Hair-Raising New Thriller Novels for Summer 2019

Martha and Becky Blackwater aren’t only siblings, they’re best friends. As Martha struggles to balance early motherhood and her career, she turns to Becky. Then an unthinkable tragedy strikes, and Becky’s charged with murder. Against all odds, Martha remains by her side, unable to fathom her sister’s guilt. But the weight of tragedy and an aggressive trial may be enough to open old fault lines in their seemingly rock-solid relationship.

Darren and Jodie are not exactly ideal neighbors. They blast music at all hours, are turning their house into an unsightly mess, and run a used-car business from their front yard. They simply aren’t Lowland Way people. When a horrific death upends life on the street, a long simmering war reaches its boiling point.

Liam and Drew Brennan couldn’t be more different. Liam is the troubled ne’er-do-well; Drew is the polished and charismatic family man with his sights on the governor’s mansion. When Liam suddenly kidnaps a young woman working for Drew, it appears he’s finally snapped. But with the Brennan brothers, nothing is quite what it seems, and Liam’s actions set in motion a chain of events that opens wide cracks in Drew’s perfect suburban veneer, leading both men toward a desperate confrontation.

Landing on a spectrum somewhere between The Stand and Station Eleven, Wanderers sees society crumbling against the weight of a bizarre malady that makes sufferers appear to be in a constant state of sleepwalking. As the sleepwalkers all seem to be heading for the same location, friends and family begin to follow the flock, acting as “shepherds” to protect the sleepwalkers from the dangers that lie ahead, and perhaps unravel the mystery of the epidemic that’s ripping society apart.

Stephanie Maddox has worked long and hard—often at the expense of her son—to obtain her position in the FBI. When she finds a loaded gun in her son’s room and a colleague from the domestic terrorism squad knocks at her door, Stephanie feels the world around her unraveling. Little does she know she and her son are in the grip of a far-reaching conspiracy that could bring the country to its knees.

Four friends, certain the world is on the verge of collapse, leave society behind for a commune in an upstate New York. Mack, a disillusioned grad-school dropout, feels compelled to tell their story. While initially swept up in the group’s grand plans, she soon discovers a complicated—and potentially dangerous—web of secrets and betrayals.

She wakes up with no memory of who or where she is. There’s a man next to her claiming to be her husband. He tells her name is Abbie and that she is a loving mother and the perfect wife. She was in accident five years ago, and science has brought her back from the brink. But as her memories slowly return, her husband’s motive and his view of their supposed life together begin to fall apart. Can she trust this man, and, more importantly, was her terrible accident an accident at all?

When Dr. Emma Sweeney stumbles into a murder scene—a hit and run—outside a university, she calls her boyfriend, Detective Cormac Reilly. The dead girl is quickly identified as the heir to a massive pharmaceutical company. Soon, Emma is pulled into the center of a web of deadly secrets that refuse to stay hidden and could shake the foundations of her life.

When FBI agent Nell Flynn returns home to spread the ashes of her estranged father, Detective Martin Flynn, she doesn’t expect to be caught up in the murder investigation of two young women. And she certainly doesn’t expect to see her deceased father as the prime suspect. When it appears his police colleagues might have covered his tracks, Nell begins to question everything she knew about her father—and the brutal murder of her mother years earlier.

Joshua Fields flies weekly for work. On what seems like yet another routine layover, he meets a woman named Morgan and feels an immediate connection. Before leaving for their respective flights, Morgan kisses him and tells Joshua she’ll never see him again. He soon sees her face on a TV and realizes Morgan is a missing person, drawing him into a whirlwind mystery filled with secrets and deceits tied to a beguiling woman he barely knows.

Seven years ago, 10-year-old Beth disappeared from her Georgia home. A Ku Klux Klan flyer was left behind in her yard. When Imogene Coulter returned home to bury her father—a notorious Klan leader—she wants nothing more than to distance herself from that legacy. However, when she finds Beth, still alive and locked behind a door in her father’s house, Imogene is forced to face up to her father’s legacy and a tightly coiled chain of secrets that could prove deadly.

A string of women have gone missing in southern Texas, and rookie FBI agent Caitlin Hendrix has been assigned to the case. When the women’s bodies begin to turn up, each dressed in a white shift and surrounded by photos of other victims, Caitlin fears a serial killer is on the loose. What follows is a dangerous game of cat and mouse with an incredibly cunning sociopath.

While her new apartment-sitting job has a few odd rules—no visitors, no nights away from the apartment, don’t disturb the other residents—it’s nonetheless a perfect opportunity for recently heartbroken Jules Larson to make some much-needed money. When her new friend and fellow apartment-sitter disappears after warning Jules that the building is not what it seems, Jules finds herself in the midst of an increasingly dangerous mystery and perhaps the clutches of a killer.

A mysterious phenomenon called False Memory Syndrome is driving people mad with memories of lives they’ve never led. New York City cop Barry Sutton begins an investigation into the bizarre occurrences, and it leads him to Helena Smith, a neuroscientist who may have unlocked the key to memory. Sutton’s investigation and Smith’s work bring the duo face-to-face with forces capable of bringing the whole of reality crashing down around them.

