Five Must Read Thrillers for Autumn

The arrival of autumn brings many things. Chilly days and long nights, pumpkins and pumpkin spice, apple cider and crunchy leaves underfoot. The time for cozy sweaters and mugs of mulled wine is nigh. With the arrival of the coziest season, I know many of us readers feel a shift in the types of books we read. Sometimes it’s a shift towards cozier books to settle down with, or perhaps a horror classic to keep us awake at night, or maybe something with a bit of an unsettling mystery to set us on edge as the sun sinks down. With gray skies and bare branches, the howling wind and smell of fire in the air, it’s no surprise so many readers look for something that reflects that atmosphere in books. Perhaps a thriller is what you’re looking for, and perhaps one of these will be the perfect fit. As the year winds down, so do book releases. Few new thrillers are set to be released in the last few months of the year but there may be some you missed the memo on earlier this year. There were several extremely popular thrillers this year, but these are four novels I haven’t heard much about along with one upcoming release I’m eagerly anticipating. 

 

An Anonymous Girl

by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

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Seeking women ages 18–32 to participate in a study on ethics and morality. Generous compensation. Anonymity guaranteed. When Jessica Farris signs up for a psychology study conducted by the mysterious Dr. Shields, she thinks all she’ll have to do is answer a few questions, collect her money, and leave. Question #1: Could you tell a lie without feeling guilt? But as the questions grow more and more intense and invasive and the sessions become outings where Jess is told what to wear and how to act, she begins to feel as though Dr. Shields may know what she’s thinking… and what she’s hiding. Question #2: Have you ever deeply hurt someone you care about? As Jess’s paranoia grows, it becomes clear that she can no longer trust what in her life is real, and what is one of Dr. Shields’ manipulative experiments. Caught in a web of deceit and jealousy, Jess quickly learns that some obsessions can be deadly. Question #3: Should a punishment always fit the crime? From the authors of the blockbuster bestseller The Wife Between Us comes an electrifying new novel about doubt, passion, and just how much you can trust someone.

 

 

This book has been on my radar since early summer and I’m eager to read it. I haven’t read many psychological thrillers and have only loved one of the few I’ve read but I certainly love the idea of them and the sound of this book specifically. 

 

The Stranger Inside

by Lisa Unger

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Twelve-year-old Rain Winter narrowly escaped an abduction while walking to a friend’s house. Her two best friends, Tess and Hank, were not as lucky. Tess never came home, and Hank was held in captivity before managing to escape. Their abductor was sent to prison but years later was released. Then someone delivered real justice—and killed him in cold blood. Now Rain is living the perfect suburban life, her dark childhood buried deep. She spends her days as a stay-at-home mom, having put aside her career as a hard-hitting journalist to care for her infant daughter. But when another brutal murderer who escaped justice is found dead, Rain is unexpectedly drawn into the case. Eerie similarities to the murder of her friends’ abductor force Rain to revisit memories she’s worked hard to leave behind. Is there a vigilante at work? Who is the next target? Why can’t Rain just let it go? Introducing one of the most compelling and original killers in crime fiction today, Lisa Unger takes readers deep inside the minds of both perpetrator and victim, blurring the lines between right and wrong, crime and justice, and showing that sometimes people deserve what comes to them.

 

This is a very recent release, coming out just two days ago on September 17th. It’s exactly the type of book I could see myself loving. 

 

The Current

by Tim Johnston

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When two young women leave their college campus in the dead of winter for a 700-mile drive north to Minnesota, they suddenly find themselves fighting for their lives in the icy waters of the Black Root River, just miles from home. One girl’s survival, and the other’s death—murder, actually—stun the citizens of a small Minnesota town, thawing memories of another young woman who lost her life in the same river ten years earlier, and whose killer may yet live among them. One father is forced to relive his agony while another’s greatest desire—to bring a killer to justice—is revitalized . . . and the girl who survived the icy plunge cannot escape the sense that she is connected to that earlier unsolved case by more than a river. Soon enough she’s caught up in an investigation of her own that will unearth long-hidden secrets, and stoke the violence that has long simmered just below the surface of the town. Souls frozen in time, ghosts and demons, the accused and the guilty, all stir to life in this cold northern place where memories, like treachery, run just beneath the ice, and where a young woman can come home but still not be safe. Brilliantly plotted, unrelentingly suspenseful, and beautifully realized, The Current is a gripping page-turner about how the past holds the key to the future as well as an unbreakable grip on the present.

 

This already feels atmospheric and creepy. I can absolutely see myself getting wrapped up in this over the cold months.  

 

The Family Upstairs

by Lisa Jewell 

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Soon after her twenty-fifth birthday, Libby Jones returns home from work to find the letter she’s been waiting for her entire life. She rips it open with one driving thought: I am finally going to know who I am. She soon learns not only the identity of her birth parents, but also that she is the sole inheritor of their abandoned mansion on the banks of the Thames in London’s fashionable Chelsea neighborhood, worth millions. Everything in Libby’s life is about to change. But what she can’t possibly know is that others have been waiting for this day as well—and she is on a collision course to meet them. Twenty-five years ago, police were called to 16 Cheyne Walk with reports of a baby crying. When they arrived, they found a healthy ten-month-old happily cooing in her crib in the bedroom. Downstairs in the kitchen lay three dead bodies, all dressed in black, next to a hastily scrawled note. And the four other children reported to live at Cheyne Walk were gone. In The Family Upstairs, the master of “bone-chilling suspense” (People) brings us the can’t-look-away story of three entangled families living in a house with the darkest of secrets. 

 

Described as twisty, intricate, engrossing and creepy by several reviewers, I’m hoping this could be a new favorite. 

 

Imaginary Friend

by Stephen Chbosky 

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We can swallow our fear or let our fear swallow us. Single mother Kate Reese is on the run. Determined to improve life for her and her son, Christopher, she flees an abusive relationship in the middle of the night with Christopher at her side. Together, they find themselves drawn to the tight-knit community of Mill Grove, Pennsylvania. It’s as far off the beaten track as they can get. Just one highway in, one highway out. At first, it seems like the perfect place to finally settle down. Then Christopher vanishes. For six awful days, no one can find him. Until Christopher emerges from the woods at the edge of town, unharmed but not unchanged. He returns with a voice in his head only he can hear, with a mission only he can complete: Build a tree house in the woods by Christmas, or his mother and everyone in the town will never be the same again. Soon Kate and Christopher find themselves in the fight of their lives, caught in the middle of a war playing out between good and evil, with their small town as the battleground.

 

Stephen Chbosky hasn’t published a book in twenty years and this new release, coming October 1st, is vastly different from his debut hit The Perks of Being a Wallflower. After a twenty year wait, this is one of the most anticipated books of the year. Described as both thriller and literary horror, this book could be the dark story I’m looking for this autumn.

 

Have you read any of these thrillers this year or are you, like me, looking to read them over the autumn months? Let me know in the comments! 

Thanks for reading, 

Madison