Chris Bohjalian (The Guest Room) blends historical fiction with a thrilling courtroom drama in his latest novel, Hour of the Witch. Its narrator’s unique voice and perspective make this a fascinating and immersive read.

Mary Deerfield is a young Puritan woman who lives in Boston in 1662 and whose faith guides every aspect of her life. She’s constantly watching for signs—from both God and the devil. When her husband Thomas' physical abuse becomes too much to bear, she breaks from tradition and makes an unprecedented request to be granted a divorce on the grounds of cruelty. Mary’s decision to assert herself rather than submit to the will of her husband and the Church causes a cascade of unexpected events, the most terrifying of which is Mary being accused of witchcraft, a charge that could lead to her execution.

The themes in Hour of the Witch are universal: A young woman seeks to escape her husband's abuse and also the patriarchal culture that allows such abuse to persist. By demanding to be released from her marriage, Mary faces judgement that victims of violence from intimate partners still experience today. What makes this novel remarkable and compulsively readable is Bohjalian’s uncanny ability to capture the Puritan perspective. Mary’s manner of thinking is heavily informed by her religion and also by superstition; ultimately, she must break away from those structures in order to survive.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Chris Bohjalian explores the eerie similarities between the Puritans' time and our own.

As Mary’s community searches for supernatural evil and analyzes her every action for signs of witchcraft, true evil, in the form of Thomas’ abuse, is allowed to flourish due to his standing in the community. The reader will acutely feel Mary’s justifiable paranoia as she becomes the scapegoat for all of her community’s woes. Her fear of both Thomas and the people she is supposed to be able to trust make the tension in this novel almost claustrophobic.

Hour of the Witch is at once brilliantly idiosyncratic while also recognizable. This genre-defying thriller is sure to become a staple of book clubs and a favorite of historical mystery fans.

In Caroline Kepnes’ third You novel, Joe Goldberg is ready to settle down. Volunteering at a library on Bainbridge Island, he’s keeping things squeaky clean while also falling in love with his boss, Mary Kay. Her social and family ties distract her from Joe—the real thing, staring her in the face across the circulation desk—but this time, he’s committed to doing no harm. If he gently thumbs the scales of justice (and true love) in his favor, surely that will be OK, right? Of course, this new beginning is dogged by loose ends from his last known address that refuse to be neatly tied off.

You Love Me is a wild ride, full of twists and slapstick gore. It's also a metatext in some ways. Joe’s obsession with Mary Kay is true to what we know of him, and his interior monologue full of TV, music, film and book references make him a compelling antihero. Mary Kay’s relationship with a rocker from the heyday of Seattle’s grunge scene feels realistic, while her female friends are more like caricatures, overdrawn in a way that’s often hilarious. A plot thread featuring a screenplay based on Joe’s life is both a callback to Hidden Bodies and a wink at the Netflix series based on the books.

Kepnes makes Joe compelling in a way that allows for some brilliant sleight of hand. Surprises seem to come from out of nowhere, and the end is truly shocking, yet there’s a relaxed flow as it all unfolds. You Love Me is more broadly funny than You; Joe’s restraint from violence does not mean the body count is low, and some of the deaths are, to put it mildly, absolutely bonkers. The reader has to wrestle with a character who is charming, funny, well read, accommodating to a fault—and also a monster. Start here if you like, but be prepared to read the whole series. It will really get under your skin.

Freya Lyell is apprehensive about attending a wedding on the grounds of Byrne Hall; her sister Stella’s body was found not far away, and that loss still stings five years later. But when she sees a painting hanging in the main house that surely must be of Stella, her curiosity takes over. She returns to Byrne Hall alone and is rapidly absorbed into the world of Cory Byrne, his ailing mother, Diana, and the house itself, which is eerily attuned to its occupants.

The Whispering House is a gothic mystery whose ethereal tone and atmospheric detail allow it to step lightly between heavy revelations. Author Elizabeth Brooks (The Orphan of Salt Winds) establishes early on that Freya is still submerged in grief and guilt over her sister’s presumed suicide, despite the fact that many of her memories of Stella are of an impulsive young woman whose demands for attention tended to eclipse the rest of the family altogether.

Amid this grief, Freya’s numb quality makes her passive involvement with Cory, and her half-formed ideas of what their life together might be, poignant as well as also a great source of tension for the reader as more information about the house and its history come to light. It’s an odd feeling, being happy for Freya while also internally screaming for her to get out while she can.

