The best psychological thrillers don’t need car chases or explosions. They get under your skin with paranoia, manipulation, and the terrifying realization that you can’t trust anyone — including the person telling you the story. Here are 30 books that do exactly that.
There’s a reason psychological thrillers have dominated bestseller lists for the past decade. These are books where the real danger isn’t a killer lurking in the shadows — it’s the slow unraveling of a character’s mind, or the dawning horror that someone you thought you knew is capable of something monstrous. The tension comes from within: gaslighting spouses, fractured memories, narrators who are lying to you (and maybe to themselves), and ordinary domestic settings that curdle into something sinister.
The psychological thriller as a genre has roots stretching back to the Gothic novels of the 18th and 19th centuries, but it hit a new gear with Patricia Highsmith’s cold, amoral protagonists in the 1950s and Ruth Rendell’s unsettling explorations of obsession in the 1970s and ’80s. Then Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl landed in 2012 and blew the doors off, spawning an entire wave of domestic suspense novels with unreliable female narrators, poisonous marriages, and twist endings designed to make you flip back to page one and reread everything.
What separates a great psychological thriller from a mediocre one? Stakes that feel personal. A sense that something is deeply wrong beneath the surface. And characters who are complicated enough that you can’t quite pin them down as good or evil. The 30 books on this list all deliver that queasy, compulsive reading experience where you’re turning pages at 2 a.m. because you need to know the truth — even if the truth turns out to be worse than you imagined.
If you enjoy the suspense genre more broadly, check out our list of the best thriller authors and the best suspense authors. Fans of Gillian Flynn will also want to see our guide to authors like Gillian Flynn, and if plot twists are your thing, our roundup of the best plot twist books has plenty more to keep you guessing.
Table of Contents
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Classic Psychological Thrillers
These are the books that defined the genre — or at least laid the groundwork for everything that came after. From Daphne du Maurier’s Gothic suspense to Patricia Highsmith’s amoral antiheroes, these classics proved that the scariest stories are the ones happening inside someone’s head.
1. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1938)
Daphne du Maurier was born in London in 1907 into a creative family — her father was the actor-manager Gerald du Maurier, and her grandfather was the author and illustrator George du Maurier. She spent much of her adult life in Cornwall, and that wild, windswept landscape seeped into her fiction. Rebecca was published in 1938 and became an immediate sensation, selling nearly three million copies between 1938 and 1965.
The novel opens with one of the most famous lines in English literature: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” The unnamed narrator, a young, insecure woman, marries the wealthy widower Maxim de Winter and moves into his grand estate, Manderley, only to find herself haunted by the presence of his first wife, Rebecca. The sinister housekeeper Mrs. Danvers keeps Rebecca’s memory alive with obsessive devotion, and the new Mrs. de Winter begins to wonder whether she can ever escape Rebecca’s shadow — or whether Maxim is hiding something far darker than grief.
What makes Rebecca a psychological thriller rather than simply a romance or a Gothic novel is the suffocating atmosphere of dread and self-doubt. The narrator’s lack of a name is itself a statement: she is being erased, overshadowed, consumed. Du Maurier constructs a slow-burning tension that builds not through violence but through social humiliation, psychological manipulation, and the growing sense that Manderley itself is a kind of trap.
“I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say.”
Alfred Hitchcock adapted Rebecca into a film in 1940, winning the Academy Award for Best Picture. The novel has never gone out of print. If you read one book from this list, make it this one — it’s the template for nearly every domestic suspense novel that followed.
2. The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (1955)
Patricia Highsmith was born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1921 and lived much of her adult life in Europe. She was famously difficult, reclusive, and brilliant. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train (1950), was adapted by Hitchcock, but it was The Talented Mr. Ripley that cemented her reputation as the foremost writer of psychological crime fiction in the 20th century.
Tom Ripley is sent to Italy by a wealthy man to retrieve his wayward son, Dickie Greenleaf. Instead, Tom becomes obsessed with Dickie’s life — his money, his ease, his identity — and eventually murders him and assumes his identity. What makes the book so disturbing is that Highsmith doesn’t treat Tom as a monster. She writes him with chilling sympathy. You understand his loneliness, his hunger to belong, and his absolute lack of moral feeling about what he’s done.
