Beneath the suspense-filled action of a homegrown terrorist plot, Nicholas Petrie’s debut novel, The Drifter, follows the compelling story of one former Marine’s struggle to reacclimate himself to civilian life while honoring his commitment to a fallen soldier. That alone is reason to keep reading, but Petrie amps up the stakes in surprising fashion, creating a story that is moving, thrilling and satisfying on every level.

Like Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, Peter Ash is a loner with an uncompromising sense of honor and duty. A soldier home after deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, Ash is already battling personal demons in the form of a “white static” that constantly threatens his ability to function. The condition, a byproduct of post-traumatic stress, manifests itself whenever he enters confined spaces, forcing him to eschew the modern conveniences of hearth and home for uneasy nights spent under the stars or in his beat-up pickup truck where the wide windows ease his troubled soul.

Upon learning that one of the men he commanded overseas has committed suicide, a guilt-ridden Ash leaves the relative safety of his new lifestyle to aid the widow the man left behind. In the process of rebuilding the woman’s porch, and his own life, Ash finds his former soldier’s mangy dog standing guard over a suitcase filled with $400,000 in cash and four blocks of C4 explosives. Ash sets off on a trail of discovery, both internally as he learns to cope with his affliction and externally as he attempts to determine the origins of the money and the purpose for the explosives—all while trying to keep the widow and her children safe from the men who actually killed her husband.

Petrie’s meticulous research into the effects of PTSD on the nation’s returning veterans and the internal war many of them still fight as they try to resume their normal life brings an added dimension to his main character, but without being preachy. The result is an intimate story of personal discovery as well as an obsessive pageturner of a book.

Just after well-known British mystery writer Ruth Rendell died in May of this year, at the age of 85, her life and talents were described in the media with words like “brilliant,” “discomfiting” and “challenging.” Readers who’ve long been gripped by Rendell’s imaginative crime fiction, however, knew that already. From her popular Chief Inspector Wexford series with such hallmarks as the top-notch An Unkindness of Ravens and Not in the Flesh, to standalone classics like A Dark Adapted Eye (as Barbara Vine) and A Judgment in Stone, right up to her last, Dark Corners, the author’s unsettling prose has always attracted legions of readers.

Rendell’s final novel, her 66th, achieves the same high quality of work and complexity of character that have been typical of her fiction. Dark Corners indeed visits the dark corners so familiar in her other works: an eerie creepiness disguised as something plain and innocuous; a dark character or two who ominously invade the reader’s consciousness; that page the reader almost doesn’t want to turn.

Carl Martin is a newly published writer with a lovely woman in his life, and he has just inherited a home in an upscale London neighborhood. Who could ask for more? But Carl makes a big mistake—he decides to take in a tenant for the upstairs flat. It sounds harmless, at least to Carl, but renter Dermot is anything but. In true Rendell style, the everyday and innocent gets pushed into the dark and disturbing, as Dermot’s invasion into Carl’s life is relentless, turning it—and the reader’s comfort zone—prickly and unbearable. What follows is a descent into blackmail, murder and drunken oblivion. As one character quietly tells Carl: “I can see you’re suffering, but there is a way to end this, and you know what that is.”

Other writers might have ended with the story duly resolved, with the circle of crime and punishment neatly closed. But Rendell’s clever nightmares usually have something trailing off after the proper ending, so we aren’t quite finished. So it is with Rendell’s last engrossing novel.

In 1952, Barcelona trembles beneath the oppressive, tyrannical regime of Franco’s fascist party. Ana Marti, a young journalist sick of detailing debutantes’ fashions and high-society scandals, gets her big break when socialite Mariona Sobrerroca is brutally murdered in the exclusive upper part of the city. Ana’s shocked to be assigned such an important case, but she holds her ground while working with Barcelona’s finest detective, Isidro Castro, despite his misogynistic grumblings about working with a woman.

The police announce that the murder was nothing more than an intruder and an incident of unfortunate timing. Ana concedes her curiosity—until she uncovers a bundle of love letters that insinuate a much different story. To meld the pieces of the real account together, Ana enlists the help of her languages-savvy cousin, Beatriz. Ana and Beatriz must tread lightly, as their family is already ill favored for their sympathy for the Republic, and Beatriz has even been ostracized for her writings. As they disentangle truth from lies to nullify the original statement, the two women expose political hypocrisy that will ultimately threaten their lives.

