24 edge-of-the-bed best Psychological thriller books
I love writing this post because I'm recommending books from my favorite and most-read genre.
They include classic thrillers, contemporary mysteries, disturbing stories and harrowing true accounts. Take your pick and celebrate this spooky season.
Top 24 crime/thriller/mystery books to read this spooky season
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Classic Thriller Books
Spooky events centered surrounding kids – I find such books/movies so emotionally draining and disturbing that they become my favorite spooky reads. Add to it a remotely located hotel, Overlook, a newly appointed caretaker, Jack, the winter setting, and strange and dangerous events gathering around the hotel which is initially noticed only by the five-year-old Danny.
Did I not sleep well at night while reading this book? Yes
Would I be brave enough to help Danny get rid of all ghosts? Yes
A new governess caring for two out-of-the-ordinary weird and quiet kids, Miles and Flora, at another remote location. And what’s more the estate is haunted and the ghosts are trying to get closer to the children every day. Will the helpless governess be able to save the kids from the horrors lurking in the dark or will she succumb?
A classic with a unique plot and with an ambiguous ending that leaves the readers to form their conclusions.
This classic of thriller books most definitely qualifies in the Best Psychological thriller book lists. Because it is a book that elaborates on the psychology of two different women married to the same man. And it’s a mystery surrounding the house in Manderley, which consumes you and fascinates you like no other on the list.
I absolutely could not put this book down.
The very popular and recognized Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is invited to a Swiss research facility to investigate a cryptic symbol seared into the chest of a murdered physicist. What he uncovers is beyond reason and logic: a deadly vendetta against the Catholic Church by a centuries-old underground organization -- the Illuminati.
In a frantic race to save the Vatican from literal destruction, Langdon joins forces in Rome with the scientist Vittoria Vetra. Together they get on on a desperate hunt through impenetrable crypts, precarious vaults, and abandoned churches, and into the depths of the most mysterious vault on earth...the long-forgotten Illuminati den.
Psychological Thrillers Books based on Domestic Life
I love reading psychological thrillers based on very intimate relations like a mother-daughter relation. The emotions in these are so complex and so high that they leave the reader feeling breathless.
Blythe wants to be like any other mother – loving caring and comforting to her baby daughter. But what if her baby is not like the other babies. Or is Blythe just imagining the worst, just like her husband says.
Then baby Sam is born and he is every mother’s dream. And yet Blythe is pressed to face the truth when suddenly she finds her life is completely changed.
Every blog that has a “books with endings you did not see coming” list, has this book in that list for sure. That is the reason everyone is talking about Sarah Pinborough's Behind Her Eyes.
A woman, Louise, meets a guy at the bar, they kiss and feel a connection. The next day the woman goes to her office to find that guy is her new boss and he says their kiss was a mistake as he’s married. Then that same woman bumps into another woman who is new in town and they become friends only to realize that this woman is the boss or the man from the bar’s wife.
Well, things start getting complicated when the perfect husband and wife start giving creepy vibes with the controlling husband scaring the timid wife. Louise gets sucked into the relationship and begins uncovering puzzling secrets to their marriage. And that doesn’t go down well with the couple.
Two sisters. One is bold and beautiful, and the other is timid and reserved. The bold one calls the timid one saying she has something important to tell and the other one just ignores her. The next day the sister who called is dead. Everyone says she committed suicide by jumping into the river they’ve dreaded all their life and the lake that has taken more lives earlier.
What is this fatal secret her sister died for? Not the best work by Hawkins but a good Psychological thriller.
A book with cozy mystery vibes. Perfect for fans of Agatha Christie.
Four friends in their eighties find themselves solving a local murder when they find the local developer dead. They have the help of a female cop who is on her first case. And together they are the Thursday Murder Club.
Will they be able to solve the murder mystery before more bodies start showing up?
Liane Moriarty is a mystery master. In this book set in Melbourne, Australia, she dives deep into a marriage and its intricacies. A husband has written a letter that his wife should read after his death. But he didn’t mean his wife to find the letter before his death because he has written about his deepest darkest secrets in it.
Will the wife become a partner in the secret or will she divulge them and break her family apart?
A retelling of the classic, Jane Eyre for a more contemporary reader.
Ultra-rich neighborhood, a dog-walker Jane, who also steals from the houses she works in. When one day she meets Eddie, the man of her dreams. He is rich, handsome, successful and above all single. Single because his wife, and her friend recently drowned in a freak accident.
Although Jane has landed her dream she is haunted by Eddie’s ex-wife Bea and the charming, successful, ambitious story she leaves behind. Will she remain happily married or will the bubble burst due to her disturbing past or Eddie’s?
I adore plots that involve writers. And this one is horrifyingly twisted.
Lowen Ashleigh is a bankrupt struggling writer. She’ll take up anything that comes her way. When she accepts to ghostwrite books of a successful series writer, little does she know that she might stumble upon a diary with painful secrets, including the one about the writer’s daughter’s death?
Jack and Grace are the perfect couple. Wealthy, good-looking, charming and elegant. He has looks and wealth; she has charm and elegance and what’s more they are inseparable.
