The spooky season may be coming to an end but that doesn’t mean we should stop reading mystery and thrillers when November 1 arrives. What we mystery fans love about the genre is that you can read it any time of the year. So, if you are looking for your next exciting mysterious read for the rest of the year and beyond, I’m here to highlight 15 thrilling upcoming titles that, if you are a fan of the genre, will want to have your reading list:
Imposter Syndrome by Joseph Knox
Expected Publication Date: December 10
On the run from his shady past, Lynch has just arrived in London, still looking over his shoulder to make sure he isn’t being followed. His phone is dead, he has no money, no contacts, no one at all. Until he runs into a young woman named Bobbie who mistakes him for her brother, Heydon Pierce, who disappeared five years ago without a trace.
At Bobbie’s suggestion, Lynch goes to the Pierce family home, posing as Heydon to try and con some money out of them. But far from tricking them, his subterfuge is instantly discovered. He strikes the devil’s bargain with them – their silence for his cooperation in finding out what really happened to Heydon.
But Lynch’s investigation goes too deep and uncovers the fact that Heydon Pierce was tangled up with some dangerous and powerful people in London. Everyone has their own motives to keep Heydon well buried in the past. In such a conspiracy of mirrors, there’s only one thing Lynch know for certain: the only person he can trust is himself (Credit: Sourcebooks Landmark)
The Only Way Out by Sarah Daniels
Expected Publication Date: December 3
Trust no one.
It’s been six months since the Arcadia set sail. But this wasn’t the freedom the inhabitants were hoping for. Esther did what she had to do, but she left a trail of destruction in her wake. Now the wrecked ship is abandoned, and its inhabitants are in exile, trapped in makeshift shelters.
Esther and Nik, architects of the rebellion, are on the run. Esther is in hiding and Nik seems to have abandoned all hope. But neither of them wants to face up to their true feelings for each other. And there’s a new villain in town: ruthless Admiral Janek who wants to deal with the traitors while outrunning her own shady past.
When the shaky ceasefire negotiated by Nik’s mom, General Lall, falls apart, Nik and Esther find themselves in a world of betrayals and double crossings–a game of power with no one to trust but themselves. (Credit: Sourcebooks Fire)
Hotel Lucky Seven by Kotaro Isaka
Expected Publication Date: December 3
In Bullet Train, underworld operative Ladybug was tasked by his handler Maria with retrieving a suitcase from a high-speed train in Japan. The job did not go according to plan, to the delight of millions of readers and movie fans around the world.
Will the unluckiest assassin in the world will find things easier this time around? All he has to do is deliver a painting to a hotel guest, a portrait made by his daughter. Easy enough, except when Ladybug makes the delivery, he realizes that the guest is clearly not the guy in the painting. Then he attacks Ladybug, they fight, and the guest ends up dead. How can such simple jobs always go wrong?
Internationally acclaimed author Kotaro Isaka spins another outrageously entertaining thriller in Hotel Lucky Seven. This is a stylish, masterful book, again featuring outsized characters, gripping action, plot twists, and surprise identities.(Credit: Overlook Press)
Kill Yours, Kill Mine by Katherine Kovacic
Expected Publication Date: November 5
Mia’s grief counselling practice, The Pleiades, is named for the seven sisters from Greek mythology who were the companions of the Goddess of the Hunt–and who, in some stories, die of grief or are killed to be saved from attackers.
Mia has been gathering broken women together for a radical form of group therapy. Amy. Gabrielle. Katy. Brooke. Olivia. Five women crippled with grief by the murders of their sisters–and seething with rage that the partners who killed them all walk free. She just needs one more.
When Mia meets Naomi, she knows she has found the perfect candidate, but Naomi is resistant. She only needs to meet the others before she realizes that they, too, are consumed with desire for hands-on revenge. Under Mia’s guidance, the women devise a plan to heal themselves. They’ll take back their lives from the men who took their sisters. The premise is satisfyingly simple: I’ll kill yours if you kill mine…(Credit: Poisoned Pen Press)
Getting Away with Murder by Kathryn Foxfield
Expected Publication Date: November 5
Walking disaster Saffron and her perfectionist twin sister Georgia have only one thing in common-they are both obsessed with battle royale video game Sole Survivor.
While working at a brand new, high tech escape room complex, Saffron poses a question to the resident AI: which high school stereotype would survive the longest in a real life version of Sole Survivor? She is convinced a rebel like her would beat a know-it-all like Georgia. Unbeknown to her, the AI decides to determine the answer to her question by testing it out for real. It invites Saffron and Georgia’s gamer friends to a preview of the escape rooms, but then it locks the doors and turns the rooms into a life-or-death battle to be the last player standing.
