Brilliant hacker-turned-MI6-agent Brigitte Sharp (she goes by “Bridge”) feels torn between opposing forces. She’s a member of the British intelligence agency’s elite cyber threat analytics unit and an excellent field agent, but she’s reluctant to leave desk duty since a failed mission three years ago. She’s close to her sister and friends but has become weary of lying to them to protect her cover. And her drive to seek justice has been tamped down by PTSD-fueled fear that she’ll harm someone because of her perceived incompetence.

Now, as Antony Johnston’s The Exphoria Code opens, Bridge’s life has come to a crisis point: Her boss and therapist are insisting she get back to fieldwork just as she learns her online friend Tenebrae_Z has been found dead—perhaps as a result of their attempts to decrypt mysterious ASCII (an electronic character encoding standard) art that the two came across online.

Bridge “had always thought of the truth as a mountain peak. . . . To reach it, you might have to negotiate tricky paths, shifting scree, falling boulders. But if you were persistent enough . . . you could eventually reach the summit and the truth would be revealed.” She comes up against a veritable mountain range of obstacles as she investigates Ten’s murder. For starters, the ASCII posts are related to a top-secret Anglo-French project involving military drones—a project that’s got a mole in its ranks, as well as plenty of dangerous people invested in keeping Bridge from finding out who the mole is or what nefariousness he or she is up to.

Johnston, perhaps best known for his graphic novel The Coldest City (which served as the source for the film Atomic Blonde), has once again created a heroine who’s as smart and savvy as she is badass. He lays a complex trail of clues, hazards and betrayals as Bridge goes undercover to track down the mole and ends up in tense interrogations, edge-of-your-seat chases and action-packed fights to the possible death. Can she unearth the mole before something terrible happens? Readers will thrill to the chase in this kickoff to a techno-thriller series that has at its center a hacker with a heart of gold—and nerves of steel.

A squeaky-clean honors student gets arrested for selling drugs. A gregarious old man vanishes in the middle of the night, leaving his beloved dog and his belongings behind. Longtime Black residents are disappearing from Gifford Place, and wealthy white people are moving in. Something is definitely wrong with this picture, and it’s worse than run-of-the-mill gentrification.

By now, many will have seen When No One Is Watching described as Rear Window meets Get Out. Those comparisons are shockingly apt. Alyssa Cole’s latest triumph incorporates elements of both psychological thriller and social horror. Its finale is a bit macabre, much like Get Out, and there is a romantic subplot as well, just as there was in Hitchcock’s masterpiece. But Cole’s story is also highly original. She is drawing directly from today’s turbulent social currents and grim realities, crafting a nightmare from everyday terrors, both large and small.

Through the story of one woman defending her home and her neighborhood, Cole dramatizes the economic displacement caused by racialized capitalism, as well as the petty skirmishes that take place between new settlers and old, between Black and white, on a daily basis in places like Fort Greene and Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn. There’s simply no one better equipped to distill the racial politics of this moment into intriguing and terrifying entertainment.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Alyssa Cole shares why she’s wanted to write about gentrification for years.

Perhaps the best evidence of Cole’s skill in this regard is the remarkable correspondence between a fictional event in the book and a real-life incident that occurred just miles away from where the book is set. In May, a white woman was walking her dog off-leash in Central Park (in violation of the rules). When a concerned Black birdwatcher asked her to leash her dog, she falsely accused him of threatening her and reported him to the police. The incident occurred many months after Cole had finished her manuscript, and yet the confrontation strikes a frighteningly similar chord as the one in her book.

A similar standoff occurs between the protagonist, Sydney, an African American woman who is a longtime owner of a brownstone on Gifford Place, and Kim, a “high-ponytailed,” Lululemon-wearing newcomer, who is white. Viewers of the Central Park video saw that Amy Cooper was the aggressor and that she explicitly used her racial identity to claim authority. Readers will find the same is true with Kim and Sydney. It’s all about social control. Kim has done something wrong and tries to get out of it by accusing Sydney of “making [her] feel unsafe” and, again just like Amy Cooper, saying, “I’ll call the police.” As Cole explained on Twitter, “it’s not because I’m prescient, it’s because this kind of power play happens all the time, in ways small and large, often from white people who don’t think they’re racist.”