Rosa Ribas and Sabine Hoffman are the writing team behind the pseudonym Sara Moliner. Drawing from Ribas’ experiences of growing up in Francoist Spain and Hoffman’s education in philology, the two authors create a powerful voice that thunders with cultural wit and historical fact. Setting the scene takes a while, but the reader’s patience is rewarded as the historical-political plot sears with sensational revelations implicating the dictatorship’s influential leaders. This is Ribas and Hoffman’s first time working together and surely not to be their last, as The Whispering City is already highly acclaimed in Spain and has been translated into several languages.

Violinist Julia Ansdell is the troubled heroine of Playing with Fire, a haunting new literary suspense novel by Tess Gerritsen, the best-selling author of the Rizzoli & Isles series and a number of standalone thrillers such as The Bone Garden and Harvest.

On a trip to Rome, Julia finds a strange piece of anonymous music penciled on a loose sheet tucked inside an old book of gypsy melodies. Upon returning to Boston, she plays the piece on her violin, only to find that the music seems to spark violent behavior in her 3-year-old daughter, Lily. Though no one believes her about Lily’s odd violent episodes, Julia becomes increasingly concerned and finally returns to Italy to seek out the music's strange origins.

Alternate sections of Playing with Fire flash back to another story, that of a young Jewish violinist named Lorenzo Todesco in World War II-era Italy, a time of horror and cruelty when fascists come to power and anti-Semitism reaches its apex. This parallel narrative weaves its way toward Julia as she searches for the music’s composer and the origins of its evocative yet disturbing melody.

Gerritsen, a former practicing physician as well as a talented amateur musician, dramatically evokes the strange, stirring melody that imprints itself in the past and present. The author created the musical piece titled “Incendio” that simmers at the heart of Playing with Fire. The melody simply appeared in her head one morning, and immediately she knew the book would center on “the power of music to transform.”

Accurate historical details about an Italy on the brink of terrible war raise this story well above that of an ordinary thriller. Tension rises from readers’ historical hindsight and the sad knowledge of events that will soon unfold. As Playing with Fire reaches its stirring conclusion, the two stories combine into one melody, bringing to light the terrors of past events, the beauty of an innocent love and one young man’s courage that transformed and transcended history’s inerasable marks.

For nine months The Girl on the Train has been lauded as the best thriller of 2015, but it has some real competition with the arrival of The Killing Lessons, a dark, violent novel from British author Glen Duncan (The Last Werewolf) writing under the pseudonym Saul Black. Set in San Francisco and Colorado, it’s a cross-country race to catch two serial killers that channels the atmosphere of Scandinavia’s celebrated TV noirs with female heroes like “The Killing” (Forbrydelsen) and “The Bridge” (Broen).

Rowena Cooper is baking Christmas cookies for her children when two men appear in her home in the mountains of Colorado, one holding a shotgun, the other a knife. Though they murder Rowena and her son, her 10-year-old daughter Nell manages to escape into the woods. Meanwhile in San Francisco, a team of investigators has been hunting these murderers for months, after they abducted, raped and murdered seven women in different cities before transporting their bodies to another state. The men leave objects inside their victims as a signature—a balloon, a fork, a museum flier. Lead investigator Valerie Hart isn’t sure if they’re meaningful or random, but she’s not sure of anything anymore. Once driven and naive, Valerie has become jaded, resigned and dependent on a drink ever since she “killed love” in her own heart. Though Valerie soon makes a long overdue break in the case, the only person alive who can help her identify the serial killers is young Nell, still missing in the Colorado mountains, who may have escaped one grisly fate only to meet another.

Violent but never gratuitous, Duncan’s first crack at a thriller is a master class in suspense. Phrases like “page-turner” and “it kept me up all night!” get thrown around a lot in the book business, but The Killing Lessons is hands-down the most compelling, addictive novel I’ve read this year.

Imagine a world in which the Nazis were victorious in World War II. Guy Saville takes that perilous route in his new thriller, The Madagaskar Plan, a sequel to his first novel, The Afrika Reich, with a third to follow in the author’s alternate history trilogy.

In April 1953, victorious Germany has consolidated its power, and the Reich, now called Germania, stretches from the Rhine to the Ural Mountains. Much of the story centers on the mineral-rich continent of Africa, where rule is divided between Britain and Germany. America, which never entered the war, remains politically isolated from the current fray, although a powerful Jewish lobby courts the U.S. president, ensuring his election.

As for the Jews, instead of the extermination camps of history, Saville imagines that millions are in the process of being forcibly “resettled” on the island of Madagaskar off the African coast, most slated for eventual extermination. On the island, there are ruptures among several factions in the Jewish community and hints of violent revolution.