The Talented Mr. Ripley launched a five-book series following Ripley through decades of fraud, manipulation, and murder. Highsmith’s prose is clean and precise, and she never flinches from the implications of her premise: that charm and sociopathy can look identical from the outside.
“He loved possessions, not masses of them, but a select few that he did not part with.”
The 1999 film adaptation starring Matt Damon is excellent, but the book is colder, stranger, and more unsettling. Start here if you want to understand the roots of the modern psychological thriller.
3. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (1962)
Shirley Jackson published six novels, over 200 short stories, and two memoirs during her career, but she was chronically undervalued during her lifetime. Born in San Francisco in 1916, she spent most of her adult life in North Bennington, Vermont, where she raised four children and wrote prolifically until her death in 1965 at the age of 48. Her reputation has grown enormously in recent decades.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle is narrated by 18-year-old Merricat Blackwood, who lives with her sister Constance and their ailing Uncle Julian in a decaying family home. Most of the Blackwood family died from arsenic poisoning at dinner six years earlier, and the townspeople shun the survivors. Merricat is one of the most unforgettable narrators in American fiction — strange, fiercely protective, and possibly dangerous.
Jackson’s genius is in making you love Merricat and root for her even as you realize the full extent of what she’s done and what she’s capable of doing. The novel works as a psychological thriller, a Gothic horror story, and a savage commentary on small-town cruelty and female rage. We Have Always Lived in the Castle remains as fresh and disturbing today as it was in 1962.
“I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length.”
If you haven’t read Jackson, start here or with The Haunting of Hill House. She was decades ahead of her time.
4. Misery by Stephen King (1987)
Stephen King is primarily known as a horror writer, but Misery is one of the purest psychological thrillers ever written. Published in 1987, it tells the story of novelist Paul Sheldon, who crashes his car in a Colorado snowstorm and is “rescued” by Annie Wilkes, his self-proclaimed number one fan. Annie is a former nurse with a violent past, and when she discovers that Paul has killed off her favorite character, Misery Chastain, she holds him captive and forces him to write a new book bringing the character back to life.
King wrote the novel partly as an allegory for his own relationship with addiction and with his audience’s demands. But it works brilliantly on a literal level, too. The claustrophobia is intense — almost the entire book takes place in a single room — and Annie Wilkes is one of the great villains in modern fiction: polite, unpredictable, and terrifying.
Misery won King the 1987 British Fantasy Award. Kathy Bates won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Annie in the 1990 Rob Reiner film.
“I’m your number one fan.”
Few books capture the horror of being completely at someone else’s mercy with this level of visceral power.
5. The Collector by John Fowles (1963)
John Fowles was born in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, in 1926 and studied French at the University of Edinburgh and Oxford. The Collector was his debut novel, published in 1963, and it became a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic. The premise is nightmarishly simple: Frederick Clegg, a lonely, socially awkward butterfly collector, wins a large sum of money in the football pools and uses it to buy a remote house where he kidnaps Miranda Grey, a beautiful art student he has been watching from afar.
The novel is split into two sections. The first is narrated by Clegg, whose chilling, emotionally flat voice reveals a man who genuinely believes he is being reasonable and romantic. The second is Miranda’s diary, full of intelligence, fury, and desperation. The contrast between the two voices is devastating. Fowles never lets Clegg become a cartoonish villain — he’s pathetic, delusional, and terrifyingly ordinary.
The Collector has influenced countless kidnap thrillers and psychological suspense novels in the decades since its publication. It remains one of the most unsettling explorations of obsession, control, and the banality of evil in English literature.
“I think we are just insects, we live a bit and then die and that’s the lot. There’s no mercy in things. There’s not even a Great Beyond. There’s nothing.”
Domestic Suspense
These books take place inside marriages, homes, and families — places that should be safe but aren’t. The threat isn’t external. It’s the person sleeping next to you.
6. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (2012)
Gillian Flynn was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1971. She studied English at the University of Kansas and journalism at Northwestern University, then spent a decade as a television critic at Entertainment Weekly. Her first two novels, Sharp Objects (2006) and Dark Places (2009), earned strong reviews but modest sales. Then came Gone Girl in 2012, which changed everything.
