The crime scene is the stuff of nightmares: A blood-drenched bed in a posh, pristine home on a family’s private island. Worse yet, the victim is missing. Called to the scene in the midst of a ferocious storm, Senior Investigator Shana Merchant’s partner on the case challenges her assessment of the case and asserts a theory that the victim may be injured but alive. Death in the Family is a dark and stormy mystery that sets doubt and certainty against one another for up-all-night reading.

Author Tessa Wegert’s debut is impressive in its scope. The Sinclair family is packed with suspects, and their confinement in foul weather makes for short tempers and lots of juicy misbehavior. But on top of that classical, Christie-like foundation, there’s the matter of Shana’s personal history. We learn over the course of the novel that she was abducted by a serial killer when she worked for the NYPD, a trauma from which she may not have fully recovered. Her new job in the rural Thousand Islands region is not supposed to include the depravity this case confronts her with. Both Shana’s partner and her fiancé question her judgement, and her behavior at times makes their concerns seem entirely reasonable.

As Death in the Family draws to a close, the Sinclair matter is resolved, but we’ve barely pulled back the curtain on Shana’s past. It’s enormously frustrating to close a book knowing you have to wait for the next installment, but it speaks to how finely this debut is engineered. Death in the Family marks a bold beginning to an addictive new series.

Former police detective Joona Linna is once more on the case in the high-octane novel The Rabbit Hunter by Lars Kepler. Things get off to an explosive start as an escort service worker is witness to the brutal assassination of her client, who is none other than the Swedish foreign minister. Initially believing the hit to be the work of terrorists and a possible prelude to additional violence, the Swedish Security Service, including Joona’s former partner, Saga Bauer, turn to Joona for help. But Joona, as Kepler fans know, is in jail as a result of striking an officer in his last case (recounted in Kepler’s previous novel, Stalker.) After some convincing from the prime minister himself, and promises of a possible commuted sentence, Joona agrees to lend his skills to the case at hand. The resulting investigation turns into an action-packed race against the clock to stop a series of additional killings by a ruthless assassin.

Kepler, a pseudonym for husband-and-wife authors Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril and Alexander Ahndoril, builds suspense with each subsequent murder while planting more clues to tantalize readers. Joona is constantly one step behind the killer, increasing the stakes for the next victim in line. While there are instances of graphic violence and admittedly gratuitous sex, Kepler keeps things grounded with real emotional threads for each of his characters. Joona’s relationship with his former co-workers is especially intriguing as he tries to put his criminal misdeeds behind him while rebuilding the trust of his colleagues.

The sixth book in the Joona Linna series (you don’t have to read the others to follow along), The Rabbit Hunter grips readers from the start and rarely lets up throughout its 500-plus pages. The breakneck pace almost seems custom-built for TV or film—producers of the TV adaptation of Jeffery Deaver’s The Bone Collector, take note! The Rabbit Hunter is a chase you’ll want to get in on.

In Dr. Judy Melinek and T.J. Mitchell’s First Cut, medical examiner Dr. Jessie Teska works on the victims of “sudden, violent, and unexpected deaths,” from accidents to suicide to murder. And in Jessie’s first week at her new job, a homicide case launches her life into chaos: A young woman has died from a drug overdose and, it turns out, used to work for one of Jessie’s mercurial new bosses. His reaction makes Jessie wonder if it’s an innocent connection or something darker—but how will she balance a proper investigation with complicated, unfamiliar office politics?

Questions mount and danger rises as Jessie strives to juggle a heavy caseload, leave past hurts behind and figure out whom she can (and cannot) trust. Drug dealers, detectives, lawyers and bitcoin brokers figure into this atmospheric, San Francisco-set tale, which is peppered with humor thanks to Jessie’s wit, as well as Bea the high-spirited beagle and Sparkle the whip-smart bail-bonds lady. Jessie’s forays into dating and romance add sexy fun, and her musings on our collective corporeal vulnerability are by turns humbling (“The cops could drag their feet and stonewall . . . all they want. The body never lies.”) and alarming (à la lists of cases like “jaywalker hit by a bus, a gunshot suicide, a skateboard versus a hydrant, and a stabbing homicide”).

The married authors—whose first book was the bestselling 2014 memoir Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner—expertly employ their know-how, maintaining blood-and-guts vérité while empathetically exploring what it’s like to do a job with actual life-and-death stakes. First Cut is a fascinating, entertaining series kickoff, with a particularly kickass heroine.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Judy Melinek and T.J. Mitchell.

A title like Thin Ice immediately connotes danger, and New York Times bestselling author Paige Shelton delivers in every way. A sense of dread persists from the opening page to the novel’s surprising conclusion, with an overall tense mood and an all-too-real terror felt by the book’s protagonist, Beth Rivers.

Beth is also known as Elizabeth Fairchild, the famous penname under which she writes popular thrillers. When we first meet her, Beth is on the run from a violent encounter—a kidnapping by an obsessed fan and a dramatic escape. Her flight takes her to the remote village of Benedict, Alaska, where she hopes to elude her assailant, who is still at large.

Beth’s scars, both internal and external, are real. Internally, she suffers from an overriding fear that even though she has put hundreds of miles between her former and new lives, she may still be in danger. Externally, there is a ragged scar on her head incurred during her escape, serving as a constant reminder of her close brush with death.

Shelton methodically introduces Beth to a wide-ranging cast while swiftly ramping up the tension. It’s not yet winter, but Beth’s Alaskan environment is already harsh, cold and remote. While most of the people she encounters in the village appear to be supportive and caring, she can never quite let go of her suspicions that any one of them could mean her harm—or worse, expose her real identity.

With more memories of her ordeal threatening to return, Beth takes on a new role as the community newspaper’s only reporter and thrusts herself into an ongoing investigation of a local death. New secrets and questions abound, leaving Beth to wonder if she has escaped one threat only to have fallen into another.

Thin Ice is the first in a series from Shelton, who is best known for her Scottish Bookshop Mystery cozy series. But there is nothing cozy here, only danger.