April’s Best Psychological Thrillers

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Now that Lisa Levy has moved on to a new set of columns, I’ll be taking over her psychological thriller column and recommending a few books each month perfect for the reader who knows the greatest mystery is why we do the things we do. April brings new suspenseful reads from old favorites and new voices, including a new Caroline Kepnes novel in the “You” universe, Adam Sternbergh’s take on a couple’s retreat gone sour, a reunion thriller from Megan Miranda, and a delicious debut from Disha Bose. Thanks to my colleagues Olivia Rutigliano and Dwyer Murphy as always for their wonderful blurb contributions.

Azma Dar, Spider
(Datura)

Azma Dar has created a wickedly delightful antiheroine in Sophie, the self-centered actress at the heart of her novel Spider, who just wants to turn her lovely countenance into a screen siren with the successive help of her three husbands—at least, until the third husband, a leading light in their local Pakistani British community, is found dead. Did one of her previous lovers kill him? Or did Sophie do the calculations and decide she was better off looking for number four? And not to be too heartless or anything, but how will this all effect her acting career?!? –MO

Caroline Kepnes, For You and Only You
(Random House)

Joe Goldberg heads to an MFA program to work on his novel in this fourth installment of Kepnes’s series, now close to the Ripliad in length and almost as huge in scope. Goldberg, like Ripley, is as bad as they come—but we can all relate to his visceral disgust at the hypocrisy of his surroundings, especially now that Joe is at an Ivy League program being taught by a pompous, no-talent has-been with a penchant for ruining the literary dreams of women who won’t sleep with him. Joe quickly falls in love with the only other student in the program who shares his working-class origins, but of course, he’s bound to project far more onto “Dunkin’ Sally Rooney” than she could ever live up to. –MO

Adam Sternbergh, The Eden Test
(Flatiron)

Sternbergh’s newest is thriller set at a couple’s retreat, and each day the lucky pair, whose relationship is very much on the rocks, is asked a provocative new question that throws them deeper and deeper into crisis. That’s a perfect recipe for some emotionally heavy suspense. –DM

Disha Bose, Dirty Laundry
(Ballantine)

Ciara Dunphy is the queen bee of her small Irish village, whose ambivalence towards her own family doesn’t make it into her carefully curated mommy influencer persona. Her best friend, Mishti, misses her home in India and distrusts her psychologist husband and his reluctance to visit their relatives. Her sworn enemy, Lauren, has been picked on for far too long by the mean girls of the village, and she’s had about enough of Ciara’s fakery. And then, Ciara ends up dead….I tore through this delicious and insightful thriller, where plenty of plausible suspects and reveals keep the reader guessing. –MO

Alice Slater, Death of a Bookseller
(Scarlet)

I truly feel like this book was written for me, but also for all of you, dear readers, for it is creepy AF in the best way. Two booksellers, one obsessed with true crime and the other deeply uncomfortable with the medium, get ready for a deadly showdown when one discovers the other has a more personal connection to the genre than most realize. Also there are snails. –MO

Jeneva Rose, You Shouldn’t Have Come Here
(Blackstone)

In this fabulous pandemic Air BnB thriller, a New Yorker heads to a quiet getaway in Wyoming for escape, only to find herself enthralled by her host and cut off from civilization far more thoroughly than she anticipated. Is it fate, drawing her together with the handsome home owner? Or was their meeting somehow engineered? As growing affection becomes obsession, it’s up to Rose’s heroine to figure out how to escape, or decide if she even wants to. –MO

Megan Miranda, The Only Survivors
(Scribner)

In Miranda’s newest, old classmates get together ten years after a tragedy, but when one of them disappears, it calls into question everything the group thought it had already reckoned with. Miranda always delivers a gripping thriller. –DM

Meagan Jennett, You Know Her
(MCD)

The thesis of You Know Her is that *everyone else doesn’t know her*! You heard me. Rookie officer Nora Martin is new to her small-town police department, but she knows in her gut that there is something going on with Sophie Braam, her new friend and the bartender at the local watering hole where a young man’s mutilated body is just discovered. There has been a serial killer stalking their tiny Virginia community. And Nora thinks it’s Sophie. And she’s the only one.–OR

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