New Mystery & Thriller Books Coming This October
There’s no better time to read suspense novels and mystery books than October. With its spooky vibes and witchy holiday, it’s a month tailor-made for horror fans. It’s also a great month for new releases in horror and suspense books. Whether you’re looking for a social thriller or an atmospheric mystery with dark and eerie vibes, there’s a book coming out this month that’s perfect for you. Check out the list below for seven scary, twisty, and suspenseful books for your October TBR.
Astronaut Chris Hadfield transports readers to the high tension space race and the height of the Cold War with this debut thriller. The Apollo Murders takes place in 1973; NASA has just launched Apollo 18. Flight controller Kaz Zemeckis is one of the few people who knows the mission's true, top-secret objective. The U.S. has discovered a secret Soviet space station, and Apollo 18 might be the only way to stop it. But when a terrible accident befalls the mission, Kaz realizes that the situation is direr than he imagined, and he can't trust anyone. Full of explosive tension and scientific detail, this is mystery suspense like only someone who's been in space could write.
Attorney Rhonda Bird returns home after a long estrangement when she learns her father has died. There she makes two important discoveries: her father stopped being an accountant and had opened up a private detective agency, and she has a teenage half sister named Baby. Baby brings in a client to the detective agency, a young man who claims he was abducted. During the course of the investigation, Rhonda and Baby become entangled in a dangerous case involving a group of overprivileged young adults who break laws for fun, their psychopath ringleader, and an ex-assassin victim who decides to hunt them down for revenge.
Wayland Maynard's life is irrevocably altered, when, at 8 years old, he sees his father kill himself. Soon after he finds a note that says only: "I am not who you think I am." Terrified, confused, and grieving, Wayland puts the note aside, keeping it a secret even from the rest of his family. But eight years later, after Wayland makes a startling discovery, the note comes back to haunt him. Thinking it might hold the keys to understanding his past, he sets out to discover who his father truly was. The web of secrets he unearths holds consequences not only for Wayland and his family but for their whole town. It's a dark and twisty story about fate, loss, obsession, and the cost of knowing the truth.
Set in the remote woods of the northern Appalachian mountains, These Silent Woods is a haunting and atmospheric novel about the blurry lines between love, sacrifice, and survival. Finch and her father Cooper live in a tiny cabin deep in the wilderness, cut off from the rest of the world. The stark beauty and harsh realities of their isolated home are all Finch has ever known. But when a stranger appears one day, and Finch begins to question why they live the way they do, Cooper is finally forced to confront the choices that led them there, the ghosts that still haunt him, and the danger he and Finch still face.
The Unheard is a chilling thriller about a woman fighting with everything she has to protect her daughter. Her 3-year old daughter Poppy has always been the joy of Tess's life. When she splits up with Poppy's father, she knows it means that she won't always be there to keep Poppy safe. When she finds a disturbing drawing among Poppy's things, she's convinced it means Poppy saw or experienced something terrible that she doesn't know how to talk about. But when no one will take Tess's worries seriously, it falls on her to protect Poppy from harm—even if she doesn't know how.
An internet date turns into a deadly cat-and-mouse game in Last Girl Ghosted, a fresh, contemporary suspense novel about internet dating and online culture. A woman meets an intriguing man on a dating app. They have an immediate connection, and soon their one-night stand turns into something more. But then he stands her up. He doesn't just ghost her; he vanishes. All traces of his online presence evaporate. Soon she realizes that she's not the first woman he's done this to and that his motives are far more sinister than she could have imagined. She follows his digital trail deep into the past, hunting for the answers that will save her life.
Better Off Dead, the latest installment in Lee and Andrew Child's bestselling Jack Reacher series, finds Jack Reacher doing what he does best: getting himself in a whole lot of danger. Reacher is an ex-military policeman and a loner, drifting from place to place, solving crimes where they arise. He's minding his own business when he comes across a woman and her crashed car on a lonely desert road. It turns out she's an FBI agent looking for her twin brother—and the kind of people he's mixed up with are the kind who don't spare the lives of people who start asking questions. Naturally, Reacher volunteers to help.
Fan Club is a sharply observant psychological thriller about the pitfalls of millennial life and 21st-century internet culture. The narrator, a woman who works a soulless office job for a women's lifestyle magazine, finds relief and meaning in the online fandom of pop singer Adriana Argento. She's soon invited to join a secret group of superfans who worship Adriana in their witchy rituals. It's not long before our narrator realizes that there's something more sinister going on than harmless seances—and she's determined to figure out what it is.
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Practical, unassuming Jane Shoringfield has done the calculations and decided that the most secure path forward is this: a husband, in a marriage of convenience, who will allow her to remain independent and occupied with meaningful work. Her first choice, the dashing but reclusive doctor Augustine Lawrence, agrees to her proposal with only one condition: that she must never visit Lindridge Hall, his crumbling family manor outside of town.
Yet on their wedding night, an accident strands her at his door in a pitch-black rainstorm, and she finds him changed. Gone is the bold, courageous surgeon, and in his place is a terrified, paranoid man—one who cannot tell reality from nightmare, and fears Jane is an apparition, come to haunt him. By morning, Augustine is himself again, but Jane knows something is deeply wrong at Lindridge Hall, and with the man she has so hastily bound her safety to.
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