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Most anticipated mystery & suspense of 2025

This year, The Thursday Murder Club returns and Reese Witherspoon will make her adult fiction debut, plus intriguing new titles from Deanna Raybourn, S.A. Cosby and more.
Available 02/25/2025
Suspense

Close Your Eyes and Count to 10

By Lisa Unger

The queen of “thrillers you can also discuss with your book club” is back with this high-stakes suspense novel about a game of hide-and-seek that turns murderous. Single mother Adele is participating in an extreme version of the childhood classic on an island as part of a mass social media stunt. But a storm is brewing, someone seems to be stalking the contestants and Adele will have to fight her way through layers of intrigue and hidden motives to make it out alive.

Available 03/11/2025
Suspense

Kills Well with Others

By Deanna Raybourn

We adored Deanna Raybourn’s Killers of a Certain Age and cannot wait to be reunited with Billie, Helen, Mary Alice and Natalie, four accomplished assassins in their 60s. Having settled their beef with the secret organization that employs them, the Museum, the women are called into action to stop a mole within the Museum’s ranks who seems to have teamed up with an Eastern European gangster.

Available 03/25/2025
Thriller

Nobody’s Fool

By Harlan Coben

Harlan Coben’s extensive backlist has proved fertile ground for Netflix in recent years, with adaptations of the thriller master’s effortlessly engaging novels frequently becoming the most watched shows on the platform. Fool Me Once, based on Coben’s novel of the same name, was an enormous hit, and so the ever-savvy Coben has penned a sequel of sorts: Nobody’s Fool, which follows former detective Sami Kierce of Fool Me Once as he investigates a mystery from his past.

Available 04/01/2025
Mystery

Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man)

By Jesse Q. Sutanto

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, Jesse Q. Sutanto’s charming cozy mystery and one of our Best Mysteries of 2023, will be getting a sequel! For her next case, Vera will be looking into influencer Xander Lin, whose background is just as mysterious as his death: When Xander’s body is discovered, the police can’t find anyone to officially identify him, as all of his contacts deny knowing him.

Available 04/08/2025
Cozy Mystery, Mystery

The Maid’s Secret

By Nita Prose

Another beloved cozy mystery sleuth will return in 2025: Molly Gray, Nita Prose’s adored hotel maid-turned-detective. When an antiques show films at the hotel, one of Molly’s family heirlooms turns out to be worth millions. But then, of course, the heirloom is stolen. As Molly investigates, she uncovers some shocking secrets about her own family.

Available 05/06/2025
Thriller

South of Nowhere

By Jeffery Deaver

Jeffery Deaver’s Colter Shaw series—which also now serves as the source material for Tracker, a hit TV show on CBS—follows the titular character as he searches for missing people and, inevitably, stumbles upon a crime he must put right. For his fifth adventure, Colter travels to Northern California to find a family that’s lost in the rising floodwaters as a nearby levee fails.

Available 05/13/2025
Mystery, Noir

Fever Beach

By Carl Hiaasen

The iconic writer (and inventor of what we like to call “Florida Guy Noir”) will return with his first novel for adults in four years, Fever Beach, a zany Sunshine State caper that begins with Dale Figgo, a man so stupid he was kicked out of the Proud Boys for being incompetent, picking up a hitchhiker. Things will, of course, soon spiral out of control in classic Hiaasen fashion, pulling in shady billionaires and dark money and skulduggery galore.

Available 05/20/2025
Thriller

The Last Ferry Out

By Andrea Bartz

Andrea Bartz’s thrillers are marvelous marriages of ripped-from-the-headlines plots and nuanced character work, the perfect read to while away a day by the pool or on a blanket in a park. So The Last Ferry Out had a near-guaranteed spot on our summer reading list, even before we heard its juicy premise: A woman travels to the island paradise where her fiancée died to find closure, and befriends a charming group of expats. But then one of the expats vanishes—right after saying he knows the truth about what happened to her fiancée.

