8 Transporting Thrillers to Help You Escape the Office This Summer

Scrum. Stand-up. Slack notification. Email. Email. Zoom call.

As summer is nearing and the days grow longer, being stuck in an office all day becomes even more grueling. When you’ve spent so many hours staring at spreadsheets that you feel like your brain is going to melt out of your ears but your PTO hasn’t replenished, the next best thing is a book that can whisk you away on an adventure. (And if that adventure involves heists, murders, and mysteries? Even better!)

Luckily, these mysteries and thrillers will transport you away from your desk in no time.

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Jenna Voris, The Long Con

I’m as much a sucker for a caper, a hoodwink, and a scam as I am for a Miami vacay, and The Long Con absolutely delivers on both. Everyone knows the real heist is the found family you make along the way, and Jenna Voris’s first foray into the world of thrillers is filled with characters you’ll love (and sometimes love to hate.)

Ruth Ware, One by One

As delightful as escaping to the French Alps sounds, this is not the chic getaway the employees of the tech start-up Snoop are hoping for in Ruth Ware’s One By One. This is an instant classic with a fresh, satirical zing. It’s a wonderful ode to one of my favorite Christie novels and kept me firmly on the edge of my seat.

Ally Carter, The Blonde Identity

If there’s one thing I stand by, it’s that romance makes thrillers even more fun, and Ally Carter’s adult romance debut is a thrilling, riotous ride into the world of undercover operatives. Throw in a little amnesia, mistaken identity, and you’ve got a page-turner that’s equal parts heartfelt and heart-pounding.

The Blonde Identity is the perfect armchair travel cure to transport you out of your cubicle (or Zoom meeting) and into a high-stakes European escapade.

Mackenzie Reed, The Rosewood Hunt

I cut my teeth in the YA space, and The Rosewood Hunt is a book I keep coming back to. It’s a found family Knives Out with a treasure hunt for a gobsmacking inheritance that sends its teen protagonists scouring across their seaside city for clues. This one’s a whirlwind filled with so much heart and humor it’ll feel like you’re right there in Rosetown, Massachusetts.

Melissa Ferguson, Without a Clue

If you’re asking me, cruises, at a base level, are a terrifying prospect. You and 3,000 of your closest friends are all floating in the ocean (an intrinsically horrifying location) where any number of things could go wrong. But this cruise is exactly the break Penelope Mae Dupont needs in Without a Clue.

Melissa Ferguson takes us OOO on a bookish cruise packed with bestselling authors in a hilarious whodunit.

Jaclyn Goldis, The Safari

I’ll go anywhere Jaclyn Goldis wants to take me: a glittering French chateau in The Chateau; the stunning coastlines of Italy in The Main Character; and, in this case, the South African safari in The Safari. When fashion mogul Odelia Babel is murdered while in South Africa to celebrate her wedding, guests are left reeling—and dropping like flies—as they hunt for the truth in this wild landscape.

If you liked Succession, you’ll love this heart-stopping thriller!

Ally Condie, The Unwedding

The wedding thriller gets a fun update in this twisty mystery from Ally Condie. The Unwedding takes us to Big Sur, California, where Ellery Wainwright is thrust into the chaos of a big wedding—on the heels of her own marriage’s demise—when a storm severs communication out of the remote venue and bodies start falling.

As soon as I thought I knew which direction this one was heading, we took a sharp left.

Rachel Moore, Safari Murder Party

I’ll admit I’m biased here! But if you’re looking for a campy, fast-paced thriller that’s as romantic as it is high-octane, my debut thriller, Safari Murder Party, fits the bill.

It follows a burnt-out executive assistant on her company’s annual retreat to a private island safari park, but when the CEO meets an untimely demise at the mouths of a few hungry lions, his last will and testament pitches the attendees against each other in a battle to the death for his multibillion-dollar inheritance. It’s my modern spin on Richard Connell’s classic short story “The Most Dangerous Game,” and it’s as chock full of zany rom-com antics as it is life-or-death stakes.

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