The 20 best mystery and thriller novels to read this summer, according to Goodreads
Summary List Placement
A propulsive, can’t-put-it-down thriller is one of life’s greatest joys.
Whether it’s delivered by a pool-water-logged paperback or an audiobook on a long road trip, a mystery book’s mix of intrigue and psychological suspense improves any activity — be it a long road trip or folding the laundry.
Below, you’ll find 20 of 2020’s best mystery books, according to tens of thousands of Goodreads readers. The list includes everything from the latest Cormoran Strike novel to an unsettling “Get Out”-like tale of gentrification in Brooklyn.
If you’re looking for an audiobook, you’ll also find the Audible version of each title on its Amazon page.
Book descriptions are provided by Amazon and Bookshop and lightly condensed.
Check out the Goodreads Awards for best mystery and thriller books in 2020:
The winner
The nominees
The winner
“The Guest List” by Lucy Foley
by Lucy Foley (button)
On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.
But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes.
And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?
The nominees
“Home Before Dark” by Riley Sager
by Riley Sager (button)
In this chilling thriller, a woman returns to the house made famous by her father’s bestselling horror memoir. Is the place really haunted by evil forces, as her father claimed? Or are there more earthbound — and dangerous — secrets hidden within its walls?
25 years ago, Maggie Holt and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved into Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. Three weeks later, they fled in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later recounted in a nonfiction book called “House of Horrors”.
Today, Maggie is a restorer of old homes and too young to remember any of the events mentioned in her father’s book. But she also doesn’t believe a word of it. When Maggie inherits Baneberry Hall after her father’s death, she returns to renovate the place to prepare it for sale. But her homecoming is anything but warm. People from the past, chronicled in “House of Horrors,” lurk in the shadows. And locals aren’t thrilled that their small town has been made infamous thanks to Maggie’s father. Even more unnerving is Baneberry Hall itself.
Alternating between Maggie’s uneasy homecoming and chapters from her father’s book, “Home Before Dark” is the story of a house with long-buried secrets and a woman’s quest to uncover them — even if the truth is far more terrifying than any haunting.
“The Sun Down Motel” by Simone St. James
Motel” (button)
Upstate New York, 1982. Viv Delaney wants to move to New York City, and to help pay for it she takes a job as the night clerk at the Sun Down Motel in Fell, New York. But something isnʼt right at the motel, something haunting and scary.
Upstate New York, 2017. Carly Kirk has never been able to let go of the story of her aunt Viv, who mysteriously disappeared from the Sun Down before she was born. She decides to move to Fell and visit the motel, where she quickly learns that nothing has changed since 1982. And she soon finds herself ensnared in the same mysteries that claimed her aunt.
“When No One Is Watching” by Alyssa Cole
by Alyssa Cole (button)
Sydney Green is Brooklyn-born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos are sprouting like weeds, “FOR SALE” signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she’s known all her life are disappearing. To hold onto her community’s past and present, Sydney channels her frustration into a walking tour and finds an unlikely and unwanted assistant in one of the new arrivals to the block — her neighbor, Theo.
But Sydney and Theo’s deep dive into history quickly becomes a dizzying descent into paranoia and fear. Their neighbors may not have moved to the suburbs after all, and the push to revitalize the community may be more deadly than advertised.
When does coincidence become conspiracy? Where do people go when gentrification pushes them out? Can Sydney and Theo trust each other — or themselves — long enough to find out before they too disappear?
“The Wives” by Tarryn Fisher
by Tarryn Fisher (button)
Imagine that your husband has two other wives.
You’ve never met the other wives. None of you know each other, and because of this unconventional arrangement, you can see your husband only one day a week. But you love him so much you don’t care. Or at least that’s what you’ve told yourself.
But one day, while you’re doing laundry, you find a scrap of paper in his pocket — an appointment reminder for a woman named Hannah, and you just know it’s another of the wives.