Here, Cole actually exercises restraint. Though thrillers like Get Out tend to present heightened versions of reality until the grisly denouement, the tensions that Cole brings to life on the page are hardly exaggerated. The petty insults and indignities that occur on Gifford Place happen every day in shops and on corners throughout America. The book also includes snippets of discussions from a neighborhood forum called “OurHood,” which seems to be modeled on Nextdoor. The ending is a bit rushed, and some readers will question the need for some of the violence. Overall, though, this is a brilliant first foray into the genre. Cole leverages her strengths to great effect, incorporating history, biting social observation and even a little romance along the way.

Another element that distinguishes When No One Is Watching is its grounding in not just present-day politics but history. Cole made her name in historical romance, and it shows. The Brooklyn history she includes enriches and deepens the story, placing current events and the characters’ experience with systemic racism today firmly in context and conversation with the past. The story Cole tells is a disturbing one, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Virgil Wounded Horse is a man living tentatively between two worlds. On the one hand, he feels an obligation to his Lakota upbringing. On the other, the tragic deaths of his mother and sister have caused him to drift away from this heritage. But when his 14-year-old nephew, Nathan, nearly dies after a heroin overdose, Virgil’s loyalties are put to the test. A recovering alcoholic, Virgil vows to protect his family and his tribe as best he can by seeking out those bringing the drugs into his community and exacting his revenge.

The police are no help on South Dakota’s Rosebud Indian Reservation, so it falls to men like Virgil to mete out the tribe’s own brand of justice when necessary. When the trail leads off reservation, however, and into the purview of the FBI, Virgil’s hands are tied. The only way around it may be by allowing the Feds to use Nathan as a confidential informant in a pair of drug buys, or else Virgil may see his nephew imprisoned in an adult institution for distribution of narcotics.

Virgil’s quest for justice is further complicated when he is reunited with his former girlfriend, Marie, who still embraces much of their heritage. The daughter of Ben Short Bear, who is running for tribal president, she is torn by the opportunity to attend medical school off campus, which could mean leaving the reservation and Virgil behind.

On the surface, David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s debut novel, Winter Counts, is somewhat typical for its genre: Bad guys disrupt the status quo when they muscle into the community, pushing bad drugs on an unsuspecting and highly susceptible teen population, until a vigilante or detective pushes back. The difference here is the setting on the Lakota reservation, the clash of policies between the U.S. government and Native American life, and the internal conflicts of the novel’s main characters.

Weiden, who is a member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation, elevates an otherwise routine crime novel with Native American culture and traditions, political differences and organized crime. His well-rendered, emotionally charged characters do the rest.

The Girls Weekend opens with an invitation. International bestselling young adult writer Sadie MacTavish is gathering her college friends for a weekend getaway in the Pacific Northwest to celebrate their friendship and her cousin Amy’s pregnancy. The reunited Fearless Five prepare for a perfect weekend organized by their perfect friend, complete with wine, kayaking and plenty of rehashing of past adventures (as well as grievances).

But the weekend takes a sour turn when their host abruptly goes missing, leaving behind a massive bloodstain, a messy house and a missing statue. None of the friends remember the night before, but all know the truth: With tensions high, any of them could be responsible for Sadie’s apparent murder. The only problem is that none of them knows who.

Jody Gehrman’s latest thriller is a locked-room mystery in which no one even knows how the room got locked in the first place. The women—possibly including the killer—dont’t know who’s responsible for Sadie’s disappearance, to the point that they think they might have all been drugged. Paranoia and claustrophobia prevail as our narrator, English professor June Moody, tries to uncover what happened to her perfect and perfectly infuriating friend. Gehrman slowly and skillfully doles out one bit of recovered memory at a time as June gets closer to the truth, and as the innocence of each character is questioned in turn.

With intimate character studies and breathtaking suspense, The Girls Weekend deals with old relationships turned brittle with age, inviting the reader to an idyllic haven and then abruptly shattering the calm.