Into this imagined political and social milieu steps Burton Cole, a British ex-mercenary who has recently failed in an attempt to assassinate the current Kongolese governor, the wily, ambitious Nazi Walter Hochburg, who is pursuing Jewish scientists that have knowledge of a mega-weapon the Nazis covet. He’s also eyeing British-controlled Northern Rhodesia for a possible takeover, while Britain is developing its own plan for getting America involved in the looming struggle. This thrilling tale is also a sprawling and expansive romance, as Burton seeks to rescue his Jewish lover, Madeleine, from the island of Madagaskar, where she is held after being betrayed by her husband, Jared Cranley.

The Madagaskar Plan is layered with conspiracy upon conspiracy, as characters betray those closest to them in the battle for power and territory in a grim post-war world. Dark passages about the thousands of displaced souls struggling to survive—and retake their freedom—alternate with lyrical prose that defines the strength of the human connection. It succeeds as a standalone read, as a prologue brings readers up to date with a concise description of Saville’s alternative world, while an intriguing author’s note explains the very real history behind the book: a Nazi plan to “quarantine” Jews in Poland beginning in 1939, and the subsequent unsuccessful Nazi “Madagaskar-Projekt,” hatched by SS leader Heinrich Himmler in 1940.

There are plenty of ugly childhoods, traumas and bad starts to go around in Mary Kubica’s Pretty Baby, a new psychological thriller that comes hard on the heels of the author’s debut novel, The Good Girl, which hit a number of “best” lists in 2014.

This new thriller is narrated from three different viewpoints, and—as the author no doubt intends—it’s sometimes hard to identify where falsehoods end and reality begins. Kubica skillfully depicts the emotionally scarred psyches, moods and internal meanderings of her characters while ratcheting up the tension with each succeeding chapter.

Do-gooder Heidi Wood volunteers at the local soup kitchen, tutors students in ESL and rescues stray animals from city alleyways. But she ups the ante when, without first telling her husband or preteen daughter, she initiates another, more intensive pickup. After discovering a ragged, homeless teen and her baby on a freezing Chicago street, Heidi brings them into her home, where an overnight respite turns into a much longer stay, punctuated by growing suspicions on the part of Heidi’s husband, Chris, as to what baggage young Willow has brought into their home.

As Willow tells her part of the narrative, filled with foster homes and wayward stepfathers, readers also begin to feel uneasy about Heidi’s obsession with the child, as her own hidden and terrible grief surfaces in this intense, addictive psychological thriller.

Intermingling with the stories spun by Willow and Heidi, readers hear from Chris, a workaholic who has plowed ahead with his life and career without considering what his wife has been going through. And after all, there’s his sexy, emotionally unencumbered office assistant offering an attractive sideline, should he choose to take it. He says: “Heidi and I rarely hold hands. We’re like the wheels of a car: in sync but also independent.” This may be admirable, but here it’s also a definite clue to how easily things can go wrong when you don’t pay attention. As household aggravations escalate and suspicions about Willow’s past take shape, Chris is finally galvanized to action, as events in Heidi’s life begin to spin out of control. But is there time to avoid a family disaster?

The story uncoils chapter after chapter in this unpredictable story, where readers are kept in suspense until the last page—and perhaps beyond.

For some college is about fresh starts, new friends and big adventures. When Chad wants to make the most of his time abroad at Oxford, he befriends Jolyon, a jovial, well-liked first-year student. The two share great camaraderie, and together they design an innocent game meant to mimic the inherent risks and consequences of life. Needing six to realize the game, they invite four others to participate with an enticing reward.

But those closest to you have the ability to use your greatest fear against you, and this harmless game of dares and consequences evolves into psychological warfare, and after a horrifying incident, The Game is suspended.

Now, 14 years later, The Game resumes. This lapse in time was enough for the players to mend from the psychological stress—except for Jolyon, whose neurosis immobilizes him into a shuddering recluse, damaging his love life and career and impairing the simplest of everyday physical activities such as dressing, eating and going outside. Now that The Game has even higher stakes, Jolyon sets out to retell the story of his first year at Oxford so he can get the story straight and get his life back. More than just a fable of his youthful follies with friends, his story holds secrets unknown to the final players—but they have hidden confidences, too.

Christopher J. Yates shines with his first book, Black Chalk, a grippingly dark narrative set in 1990s Oxford and present-day New York. Yates creates calculated threads, knotted with friendship and romance, and slowly reveals frightening character traits for a thrilling read. One question will remain with readers: What do your friends know about you, and how far would they take that truth?

Noir fans will find plenty to like in The Devil’s Share, the fourth book in Wallace Stroby’s series featuring professional thief Crissa Stone. It’s a classic of the genre and a perfect example of just how badly things can go wrong for anyone, even an obsessive planner like Crissa, who picks up on any tiny deviation from her carefully organized heists.