But why are they inseparable? Grace never mees for coffee, although she is a house wife. Their house is surrounded by high-security metal gates and even their windows are covered with it. Grace is always indoors. What really is going on behind this perfect façade?
Alicia Berenson shot her husband five times in the face. She is a famous painter married to an equally famous fashion photographer. After killing her husband she goes mute, never to speak again.
Alicia’s refusal to talk, or explain what happened and why it happened, turns a domestic tragedy into a most sought-after mystery for the media and the public.
Theo Faber, a criminal psychotherapist, has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. He thinks he can break Alicia’s silence and crack the mystery of the murder. But the truth might consume him.
Brilliant plot twist, hands down.
Anna Fox, a psychiatrist herself, lives alone and she never goes out of the house. All day she’s either drinking wine or spying on her neighbors.
Especially the Russells, father, mother, son. But one day she sees something she wasn’t supposed to see. When she calls the police she is led to believe that she imagined everything. After all who would believe a reclusive drunkard? But things turn sinister when someone clicks a picture of her sleeping on her phone.
You would never guess the twist in this one, it’s just some excellent writing and plotting.
YA Thriller Books
This YA thriller is taking the thriller genre like a storm.
Five students of a university. One of them is going to reveal some juicy secrets about the other four. Only he can’t because before he does that he is found dead.
Did one of the other four do it or did all of them do it or was there someone else involved who wanted to trap the four?
Read carefully and you might just find out the secret.
Classic YA Mystery. Kids in the neighborhood goofing around and leaving secret messages in chalk stick figures to each other. But one of these messages is creepy as it leads them to a dead body.
Fast forward to 2016 and all the kids are grown up and the incident is a memory. But then one of them receives an envelope with a stick figure drawn and now he must find out what happened because one of his friends is now dead.
A distinguished family, the Sinclairs meet every year on their private island.
Only one year they don’t. Something happens that year that destroys the family, but everyone is trying to hide the truth of what happened.
We Were Liars is a contemporary, classy thriller book that makes it to the list of ‘Books with endings you did not see coming.”
After all the lies and the liars, the truth will surely blow your mind.
Read it.
Maggie and Nina live in a house and have dinner together. Then Nina takes Maggie back to the attic to be heavily chained.
Chained because Nina cannot forgive Maggie for the unthinkable things she did to her.
But Nina isn’t yet aware of many things in the past, and Maggie is keeping it a secret even if it kills her.
Although a true crime book, I’d say this qualifies more for disturbing psychological thriller books.
Another story based on the complexity of the mother-daughter relationship, only this one isn’t a story but the real life of sisters Nikki, Sami, and Tori Knotek.
Whoever heard of a mother confining and torturing her daughters for years escalated to the level of multiple murders?
Unbelievable, gut-wrenching, and deeply disturbing this is a story of the survival of the sisters who found strength in their bond and togetherness to beat the pure evil that was their mother.
When Ella Longfield listens in on two men flirting with teenage girls on a train, she thinks nothing of it—until she realizes they are fresh out of prison.
But she doesn’t call the police then only to wake up the next day with the news that one of the girls has disappeared.
On the anniversary of the disappearance Ella realizes the family is hiding something, she also receives a series of threatening letters.
A very popular mystery book available free on Kindle Unlimited in India.
Atmospheric Thriller Books
If you are someone who loves Gothic and spooky setups, well this 2021 thriller story is perfect for you.
A beautiful resort set in the Swiss mountains that has a creepy past. Before becoming a luxurious resort it was a sanatorium for patients of TB who were shunned by the world. A couple is celebrating their engagement at the resort and the fiancée disappears and then a body turns up, to be followed by another. The sister of the groom is an ex-police officer now on vacation and she has a job to do.
Harriet Vanger was the scion of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families, but she disappeared forty years ago without a trace. But her aged uncle still seeks the truth by hiring Mikael Blomkvist, a struggling journalist recently trapped by a defamation conviction, to investigate.
He is helped by the pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander, the protagonist of the story.
A worldwide sensation, Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo weaves together multiple themes of murder mystery, domestic saga, romance, and bureaucracy, seamlessly.
Don’t be deceived by this misleading title. Although there is a beautiful garden involved with butterflies, these are no ordinary butterflies.
They are kidnapped women tattooed to resemble butterflies, by its brutal gardener.
But that’s not the story, the garden is found and a survivor Maya is interviewed by the FBI and that is where the real mystery begins. Because Maya is still hiding a few things under her dark and twisted story.
A wedding on a secluded island in Ireland, with a storm that is threatening to salvage the island and in the midst a body is found.
The groom, a rising television star is handsome and charming. The bride, a magazine publisher is smart and ambitious. It’s like a wedding of dreams, the designer dress, the remote location, the glam party favors, and the boutique whiskey.
The wedding planner has planned everything in great detail and with pure grace and elegance. But sometimes the best-laid plans don’t work out well. The limited guests have arrived and then someone turns up dead. Who wished to malign the happy couple’s prospects, and who was murdered? And the more pressing question, why?
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