Available 05/20/2025
Suspense

We Live Here Now

By Sarah Pinborough

The mad genius who penned Behind Her Eyes, a book whose twists will go down as some of the most go-for-broke and shocking reveals in suspense history, returns with a gothic, haunted house thriller that sounds right up her alley. After nearly dying in an accident, Londoner Emily moves with her husband to a beautiful, remote estate in Dartmoor. Things start to go wrong immediately—fires going out, books falling from the shelves, a terrible presence in one of the rooms—but only when Emily is alone.

Available 05/20/2025
Suspense

The Doorman

By Chris Pavone

Chris Pavone’s classy, insightful thrillers are as interested in the inner workings of their characters as they are in feats of derring-do, and his next book is rightfully being called his “most ambitious book yet.” A one-day-in-the-city type of story, The Doorman hinges upon Chicky Diaz, the titular guardian of New York City’s Bohemia apartment building, but broadens its scope to encompass all the citizens of the Bohemia, from the penthouse inhabitants to the other staff members. As racial tensions erupt in the city after the police kill an unarmed Black man, all of them will be affected—and not all of them will survive.

Available 06/03/2025
Thriller

The Ghostwriter

By Julie Clark

We loved both of Julie Clark’s two previous novels, The Last Flight and The Lies I Tell, both of which were international bestsellers. So we can’t wait to get our hands on The Ghostwriter, which follows Olivia, the titular character, as she prepares for her most challenging job yet: writing her father’s last book. A legendary horror writer who was suspected of killing his siblings, Olivia’s father is finally ready to reveal the truth.

Available 06/10/2025
Noir, Thriller

King of Ashes

By S.A. Cosby

The lauded author of All the Sinners Bleed (our Best Mystery of 2023), S.A. Cosby has become one of the kings of Southern noir thanks to his fusion of genre thrills with matter-of-fact social commentary. His next novel, King of Ashes, is reportedly inspired by The Godfather, and there are few people better suited to provide a new take on that classic saga than Cosby, who understands that there are few things more American than crime.

Available 07/08/2025
Mystery

What the Night Brings

By Mark Billingham

After two entries in his new Detective Miller series, Mark Billingham returns to his acclaimed Tom Thorne series with What the Night Brings, which will see the detective inspector trying to solve the murder of four police officers, who seem to have been targeted as payback for some unknown transgression.

Available 09/16/2025
Cozy Mystery

Murder on the Marlow Belle

By Robert Thorogood

Robert Thorogood’s ultra-charmy British cozy series continues with Murder on the Marlow Bell, which sees best friends and sleuths Judith, Becks and Suzie investigating the death of Oliver Beresford, head of the local amateur dramatic society. It all sounds very Midsomer Murders, which we mean as the highest of compliments.

Available 09/25/2025
Cozy Mystery, Mystery

Untitled Thursday Murder Club

By Richard Osman

There are no plot details yet, but Richard Osman’s adored Thursday Murder Club mysteries will return this fall! For those of you who have not yet met the beloved sleuths of Cooper’s Chase retirement village, you have plenty of time to get caught up—once you start this hilarious cozy mystery series, you won’t want to stop.

Available 10/14/2025
Thriller

Untitled Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben

By Harlan Coben, By Reese Witherspoon

Reese Witherspoon has built a reputation as one of our most literary celebrities by helming her very influential book club, green-lighting approximately a gajillion book adaptations and writing her own picture book series. But this fall, she’ll release her very first novel for adults, with the help of blockbuster thriller author Harlan Coben. As with the new Thursday Murder Club mystery, there’s no word yet on what the book will be about, but the presence of Coben is certainly intriguing, and may hint that Witherspoon isn’t interested in working in the Big Little Lies mode that many might assume she would gravitate toward.

Available 10/21/2026
Mystery

1999

By Val McDermid

Val McDermid’s magnificent Allie Burns mysteries function as both whodunits and time capsules, jumping forward 10 years with each book to find the stalwart Scottish journalist facing not only a new case, but an entirely different cultural and political landscape. In this ’90s installment, Allie will be tracking down a serial killer and, one assumes, grappling with the paradigm-shifting rise of the internet.

Book publication dates are subject to change.

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