On their fifth wedding anniversary, Amy Elliott Dunne disappears. Her husband Nick becomes the prime suspect. The first half of the novel alternates between Nick’s present-tense narration and entries from Amy’s diary, and the picture of their marriage that emerges is bruising and recognizable — two smart, resentful people who have brought out the worst in each other. Then comes the twist at the midpoint, which I won’t spoil here, except to say it reframes everything you’ve read and turns the book into something else entirely.
Gone Girl spent eight weeks at number one on the New York Times bestseller list and sold over 20 million copies worldwide. David Fincher directed the 2014 film adaptation, with Rosamund Pike delivering a career-defining performance as Amy. The novel essentially created the modern domestic suspense genre and launched a thousand imitators.
“What are you thinking? How are you feeling? What have we done to each other? What will we do?”
Flynn’s genius is in making both Nick and Amy deeply flawed and deeply compelling. You root for neither and both.
7. Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris (2016)
B.A. Paris is the pen name of Bernadine MacDougall, who was born in England and has lived in France for many years. Behind Closed Doors was her debut novel, published in 2016, and it became a word-of-mouth sensation, selling over three million copies.
Jack and Grace Angel seem like the perfect couple. He’s a successful lawyer; she’s beautiful and poised. Their friends are envious. But behind the doors of their immaculate home, Grace is a prisoner. Jack is a meticulous, sadistic controller who has stripped away every freedom — she has no phone, no money, no friends who know the truth. The novel reveals the mechanics of Jack’s control slowly and horrifyingly, and the tension comes from wondering whether Grace can find a way out.
What makes Behind Closed Doors effective is the contrast between the glossy exterior and the nightmare beneath it. Paris understands that the most disturbing element of domestic abuse is how invisible it can be. The pacing is relentless — this is one of those books people describe as reading in a single sitting.
“Never judge what goes on behind closed doors.”
If you found Gone Girl too cool and cerebral, this book delivers a more visceral, emotional gut-punch.
8. The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn (2018)
A.J. Finn is the pen name of Daniel Mallory, who worked as an editor at William Morrow before publishing his debut novel in 2018. The Woman in the Window became a massive bestseller, spending over a year on the New York Times list, though it also attracted controversy over Mallory’s history of fabricating parts of his personal biography.
Anna Fox is a child psychologist who hasn’t left her New York City apartment in months due to severe agoraphobia. She spends her days drinking too much wine, watching old movies, and spying on her neighbors through her camera lens. When she witnesses what she believes is a violent crime in the house across the street, no one believes her — not the police, not the neighbors, not even her own therapist. Is Anna seeing things? Is she losing her mind? Or is something genuinely wrong?
The Woman in the Window wears its influences openly — Hitchcock’s Rear Window, obviously, but also the alcoholic unreliable narrators of The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl. The plot twists are engineered for maximum shock value, and the claustrophobic setting of Anna’s apartment amplifies the paranoia.
“I feel like I’m disappearing. Like I don’t exist.”
The book works best if you go in cold and let the reveals hit you without warning.
9. The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen (2018)
Greer Hendricks spent two decades as a book editor at Simon & Schuster before turning to writing. Sarah Pekkanen is the author of several novels and a journalist. Their collaboration on The Wife Between Us (2018) produced one of the cleverest structural twists in recent thriller fiction.
The novel appears to be a straightforward story: Vanessa, recently divorced from her husband Richard, is obsessively watching Richard’s new fiancee Nellie. Vanessa wants to save Nellie from the man she knows to be controlling and dangerous. But nothing in this book is what it seems. The twist — which arrives about a third of the way through — completely rearranges your understanding of who these characters are and what’s actually happening.
The Wife Between Us succeeds because the misdirection is genuinely clever and the emotional core is real. The writing partnership between Hendricks and Pekkanen continued with An Anonymous Girl (2019) and The Golden Couple (2022).
“Perception is reality. You know that.”
This is a book that rewards a second reading once you know the truth.
10. My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing (2019)
Samantha Downing’s debut novel arrived in 2019 with one of the most audacious premises in recent thriller fiction: What if a married couple’s relationship was held together not by love or children but by the fact that they murder people together?
