26 Brand New Thrillers That Will Give You Chills This Winter

Gemma Liviero brings us back to August 1945 in The Road Beyond Ruin, which weaves the real-life pain of World War II with a captivating fictional drama. In it, Stefano, an Italian POW, is making his way across war-torn Germany when he stumbles upon a young orphan, and decides to keep him safe in a seemingly abandoned house nearby. Before long, the owner arrives, setting off a chain of events that might keep Stefano from ever reaching his true home.

Out Jan. 1

Emma Rous's The Au Pair is poised to be the world's next big thriller, as it tracks twins Seraphine and Danny Mayes, who are haunted by the death of their mother, who threw herself from a cliff shortly after their birth. Now that Seraphine has grown up and finds herself dealing with her father's passing, she discovers a photo that could change everything: an image of her mother smiling on the day the twins were supposedly born, but she's only holding one baby.

Out Jan. 8

Fans of Tana French and Kate Atkinson will eat up Gytha Lodge's She Lies in Wait. The thriller will keep you up at night as you devour the story of six friends who go camping in 1983 with a young woman named Aurora Jackson, who disappears by the end of their trip. Flash forward 30 years later, and Aurora's body is found in those same woods, forcing the old friends to accept that one of them is a killer . . . but who?!

Out Jan. 8

Freefall is Jessica Barry's first novel, and it's already drumming up considerable buzz. The book volleys between the alternating perspectives of a mother, Maggie, and her daughter, Allison, who've been estranged for two years, but now find themselves being drawn back together after a devastating plane crash leaves Allison fighting for her life.

Out Jan. 8

Fans of Big Little Lies and The Couple Next Door should keep an eye out for Heidi Perks's Her One Mistake. The novel hones in on the dissolution of the friendship between mothers Charlotte and Harriet, when the latter's only daughter goes mysteriously missing. With the police bearing down on both of them in an attempt to find the little girl, their lives start to come apart at the seams, and both are left back where they started: leaning on each other.

Out Jan. 8

What begins as a seemingly innocent psychology study in An Anonymous Girl quickly turns to hellish paranoia for Jessica Farris, who starts to question her every move when the doctor conducting her study appears to know way more about her than she could've guessed.

Out Jan. 8

While you might've grown up wanting to be a fireman or an astronaut, The Burglar's Elle Stowell realized her destined profession early on: a thief. Skilled at ripping off heists in ritzy Bel Air neighborhoods, Elle is able to make a pretty decent living. But when one of the homes she's stealing from has way more than pricey art inside — a triple homicide, to be exact — someone starts hunting her.

Out Jan. 8

New York Times bestselling author Fiona Barton is a veritable master of complex mysteries, and now she's ready to enthrall you with a brand new, deeply chilling story. In The Suspect, two 18-year-old girls disappear during a vacation to Thailand, which captures the attention of journalist Kate Waters. As multiple parties work to uncover the reality of what happened to them, painful memories and unexpected truths bubble to the surface, some much closer to home than anyone expected.

Out Jan. 22

Pam Jenoff's highly anticipated historical drama The Lost Girls of Paris is a must-read for anyone with a love of WWII stories featuring strong female characters. In 1946 Manhattan, Grace Healey finds an abandoned suitcase tucked beneath a bench in Grand Central station. Unable to resist her curiosity, Grace opens it and finds photographs of unidentified women, and on an impulse, takes the suitcase with her. Eventually she finds out that the women were part of a network of female secret agents, and is drawn into a complex web of intrigue, danger, and courage.

Out Jan. 29

Australian author Jane Harper made a splash with her 2017 hit The Dry, and in 2019, the bestselling writer returns with The Lost Man. Nathan and Xander live in the sprawling outback with no neighbors but each other, and even then their homes are three hours apart. But when their middle brother is found dead, alone and in the middle of nowhere, they begin to dig into who could've forced him to his untimely death, and if that person wants to take out the rest of the family.

Out Feb. 5

Christina McDonald's The Night Olivia Fell presents every parent's worst nightmare: mom Abi Knight gets a call in the middle of the night from the police saying that her daughter, Olivia, has fallen off a bridge and is now brain-dead. On top of that, Olivia is revealed to be pregnant, and in order to successfully deliver the baby, doctors need to keep her on life support. With Olivia's body clinging to life in the hospital, her mother begins an investigation all on her own to prove that there's no way her daughter merely fell — she was pushed.

Out Feb. 5

Fans of Ruth Ware will likely rip through The Hunting Party at warp speed, as a group of thirtysomething friends from Oxford unravel a murder mystery while being snowed in at a hunting lodge. Despite knowing each other for decades, the group realizes that a murderer is among them at the idyllic Scottish Highlands estate, and that some resentments are too strong to stay buried.

