The Best Thriller & Horror Books of the Year So Far, According to Goodreads

Debbie Mullen has been running a neighborly advice column, Dear Debbie, for the wives of New England for years. She’s helped countless women through their struggles of being ignored, belittled, or abused by their husbands. Now, she’s just lost her job. Something strange is happening with her teenage daughters. And her husband has been keeping secrets. She’s done being reasonable, practical, grounded. It’s time to take her own advice and get back at all the people in her life who have wronged her.

Eden Fox is on the brink of artistic success when she returns to discover her home, Spyglass, is no longer her own. A strange woman answers the door. And her husband is insistent that this stranger is his wife. Six months earlier, reclusive Londoner Birdy inherits Spyglass from a long-lost grandmother. But when a shadowy London clinic predicts the date of her death, Birdy feels compelled to right some old wrongs. Secrets start to unravel, and the line between truth and lies blurs.

Camille Bayliss appears to have the picture-perfect life. Only nothing is as it seems: Camille believes her husband Ben has been hiding dirty secrets for years, but she can’t find proof because he tracks her every move. Aubrey Price has been haunted by the terrible night that changed her life a decade ago, and she’s convinced Benjamin Bayliss knows something about it. Aubrey and Camille hatch a plan. Aubrey will take Camille’s place. Camille will spy on Ben, and the two women will get the answers they desperately seek. Except the next morning, Ben is found murdered.

Benny Abbott and Joy Moore host one of the most beloved podcasts in the world. Each week, they delight listeners with a different “against all odds” survival story. Since their first episode on Joy’s experience with severe narcolepsy, they’ve been the best friends everyone wants to befriend. The problem is, their next survival story may be their own. When Benny arrives at Joy’s one morning to record, he finds shattered glass and an empty house. Benny is desperate to Joy and her husband, even when the police soon zero in on him as their prime suspect.

On a cold night in the remote Irish village of Ardnakelty, a girl goes missing. Sweet, loving Rachel Holohan was about to be engaged to the son of the local big shot. Instead, she’s dead in the river. In a close-knit small town, a death like this isn’t simple. It comes wrapped in generations-old grudges and power struggles, and it splits the townland in two. Retired Chicago detective Cal Hooper has friends here now, and he owes them loyalty, but his fiancée Lena wants nothing to do with Ardnakelty’s tangles. As the feud becomes more vicious, their settled peace starts to crack apart. And when they uncover a scheme that casts a new light on Rachel’s death and threatens the whole village, they find themselves in the firing line.

From the outside, Catharine West’s childhood sounds idyllic—balmy days spent running barefoot through the gardens, plucking ripe tomatoes straight from the vine as sunlight warmed her skin. For a time, Catharine’s magnetic father was enough to keep the farm thriving and temptation outside its gates. But as she grew older, the farm and family she was raised to love faded into something darker, forcing Catharine to evolve with it. ​It’s now been a decade since Catharine abandoned the farm, and she has done her best to reinvent her life, until an email from a charismatic journalist interrupts her peace. Her first instinct is to ignore the stranger’s prying questions—whether she knew about a mysterious “cult” in central Florida, whether she is the same “Catharine-with-an-A” who lived there for a time. But when she realizes the journalist knows far more than he’s letting on, she reconsiders. If Catharine can stay one step ahead of him, she may be able to find the one person she never wanted to leave behind—her sister, Linna—and make sure her own secrets remain buried too.

Lillian has a plan to lock her situationship, Henry, down. She’ll be the best, most accommodating version of herself until he falls in love with her. But when Henry blindsides Lillian with a breakup, she’s left with no choice but to exact revenge with a hex.

Lillian expects Henry to come crawling back to her, but instead, she becomes a prime suspect in his murder case when he’s found dead. Desperate to control the narrative, clear her name, and assume her rightful place as Henry’s mourning girlfriend, Lillian’s pursuit of the truth will throw her into a dangerous tailspin, which

Jane Trevally is walking her dogs on her country estate when a small white terrier appears, alone and with no sign of the teenaged girl he’d been staying with nearby. When the teenager is reported missing, Jane offers to return the dog to his registered owner, hours away in London. When she arrives, Jane realizes she has a dark history with this house. The man who answers the door is cagey, and claims to know nothing about the missing teenage girl. Conjuring her memories from 25 years ago, Jane knows this unsettling house holds the key—to the missing teenager, to her own traumatic story, and to the dark secrets of the past.

October, 2026: Lee Turner doesn’t remember how or why he killed his college roommate. All he knows is he has to flee New York and go to his father’s new home in Japan. But something is terribly wrong with the house: a woman with a sword appears in the yard when night falls. October, 1877: Sen is a young samurai in exile, hiding from the imperial soldiers. She knows the soldiers will soon slaughter her whole family when she sees a terrible omen: a young foreign man who appears outside her window. One of these people is a ghost, and one of these stories is a lie.

When Camille Deming isn’t cooking, cleaning, or homesteading in her picture-perfect country farmhouse, she’s posting about her tradwife lifestyle for her online followers. She takes inspiration from other tradwives on social media, aspiring to be like them, but Camille’s missing a key component: a baby. And contrary to what she posts online, things with her husband, Graham, have been strained. Pressured by her eager followers, Camille fears that without a baby, her relationship will suffer and her social media will never grow out of its infancy. When Camille discovers a mysterious, decrepit well in the wheatfield behind her house, she makes a wish for a baby. Afterward, she has unsettling experiences that she convinces herself are angelic in nature, and when she’s visited one night by a strange creature, her wish comes true. Camille’s pregnancy announcement gets more engagement than anything she’s ever posted—never mind that her pregnancy is developing freakishly rapidly and she’s suddenly craving raw meat. Being a traditional wife is worth it.

In an unassuming Seoul workplace, IT technician Junyoung’s network reaches throughout the entire building. The women in this building may be cold and dismissive, but he can always pull up his favorite images of them and remember who holds the real power. Until one, Dahye, sets herself apart from the rest. Dahye, ever the romantic, yearns to be cherished after years of living in the shadow of her perfect older sister, who tragically drowned years ago. Only her boyfriend seems to appreciate Dahye. He’s rich, handsome, and generous—and she’d do anything to hold on to the happiness he brings her. But when a hidden camera scandal rocks the city’s elites, Dahye’s dreams of a fairy-tale romance twist into a grotesque nightmare. Her boyfriend abandons her. Her parents reject her. Her grip on reality begins to shatter as visions of her dead sister suddenly appear. And as Junyoung’s interest in Dahye turns to obsession, and the truths of their troubled lives are revealed, Dahye must go to extreme lengths to bring the truth to light . . .

Poppy Stringer was born to be a star. An aspiring fashion influencer by day, Poppy moonlights as a grave robber to make ends meet, wheeling and dealing dead bodies across Palm Springs. When her hero, the flamboyant, piano-slamming rockstar Eddie Michaels, unexpectedly dies, Poppy gets a call to retrieve his body from the medical examiner’s office for a lucrative sum. It could be the last job she’ll ever need—if everything goes to plan. But the night’s delivery quickly veers off course when Eddie wakes up. Now Poppy must fight for her life if she hopes to survive this blood-soaked joyride of carnage and extravagant entertainment.