The narrator and his wife Millicent appear to be an ordinary suburban couple — nice house, two kids, steady jobs. But every so often, they select a victim together, and the thrill of the kill is what keeps their marriage alive. The novel is darkly funny in places, disturbing in others, and structured as a ticking clock: how long can they keep getting away with it, and what happens when one of them starts to have doubts?
My Lovely Wife was optioned for a television adaptation almost immediately after publication. Downing followed it with He Started It (2020) and For Your Own Good (2021).
“Every marriage has its secrets.”
If you like your thrillers with a pitch-black sense of humor, this is the book for you.
11. The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine (2017)
Liv Constantine is the pen name of sisters Lynne Constantine and Valerie Constantine. The Last Mrs. Parrish (2017) is a tale of deception and manipulation centered on Amber Patterson, a scheming woman who befriends Daphne Parrish with the goal of stealing her wealthy husband, Jackson.
The first half of the novel is narrated by Amber and reads as a cold-blooded social-climbing thriller. Amber lies, manipulates, and fakes her way into Daphne’s life. Then the perspective shifts to Daphne, and the whole story flips on its head. The truth about the Parrish marriage is far more complicated — and far more disturbing — than Amber realized.
The Last Mrs. Parrish landed on several bestseller lists and was picked for Reese Witherspoon’s book club. The dual-perspective structure gives it a propulsive energy, and the midpoint twist is genuinely surprising.
“Things are never what they seem.”
Unreliable Narrator Thrillers
These books share a common trick: you can’t trust the person telling you the story. Maybe they’re lying. Maybe they’re delusional. Maybe they simply can’t remember what happened. Either way, the ground keeps shifting under your feet.
12. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (2015)
Paula Hawkins was born in Harare, Zimbabwe, in 1972 and moved to London as a young adult. She worked as a financial journalist for fifteen years before turning to fiction. Her first novel under her own name, The Girl on the Train, was published in January 2015 and became a global phenomenon, selling over 23 million copies.
Rachel Watson rides the commuter train into London every day and watches the same houses slip past her window. She becomes fixated on a couple she can see from the train — she calls them Jess and Jason — and imagines their perfect life. Then one day she sees something shocking from the train window, and the next morning, “Jess” is reported missing. Rachel, who is an alcoholic with severe blackouts, realizes she was near the scene that night but can’t remember what happened.
The Girl on the Train uses three female narrators — Rachel, the missing woman Megan, and Rachel’s ex-husband’s new wife Anna — all of whom are hiding something. The alcoholic blackout is the perfect device for an unreliable narrator: Rachel desperately wants to know the truth, but her own memory is the thing standing in the way.
“I have lost control over everything, even the places in my head.”
The 2016 film starred Emily Blunt and grossed over $170 million worldwide.
13. Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney (2017)
Alice Feeney worked as a journalist at the BBC for sixteen years before publishing her debut novel, Sometimes I Lie, in 2017. The book opens with a woman named Amber lying in a hospital bed in a coma. She can hear everything around her but can’t move or speak. The narrative then jumps between three timelines: Amber’s present in the coma, the week before she ended up there, and her childhood diary entries from 1992.
The book’s opening lines set the tone: “My name is Amber Reynolds. There are three things you should know about me: 1. I’m in a coma. 2. My husband doesn’t love me anymore. 3. Sometimes I lie.” From that point on, you know you can’t trust a word she says, and Feeney uses that distrust to construct a series of escalating twists that pull the rug out from under you multiple times.
Sometimes I Lie demands a second read. The reveals in the final chapters recontextualize everything that came before, and the darkness of the ending is genuinely startling. Feeney went on to write His & Hers (2020) and Rock Paper Scissors (2021), both of which employ similar structural trickery.
“Sometimes I lie. I’m lying now.”
14. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides (2019)
Alex Michaelides was born in Cyprus in 1977 to a Greek Cypriot father and an English mother. He studied English at Cambridge and screenwriting at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. The Silent Patient was his debut novel, published in 2019, and it became one of the biggest thrillers of the year, spending over a year on the New York Times bestseller list.
Alicia Berenson is a famous painter who shot her husband Gabriel five times in the face and then never spoke another word. She’s been confined to a psychiatric facility called the Grove, where she paints obsessively and refuses all communication. Theo Faber, a criminal psychotherapist, becomes determined to get Alicia to speak and to understand why she killed the man she apparently loved.