You thought you were fine with your arrangement, but you can’t help yourself: you track her down, and, under false pretenses, you strike up a friendship. Hannah has no idea who you really are. Then Hannah starts showing up to your coffee dates with telltale bruises, and you realize she’s being abused by her husband. Who, of course, is also your husband. But you’ve never known him to be violent, ever.
Who exactly is your husband, and how far would you be willing to go to find out? And who is his mysterious third wife?
“The Searcher” by Tana French
Book (button)
Cal Hooper thought a fixer-upper in a bucolic Irish village would be the perfect escape. After 25 years in the Chicago police force and a bruising divorce, he just wants to build a new life in a pretty spot with a good pub where nothing much happens. But when a local kid whose brother has gone missing arm-twists him into investigating, Cal uncovers layers of darkness beneath his picturesque retreat, and starts to realize that even small towns shelter dangerous secrets.
“The Boy from the Woods” by Harlan Coben
Book (button)
30 years ago, Wilde was found as a boy living feral in the woods, with no memory of his past. Now an adult, he still doesn’t know where he comes from, and another child has gone missing.
No one seems to take Naomi Pine’s disappearance seriously, not even her father — with one exception. Hester Crimstein, a television criminal attorney, knows through her grandson that Naomi was relentlessly bullied at school. Hester asks Wilde — with whom she shares a tragic connection — to use his unique skills to help find Naomi.
Wilde can’t ignore an outcast in trouble, but in order to find Naomi, he must venture back into the community where he has never fit in, a place where the powerful are protected even when they harbor secrets that could destroy the lives of millions… secrets that Wilde must uncover before it’s too late.
“One by One” by Ruth Ware
by Ruth Ware (button)
When the cofounder of Snoop, a trendy London-based tech start-up, organizes a weeklong trip for the team in the French Alps, it starts out as a corporate retreat like any other: PowerPoint presentations and strategy sessions broken up by mandatory bonding on the slopes. But as soon as one shareholder upends the agenda by pushing a lucrative but contentious buyout offer, tensions simmer and loyalties are tested. The storm brewing inside the chalet is no match for the one outside, however, and a devastating avalanche leaves the group cut off from all access to the outside world. Even worse, one Snooper hadn’t made it back from the slopes when the avalanche hit.
As each hour passes without any sign of rescue, panic mounts, the chalet grows colder, and the group dwindles further…one by one.
“The Devil and the Dark Water” by Stuart Turton
by Stuart Turton (button)
A murder on the high seas. A remarkable detective duo. A demon who may or may not exist.
It’s 1634 and Samuel Pipps, the world’s greatest detective, is being transported to Amsterdam to be executed for a crime he may, or may not, have committed. Traveling with him is his loyal bodyguard, Arent Hayes, who is determined to prove his friend innocent.
But no sooner are they out to sea than devilry begins to blight the voyage. A twice-dead leper stalks the decks. Strange symbols appear on the sails. Livestock is slaughtered. Anyone could be to blame. Even a demon.
And then three passengers are marked for death, including Samuel.
With Pipps imprisoned, only Arent can solve a mystery that connects every passenger. A mystery that stretches back into their past and now threatens to sink the ship, killing everybody on board.
“Long Bright River” by Liz Moore
by Liz Moore (button)
In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same blocks on her police beat. They don’t speak anymore, but Mickey never stops worrying about her sibling.
Then Kacey disappears, suddenly, at the same time that a mysterious string of murders begins in Mickey’s district, and Mickey becomes dangerously obsessed with finding the culprit — and her sister — before it’s too late.
Alternating its present-day mystery with the story of the sisters’ childhood and adolescence, “Long Bright River” is at once heart-pounding and heart-wrenching: a gripping suspense novel that is also a moving story of sisters, addiction, and the formidable ties that persist between place, family, and fate.
“All the Devils Are Here” by Louise Penny
Book (button)
On their first night in Paris, the Gamaches gather as a family for a bistro dinner with Armand’s godfather, the billionaire Stephen Horowitz. Walking home together after the meal, they watch in horror as Stephen is knocked down and critically injured in what Gamache knows is no accident, but a deliberate attempt on the elderly man’s life.