As for the theft proposed in Devil, what could possibly go wrong? Stone is working with a wealthy art collector named Cota, who plundered Iraqi art treasures from their native country but has agreed to return them in exchange for the promise that he’ll suffer no legal consequences. Now, however, he’s found a secret buyer for the problematic art and hires Crissa to steal the lot back while they’re on their way home—all the better to end up in his hands again.

Crissa asks all the right questions but hasn’t quite planned for Hicks, Cota’s head of security, and his coterie of ex-Marines, who have their own code of conduct, not to mention their own plans as to how this operation should go. She gets blindsided by the ruthlesss Hicks, barely escaping with her life after a confrontation in the Nevada desert. Crissa’s carefully honed competence must kick into high gear as she works to outwit her adversaries before they can eliminate her.

Crissa is poised to join the elite ranks of literary “bad guys” of the caliber created by Elmore Leonard and Donald Westlake (aka Richard Stark), and she doesn’t have a lot of sympathy to waste on folks who try to find her “redeeming” virtues. She is who she is, neither charming nor humorous, but in brief, poignant scenes throughout the book we see glimpses of her troubled, lonely life and the people with whom she clearly possesses a bond of loyalty—a lover/mentor who’s in jail for the long haul; her friend and partner-in-crime, Chase; and her daughter, who has no clue about Crissa—all those whom she loves but cannot ever really reach.

This taut story has no wasted words, and it packs a singular punch.

Most readers probably imagine their favorite author as thoughtful and deep—someone bursting with insight into life and empathy for all creation. From the outside, that’s what Henry Hayden appears to be. Modest despite the five-and-counting bestsellers that bear his name, he seems to be devoted to his wife, loyal to his friends and eager to sign books for the fans who travel to his remote village just to meet him. But he’s a fraud: Every word of his novels was written by his publicity-shy wife, Martha. His role is to take the credit—and enjoy the mansion, Maserati and mistresses that come with fame.

Then Henry’s girlfriend tells him she’s pregnant. Desperate to protect his perfect life, he commits a violent act that turns out to be a huge mistake. Now Martha is missing, and he must prove he’s not to blame. To do so, he’ll have to use his manipulative charms on an entire cast of amoral schemers—including Betty, the mistress who hopes to wed him; Gisbert, the sad-sack ex-schoolmate who can’t forgive Henry’s childhood cruelty; and Obradin, the brooding Serbian best friend who’d do anything in the name of loyalty. As the carnage piles up, the truth about Henry’s past threatens to close in on him.

The Truth and Other Lies is told from Henry’s point of view and incisively presents the mind of a narcissist—a man who can commit murder, yet pat himself on the back for “doing good and feeling good at the same time.” Henry’s cynical worldview provides flashes of mordant humor: Fearing arrest, he takes the scenic route to the morgue because “he wanted to make the most of his last opportunity to drive the Maserati.” And his schemes result in ironic plot complications that rival those of “his” acclaimed thrillers. Henry may lack literary talent, but as a criminal he authors an unfolding catastrophe that readers will relish.

Great psychological thrillers work on two levels: as action-based mysteries and as emotionally resonant personal stories. Jenny Milchman balances both in As Night Falls, as slightly anxious counselor Sandy Tremont faces murderers on her doorstep and secrets from her past with equal intensity.

Milchman creates tension by putting Sandy, her outdoorsy husband Ben and moody teenager Ivy in a contained setting: a remote home in the midst of a heavy snowstorm. When two escaped convicts make their way to this mountain hideaway—and can’t leave because of the storm—the mounting concern for Sandy's family’s physical safety is mirrored by the secrets that threaten to spill from her own mind. The action never falters as criminal mastermind Nick and his frighteningly large but surprisingly tender sidekick, Harlan, cruelly abuse the family and their neighbors. Milchman uses the maze-like interior of Sandy’s home to facilitate chase scenes and to mirror the confusion that reigns in Sandy’s mind. As she runs from Nick, she gets closer to some awful truths about her childhood. Simultaneously, Milchman flashes back to Nick’s own childhood, which is perhaps more troubling than all of the violence he’s wreaked as an adult. The two stories come together in a surprising twist that changes not only the dynamic between Nick and his victims, but also between Sandy and Ivy, who must learn to trust each other if they are going to come out of this alive.

Milchman sometimes sacrifices character development for action, but the momentum keeps the pages turning. Though the events in As Night Falls happen in one night, it’s not a short book. You may not be able to finish it in one sitting, but you’ll want to.