This year’s psychological thrillers are nasty, no-holds-barred knock-downs, skewering society from top to bottom, taking down the pretentious, the willfully ignorant, and the merely complacent. The works below don’t all err on the side of gleeful send-offs; there’s plenty of compassion for those who most trapped by circumstance, sentiment, and the prisons of their own selves.
A good psychological thriller often feels like a sit-com set-up taken utterly seriously, where the circular paths of interior logic quickly lead to insidious derangement. They can also, like horror, provide a perfect vector for vengeance and schadenfreude, in which hypocrisy and small-mindedness always earn their comeuppance. And psychological thrillers can also be about exploring the enormous capacity of humans to surprise, in ways both awesome and terrible. Like the depth of human experience, the selections below hold multitudes, and you can see the breadth of the genre through the diversity of this single snapshot.
I Make My Own Fun, Hannah Beer
(Anansi International)
Hannah Beer’s twist on the obsession novel is pitch-perfect for our current era and makes for a powerfully entertaining debut. In I Make My Own Fun, a successful actress who has everything (and everyone) she could ever want finds herself obsessed with the one person indifferent to her fame. What follows is a rip-roaring yarn of entitlement and ego gone epically sideways.
The New Year’s Party, Jenna Satterthwaite
(Mira)
Satterthwaite’s new thriller is a great reminder that New Year’s parties are nearly always more fun to read about than attend. The set-up is simple: a group of old friends reunites for a year-end bash with a long tradition. Each smile conceals a shocking secret, and each couple is on the brink of collapse. Satterthwaite skillfully interweaves between characters, using slow reveals and shifts in viewpoint to amp up the tension and add to the aura of impending doom. An excellent work of suspense from a rising voice in genre!
Clay,Franck Bouysse
Translated by Laura Vergnaud
(Other Press)
Franck Bouysse has done it again! By which I mean that Bouysse has written another truly disturbing noir exploration of the depths of human behavior. In Clay, a French farmhouse in the midst of WWI, bereft of its fighting-age men and plow-pulling horses, is the claustrophobic setting for a slow-burn psychological thriller. Bouysse examines the nature of conflict and the weight of history through a limited cast of characters, featuring a struggling mother, her adolescent son, and their resentful neighbor, spared from the draft but not from his own violence, as they grow ever closer to a devastating clash of personalities, ideals, and resentments.
Best Offer Wins, Marisa Kashino
(Celadon)
In the DC area, one woman will do anything to get a house, no matter who gets harmed in the process…But hey, that’s just the state of the housing market today! I have cousins in Bethesda so I know all about the housing crunch (although hopefully they didn’t have to resort to quite such drastic measures).
The Death of Us, Abigail Dean
(Viking)
Abigail Dean has already proven to be a skilled observer of ordinary humans in extraordinary circumstances, and her latest is her most affecting study yet. A once-happy couple reunites after decades of estrangement when the man who once broke into their home and tortured them finally goes to trial. The love they shared wasn’t enough to keep them together after their ordeal, but perhaps the act of seeing their tormentor brought to justice will finally bring the two of them back together.
Love You To Death, Christina Dotson
(Ballantine)
Two childhood friends go on the run after a heist at a wedding goes south (to be fair, the wedding was at a plantation, so the newly married couple deserved all their cash stolen). Trials and tribulations ensue! And while it’s got Thelma and Louise vibes, don’t let that make you think you can predict the ending. This book will have you seriously questioning what you’d be willing to do for your best friend…
The Influencers, Anna-Marie McLemore
(Dial Press)
In this razor-sharp dissection of the pitfalls of internet fame, a family of influencers comes under a different kind of scrutiny when the matriarch’s boy toy is found dead in her mansion, and suspicion falls upon her five daughters, each with her own grudge against the family business. While the reveal for the murder comes at the tail end of the novel, one simple fact is never in doubt: a childhood lived in front of a camera cannot possibly be a happy one. Anna-Marie McLemore has crafting a vicious send-off of a hated part of our metaverse, and I can’t wait to see what they do next.
