Mystery & Suspense Novels About Parties Gone Wrong

When a group of old college friends rent a remote estate in the Scottish Highlands for their annual New Year's vacation, they're all looking forward to reminiscing, unwinding, and drinking by the fire. But then a historic blizzard cuts them off from the rest of the world, and the next thing they know, one of them is dead. Stranded in the countryside with nothing but simmering, decades-old resentments, and a killer among them, an idyllic retreat soon turns into the most deadly vacation of their lives.

Lucy Foley is a master of suspense novels with fantastic character development, and The Guest List is no exception. This international mystery takes place on an island off the coast of Ireland, where a young couple are in the midst of their dream wedding. He's a rising TV star and she's a magazine publisher; their wedding is perfect, from the designer dress to the signature whisky. That is, until one of the guests turns up dead. It's a chilling story about the kind of deadly secrets and hidden tensions that so often simmer just under the surface. 

Time is everything in this twisty and surprising mystery suspense novel about a group of teenagers faced with a deadly choice. All Your Twisted Secrets takes place in a locked room. A group of students are invited to a scholarship dinner, only to be thrown into a room with a bomb and a syringe of poison and issued an ultimatum: choose someone to kill within an hour, or all of them will die. As the teens desperately try to figure out how to save themselves, their own secrets slowly begin to unravel. Propulsive and surprising, this is a locked-door mystery you won't be able to put down.

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In Devil's Breath, the sixth installment in G.M. Malliet's Max Tudor mystery series, the body of a film star washes ashore near the quiet village where Max serves as an unofficial town sleuth. Margot Browne was killed while on a yacht, so the investigation should be simple—surely one of the other people who were on board with her must be the killer. But as Max digs deeper into Margo's past, he uncovers a wealth of secrets that make him wonder if the seemingly straightforward murder isn't as straightforward as it looks.

When Jemma and her husband Matt receive an invitation to Matt's old friend Lucas's beach house, Jemma would do anything to refuse. The last time she and Matt were there, exactly a year ago, a young woman was killed. But at Lucas's insistence, she reluctantly agrees to return. But what Lucas has in mind isn't exactly a vacation—he thinks someone knows more about that dreadful night a year ago than they're willing to admit, and he'll do anything to get them to talk. As his games grow deadlier and more sinister, Jemma becomes less and less sure of her own memories.

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In 2009, Edie had New York’s social world in her thrall. Mercurial and beguiling, she was the shining star of a group of recent graduates living in a Brooklyn loft and treating New York like their playground. When Edie’s body was found near a suicide note at the end of a long, drunken night, no one could believe it. Grief, shock, and resentment scattered the group and brought the era to an abrupt end. When a chance reunion leads Lindsay to discover an unsettling video from that hazy night, she starts to wonder if Edie was actually murdered—and worse, if she herself was involved.