The Best Crime Novels, Mysteries, and Thrillers of The Month: September 2026

September brings a host of quiet suspense, complex mysteries, and shocking thrillers, as we finish up summer and enter the long lead-up to the season of horror. Below, you’ll find an elaborate quest for vengeance, a nasty family inheritance drama, two works of techno-horror, and two different historical novels in which Walter White makes an appearance; there’s also new works from favorites Kate Atkinson and Richard Osman, for an assortment that should play to all tastes. Enjoy!

As always, all blurbs are by yours truly unless otherwise stated.

George Makana Clark, The Wreckers
(Europa)

It’s a difficult, if not impossible, task to write something so sprawling that is also so funny; this book feels a bit like if Thomas Pynchon rewrote The Count of Monte Cristo, with some editorial input from Evelyn Waugh. The Wreckers is an elaborate, fiendishly plotted revenge tale, filled with Rabelaisian set-pieces and cutting asides, as complex as it is rewarding—in short, a brilliant work of fiction. In George Makana Clark’s epic shaggy dog narrative, artifacts from a long-ago collaborator in the slave trade become the basis for a valuable mining concern’s attempt at legitimacy, as scammers track down the far-flung descendants of a ambivalent marauder in order to exploit the riches of his loosely claimed territory.

Megan Mostyn-Brown, The Need
(Del Rey)

There are a lot of books about cannibalism out this year, and a lot of titles getting compared to Succession, but this is one of the weirdest in either category. Megan Mostyn-Brown’s debut follows a mother and her teenage children as they find themselves in the clutches of her dead husband’s family, desperate for an heir who shares their predilection for human flesh. The ancient dynasty of monstrous aristocrats are not going to let their scion’s widow or her children get away easily, but as they often say, even in books about extremely wealthy cannibals, never underestimate the power of love. I can’t wait to see what Mostyn-Brown does next!

Sarah Langan, Trad Wife
(Atria)

Forget social media thrillers—it is now the age of influencer horror. Sarah Langan has already won me as a reader through her speculative suburban suspense; now she takes it a step further with a take on trad wives even more disturbing than the megahit Yesteryear. Determined to write a daring expose, an investigative reporter embeds herself with the family of a trad-wife influencer. The kitchen is messy, the kids are uneducated, the parents are exhausted, and the old-fashioned lifestyle from their videos is nowhere to be seen. But the family’s sins don’t end at hypocrisy—their matriarch is fully possessed by a demonic spirit (honestly, that tracks) and he’s looking for a new home.

Alma Katsu, Incarnate
(Putnam)

The second on this list to take gruesome delight in the horrors of influencer culture, The Influencer centers around a put-upon tech worker with low self-esteem and a penchant for AI deepfakes; the two collide when she creates a gorgeous avatar and makes a deal with a dark internet presence to achieve fame and power via her alter-ego. When the protagonist’s IRL appearance starts shifting to resemble the impossible proportions of her creation, and her videos result in universal adulation and instant success, she begins to question her devil’s bargain, and wonder what price will be demanded for all her new rewards. Another excellent effort from a consistently entertaining writer, this one should please audiences of thrillers and horror alike.

Henry Wise, Promised Land
(Atlantic Crime)

In this sequel to the breakout debut, Holy City, a new investigation takes deputy sheriff Will Seems deep into the swampland of southeast Virginia and into the hidden history of the community surrounding it. Wise brings gothic notes to the classic detective plot, creating an atmosphere all his own. –DM

Premee Mohamed, Wickhills
(Tor Books)

Wickhills is set in a bustling, striving port city, in which magic rules the streets and is in turned controlled by the city’s elites; the people are hungry, the rulers are corrupt, and a shocking technology threatens to upset the delicate balance of power and throw the entire city into chaos. Into this morass, a new weapon arrives, operated by an unpredictable defector from a foreign land, and protected from misuse by a jaded secret agent with nothing left to lose. A fantastical melange of noir and fantasy that makes me want to go through the author’s entire oeuvre.

Kelly McWilliams, American Nightmare
(Crown)

Walter White, former head of the NAACP and the driving force between many of the reforms in cultural depictions of African-Americans during WWII, is the hero of this historical horror novel, his light skin enabling him to go undercover for a Black newspaper and report on the massive spike of lynchings across the South in the 1920s. American Nightmare is well-crafted, richly detailed, and an excellent drama of investigative reportage, featuring vividly drawn characters and just a tinge of the supernatural. An excellent companion to Tananarive’s upcoming Mazywood, although Walter White’s brief cameo in that one is decidedly unheroic, alas. –MO

Kate Atkinson, Our Noble Selves
(Doubleday)

It may be humanly impossible to read this book without loving it. Our Noble Selves is certainly my new favorite, with its irresistible setting: A festival! Celebrating Britain! On the eve of empire’s decline! And in the midst of England’s growing irrelevancy! Into this maelstrom of amusement park planning and late empire soul-searching, Atkinson’s utterly charming characters are unceremoniously tossed, inexorably caught in the convoluted riptides of the mid-20th century, where dangerous undercurrents threaten to pull her hapless, tortured souls deep into the morass, before they even finish helping their government decide on which cake exactly represents the pinnacle of British (not suet, thank goodness, although the winner is just as hideous as any Etonian concoction). Oh, and there’s a murder. So that’s why it’s on this list.

Richard Osman, We Chase Shadows
(Pamela Dorman)

Richard Osman’s second phenomenal crime series (I’m talking about the one he began with We Solve Murders two years ago) continues apace with this second installment, in which our heroes Amy, Rosie, and Steve take on their first proper case: one involving a mysterious killer who has committed a murder in the Italian hills, and an even more mysterious client who wants the killer found out, but not at the hands of any authority. STRAP IN, FRIENDS!–OR

Tananarive Due, Mazywood
(Saga)

Tananarive Due has been steadily growing in reputation with each new work in her storied career, quietly amassing one of the greatest oeuvres in horror history; her last novel, The Reformatory, finally took Due from best-kept secret to household name, and her upcoming release delivers just as much heartbreak, horror, and history. Mazywood follows the long shadow of exploitation and trauma from the 1920s through to the present day: in Old Hollywood, the child of Black vaudevillians makes a fervent wish for a loyal helpmeet and a successful career, only to find herself facing rampant discrimination and impossible compromises; three generations later, her grandson takes his wife and children to his grandmother’s dilapidated resort, full of decayed glamour, dark secrets, a terrifying creature, and perhaps, just a kernel of hope. Mazywood may be 500 pages long, but I blazed through it in a single afternoon, and I have no doubt future readers will find it just as compelling. Man, this book was good…

Gigi Waldorf, Murder on the Upper East Side
(Atria/Emily Bestler)

Gigi Waldorf’s new novel is pitched as Gossip Girl meets Only Murders in the Building, which is all I need to want to read this immediately. One reviewer of an advance copy warned that the book never stops noting the impact of class and wealth on characters’ behavior, but in my humble opinion, that’s not a good reason to stay away—that’s an endorsement. Waldorf is the pen for Kit Frick, by the way, so if you like this one, definitely check out the rest of her work.