The Warehouse centers on two characters and the machinations of a sprawling near-future tech mega-corporation called Cloud. Paxton is simply hoping for a better life, while Zinnia is playing a dangerous game to discover the company’s darkest secrets. When their paths cross and become inextricably intertwined, they’ll discover far more than either bargained for and realize just how dangerous Cloud really is.

Dixie Wheeler has long been haunted by the brutal murder of her family. When she was only a year old, Dixie’s father killed her mother and brothers before slitting his own throat. Only Dixie was left alive. Now, 25 years later, Dixie makes the inexplicable decision to return to her family home. But the building is populated by an evil presence, and as Dixie begins to unravel the dark secrets of her past, she must fight for not only her loved ones that are still alive but also her own sanity.

Ellie de Florent-Stinson has a seemingly perfect life: beautiful homes, a successful career, and a picture-perfect family. It’s her 40th birthday celebration, and she’s planned an extravagant party to end all parties at her new home in Palm Springs. However, Ellie has secrets—long-held secrets tracing back to another birthday some 24 years earlier, the sort of secrets that could bring the facade of her life crumbling down. Over the course of this single night, it’s all about to come to the surface.

As a veteran 911 dispatcher, Lauren Ahmadi has heard it all—or she thought she had. Nothing could have prepared her for the night she answered the line to hear her daughter JoJo’s voice, disoriented and in pain, pleading for help. JoJo is quickly found, but she’s been sexually assaulted, and her friend Harper is still missing. As Lauren and JoJo piece together what happened in the hopes of finding Harper, they stumble into a far-reaching and dangerous conspiracy that could destroy them all.

Phoebe Miller’s staid suburban life—one where the unhappy housewife passes her time with wine and ice cream—is slowly upended when a rusty car appears on her cul-de-sac and the driver begins spying on her. But that’s all forgotten when a family moves in next door, and Phoebe finds a new best friend in Vickie, and something more in Vickie’s college-bound son, Jake. That rusty car is still there, however, and its driver is still watching—and waiting.

Retired Marine-turned-novelist Jack Dana thought his fight was over. His nemesis is dead; he’s fallen in love and is enjoying a quiet retirement. Still, it looks like a quiet life is not in the cards for Jack. When he becomes entwined in a brutal murder, Jack quickly finds himself wrapped up in a deadly scheme that threatens to tear down the peaceful existence he’s fought so hard for.

In a near future world, society is crumbling. Politics have moved to the far-right. Trump is no longer in the White House, but the EU is slowing disintegrating amidst a global financial crisis. An ultra-populist movement has taken hold in Germany, and a housewife named Britta secretly runs an organization that supplies terrorists with suicide bombers. When a suicide attack rocks Liepzig, Britta is shocked because she had nothing to do with it. A new, deadly group called Empty Hearts is coming for Britta’s organization, and possibly the world.

The House of Wisdom was a massive space-exploration vessel abandoned by Earth’s government after a deadly virus killed the entire crew. Now, a decade later, Zahra is leading a crew to claim the derelict vessel. However, what’s lurking aboard the long-dead ship is far worse and more deadly than Zahra could have ever imagined—a horrific secret that endangers all of humanity.

It’s only a matter of time until self-driving cars are a common thing on our roadways, but what if that technology is used for something sinister? Eight strangers suddenly find themselves locked in their moving cars, unable to take back control, and a mysterious voice says simply, “You are going to do.” Hidden cameras broadcast the panic around the world, and two questions are posed: “Who should be saved? And who should we kill first?”

Malin fell in with her circle of friends in her first weeks at Hawthorne College. They were a tight-knit group with no idea that Malin’s image—and her place in the group—was simply a well-curated front. As graduation draws near, Malin’s secrets begin to bubble to the surface, setting off a chain of events ending in murder and tearing away the fragile relationships at the heart of Malin’s group. If you’re a fan of The Secret History, this one needs a spot on your TBR pile.

Set against the backdrop of rural Kansas, The Wolf Wants In follows two women, each struggling against a dark past and desperate for a brighter future. Sadie Keller wants nothing more than to find out how her brother died, but the police are occupied with a potential child murderer after a skull is found in the woods. Henley Pettit wants out of Blackwater, Kansas, and away from her crime-ridden family. Escape will be more dangerous than she could ever imagine. As their paths intersect, Sadie and Henley soon learn that some secrets are simply too dangerous to carry.

This timely thriller centers around an exclusive prep school and new creative writing teacher named Alexandra Witt. After a creative writing assignment unearths a more disturbing side to some of her students, as well as rumblings of something called the Darkroom, Alexandra finds herself entangled in the school’s fraught political landscape and an inspiration to the girls questioning the school’s “boys will be boys” policies. As secrets come to light and tensions begin to boil over, an all-out war for the soul of the school spills into the hallways, with potentially deadly consequences for all involved.