The novel is structured as Theo’s investigation — he interviews staff, reviews Alicia’s history, and examines her paintings for clues. Meanwhile, excerpts from Alicia’s diary reveal the state of her marriage before the murder. The twist at the end is a masterclass in misdirection, and it changes the meaning of every scene Theo has narrated.
The Silent Patient has sold over six million copies worldwide. Michaelides followed it with The Maidens (2021) and The Fury (2024).
“But hope is a knife that can cut you open.”
This is one of those thrillers where the final page makes you want to immediately start over from page one.
15. Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson (2011)
S.J. Watson was born in the Midlands, England, and worked as an audiologist for the NHS before studying creative writing at the Faber Academy. Before I Go to Sleep was his debut novel, published in 2011, and it was translated into over 40 languages.
Christine Lucas wakes up every morning with no memory. A brain injury years ago damaged her ability to form new long-term memories, so each day she wakes up believing she’s decades younger, in a strange bed, next to a man she doesn’t recognize — her husband Ben. Every morning, he patiently explains who he is and what happened to her. But Christine has been secretly keeping a journal at the suggestion of a doctor she sees without Ben’s knowledge, and as she reads her own entries each day, she begins to realize that what Ben tells her and what she’s written down don’t match.
Before I Go to Sleep is built on one of the most effective thriller premises imaginable: what if you couldn’t trust your own memory, and the person you depend on most might be lying to you? The paranoia is excruciating, and the slow accumulation of inconsistencies drives the tension beautifully.
“The truth is what I make it.”
Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth starred in the 2014 film adaptation. The book remains Watson’s finest work.
16. In the Woods by Tana French (2007)
Tana French was born in Vermont in 1973 but grew up in Ireland, Italy, and Malawi before settling in Dublin. She trained as an actress at Trinity College Dublin and performed in theatre for years before turning to fiction. In the Woods was her debut novel, published in 2007, and it won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel.
Detective Rob Ryan is assigned to a murder case in the Dublin suburbs: a twelve-year-old girl found dead on an archaeological site. The problem is that Rob has a secret — twenty years earlier, as a child, he walked out of those same woods traumatized and covered in blood, and his two best friends were never seen again. He has no memory of what happened. Now, as the new investigation progresses, his suppressed past begins to resurface.
In the Woods is the first book in French’s Dublin Murder Squad series, but it stands alone beautifully. French’s writing is literary and atmospheric — the woods themselves become a character, a symbol of everything buried and unresolved. This is a psychological thriller disguised as a detective novel, and the ending will divide readers (French deliberately leaves one mystery unsolved).
“What I warn you to remember is that I am a detective. Our relationship with truth is fundamental but cracked.”
French went on to write five more books in the series, plus the standalone The Searcher (2020) and The Hunter (2024).
If you’re writing about books or anything else that requires clear, polished prose, tools like Grammarly can help you catch mistakes you’d otherwise miss — something any thriller writer knows is critical when constructing a plot with hidden clues.
17. You by Caroline Kepnes (2014)
Caroline Kepnes was born in the United States and worked as a writer and journalist — including a stint at Entertainment Weekly — before publishing You in 2014. The novel is narrated in second person by Joe Goldberg, a bookstore manager in New York who becomes obsessed with a customer named Guinevere Beck. Joe’s narration addresses Beck directly as “you,” and the effect is deeply uncomfortable: you’re trapped inside the mind of a stalker who frames his obsession as romantic devotion.
Joe is charming, well-read, and utterly delusional. He breaks into Beck’s apartment, hacks her email and social media, manipulates her relationships, and eliminates people who get in his way — all while telling himself he’s doing it for love. Kepnes walks a tightrope between making Joe repellent and making him disturbingly relatable. His commentary on modern dating culture and social media narcissism is often sharp and funny, which makes the horror of his actions all the more effective.
You was adapted into a hugely popular Netflix series starring Penn Badgley. Kepnes has continued the series with Hidden Bodies (2016), You Love Me (2021), and For You and Only You (2023).
“A guy needs to look after the things he loves. You don’t let the sun damage your Porsche. You don’t let mildew build up in your house.”
