Best Thriller Books

When Renée Ballard's badge, gun, and ID are stolen, the theft becomes a personal crisis on top of her cold-case work — including a decades-old serial-killer case she's chasing through genetic genealogy. Help arrives from an unexpected volunteer: Maddie Bosch, Harry's daughter, now a patrol officer ready to take up the family calling.

A morbidly obese lawyer accidentally kills an old Romani woman with his car and receives a single word from her ancient father — 'thinner' — triggering an unstoppable supernatural curse that begins to consume him.

Ray Garrett's wife has died — a probable suicide — and her father, Ed Coleman, blames Ray and has tried to shoot him in Rome. The novel follows the two men as they circle each other through Venice and its islands — Coleman hunting Ray, Ray unable to leave, drawn back to a man who wants to kill him in a city that seems to conspire with grief.

A pair of killers obsessed with vampirism drain their victims of blood across the country, while the Mastermind who shattered Alex Cross's life in Roses Are Red continues to taunt him from the shadows. Cross must close two cases at once — one grotesque, one personal — in this two-front thriller.

Sonchai is sent to Dubai and beyond to investigate a human organ-trafficking operation — the harvesting and sale of kidneys, corneas, and hearts from the living poor to the wealthy dying. The fifth Sonchai novel takes the series global, from Bangkok to Shanghai to Dubai, asking what Buddhist teachings have to say about the commodification of the human body.

A Secret Service agent recruits Jack Reacher to do the impossible: assassinate the Vice President-elect — on paper — to expose the holes in his protection before a real killer exploits them. As credible death threats mount, Reacher's war game becomes a desperate race to stop an assassination for real.

A luxury-hotel murder scene yields a shocking clue: a news photo places Lindsay Boxer's own husband, Joe, at the scene — with another woman. When Joe vanishes, Lindsay must investigate the man she married, uncovering a possible double life tangled in espionage and national security.

An imprisoned serial killer's reign of terror seems to be over — until a copycat begins killing in his style, and reporter Cindy Thomas, writing a book about the original murderer, finds herself drawn dangerously close to both. Lindsay Boxer and the Women's Murder Club race to stop a protégé finishing his mentor's work.

When her longtime mentor and former partner Warren Jacobi is brutally stabbed to death, Lindsay Boxer vows to find his killer at any cost. The murder links to a string of clue-leaving killings — and to a brutal cartel that has drawn her husband Joe to Mexico, as Yuki prosecutes a case of her own.

A pair of arsonists is burning wealthy families alive in their own homes, leaving taunting Latin clues amid the ashes. As Lindsay Boxer hunts the fire-setters, the cold case of a missing young man — the son of a former governor — resurfaces to test the Women's Murder Club on two fronts.

A young man is found dead on a houseboat in London. Three women — each damaged, each with a connection to the dead man — become suspects in an investigation that reaches back through years of loss and resentment.

A passenger plane is shot out of the sky over Washington, and Alex Cross is drawn into the hunt for whoever turned the capital's airspace into a killing ground. As the investigation deepens, a separate executioner is at work — and the title is no idle threat: someone wants Cross dead.

Danny, an undocumented Sri Lankan immigrant cleaning houses in Sydney, recognises that a client of one of his regular houses may know something about a murder — and spends a single day deciding whether to go to the police, knowing that doing so will mean deportation.

Jazz Bashara is a porter and small-time smuggler in Artemis — humanity's first and only city on the Moon. When she's offered an opportunity to pull off a corporate heist that could solve her financial problems permanently, she discovers the job connects to a conspiracy that threatens the entire lunar colony.

A New Zealand guerrilla gardening collective called Birnam Wood begins farming unused land without permission; when their activities bring them into contact with a reclusive American tech billionaire with interests in the land, the collision between their idealism and his power becomes increasingly dangerous.

A monster hurricane batters Camino Island, and in its chaos a bestselling thriller writer turns up dead. Bookseller Bruce Cable suspects the storm didn't kill his friend. Using clues hidden in the dead author's unpublished manuscript, Bruce sets out to unmask a killer.

One afternoon in Boston, a mysterious signal called the Pulse turns every cell-phone user into a mindless, murderous savage. Artist Clay Riddell sets out across a collapsing New England to find his son. Stephen King's breakneck apocalyptic zombie thriller.

As Alex Cross plans his long-awaited wedding to Bree Stone, a sniper begins assassinating Washington's most corrupt politicians and power brokers, dividing a city that half-cheers the killings. Then Cross's oldest nemesis, Kyle Craig, returns to turn the chaos into a personal trap.

A criminal genius named Thierry Mulch becomes obsessed with Alex Cross, watching his every move and orchestrating an elaborate campaign to prove he can outthink and destroy him. As Mulch closes in, the danger gathers around the one thing Cross can't protect: his family.

When Washington's police chief — Cross's friend and mentor — is gunned down, Alex Cross steps back into the force to find the killer. But the murder is only the start: a wave of vigilante killings is sweeping the capital, as someone decides the law is too slow and begins executing criminals in the streets.

A killer who stages elaborate murders for a watching audience terrorizes Washington, just as Alex Cross is trying to build a peaceful life with Bree Stone. Then his oldest nemesis, the brilliant Kyle Craig, escapes and resurfaces — with a new face and a single obsession: destroying Cross.

A picnic in the Chilterns is interrupted when a hot-air balloon accident brings two strangers together. One of them — Joe Rose, a science journalist — becomes the obsessive focus of the other's deranged love. McEwan's clinical thriller dissects the boundary between reason and madness.

Alex Cross and John Sampson set out on a wilderness canoe trip to clear their heads, but their old enemy M has other plans. Stalked through the Montana backcountry by snipers and drones, the two friends fight for their lives, while Bree pursues a dangerous trafficking case of her own back home.

The origin story of Hannibal Lecter: from his aristocratic Lithuanian childhood through the traumatic events of the Second World War that broke something fundamental, to the first murders in post-war Europe and Japan. A prequel that traces the specific losses and grievances that created the most celebrated fictional cannibal.