When a strange key is found in Stephen’s possession it sends Armand, his wife Reine-Marie, and his former second-in-command at the Sûreté, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, from the top of the Tour d’Eiffel to the bowels of the Paris Archives, and from luxury hotels to odd, coded works of art.
A gruesome discovery in Stephen’s Paris apartment makes it clear the secrets are more rancid, the danger far greater and more imminent, than they realized.
Soon the whole family is caught up in a web of lies and deceit. In order to find the truth, Gamache will have to decide whether he can trust his friends, his colleagues, his instincts, his own past. His own family. For even the City of Light casts long shadows. And in that darkness devils hide.
“You Are Not Alone” by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen (button)
Shay Miller wants to find love, but it eludes her. She wants to be fulfilled, but her job is a dead end. She wants to belong, but her life is increasingly lonely.
Until Shay meets the Moore sisters. Cassandra and Jane live a life of glamorous perfection, and always get what they desire. When they invite Shay into their circle, everything seems to get better.
Shay would die for them to like her.
She may have to.
“Troubled Blood” by Robert Galbraith
by Robert Galbraith (button)
Private Detective Cormoran Strike is visiting his family in Cornwall when he is approached by a woman asking for help finding her mother, Margot Bamborough — who went missing in mysterious circumstances in 1974.
Strike has never tackled a cold case before, let alone one 40 years old. But despite the slim chance of success, he is intrigued and takes it on, adding to the long list of cases that he and his partner in the agency, Robin Ellacott, are currently working on. And Robin herself is also juggling a messy divorce and unwanted male attention, as well as battling her own feelings about Strike.
As Strike and Robin investigate Margot’s disappearance, they come up against a fiendishly complex case with leads that include tarot cards, a psychopathic serial killer and witnesses who cannot all be trusted. And they learn that even cases decades old can prove to be deadly….
“Unspeakable Things” by Jess Lourey
by Jess Lourey (button)
Inspired by a terrifying true story from the author’s hometown, a heart-pounding novel of suspense about a small Minnesota community where nothing is as quiet ― or as safe ― as it seems.
Cassie McDowell’s life in 1980s Minnesota seems perfectly wholesome. She lives on a farm, loves school, and has a crush on the nicest boy in class. Yes, there are her parents’ strange parties and their parade of deviant guests, but she’s grown accustomed to them.
All that changes when someone comes hunting in Lilydale.
One by one, local boys go missing. One by one, they return changed ― violent, moody, and withdrawn. What happened to them becomes the stuff of shocking rumors. The accusations of who’s responsible grow just as wild, and dangerous town secrets start to surface. Then Cassie’s own sister undergoes the dark change. If she is to survive, Cassie must find her way in an adult world where every sin is justified, and only the truth is unforgivable.
“Winter Counts” by David Heska Wanbli Weiden
Book (button)
A groundbreaking thriller about a vigilante on a Native American reservation who embarks on a dangerous mission to track down the source of a heroin influx.
Virgil Wounded Horse is the local enforcer on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. When justice is denied by the American legal system or the tribal council, Virgil is hired to deliver his own punishment, the kind that’s hard to forget. But when heroin makes its way into the reservation and finds Virgil’s nephew, his vigilantism suddenly becomes personal. He enlists the help of his ex-girlfriend and sets out to learn where the drugs are coming from, and how to make them stop.
They follow a lead to Denver and find that drug cartels are rapidly expanding and forming new and terrifying alliances. And back on the reservation, a new tribal council initiative raises uncomfortable questions about money and power. As Virgil starts to link the pieces together, he must face his own demons and reclaim his Native identity. He realizes that being a Native American in the twenty-first century comes at an incredible cost.
“Blacktop Wasteland” by S.A. Cosby
Book (button)
A husband, a father, a son, a business owner…And the best getaway driver east of the Mississippi.