The FBI and the supernatural are familiar bedfellows in pop culture. For starters, there’s Fox and Mulder in “The X-Files.” Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child gave us Agent Pendergast. Now there’s the welcome addition of FBI agent Odessa Hardwicke and occult investigator John Silence in The Hollow Ones, the new novel from Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan.

Odessa is thrust into a bizarre mystery after she and her partner, Walt Leppo, chase down a random spree killer to a New Jersey home. But after killing the suspect in an exchange of gunfire, Leppo suddenly tries to kill the man’s 9-year-old child, and Odessa is forced to fire on and kill Leppo. In a decidedly twisted turn, Odessa “sees” something she can’t explain leaving his body.

Remanded to desk duty while the Bureau investigates her shooting of Leppo, Odessa is, somewhat conveniently, tasked with cleaning out the desk of retired agent Earl Solomon, who is dying. Solomon urges Odessa to contact John Silence, a man he’s worked with before, to assist her in the case.

Silence—who is based on one of Lovecraft disciple Algernon Blackwood’s characters by the same name—is an enigmatic and mysterious man who seemingly knows everything about Odessa and the threat she is pursuing, which he refers to as a Hollow One, a body-hopping entity addicted to the thrill of experiencing death.

The authors ferry us back and forth in time. Silence is hundreds of years old, thanks to an ancient curse, and is responsible for setting the Hollow One loose in the world. It’s a bit complicated, but suffice it to say there’s a good bit of world building behind the strange goings-on, which all leads up to a modern-day, high-stakes pursuit by Odessa and Silence to capture the entity before it can do more harm.

Hogan and del Toro previously collaborated on the Strain trilogy, a popular series turned short-lived TV show, and The Hollow Ones has TV series written all over it. At the very least, it promises to be the first in a new series of literary adventures, and that’s a good thing, as Silence is a fascinating character you’ll want to see again.

Someone’s Listening, the debut novel by screenwriter and award-winning playwright Seraphina Nova Glass, is a sharply written, twisty psychological thriller that could easily fit on your bookshelf next to Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train. In convincingly heartbreaking fashion, the novel follows radio host and psychologist Faith Finley’s free-fall from the height of popularity to public enemy and outcast.

Faith has worked hard to get where she is. Her practice, radio show and new book are all taking off, and she’s riding high on her success—until everything suddenly crashes down around her. First, one of her clients accuses her of taking advantage of his trust through unwanted sexual advances. Faith denies the allegation, but neither the public at large nor the media are content to take her word for it. She is vilified for her alleged transgression, tarnishing her reputation and putting her job at risk. But the indignities don’t stop there. Even her husband, Liam, begins to doubt her, causing a rift in their seemingly perfect marriage and planting the seeds for what’s to come.

As bad as things are for Faith, Glass obligingly makes them worse. Faith and Liam are involved in a violent car crash, but when she wakes up in the hospital, Liam is gone. Only a cryptic email remains, further deepening the puzzle.

Told exclusively through Faith’s point of view, Someone’s Listening allows readers to easily empathize with Faith while clinging to an element of doubt. Is she lying about something? Is she keeping something from us? The mystery and ambiguity build with each subsequent chapter en route to a suspense-filled and breathless finale.

Set in mysterious and witchy woods, The Daughters of Foxcote Manor is the perfect read for mystery lovers who prefer thrills without gore and violence. Author Eve Chase embarks on a deep character study of two women, both of whom are entangled in the tragic events of one summer day in 1971.

Live-in nanny Rita is sent off to Foxcote Manor in the Forest of Dean to care for precocious Teddy and troubled teen Hera while their socialite mother, Jeannie, recovers after the stillbirth of a child. Awkward, shy and utterly devoted to her charges, Rita struggles to balance Jeannie’s depressive episodes with the family’s paranoid patriarch’s demands that Rita act as a spy. When Hera finds an infant abandoned in the forest and Jeannie wants to keep her, Rita is forced into even more lies.

