite?

A forensic scientist in crisis? Sign me up!

I want a fingernails-bitten-to-the-quick mystery

I love rich tales of historical espionage

Got any fresh spins on the serial killer narrative?

I’d like to hang out with my favorite senescent detectives

Give me a riveting story I’ll blaze through in one sitting

A legal thriller flipped on its head sounds like my cup of tea

Find recommendations for other genres you like
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Love Tana French? Read these books next.

Cover Her Face
by P.D. James
Bluebird, Bluebird
by Attica Locke
The Last Detective
by Peter Lovesey
Garnethill
by Denise Mina
The Fatal Touch
by Conor Fitzgerald
The Missing American
by Kwei Quartey
Beautiful Animals
by Lawrence Osborne
A Great Deliverance
by Elizabeth George
Case Histories
by Kate Atkinson
A Place of Execution
by Val McDermid
Devil in a Blue Dress
by Walter Mosley
Knife
by Jo Nesbo
Raven Black
by Ann Cleeves
The Body Snatcher
by Patricia Melo
Witness the Night
by Kishwar Desai
Searching for Sylvie Lee
by Jean Kwok
Havoc
by Christopher Bollen
The Dry
by Jane Harper
New and noteworthy
Our latest thriller reviews.
How to Survive in the Woods
by Kat Rosenfield
Three people travel to a remote part of the Appalachian Trail in Maine. Their various goals: a little hiking, a little sightseeing, a little murder.
Five
by Ilona Bannister
It is 7:01 a.m., and a handful of people — five, in fact — are waiting at a suburban train station for the 7:06 to London. By the time it arrives, one of them will be dead.
The Counting Game
by Sinéad Nolan
A Dublin psychotherapist is hired by the police to treat a 9-year-old boy who witnessed his sister’s disappearance, but can’t seem to talk about what happened.
A Murder Most Camp
by Nicolas DiDomizio
Forced to work at a summer camp in order to access his inheritance, a nepo baby — and his crime-obsessed 12-year-old aunt — stumbles upon a murder mystery.
A Cute Little Murder
by Molly Harper
Lainey Piper, a freelance forensic accountant, teams up with her former teenage sleuthing partner to solve the case of a missing starlet in this delightful mystery.
This Story Might Save Your Life
by Tiffany Crum
Crum’s cheery romance-mystery mashup follows two BFF podcast hosts who are about to hit a big break when one of them goes missing.
Haven
by Ani Katz
Reading this deeply unsettling thriller is like ingesting psychedelics, blundering into a dystopian-themed house of mirrors and realizing that someone has locked the door.
My Grandfather, the Master Detective
by Masateru Konishi
Konishi’s English-language debut is a cozy mystery dashed with magical realism and brimming with familial love.
Still Life
by Malin Persson Gioloto
Each story in Giolito’s linked collection underscores the ways crime can arrive at anyone’s doorstep.
The Tree of Light and Flowers
by Thomas Perry
Jane Whitefield, who specializes in helping desperate people disappear by creating new identities for them, makes a final, memorable appearance.
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.
I want to start at the beginning

Give me the O.G.

I’d like a beautifully written conspiracy thriller

I want it shaken, not stirred

Give me Cold War intrigue with a stylish baddie

I’d like a novel that gets the spy details exactly right

How about some misfit spies?

I want a twisty psychological drama set in the Middle East

Got anything that isn’t British or American?

Hey, isn’t China kind of a big deal?

I want a superhero spy

Give me a real-life spy story masquerading as fiction

How about that Jack Ryan guy?

Give me a novel at the corner of Spies and Literary Fiction

How about a spy novel with a wild ending?

Get to know these spy novels with our expert guide.
New in paperback
Tinier, but just as mighty.

Not Quite Dead Yet
by Holly Jackson
The Bewitching
by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Heartwood
by Amity Gaige
What Kind of Paradise
by Janelle Brown
The Doorman
by Chris Pavone
You Are Fatally Invited
by Ande Pliego
Fair Play
by Louise Hegarty
Cross My Heart
by Megan Collins
Big Bad Wool
by Leonie Swann
Marble Hall Murders
by Anthony Horowitz
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
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
Thrilling historical mysteries

The Murder at World's End
by Ross Montgomery
The Girl in the Green Dress
by Mariah Fredericks
The Ghosts of Rome
by Joseph O'Connor
A Bad, Bad Place
by Frances Crawford
The Predicament
by William Boyd
The House at Devil's Neck
by Tom Mead
A Grave Robbery
by Deanna Raybourn
A Château Under Siege
by Martin Walker
The Bangalore Detectives Club
by Harini Nagendra
Truth Be Told
by Patricia Raybon
The Case of the Missing Maid
by Rob Osler
Murder at Gulls Nest
by Jess Kidd
A Murderous Business
by Cathy Pegau
Murder in Constantinople
by A.E. Goldin
The Housekeeper’s Secret
by Iona Grey
The Mystery of the Crooked Man
by Tom Spencer
The Drowned
by John Banville
Night in the City
by Michael McGarrity
The Silver Bone
by Andrey Kurkov
Rough Trade
by Katrina Carrasco
Edge of the Grave
by Robbie Morrison
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
Want some delicious tales of housewives’ revenge?
Elizabeth Arnott, the author of “The Secret Lives of Murderers’ Wives,” recommends tales of domestic vengeance and feminine power.

Gone Girl
by Gillian Flynn
The Change
by Kirsten Miller
The First Wives Club
by Olivia Goldsmith
Rebecca
by Daphne du Maurier
The Bandit Queens
by Parini Shroff
The Life and Loves of a She-Devil
by Fay Weldon
The Husbands
by Chandler Baker
Iron Widow
by Xiran Jay ZhaoRead more about Elizabeth Arnott’s favorite domestic revenge thrillers.
Lisa Unger’s favorite dark and stormy thrillers
The author of Served Him Right” and “Close Your Eyes and Count to 10” recommends thrilling tales where Mother Nature ups the stakes.

One Perfect Couple
by Ruth Ware
One of Us Knows
by Alyssa Cole
The Night of the Storm
by Nishita Parekh
The Shining
by Stephen King
City Under One Roof
by Iris Yamashita
Ice Cold
by Tess Gerritsen
Shutter Island
by Dennis Lehane
This Is Why We Lied
by Karin SlaughterRead more about Lisa Unger’s favorite stormy thrillers.
I want to start with the G.O.A.T.

What about the other godfather of the genre?

I’d like to dig into some nasty family secrets

Southern California noir is my jam

Give me something unflinchingly hard-boiled

That’s enough dudes: I want a woman on the case

I’m here for sumptuous New York vibes

A crime-solving duo with prickly chemistry? Yes, please!

I love a meticulously constructed puzzle

I don’t have time for a series. Any great stand-alones?

Honestly, I’m here for sex, drugs and betrayal

I’d like to ride along with the punk rocker of the P.I. world

How about a mystery that draws from true crime?

Get to know these essential private eye mysteries with our columnist’s guide.
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.








