Identity and Memory Thrillers
These books play with the fundamental question: who are you? When memory fails, when identity is stolen, when the person you thought you were turns out to be someone else entirely, the result is pure psychological terror.
18. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn (2006)
Gillian Flynn’s debut novel preceded Gone Girl by six years, and it’s arguably her darkest book. Journalist Camille Preaker returns to her hometown of Wind Gap, Missouri, to cover the murders of two young girls. She’s haunted by her own past — a history of self-harm, a manipulative mother named Adora, and a half-sister she barely knows.
Wind Gap is a sweltering, claustrophobic small town full of toxic femininity, social cruelty, and secrets that go back generations. Flynn dissects the ways women are taught to perform femininity and the damage that results when those performances become pathological. Camille is one of the most complex protagonists in contemporary thriller fiction — broken, brave, and painfully self-aware.
Sharp Objects was adapted into an HBO miniseries in 2018 starring Amy Adams, who delivered one of the finest performances of her career. The series is superb, but the book is even more harrowing.
“Sometimes you need to scorch everything to the ground, and start over.”
19. Dark Places by Gillian Flynn (2009)
Flynn’s second novel centers on Libby Day, who as a seven-year-old survived the massacre of her family in their Kansas farmhouse. Her teenage brother Ben was convicted of the murders, largely on the basis of Libby’s testimony. Twenty-five years later, a group of amateur crime investigators called the Kill Club convinces Libby that Ben might be innocent, and she reluctantly begins investigating what actually happened that night.
The novel alternates between Libby’s present-day investigation and the events of 1985, told from the perspectives of her brother Ben and her mother Patty. Flynn reconstructs the Day family’s desperate poverty with unflinching detail — the freezing farmhouse, the empty fridge, Patty’s mounting debts — and shows how economic desperation, Satanic panic, and small-town hysteria combined to produce a miscarriage of justice.
Dark Places is often considered Flynn’s most underrated work. It’s bleaker and less flashy than Gone Girl, but its depiction of generational poverty and institutional failure gives it a weight and seriousness that lingers.
“I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ.”
20. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (2005)
Stieg Larsson was a Swedish journalist and activist who spent decades investigating far-right extremism in Sweden. He completed the manuscripts for his Millennium trilogy but died of a heart attack in November 2004, at the age of 50, before the first book was published. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (originally titled Men Who Hate Women in Swedish) was published posthumously in 2005 and became one of the biggest international bestsellers of the 21st century.
The novel follows two parallel storylines: journalist Mikael Blomkvist is hired by an aging industrialist to investigate the disappearance of his grandniece Harriet forty years earlier, and brilliant hacker Lisbeth Salander — one of the most memorable characters in modern fiction — is conducting her own dangerous investigations. When their paths converge, they uncover a pattern of violence against women hidden within one of Sweden’s most prominent families.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a psychological thriller, a mystery, a social novel, and a savage critique of Swedish institutional failures. If you enjoy Nordic crime fiction, also check out our list of the best Scandinavian authors.
“What she had realized was that love was that moment when your heart was about to burst.”
21. The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992)
Donna Tartt was born in Greenwood, Mississippi, in 1963. She studied at the University of Mississippi before transferring to Bennington College in Vermont, where she studied with the writer and editor Barry Hannah. The Secret History was her debut novel, published in 1992, and it was an immediate critical and commercial success.
The novel opens with its narrator, Richard Papen, telling you that he and his friends murdered their classmate Bunny Corcoran. This is not a whodunit. It’s a whydunit and a what-happens-next. Richard, a middle-class Californian, arrives at an elite Vermont college and is drawn into a small, insular group of Classics students led by the charismatic professor Julian Morrow. They study Ancient Greek, drink wine, and attempt to recreate a Dionysian ritual — which results in a death. The cover-up of that death leads to Bunny’s murder.
The Secret History is a psychological thriller about the seduction of intellectualism, the toxicity of elitism, and the way guilt corrodes a group from within. Tartt’s prose is elegant and addictive, and the Greek tragedy structure gives the novel a feeling of inevitability.
“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
Tartt went on to publish two more novels — The Little Friend (2002) and The Goldfinch (2013), the latter winning the Pulitzer Prize.
22. Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane (2003)
Dennis Lehane was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1965. He’s the author of numerous crime novels, including Mystic River and Gone, Baby, Gone, but Shutter Island (2003) is his purest psychological thriller.
U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels arrives at Ashecliffe Hospital, a psychiatric facility on a remote island in Boston Harbor, to investigate the disappearance of a patient. As a hurricane strands him on the island, Teddy becomes convinced that the hospital is conducting sinister experiments on its patients. The walls seem to be closing in. His memories of his wife’s death and his wartime experiences keep intruding. Nothing is as it appears.
Shutter Island was adapted into a 2010 film by Martin Scorsese starring Leonardo DiCaprio. The twist is famous enough now that it’s hard to come to the book fresh, but if you can manage it, the experience is devastating.
“Which would be worse: to live as a monster, or to die as a good man?“
23. The Girl Before by JP Delaney (2017)
JP Delaney is a pen name of British author Tony Strong. The Girl Before (2017) alternates between two women — Emma and Jane — who at different times move into the same extraordinary minimalist house designed by an enigmatic architect named Edward Monkford. To live in the house, tenants must agree to a long list of invasive rules. Both women become involved with Edward. Both women’s lives begin to unravel.
The novel’s dual timeline structure slowly reveals the connections between Emma’s story and Jane’s, and the growing sense that the house itself is a kind of psychological experiment. Delaney’s background in advertising gives the book a sleek, controlled style that mirrors the architecture at its center.
The Girl Before was adapted into a BBC/HBO Max series in 2022. Delaney has continued writing psychological thrillers, including The Perfect Wife (2019) and Playing Nice (2020).
“Please make a list of every possession you consider essential to your life.”
Modern Psychological Thrillers
These are the books that have defined the genre in the past several years — sharp, twisty, and often strikingly original in their premises.
24. The Maid by Nita Prose (2022)
Nita Prose worked in book publishing for over two decades before publishing her debut novel, The Maid, in 2022. The book was selected for a long list of book clubs and became a New York Times number one bestseller.
Molly Gray is a hotel maid with a meticulous nature and a difficulty reading social cues (the book implies she’s on the autism spectrum without explicitly stating it). She loves her job at the Regency Grand Hotel, finding comfort in the orderly process of cleaning rooms. When she discovers a wealthy guest dead in his bed, she becomes the prime suspect — partly because her behavior strikes the police as odd, and partly because she’s been framed.
The Maid is a psychological thriller with a warm heart, which is unusual for the genre. Molly is a genuinely lovable protagonist, and the mystery is engaging without being grim. Prose followed it with The Mystery Guest (2023).
“I do so enjoy a well-made bed, the way it speaks of order and the possibility of a fresh start.”
25. The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse (2021)
Sarah Pearse’s debut novel is set in a converted sanatorium high in the Swiss Alps that has been turned into a luxury hotel. Detective Elin Warner arrives for her brother’s engagement party, but when his fiancee disappears during a storm that cuts the hotel off from the outside world, Elin is pulled into an investigation that forces her to confront her own trauma.
The setting is spectacular — Pearse uses the isolated, snowbound hotel and its dark history as a former tuberculosis sanatorium to maximum atmospheric effect. The closed-room mystery structure (everyone is trapped, anyone could be the killer) gives the book a classic Agatha Christie feel, but the psychological elements — Elin’s PTSD, her complicated family dynamics — ground it in something more modern.
The Sanatorium was a Reese’s Book Club pick and spent weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Pearse followed it with The Retreat (2022).
“The past doesn’t stay buried, not in a place like this.”
26. Verity by Colleen Hoover (2018)
Colleen Hoover is best known for her romance novels, but Verity (2018) is a full-throttle psychological thriller that surprised many of her readers. Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer, is hired to complete the remaining books in a bestselling series by Verity Crawford, who was injured in a car accident and is now unable to write. Lowen moves into the Crawford home to go through Verity’s notes and discovers an unfinished autobiography in which Verity confesses to horrifying acts — including the truth about what happened to her children.
The manuscript-within-a-novel structure is effective, and the question of whether Verity’s autobiography is truthful or fictional drives the suspense. The ending is deliberately ambiguous, and readers have debated its meaning intensely since publication.