As the story unfolds from varied points of view and different time periods, Diana’s role shifts from one at the fringes to something more central and frightening. She’s a matriarch to be reckoned with, to put it mildly. Peripheral characters—Freya’s father, a woman she meets while swimming, a man she loves but thinks she lost to Stella—are well rounded and figure into the plot in intricate ways.

Brooks’ gentle, depressive pace allows The Whispering House’s revelations to be truly shocking—the fallout from a missed phone call can feel as though the world hangs in the balance.

Windsor Horne Lockwood III has a charmed life: he’s a handsome, highly intelligent white man with access to immense generational wealth.

But every rose has its thorn, and in Harlan Coben’s suspenseful and oft-surprising Win, the rakish titular character explains that he has long had to contend with negative assumptions due to his name, slight frame and regal bearing. Even this is an advantage, however: It’s caused him to cultivate exceptional combat skills (those who underestimate him soon regret it, often from a hospital bed). This has made him an excellent sidekick to Myron Bolitar, the sports agent-turned-investigator at the forefront of 11 of Coben’s novels thus far. 

With Win, the author is trying something completely different. For the first time since readers met Win in 1995, the “preternaturally overconfident” sidekick emerges from the shadows to take center stage. His origin story is a departure from Coben’s Bolitar-universe narrative norm, one that readers will find intriguing thanks to a voice that is less open and more calculating, bolstered by a largely misanthropic worldview.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Harlan Coben reveals why he finally let Win step into the spotlight.

And Win’s got a lot to say, whether regarding his hedonistic pursuits or why the FBI thinks he knows something about a bizarre murder scene at a wealthy loner’s Manhattan penthouse. The FBI isn’t surprised Win doesn’t know the man, but are curious about two things found near him: a Vermeer painting stolen from the Lockwood family, and a suitcase bearing Win’s initials. 

The last time Win saw these items was 20 years prior, around the time his cousin Patricia was kidnapped and held prisoner at an isolated cabin. She escaped, but the case was never solved. Now, it seems this new murder victim was not only connected to Patricia’s terrifying ordeal, but to domestic terrorists who committed multiple as-yet-unsolved crimes 40 years ago.

Ever the investigator, Win delves into the past and casts a critical eye on the present, using his wits and wealth to gain access and information. Coben, as is his wont, raises moral dilemmas readers will enjoy chewing on and pulse-pounding action scenes will keep the pages at least semi-frantically turning. As lies are challenged, secrets are revealed and seemingly impossible decisions made, Win makes it clear that “Life is lived in the grays.”

Amy Gentry’s new novel Bad Habits is so much fun to read that it feels like you’re cheating somehow. It’s got the perfect setting—a prestigious and pretentious grad school program ominously referred to as The Program, where students and professors misbehave outrageously. And the friendship at its heart detonates a series of double-crosses and revelations that are breathtaking and sometimes hilarious. How can one book be so unrelenting in its sense of unease, yet also so much fun?

Academic rock star Claire “Mac” Woods has just given a keynote address when she spies Gwen, her former best friend from grad school, at the hotel bar. It’s a prickly reunion, doused in alcohol, and Claire awakens from a blackout thinking she’s confessed a long-held secret. Said secret, and the story behind it, comes out in flashbacks as Claire hunts for Gwen (and I do mean hunts) inside the hotel. What unspools is a tale of class disparity, friendship, competition, infidelity and the variable exchange rates of sex and power. It’s a knockout.

Gentry’s light touch with such high-stakes subject matter is impressive. The program Gwen and Claire (who then went primarily by “Mac”) attended is rich in details that feel true to a university experience, even as the novel skewers how how much of that experience is artifice or make-believe. Several storylines tug at the reader’s attention, but Gentry continually reminds us of what we don’t yet know with a refrain that is jarring each time it reappears: “The accident. The farmhouse.” The misdirection pays off each time because we’re so invested in this fragile, fractured relationship.

If you liked Good as Gone, Gentry’s debut novel, Bad Habits has a theme in common with it: Sometimes the biggest surprises stem from a truth that was staring you in the face all along. Read Bad Habits for a satirically surreal take on higher education, and for an antihero you’ll lose sleep over.