All the while, the forest around them feels claustrophobic and menacing. From the strange arrival of the baby to moved objects to suddenly unlocked gates, Rita feels as if Foxcote Manor is being visited by some sort of supernatural presence.

As the culmination of family secrets comes to a boil in 1971, London makeup artist Sylvie is struggling in present day. Her mother is comatose after a fall, and her teenage daughter is harboring a secret. When Sylvie finds newspaper clippings in her mother’s house about an abandoned infant and a mysterious murder in the Forest of Dean nearly 50 years ago, Sylvie realizes she knows nothing about her family.

The Daughters of Foxcote Manor draws its intensity from the secrets of its main characters, and as the summer of 1971 draws to a close, Chase builds a frenetic momentum. The slightly gothic atmosphere of Foxcote Manor and the surrounding woods adds an element of fear to an already fraught environment. While all the violence happens off-page, the galloping pace and dangers faced by both Rita and Sylvie keep this mystery from ever feeling cozy.

Beauregard “Bug” Montage thought he was out—out of the rackets and the crimes that once dominated his early life. He had walked away from that lifestyle, opened his own garage, settled down with a loving wife, had several children. But the past and the demands of the present have a way with catching up with people.

In Bug’s case, mounting expenses—a mix-up with his ailing mother’s Medicaid has left her owing more than $48,000 to her nursing home; his daughter needs tuition money for college; he’s in arrears on loans for the operation of his garage—leave him with nowhere else to turn. So when an old associate, Ronnie, approaches him about a job that could set everything right, Bug reluctantly agrees. 

Author S.A. Cosby quickly establishes Bug’s financial burdens and emotional dilemma in his new novel, Blacktop Wasteland, and never lets up on the gas. The result is a high-octane, white-knuckle thriller that will have readers whipping through the pages at breakneck speed. Needless to say, not everything goes to plan. Bug and Ronnie’s “simple” heist of a jewelry store goes horribly awry in more ways than one. Bug’s skills as a wheelman—and the Plymouth Duster he inherited from his father—enable him and his crew to get away with their lives, but it’s not enough to keep greed, betrayal and vengeance from closing in at every turn.

Cosby’s tightfisted prose fuels this story with heart-pumping (and often brutal) action that begs to be adapted for the big screen but somehow never loses its compassionate edge. Bug’s commitment and dedication to his family is real and heartfelt, as is his determination to make a legitimate life for them. His only fault is putting his trust in people he knows he should have nothing to do with and succumbing to the allure of easy money.

If you have the nagging feeling you’ve read or heard about Beauregard “Bug” Montage before, it’s possible. Cosby, a Virginia writer whose work has appeared in numerous anthologies, first penned a short story about Bug, “Slant-Six,” which was selected as a distinguished story for Best American Mystery Stories 2016, making Blacktop Wasteland a welcome return appearance.

Buckle in. This is one hell of a ride.

Author and screenwriter David Klass turns the serial killer mythology on its head in his new novel, Out of Time, in which the killer is intent on saving mankind through his inconceivable deeds. The Green Man, so dubbed by the media and the FBI pursuing him, doesn’t kill for the sake of some insatiable, perverse sexual desire but out of an acute calling to save the environment.

By targeting certain sites, the Green Man’s terrorist acts are meant to call attention to climate change and heighten awareness of its adverse effects. The novel opens with the destruction of a dam on Idaho’s Snake River. Environmental activists regard his actions as heroic, despite the deaths incurred along the way which the Green Man views as collateral damage.

FBI data analyst Tom Smith—not exactly a memorable name, he admits, adding, “I didn’t choose it”—and a task force of 300 FBI agents only see a killer who must be stopped. Smith brings to the investigation an outside-the-box approach, as he realizes that the killer isn’t just some deranged sociopath killing for kicks or sexual gratification but may be a well-educated, well-adjusted family man whose cause is more important than a few unfortunate deaths. So begins a fast-paced game of cat and mouse as Smith zeroes in on the Green Man’s identity, intent on stopping him before more lives are lost.