Out Feb. 12

Fan-favorites D.D. Warren and Flora Dane return in Lisa Gardner's Never Tell. The two of them get caught up in the murder of a man who was shot multiple times, and his pregnant wife was the one found holding the gun. Of course, the truth of the matter will prove to be far slipperier than anyone anticipated.

Out Feb. 19

Taylor Adams's No Exit is a full-throttle thriller that is not for the faint of heart. Things get more and more tense with each page as college student Darby attempts to save a young girl she discovers locked in the back of a van at a rest stop in the middle of a fierce blizzard. Will both of them escape with their lives?

Out Feb. 20

This quickly paced debut from Andrea Bartz has one eerie question at its center: What really happened the night Edie died? Her best friend, Lindsay, is haunted by the possible answers, and decides to seek out the truth of what happened to Edie, a shining star in NYC's social scene who shocked her friends and family by committing suicide. But did she actually kill herself, or was Edie murdered?

Out Feb. 26

Calling all history buffs and Killing Eve fans! In The Huntress, the fearless Nina Markova joins the Soviet Union's legendary Night Witches, an all-female night bomber regiment, to wreak havoc on invading Nazis. But when she gets herself stranded behind enemy lines, Nina becomes the prey of a lethal female killer, known as the Huntress. Only Nina's bravery and smarts will keep her alive.

Out Feb. 26

Are you ready for Breaking Wild author Diane Les Becquets to lead you back into the wilderness? Because that's exactly what she does in her latest chilling release, The Last Woman in the Forest. In it, rescue dog trainer Marian Engström is working in northern Alberta with her mentor, Tate, who she also happens to be wildly in love with. After an assignment gone wrong, however, they're separated from each other and Tate dies. What could be worse than his unexpected death? The discoveries Marian makes afterwards, which make her wonder if Tate was responsible for the unsolved murders of at least four women.

Out March 5

The couple in Annie Ward's Beautiful Bad has been together for nearly two decades, but all those years haven't come easy. Despite living in Middle America with their young son, Ian and Maddie's love story has had serious ups and downs, from a camping accident that left one of them scarred and potentially even murder.

Out Mar. 5

In Bonnie Kistler's House on Fire, a blended family comes to pieces when a drunk-driving accident leaves the mother's daughter, Chrissy, dead, seemingly at the hands of the father's son, Kip, who is thrown in prison for manslaughter. With both parents now at odds and Kip's claims that it was actually Chrissy who was driving, the truth becomes harder than ever to face.

Out Mar. 12

You won't want to run away from Harlan Coben's latest, which tracks a parent's desperate descent into a dark and dangerous world in order to save their drug-addicted daughter.

Out March 19

Remember that whole plot line in Dexter when he falls in love with a fellow serial killer and realizes that he might finally have met his match? Well, that's kind of what goes on in My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing, a delightfully deranged novel in which a pair of bored suburban parents decide to spice up their marriage by getting away with murder rather than, say, perusing Cosmo for new sex tips. That's one way to bring back the spark!

Out March 26

In Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry, from queen of suspense Mary Higgins Clark, a talented journalist's research into the #MeToo movement has a connection to a traumatic instance of sexual assault from her own past. Now, the man who drugged and assaulted her at a frat party is a wealthy, powerful businessman who will do anything to keep bad news from ruining an upcoming merger that will make him a billionaire — even murder.

Out April 2

Rachel Howzell Hall's new mystery novel, They All Fall Down, promises surprise and intrigue for those who can't get enough thrillers on their bookshelves. When a group of seven strangers arrive on a private island off the coast of Mexico after being promised a luxurious vacation, an unknown force begins picking them off one by one. When they realize all seven of them harbor devastating secrets, their lush paradise quickly turns into the vacation from hell.

Out April 9

Someone Knows is a reminder that, just like in I Know What You Did Last Summer, teenage secrets never die. It's a lesson Allie Garvey knows all too well, when her trip home for the funeral of a childhood friend dregs up a horrifying incident that shattered the lives of her and four friends when they were just teenagers attempting to play a stupid prank.

Out April 9

Is domestic noir your jam? Try Alafair Burke's The Better Sister, as it explores the twisted web of family woven between two estranged sisters who come back into each others' lives after one of them loses her husband . . . who, of course, happens to be the other sister's ex. Can you say drama?

Out Apr. 16

In The Mother-in-Law, Sally Hepworth gifts us with a story where no one can be trusted — not even the narrator. The narrator in question is Lucy, a new wife struggling to get along with her husband's seemingly perfect mother, Diana, who has always kept her son's betrothed at arm's length. That all changes when Diana is found dead with a suicide note claiming she could no longer deal with the cancer deteriorating her body, but the autopsy finds no sign of cancer (the same can't be said for poison, naturally). Did Lucy do it, or did Diana have more enemies than people realized?

Out Apr. 23