New year, new you! Or at least, that’s what we want to think…but these psychological thrillers are here to remind us that no matter where we go, there we are. These stories take us on furious and introspective journeys, plumbing the depths of character psyches in order to reveal wider human truths, for a host of tales perfect for the dark days of mid-winter and the seething undercurrents of societal ill-ease behind every new years resolution. Enjoy these deliciously unsettling reads, and keep an eye out for our big list of most anticipated crime for the year!
All blurbs are by yours truly unless otherwise stated.
Andromeda Romano-Lax, What Boys Learn
(Soho)
Andromeda Romano-Lax’s latest packs a punch, featuring a complex set-up and a fully realized denouement. At the start of What Boys Learn, two girls on the cusp of adulthood are found dead in rapid succession, throwing their sleepy Chicago neighborhood into turmoil, and a single mother finds herself torn between protection and suspicion as more and more clues point to her son’s involvement. An urgent and uncompromising take on parenting in the age of the manosphere.
Katie Bernet, Beth Is Dead
(Sarah Barley Books)
Justice for Beth March! Beth has always been the most annoying March sister, a suffering goody two-shoes who refuses to express any dismay at her shortened existence. My chronically ill sister hated her, and I did too. But Katie Bernet’s book takes the character into new territory and brings verve and vitality to the perennial victim. Yes, Beth is dead, just as the title indicates, but why? And does it have anything to do with her father’s mega-bestseller, in which the fictional Beth dies long before the real one? Bernet’s novel is a perfect read for anyone who has ever felt dismayed at a character’s acceptance of an unacceptable situation.
Ashley Elston, Anatomy of an Alibi
(Pamela Dorman Books)
Elston’s follow-up to the smash hit First Lie Wins takes another outrageous plot and ratchets up the adrenaline at every turn. When two woman switch places to get some answers on a husband’s secrets, and he turns up dead, they rally to get their stories straight as the walls close in on them. –DM
May Cobb, All the Little Houses
(Sourcebooks)
May Cobb’s new novel showcases all the setting and sass we’ve come to expect from the author of The Hunting Wives. In All the Little Houses, a status war escalates between a hometown queen bee and the popular newcomers threatening her hard-won throne, serving as a method to delve into wider truths about gender and class in small-town Texas.
Thrity Umrigar, Missing Sam
(Algonquin)
Happily married lesbian couple Ali and Sam, an interior designer and a writing professor, find their relationship tested to the extreme in this moving and meditative thriller. When Sam vanishes on a morning run, sparking the obsessive attention of internet sleuths, Ali finds herself facing the slings and arrows of public opinion as a Muslim gay woman, the crisis revealing the limits of her acceptance into white society and the fault lines within her marriage.
Rachel Taff, Paper Cut
(William Morrow)
Paper Cut is a moody noir-cum-psychological thriller set among a hazy California landscape of hippies, cults, scenes, and happenings. Centered on a famed photographer’s daughter made notorious for the murder she committed as a teen, and the ensuing spectacle of a trial that left the voracious public with more questions than answers, Taff’s debut is an intricate examination of coming-of-age and true crime culture. As old takes and new depictions of the crime proliferate, Paper Cut‘s heroine revisits that monumental summer that made her a killer, reexamining the roles of everyone involved, especially those who she once considered allies.
Sarah Crouch, The Briars
(Atria)
Crouch’s atmospheric new thriller follows a woman fleeing her troubles to the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, where she’ll work as a game warden. But when a young woman is found murdered, the situation quickly darkens. The Briars is a first class wilderness thriller. –DM
Nalini Singh, Such a Perfect Family
(Berkley)
A man with a trail dead fiancees marries a woman who immediately turns up dead…Did her family set them up just to get rid of her and blame it on the husband? Singh has crafted another delightfully engaging page-turner sure to satisfy all your marriage-plot itches.