Klass, who has written many young adult novels and is best known for a bevy of Hollywood screenplays including Kiss the Girls and Walking Tall, writes in terse, straightforward prose. Chapters alternate between Smith and the Green Man’s point of view, allowing a close-up perspective of each character’s motivations and desires.

While his intentions may have some merit and his deeds may cause readers to stop and think, you know the Green Man’s going down. The fun is in the thrill of the chase, and in that respect Klass delivers.

We’ve all heard the saying “You can’t go home again,” but Maggie Holt decides to do it anyway in Riley Sager’s supernatural haunted-house thriller, Home Before Dark.

The 30-year-old interior designer’s father, Ewan, recently died and, to her surprise, left her a house she didn’t realize he still owned: Baneberry Hall, a beautiful Victorian manse located in the woods of Vermont. Twenty-five years ago, Maggie’s parents bought the house for a song because of its tragic and violent history. They optimistically set out to make happy memories there together but after 20 days in the house they fled in terror. Unfortunately, Ewan’s bestselling memoir about their traumatic experiences achieved massive fame and notoriety that have been dogging and defining Maggie ever since. Renovating and selling the gothic mansion seems like an excellent opportunity for her to reckon with her past and put Baneberry Hall behind her at last—especially since she doesn’t remember the events Ewan wrote about (and is highly skeptical that they ever happened in the first place). Sure, her father made her promise to never return to the house, but if you don’t believe in ghosts, they can’t scare or harm you, right?

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Riley Sager shares how he crafted a literary hall of mirrors.

Sager fans know better, of course, and therein lies the fun. As in his previous bestselling thrillers (Final Girls, The Last Time I Lied and Lock Every Door), the author puts a fresh, clever spin on horror tropes, this time with echoes of The Amityville Horror and “The Haunting of Hill House.” And he amps up the tension by alternating chapters of Ewan’s book with Maggie’s musings, thus putting the past and present on a collision course that readers can, but our heroine cannot, see.

Home Before Dark is a compelling and layered mix of taut psychological suspense, genuinely scary haunted-house terrors and the vagaries of memory, capped off with an inventive and satisfyingly wild ending.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. An ex-Mafia bruiser-turned-private-detective is hired by a senator’s bodyguard to investigate the apparent suicide of his nephew. Along the way, the PI encounters a backwater town full of hillbillies, a blood-worshiping cult and a particle collider housed deep underground in a mysterious research facility. Not ringing any bells? Good! Then all of the twists and turns in Laird Barron’s intricate and deftly written Worse Angels will be as surprising to you as they were to me.

Isaiah Coleridge has taken his licks over the years. A former member of the mob known more for hurting people than helping them, Coleridge is haunted both mentally and physically by his violent past. Now he’s a private detective, working to build a more normal life for his family. But that old saying, “Just when I thought I was out . . . ” always seems to come true for Mafia types. True to form, Coleridge’s reputation for his brains as well as his brawn lead him to take on a cold case investigation. The client: Badja Adeyemi, ex-major-domo to a powerful US senator. The job: Find out if the suicide of Sean Pruitt, Adeyemi’s nephew, was in fact a murder. When Isaiah discovers that something more wicked might be happening in the town of Horseheads in upstate New York, a twisty and exciting mystery unfolds.

For all the originality of the detail, the broad strokes might come across as familiar: A brilliant tough-guy with a checkered past investigates a death in a dreary town and starts to uncover some signs that suggest something way out of the norm. But Barron’s deft handling of mood and tension makes this feel fresh too. He takes us into and out of the action with an almost cinematic precision, giving us just enough to understand the stakes, while leaving enough mystery to keep us guessing. It should also be said that Barron’s command of language is stunning. Dialogue rattles off lightning-quick and the banter between Coleridge and his team is often hilarious. When we find ourselves inside of Coleridge’s mind, the tone shifts beautifully to reflect the psychedelic canvas of inner thought.

There’s impressive world building here as well. The details that Barron chooses to populate the story with at first feel disparate and random, but his vivid choices turn out to pay dividends as the story goes on. For example, Coleridge’s knowledge of ancient mythology bleeds over into the narrative and even starts to influence the reader’s perspective on the plot. Though certain details simply created clutter, overall the risks Barron took in the name of atmosphere and payoff feel worthwhile.