The rebel, the know-it-all, the princess, the jock, the geek, the weirdo, the star, the artist and the criminal. Just like in Sole Survivor, only one can survive the night… (Credit: Sourcebooks Fire)
Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney
Expected Publication Date: January 14
Author Grady Green is having the worst best day of his life.
Grady calls his wife to share some exciting news as she is driving home. He hears Abby slam on the brakes, get out of the car, then nothing. When he eventually finds her car by the cliff edge the headlights are on, the driver door is open, her phone is still there. . . but his wife has disappeared.
A year later, Grady is still overcome with grief and desperate to know what happened to Abby. He can’t sleep, and he can’t write, so he travels to a tiny Scottish island to try to get his life back on track. Then he sees the impossible – a woman who looks exactly like his missing wife.
Wives think their husbands will change but they don’t.
Husbands think their wives won’t change but they do. (Credit: Flatiron Books)
A Long Time Gone by Joshua Moehling
Expected Publication Date: February 4
It’s time to put the past to rest…
Ben Packard was just a boy when his older brother disappeared. Ben watched him walk out the back door of their grandparents’ house and into the cold night.
His brother was never seen again.
Decades later, Deputy Packard finds himself with too much time on his hands. A shooting has him on leave and under investigation, and all he can do is dwell on the past. For the first time in years, new information about his brother has surfaced that may lead them to the location of a body.
The midwinter ground is frozen solid. Worse, Packard is cut off from department resources. As he strikes out to finally uncover the truth behind his brother’s disappearance, he stumbles on a separate, suspicious death. A tenuous connection exists between the two cases, and as Packard starts to dig, he meets fierce resistance from friends and foes alike who want him to stand down.
The winter is long and cold. By the end of it, Packard will risk everything to catch a killer and reveal the shocking truth about his brother. (Credit: Poisoned Pen Press)
Give Him to Me by Dorothy Koomson
Expected UK & Irish Publication Date: February 13
Profiler and therapist Kez Layon is slowly getting used to her new job working in a behavioural sciences unit with some of the worst people she has ever met. She regularly plots an escape but knows she is there for the foreseeable.
Then she is called in to work on the case of April Manga. Twenty-five-year-old April was twelve when she witnessed her controlling and abusive father brutally murder her mother.
Rather than go to prison, her well-connected father was given the chance of life in witness protection with a new name and erased background. April was put into care.
After struggling all her life to make sense of what she saw, she’s decided it’s time for a family reunion – so she’s killing everyone who had anything to do with her father’s case until they turn him over to her.
Can Kez get into April’s mind quickly enough to find her before she kills again, or will they have to do as the notes April leaves on her victims say . . . and give him to her?
Profiler and therapist Kez Layon returns in a brand new stand-alone novel from Sunday Times bestselling author Dorothy Koomson. (Credit: Headline Publishing)
Mondays Are Murder by Ravena Guron
Expected UK & Irish Publication Date: February 13
Seventeen-year-old Kay left her sleepy hometown after the devastating death of her friend, Ivy. But when her parents go on holiday without her, Kay is forced to come back to stay with her cousin. And her return comes with a bang. Because when Kay arrives, it’s to find an anonymous letter on her bed.
The letter tells her that there will be a thrill on Tuesday, a wreckage on Wednesday, treachery on Thursday, a fire on Friday, sabotage on Saturday, a stabbing on Sunday – and her murder on Monday.
And if Kay can’t figure out who is behind the threats, the worst day of the week is about to get deadly… (Credit: Usbour
Other People’s Houses by Clare Mackintosh
Expected UK & Irish Publication Date: February 27
The Hill is the kind of place everyone wants to live: luxurious, exclusive and safe. But now someone is breaking and entering these Cheshire homes one by one, and DS Leo Brady suspects the burglar is looking for something, or someone, in particular.
Over the border in Wales, DC Ffion Morgan recovers the body of an estate agent from the lake. There’s no love lost between Ffion and estate agents, but who hated this one enough to want her dead – and why?
As their cases collide, Ffion and Leo discover people will pay a high price to keep their secrets behind closed doors…(Credit: Little, Brown Book Group)
Famous Last Words by Gillian McAllister
Expected Publication Date: February 25
It is June 21st, the longest day of the year, and new mother Camilla’s life is about to change forever. After months of maternity leave, she will drop her infant daughter off at daycare for the first time and return to her job as a literary agent. Finally. But, when she wakes, her husband Luke isn’t there, and in his place is a cryptic note.
