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.

Heather Chavez’s No Bad Deed is a fast-paced, high-anxiety tale of a good Samaritan’s offer of assistance gone very, very wrong. On her drive home from work after a 12-hour shift at her veterinarian practice, Cassie Larkin pulls over to mop up a spilled drink—and sees a man throw a woman into a ravine.

A shocked Cassie calls 911 and, despite the dispatcher’s exhortations to stay in her minivan, she gets out and stumbles down a steep hill in an attempt to save the woman. The attacker offers a terrifying bargain—“Let her die and I’ll let you live”—before running off, stealing Cassie’s van (as well as her wallet and keys) along the way. The woman lives, and Cassie pushes through her shock and fear to give a statement to Detective Ray Rico, who tells her, “Every crime is personal, even the random ones.” But Cassie can’t imagine how on earth this crime could have anything to do with her, nor can she figure out why Rico seems to be regarding her with skepticism rather than focusing on catching the criminal who knows where she lives and has the keys to her house.

Exhausted and distraught, she pushes the weirdness aside and goes home, hoping the police will soon catch said criminal and resolving to start fresh tomorrow. Alas, rather than a festive day with a candy-filled finale, Cassie’s Halloween ends on a strange and terrifying note. Her husband Sam takes their 6-year-old daughter trick-or-treating and then disappears. Cassie wonders if he’s having an affair, but can’t believe that he would abandon their child.

Chavez, a former newspaper reporter, does an excellent job of pulling the reader along with Cassie as she tears around town assembling clues in an effort to figure out what the hell is going on. Thanks to the uncanny timing, Cassie wonders if Sam’s disappearance is related to the bizarre assault she witnessed. That would be a wild coincidence, but as the hours pass and the danger and strangeness increases, Cassie’s sense of reality warps and changes, and her instincts are increasingly at odds with what she’s seeing and hearing.

No Bad Deed is an exciting exploration of what might happen when a person’s ordinary life is suddenly thrown into chaos, and knowing whom or what to trust is no longer possible. It’s also a delightfully Harlan Coben-esque tale of the ways in which the past can influence the present—for better or much, much worse.

Screenwriter Christian White knows his way around a plot twist. Even the most die-hard thriller reader will be surprised at the direction The Wife and the Widow takes, but even without its truly shocking reveal, White’s thriller stands out for its penetrating examination of marriage and the lies that build between spouses.

Abby and her husband, Ray, are eking out a living on a gothic, windswept island off the coast of Victoria, Australia. When the police find the body of a man who died under suspicious circumstances, it disrupts the sleepy island community—and makes Abby notice how strangely Ray has been acting. Suddenly distant and secretive, Ray has disposed of his work clothes and can’t account for all his time away from home.

Just as Abby is struggling to reconcile her husband’s odd behavior, stay-at-home mom Kate is suddenly questioning everything she knows about her husband, John. After he doesn’t come home from what he said was a business trip, Kate learns that John quit his job three months ago. The only place she can think to look for her missing husband is the island where they own a vacation home.

White’s eerie, patient unraveling of small deceptions makes The Wife and the Widow a hypnotic reading experience. Both Kate and Abby’s worlds experience seismic shifts, but due to what appear to be, at first, trivial lies. Even as the suspense builds and trivial lies snowball into something much more devastating, a sense of sadness grounds the novel as Kate and Abby grieve for the relationships they thought they had. Unlike most domestic thrillers, the female leads here aren’t the victims of violence; rather their trauma comes from living lives they realize were permeated with lies. When the truth about John and Ray is finally revealed it feels explosive, but also like a relief from a nagging ache.

Heartbreaking and contemplative, The Wife and the Widow is one of those mysteries that lingers in the reader’s mind long after it is finished.

Naked Came the Florida Man, the newest novel by Tim Dorsey, is a crazy read from start to finish, and I mean that in a good way. The novel—part comedy, part thriller—follows the latest exploits of Dorsey’s oddball duo of Serge Storms and his weed-addicted sidekick Coleman on a meandering trek across the Sunshine State, with no real end goal in mind. And that’s just part of what makes this book so fun.

Longtime Dorsey fans already familiar with Serge and Coleman’s antics will have the distinct advantage of knowing what to expect heading into the novel (but they won’t be able to rekindle the feeling of discovering the intrepid pair for the first time like new readers). Admittedly, the misadventures and seemingly aimless wanderings of Dorsey’s characters take a bit of getting used to, but once you do, you’ll be all too eager to go along for the ride.

What starts out as a simple tour of the state’s historic graveyards (complete with fascinating lessons about the state and its people that you probably won’t find in tourist brochures at the state line) turns into a series of escapades resulting in Serge’s unique brand of vigilante justice. Between tombstone rubbings, the pair intervene in a so-called pastor’s scheme to bilk needy seniors out of their money through shady reverse-mortgage deals, exact punishment on a man filming birds that explode after consuming Alka Seltzer tablets and help save a young football player from a greedy pirate.

If that’s not enough to pique your curiosity, Dorsey peppers the novel with Serge’s one-of-a-kind social rants on anything that comes to mind, from tangents in internet comment threads and why the U.S. cares about soccer to the length of receipts from drug stores. At one point, Serge even admits to being completely “off his rocker” and adopts a ferret as an emotional support animal.

A former reporter and editor for the Tampa Tribune until 1999, Dorsey has shirked his commitment to serious recounts of the day’s top events in favor of over-the-top tall tales and wacky characters like Serge and Coleman. I have to admit, they are a lot more fun.

The moment you think you have the latest Valerie Hart thriller figured out, Saul Black takes the narrative in a new and stunning direction. Exquisitely plotted, this police procedural unravels with the deftness and striking prose that Black fans have come to expect.

The plot of Anything For You hinges on the personal dysfunctions of two women who occupy vastly different spaces—one a homicide detective and one a killer—but feel remarkably alike in their intelligence and canny ability to read others. Valerie Hart is a seasoned homicide investigator with the San Francisco Police Department, and she’s working to stifle her self-destructive tendencies (booze, promiscuous sex and an addiction to work, to name a few) in order to make her marriage work. She’s even contemplating having a child; it's an idea that terrifies her as much as it excites her.

Valerie’s latest case is an example of how her personal life and work have become toxically entangled: The victim, prosecutor Adam Grant, once spent a night in her bed. Grant was brutally killed in his own home, with his wife barely surviving the attack. At first, it seems a cut-and-dry case in which a former inmate with a grudge against Grant is the perpetrator. But as Valerie digs deeper she learns that both Grant and the ex-con were linked by a mysterious escort known only as Sophia. Valerie knows she should remove herself from the case due to personal conflict, but she’s too invested to let go.

There’s an icy self-awareness and a self-deprecation to both Valerie and Sophia that helps them transcend typical femme fatale stereotypes. Black gives Sophia, in particular, a complex and sometimes unsettling back story that makes her feel like more of an anti-heroine than a villainess. By the time Valerie is closing in on her quarry, we are so invested in both of these characters, and in the incredibly intricate plot, that it is almost a disappointment to see the mystery solved. Black blends nuanced characters, immersive prose and complex plotlines so skillfully that it feels practically magical. When Valerie and Sophia finally meet face-to-face, readers will be breathless with anticipation and the promise of delicious secrets being revealed.