I’m most frequently conscripted to review the sci-fi and fantasy genres, where entire universes are invented on the page, and there’s something about Worse Angels that feels similar to my usual gig. Feeling like a character is strong enough to guide you through the unknown is as relevant here as it is in more fantastic settings. The great thing is that this is, in fact, Coleridge’s third outing, with more to come. I may have to take a detour from whatever book I’m reading when his next caper hits the shelves.

Catherine House, the debut novel by Elisabeth Thomas, defies categorization; it is a coming-of-age story, a thriller, science-fiction and a Gothic novel all at once. These elements should feel incongruous, but in the strange world of Catherine House they blend together in a way that makes perfect internal sense.

Ines is a young woman running from her past. Once a dedicated student, her life changed dramatically during her senior year of high school, leading to a horrific tragedy. With nowhere left to go, Ines is fortunate to have been accepted into Catherine House, an elite, unconventional university. Isolated in the Pennsylvania woods, Catherine House’s campus is at once beautiful and moldering. Students agree that for three years they will focus solely on their course of study with no interaction with the outside world—no TV, no radio, no calls or visits home. The book’s mid-1990s means that students don’t have access to Wi-Fi or cellphones either. If they should fall behind in their studies or violate the university’s rules, they are sent to a facility called The Tower for “restoration” and contemplation.

Ines is never quite sold on Catherine House’s exclusive charms. While other students, like her roommate Baby, focus entirely on succeeding in the rigorous course study, Ines sees the decaying grandeur of Catherine House for what it is: an institution hiding secrets in plain sight. Among these secrets is the university’s research and highly secretive experiments into a mysterious substance called plasm.

Catherine House employs that wonderful Gothic convention of an inexplicable sense of wrongness, which pervades the narrative. We see the institution through Ines’ point of view; she craves its sanctuary, but is simultaneously also too cynical to accept it. There is never a moment when Ines, or the reader, can fully let her guard down and trust that any of Catherine House’s strange rituals and traditions are benign, and as Ines’ curiosity about plasm becomes a fixation, the atmosphere of the novel takes on an even more sinister feel.

Much of Catherine House is devoted to building the world that Ines and her friends inhabit, a narrative strategy that delays some of the suspense. However, by crafting a truly immersive experience, Thomas ratchets up the sense of dread as both Ines and readers begin to see Catherine House for what it truly is. With a compelling narrator and truly inventive setting, Catherine House embraces Gothic conventions even as it defies expectation and utilizes them in new and exciting ways. It challenges the genre while embracing it and takes readers on a truly unique journey.

Jack Dixon is not a conventional PI, at least by the standards of your average mystery novel. He’s strong but has no stomach for violence, and while a glass of good bourbon won’t go unappreciated, he joneses more often for apple slices dipped in almond butter. Work takes him on the road when a teammate from his college wrestling days who’s since turned professional starts receiving threats; his character, “U.S. Grant,” rips up Confederate flags in the ring, and not everyone is a fan. Now Jack has his back, but life in the “squared circle” (a wrestling slang term for the wrestling ring) may prove deadly to them both. Cheap Heat leaves it all on the mat.

Daniel Ford’s second Jack Dixon novel carries over a bit from Body Broker, his series debut. Jack gets around on his motorcycle, but the roar of a hog engine puts him on high alert thanks to a prior deadly run-in with a biker gang. Depictions of the pro wrestling circuit are grimy and depressing but manage to convey the thrill and glory of a good match—the ring announcer/chaperone for the wrestlers is a minor character juicy enough to take up a book of her own. Good food and good company are healing for Jack, but he trades the solitary claustrophobia of his houseboat for a series of cruddy motel rooms on this job.

The conclusion involves a showdown that pulls a thread from the first book and ties both stories together, then blows a hole in what we think is coming next. There will be a third volume, thankfully, because we could all use more stories about a secretly shy, carb-counting hero. Cheap Heat contains no cheap thrills; there’s a big heart and quick mind at the helm.