So Happy Together, Olivia Worley
(Minotaur)
Olivia Worley has wowed me with her YA thrillers, and her new novel for adults is just as wickedly entertaining. In a novel twist on the trend of female obsession, Worley’s heroine isn’t ready to let her ex-boyfriend go, despite his obvious happiness with his new-found love. When she starts to investigate her replacement, she’s not prepared for what she uncovers, a dark secret that soon leads to a shocking (and satisfying) denouement.
Summerhouse, Yiğit Karaahmet
Translated by Nicholas Glastonbury
(Soho)
Yigit Karaahmet’s new novel is many things: a stunning love story, a thrilling mystery, and a luscious ode to a gorgeous landscape. As Summerhouse begins, we encounter an aging queer couple who have achieved the near-impossible: 40 years together, happy and free from persecution. Their private, luxurious home on a remote island is the key to their success as a couple, but when a family moves in next door for the summer with a rebellious, and gorgeous, teenage son in tow, all bets are off and the couple will have to fight harder than ever before to secure their future.
The Grand Paloma Resort, Cleyvis Natera
(Ballantine)
Cleyvis Natera blew me away with her debut Neruda in the Park and her sophomore novel is truly the perfect follow-up from White Lotus. Set in a ritzy Dominican resort ostensibly located in a historic community of freedmen from the United States, The Grand Paloma follows staff and guests undergoing a variety of crises as a deadly hurricane approaches, and as characters steadily realize their moral compromises are no longer enough to hold off the twinned destruction of late-stage capitalism and its accompanying environmental collapse.
All the Other Mothers Hate Me, Sarah Harman
(Putnam)
In this biting, satirical take on the domestic thriller, a failed pop star turned private school parent must clear her son’s name when his bully goes missing. Luckily, she’s just made a new friend—a lawyer who just happens to harbor dreams of private investigating. And her upstairs neighbor is a cop, although not a very useful one. Between the three of them, she’s sure she can track down the little shit precious angel child before her son’s reputation is forever tarnished. If you like quirky characters, scrappy fighters, and a high dose of hijinks, this is your cup of tea! Who am I kidding? This book is everyone’s cup of tea.
The Understudy, Morgan Richter
(Knopf)
Richter’s new slow-burn thriller centers on opera singer who has finally secured her place in the upper echelons of the New York scene and the understudy who proves herself to be more than merely a young rival, but something far more dangerous. Richter’s novel is tautly drawn but still full of wonderful detail from the life cycle of a big operatic production, this one an adaptation of the cult classic Barbarella. Readers will find themselves fully immersed in this thoughtful page turner. –Dwyer Murphy
Don’t Let Him In, Lisa Jewell
(Atria)
Lisa Jewell has steadily proven herself one of the best writers of psychological thrillers today, and her upcoming novel, featuring a nasty Lonely Hearts confidence man, looks to be her most astute study of human nature yet. In Don’t Let Him In, one man connects several disparate families, each ruined (or about to be) by his financial scheming. The true villain of Don’t Let Him In is the patriarchy and double standards that allow a smooth, charming, older man to give wealthy widows the bare minimum of good treatment and still seem nicer than 99% of other dudes. Despite the length, I swear you’ll finish this one in a single weekend.
Her One Regret, Donna Freitas
(Soho)
Donna Freitas tackles a taboo subject in her latest thriller: regret for motherhood, and an urge to flee from the often-disproportionate responsibilities of childcare. In Her One Regret, a mother who has long-felt ambiguous about her role vanishes suddenly and suspiciously, leaving her infant daughter behind. Another mother, equally ambivalent about raising kids, is determined to track the missing woman down and prove that she didn’t willfully abandon her progeny, if only to keep the amateur sleuth tethered to her own familial ball-and-chain.
The Scammer, Tiffany D. Jackson
(Quill Tree Books)
Tiffany Jackson has quickly become one of the most beloved voices in genre fiction, and I was psyched to see that her new novel takes inspiration from the infamous Sarah Lawrence cult. Jackson changes the setting to an HBCU, where the naive protagonist finds herself in thrall to her roommate’s charismatic cousin, who spouts philosophy so fast it goes straight past her BS detector.