Verity has sold millions of copies, boosted significantly by BookTok, and is currently being developed as a film.
“There are no heroes in this story. Nothing to be learned. This is not a fairy tale.”
27. The Push by Ashley Audrain (2021)
Ashley Audrain worked in publicity at Penguin Random House Canada before publishing her debut novel, The Push, in 2021. The book is narrated by Blythe Connor, a new mother who becomes convinced that something is wrong with her daughter Violet. Not wrong in a medical way — wrong in a fundamental, possibly dangerous way. Is Violet a difficult child, or is she genuinely malevolent? And is Blythe’s perception reliable, given her own traumatic family history?
The novel unfolds as a letter from Blythe to her ex-husband Fox, and the second-person address (“You always loved her more than me”) gives it an immediacy and desperation that’s hard to shake. Audrain tackles the taboo of maternal ambivalence and the question of whether bad mothering is inherited — a question that has no comfortable answer.
The Push was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and has been optioned for film.
“I want you to know what you missed.”
28. The Whisper Man by Alex North (2019)
Alex North is the pen name of British author Steve Mosby. The Whisper Man (2019) follows Tom Kennedy, a recently widowed father who moves with his young son Jake to a new town for a fresh start. They don’t know that the town was once terrorized by a serial killer known as the Whisper Man, who would whisper at children’s windows to lure them outside. The killer was caught and imprisoned — but now a new child has gone missing, and Jake is hearing whispers at his bedroom window.
North combines the psychological thriller with elements of supernatural horror — Jake seems to have an ability to sense things that others can’t — but the real tension comes from Tom’s grief, his fear of failing as a father, and the creeping realization that the Whisper Man’s legacy isn’t over.
The Whisper Man is genuinely frightening in places, but it’s also a moving story about fatherhood and loss. North followed it with The Shadows (2020).
“If you leave a door half open, soon you’ll hear the whispers spoken.”
29. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (2020)
Silvia Moreno-Garcia was born in Mexico and is now based in Vancouver, Canada. Mexican Gothic (2020) was her breakthrough novel, a New York Times bestseller and finalist for multiple awards including the Bram Stoker Award.
In 1950s Mexico, glamorous socialite Noemi Taboada receives a disturbing letter from her newlywed cousin Catalina, begging for rescue from her husband’s isolated mansion, High Place. Noemi travels to the crumbling estate in the Mexican countryside and finds herself trapped in a house that seems to be alive — with a tyrannical English patriarch, a sinister family history, and something in the walls.
Mexican Gothic is a psychological thriller wrapped in Gothic horror, drawing on the tradition of du Maurier’s Rebecca and Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle while adding elements of colonialism, eugenics, and body horror. It’s atmospheric, smart, and deeply creepy.
“The house, for she was sure it was the house, pressed itself against her.”
30. The Maidens by Alex Michaelides (2021)
Alex Michaelides followed the massive success of The Silent Patient with The Maidens, published in 2021. Group therapist Mariana Andros becomes convinced that a charismatic Classics professor at Cambridge University named Edward Fosca is responsible for the murder of one of his students. Fosca has a devoted group of female students — his “Maidens” — who seem to worship him, and Mariana suspects that Greek tragedy is the key to understanding his motives.
The Cambridge setting is richly drawn, and the parallels with ancient Greek mythology give the book a literary depth unusual in the genre. Michaelides weaves in themes of grief, obsession, and the manipulation of intelligent young women by powerful older men. The twist at the end, while perhaps not as shocking as the one in The Silent Patient, is satisfying and well-constructed.
The Maidens confirms Michaelides as one of the most interesting writers working in psychological suspense today.
“In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
That last quotation is from Albert Camus, and Michaelides uses it as an epigraph — a fitting gesture for a thriller steeped in classical thought and the ancient human fascination with darkness.
Psychological thrillers work because they exploit something we all fear: the suspicion that the people closest to us might not be who they seem, or that our own minds might betray us. The 30 books on this list represent the best the genre has to offer — from Gothic classics to contemporary page-turners. If you’re looking for more recommendations in the thriller and suspense space, explore our lists of the best mystery authors and the best thriller authors. Happy reading — and maybe leave the lights on.