Then it starts. Breaking news: there’s a hostage situation developing in London. The police arrive, and tell her Luke is involved. But he isn’t a hostage. Her husband – doting father, eternal optimist – is the gunman.
What she does next is crucial. Because only she knows what the note he left behind that morning says…(Credit: William Morrorw & Company)
White King by Juan Gómez-Jurado
Expected Publication Date: March 11
Antonia Scott has an unusually gifted forensic mind, whose ability to reconstruct crimes and solve baffling murders is legendary. She’s the lynchpin of a top-secret project, Red Queen, created to work across borders and behind the scenes to solve the most devious and dangerous crimes, those that are beyond the skills of the regular police forces.
But the Red Queen project is under attack on all fronts. Across Europe, its agents are murdering each other and cases from the past, long believed resolved, are rearing their deadly heads again. At the center of it is the mysterious Mr. White, who has been weaving a web around Antonia for a very long time. He is as smart and capable as her but, unlike her, he’s a psychotic killer who has isolated Antonia Scott. Jon Gutierrez, Antonia’s protector and the only person she trusts, has been kidnapped. Antonia’s husband has been killed and her remaining family is in hiding. With Jon’s life at stake, Mr. White gives her a seemingly innocuous challenge: solve three crimes and bring the perpetrators to justice. The only way to keep Jon alive is to play Mr. White’s game, but can even Antonia win a game when she can only see part of the board? (Credit: Minotaur Books)
Burn After Reading by Catherine Ryan Howard
Expected UK & Irish Publication Date: April 10
The night Jack Smyth ran into flames in a desperate attempt to save his wife from their burning home, he was, tragically, too late – but hailed a hero. Until it emerged that Kate was dead long before the fire began.
Suspicion has stalked him ever since. After all, there’s no smoke without fire.
A year on, he’s signed a book deal. He wants to tell his side of the story, to prove his own innocence in print. He just needs someone to help him write it.
Emily has never ghostwritten anything before, but she knows what it’s like to live with a guilty secret. And she’s about to learn that there are some stories that should never be told . . .(Credit: Transworld Publishing)
Don’t Let Him In by Lisa Jewell
Expected Publication Date: June 24
Restauranteur Paddy Swann was the life of the party until the day a man pushed him in the path of an oncoming train, leaving his twenty-something daughter Ash and wife Nina devastated. Shortly after Paddy’s funeral, the two women receive a surprise in the mail: a note and package from Nick Radcliffe, an old friend of Paddy’s, and a nondescript lighter that once belonged to him decades ago. This unexpected gift draws Nick and Nina closer together–much to Ash’s dismay.
Martha is a small-town florist with dreams of expansion. She lives with her second husband Al, her baby, and two sons from her prior marriage. But they never seem to have any money, and with his constant traveling for work, she feels like a single parent–especially when an emergency makes her realize something needs to change.But Nick and Al may not be who they say they are, leading these three women on a shocking collision course, wishing they had heeded a warning: Don’t let him in. (Credit: Atria Books)
Murder on the Marlow Belle by Robert Thorogood
Verity Beresford is worried about her husband. Oliver didn’t come home last night, so of course Verity goes straight to Judith Potts, Marlow’s resident amateur sleuth, for help. Oliver, founder of the Marlow Amateur Dramatic Society, had rented The Marlow Belle, a private pleasure cruiser, to host an exclusive party for the society, but no one remembers seeing him disembark. And when Oliver’s body washes up on the Thames with two bullet holes in him, it’s time for the Marlow Murder Club to leap into action.
Oliver was, by all accounts, a rather complicated fellow, with a reputation for bullying children during nativity play rehearsals, and he wasn’t short of enemies. Judith, Suzie, and Becks are convinced they’ll find his killer in no time. But things are not as they seem in the Marlow Amateur Dramatic Society, and this case is not so clear-cut after all. The gang will need to keep their wits about them to solve this case… otherwise a killer will walk free. (Credit: Poisoned Pen Press)
Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson
In seven days Jet Mason will be dead. Jet is the daughter of one of the wealthiest families in Woodstock, Vermont. Twenty-seven years old, she’s still waiting for her life to begin. She’ll do it later, she always says. She has time.
Until, on the night of Halloween, Jet is violently attacked by an unseen intruder. She suffers a catastrophic brain injury. The doctor is certain that within a week, she’ll suffer a deadly aneurysm.
Jet never thought of herself as having enemies. But now she looks at everyone in a new light: her family, her ex-best friend turned sister-in-law, her former boyfriend. She only has seven days, and as her condition deteriorates she has only her childhood friend Billy for help. But nevertheless, she’s absolutely determined to finally finish something:
Jet is going to solve her own murder. (Credit: Penguin Books)
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