Beauregard “Bug” Montage is an honest mechanic, a loving husband, and a hard-working dad. Bug knows there’s no future in the man he used to be: known from the hills of North Carolina to the beaches of Florida as the best wheelman on the East Coast.
He thought he’d left all that behind him, but as his carefully built new life begins to crumble, he finds himself drawn inexorably back into a world of blood and bullets. When a smooth-talking former associate comes calling with a can’t-miss jewelry store heist, Bug feels he has no choice but to get back in the driver’s seat. And Bug is at his best where the scent of gasoline mixes with the smell of fear.
Haunted by the ghost of who he used to be and the father who disappeared when he needed him most, Bug must find a way to navigate this blacktop wasteland… or die trying.
“The Night Swim” by Megan Goldin
by Megan Goldin (button)
Ever since her true-crime podcast became an overnight sensation and set an innocent man free, Rachel Krall has become a household name―and the last hope for people seeking justice. But she’s used to being recognized for her voice, not her face. Which makes it all the more unsettling when she finds a note on her car windshield, addressed to her, begging for help.
The new season of Rachel’s podcast has brought her to a small town being torn apart by a devastating rape trial. A local golden boy, a swimmer destined for Olympic greatness, has been accused of raping the beloved granddaughter of the police chief. Under pressure to make Season 3 a success, Rachel throws herself into her investigation ― but the mysterious letters keep coming. Someone is following her, and she won’t stop until Rachel finds out what happened to her sister 25 years ago. Officially, Jenny Stills tragically drowned, but the letters insist she was murdered ― and when Rachel starts asking questions, nobody in town wants to answer.
Electrifying and propulsive, “The Night Swim” asks: What is the price of a reputation? Can a small town ever right the wrongs of its past? And what really happened to Jenny?
“And Now She’s Gone” by Megan Goldin
by Megan Goldin (button)
Isabel Lincoln is gone.
But is she missing?
It’s up to Grayson Sykes to find her. Although she is reluctant to track down a woman who may not want to be found, Gray’s search for Isabel Lincoln becomes more complicated and dangerous with every new revelation about the woman’s secrets and the truth she’s hidden from her friends and family.
Featuring two complicated women in a dangerous cat and mouse game, Rachel Howzell Hall’s “And Now She’s Gone” explores the nature of secrets — and how violence and fear can lead you to abandon everything in order to survive.
“Confessions on the 7:45” by Lisa Unger
by Lisa Unger (button)
Selena Murphy is commuting home on the train when she strikes up a conversation with a beautiful stranger in the next seat. The woman introduces herself as Martha and soon confesses that she’s been stuck in an affair with her boss. Selena, in turn, confesses that she suspects her husband is sleeping with the nanny. When the train arrives at Selena’s station, the two women part ways, presumably never to meet again.
Then the nanny disappears.
As Selena is pulled into the mystery of what happened, and as the fractures in her marriage grow deeper, she begins to wonder, who was Martha really? But she is hardly prepared for what she’ll discover…
“First Girl Gone” by L.T. Vargus and Tim McBain
by L.T. Vargus and Tim McBain (button)
The girl’s chestnut hair sways gently in the shallow water, her skin is cold. Grains of sand decorate her beautiful white cheeks like freckles. First, she was taken from her family, and now it won’t be long before she’s taken by the tide…
Kara Dawkins is missing. One minute she was sitting on a park bench, her coat wrapped around her against the biting cold. The next minute, she was gone.
Her mother is beside herself with worry. Did she run away, or was she snatched? Does anyone know she’s been sneaking out at night, or about the secret hidden inside her jewelery box?
But then another girl’s body washes up on the beach a few days later, in the exact spot where the last trace of Detective Charlie Winters’ missing sister was found years ago. It can’t be a coincidence, not in a town as small as this. By taking Kara, someone is re-opening the wounds of the past and setting a deadly trap. And unless Charlie steps forward to take the bait, many more innocent victims will follow…
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