10 Best Mystery & Suspense Books of 2026 You Won’t Put Down

Cozy up with these 2026 mystery/suspense novels this fall!

Some of the best books you want to savor while others you can’t help but finish in one night, telling yourself “just one more chapter” until it’s 2 a.m. This year’s best mysteries and suspense novels include a haunted island, a revenge plot you’ll secretly cheer for, an identity swap gone deadly, and a couple who’ll do anything to keep their dream home. Liane Moriarty returns with her long-awaited Big Little Lies sequel, and Caroline Kepnes finally reveals how Joe Goldberg became Joe Goldberg. Clear your schedule, grab a snack, and get ready for these 10 new page-turners you won’t be able to put down.

A full decade after that disastrous school fundraiser, Madeline, Celeste, Jane, Renata and Bonnie are back, and their kids are now high schoolers with secrets of their own. When the principal receives a threatening package and a stranger starts lurking around campus asking questions, the women must face the truths they’ve kept from their children. It’s juicy, funny and seriously suspenseful.

In 1926, five women vanished from New Avalon, a remote Vermont island commune of spiritual mediums, leaving only their dresses hanging from an old oak. A century later, struggling actress Marin Keane lands the lead in a film about the mystery, plus a week of on-location research. Then strange symbols appear, and people start disappearing again. This is peak spooky-season Sager.

Debbie Mullen has spent years doling out sensible advice to the neglected, belittled wives of New England in her column. But after she loses her job, her teenage daughters start acting strange, and the tracking app on her husband’s phone reveals secrets, Debbie is done being reasonable. A wickedly fun revenge thriller that’ll have you rooting for its unhinged heroine.

Artist Eden Fox heads out for a run just before her first big exhibition. When she returns to Spyglass, her new seaside home, her key doesn’t fit. A woman who looks eerily like her answers the door, and her husband swears the stranger is his wife. Thriller’s reigning queen of twists delivers a deliciously disorienting puzzle about identity and revenge.

It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell Twenty-five years ago, newly divorced Jane Trevally followed a stranger home to a house on Hampstead Heath, then heard a scream and ran. Now, returning a lost terrier whose owner has gone missing, she finds herself on that doorstep again. A glimpse of a haunted woman in the window pulls Jane into the house’s darkest secrets. This is Jewell at her most chilling.

Anatomy of an Alibi by Ashley Elston Camille Bayliss is sure her lawyer husband Ben is hiding secrets, but he watches her too closely for her to prove it. Aubrey Price believes Ben knows what happened the night that upended her life a decade ago. The two Louisiana women swap places for twelve hours. By morning, Ben is dead, and only one of them has an alibi.

Hurricane season can be murder in St. Medard’s Bay, Alabama. Decades after a killing during a 1984 storm put the Gulf Coast town on the map, Rosalie Inn owner Geneva Corliss learns a writer is coming to dig into the case. He’s bringing Lo Bailey, the woman at its center. As another storm approaches, old lies start to resurface.

All the Little Houses by May Cobb It’s the mid-1980s in Longview, Texas. Charleigh clawed her way from the wrong side of town to the top of the social food chain, and she’ll do anything to keep her daughter Nellie reigning. Then a wholesome, homespun family moves to town, threatening her empire. Mean girls, meaner moms and big-haired secrets, from the author of The Hunting Wives.

Getting Away With Murder by Shari Lapena Jill and Ted love their meticulously styled New York brownstone more than most people love their kids. So when Ted’s inheritance dries up and a bad investment threatens everything, they land on an obvious fix: kill his wealthy, unsuspecting brother, Greg, and inherit his millions. The plan works almost too well. Lapena’s 10th thriller is a devious, breakneck, one-sitting read.

You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel by Caroline Kepnes How did Joe Goldberg become Joe Goldberg? Kepnes rewinds to the beginning, when 17-year-old Joe is working at the bookstore, desperate for his life to start and wondering who could ever love him. Enter Vail, his first love and his first true obsession. Darkly funny and deeply unsettling, this prequel reveals exactly where Netflix’s favorite stalker got his start.

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