8 of the Most Anticipated Mystery, Thriller, and Crime Books of 2025

Pub Date: January 7, 2025

May Hanover, a chronic rule follower, sets out for a long overdue weekend in the Hamptons with her childhood best friends, Lauren and Kelsey, a friendship that has had both its struggles, its scandals, and its secrets.

But despite their differences (Lauren and Kelsey often playfully mock May for her anxious nature), their bond has withstood the test of time.

What’s supposed to be a relaxing weekend in the sun for the women quickly spirals out of control when a drunken prank goes wrong, and May finds herself both under investigation by the police and questioning the loyalty of Kelsey and Lauren. 

From former Deputy District Attorney turned contemporary suspense maven Alafair Burke, this one promises to keep you on your toes.  

Pub Date: January 14, 2025

Life for wealthy siblings Clara and Teddy Wieland has finally settled down after decades of living in the shadow of their parents’ untimely deaths.

However, just as peace finds them, and just as Teddy is ready to throw his hat into the ring for a senate race, intimate videos of Clara are leaked to the public, disrupting everything. 

The thing is…Clara doesn’t recall the videos and believes they might be deep-fakes. 

Billed as “Succession meets Megan Abbott,” this sophomore release from Sligar (Take Me Apart) will follow Clara as she unravels before the public eye, certain that her misfortune can be blamed on an age-old family curse. 

Pub Date: January 25, 2025

When the wealthy Agarwal family convenes on a luxurious private island for the unveiling of their patriarch’s succession plan, not a single one of them can imagine the secrets the others hide.

Vying to inherit the million-dollar family business, there’s Myra, the favorite and reunion host, Aseem, the suspected heir, and Aisha, the youngest and wildest with a party habit that can’t be controlled.

And despite the belief that they’re a picture-perfect family on the surface, greed, lies, suspicion, and looming bankruptcy threaten to tear them all apart. 

When everyone has secrets, everyone has a motive, and when one of the Agarwals is murdered during the trip, a page-turning mystery ensues.

Early praise says this one is a powerhouse of a debut. 

Pub Date: February 25, 2025

Translated by Robin Myers and Sarah Booker

The long-awaited English translation of Pulitzer Prize-winning Cristina Rivera Garza’s Death Takes Me is finally releasing this year.

In this story, a protagonist also named Cristina Rivera Garza, stumbles upon the body of a murdered man who has been castrated. As fate would have it, this crime scene contains lines of poetry written within it, and it just so happens that the poetry belongs to a poet who Cristina has been studying for years. 

When other castrated bodies begin to turn up, Cristina is invited by the police to consult on the case, and what follows is a genre-bending epic that flips both gender-based violence and the nature of victimhood as we understand it on their heads.

Pub Date: March 18, 2025

When an SAT Tutor named Evie finds the parents of her wealthy client murdered in their backyard, her world is turned upside down.

 Evie and a mute woman she finds bound inside the walls of her client’s mansion are wrongfully accused of the crime and on the wrong side of a manhunt, in which they’re painted as a modern-day Thelma and Louise. 

Evie is smart enough to know that the only way she can exonerate herself is by finding the person who really committed the crime, and thus, she embarks on a misunderstood, cross-country mission to prove her innocence. 

Praised as “hilarious” and “insightful,” Killer Instinct is said to hold a mirror up to the impacts of late-stage capitalism and the power of social mobility.

This literary debut from Hannah Deitch, recommended for fans of My Sister, The Serial Killer, is one you don’t want to miss. 

Pub Date: May 6, 2025

A young reporter named Dash fills his days investigating a local serial killer in Monterey, California. He fills his nights trying to forget his past.

However, in doing so, he finds himself involved with a cult that claims to have a pill that can wipe his memory from the events he so desperately seeks to forget. But is it too good to be true?

When the pill takes more from Dash than it’s supposed to, everything falls apart. Dash soon finds himself in a race against the clock to conclude his investigation and unveil a dark secret about the cult before he forgets his identity entirely. 

A Thousand Natural Shocks, an investigation into the lasting impact of violence and trauma, is another “lyrical and literary” debut thriller that you need to be on the lookout for this year.  

Pub Date: June 10, 2025

S.A. Crosby’s highly anticipated, upcoming release King of Ashes follows the story of Roman Carruthers, a business whiz called back home when a car accident puts his father in a coma. 

When Roman returns to his family’s crematory business, he finds his sister barely holding it all together and his brother deep into some dangerous debt. Though, Roman’s skillset makes him the perfect man for digging his siblings out of their respective messes. 

But as Roman combs the books to help get things under control, he learns that, despite being a family of mortuary care workers, death is even closer than it seems.

There’s a local crime family, based on The Godfather’s Corleones, who refuse to let Roman’s brother off easy.

And while everyone might underestimate him, Roman has a secret: he will burn it all down to save those he loves. 

Pub Date: August 12, 2025

Nina is the youngest person to testify in a murder trial in France when her older sister Tamara is drowned by the family babysitter. At the time, her testimony was the defining evidence that resulted in a conviction. 

Twenty years later, when a true crime documentary about the sitter’s possible innocence enters production, Nina, now twenty-six, realizes she has very little memory of what actually went down that night.

And she takes the documentary as a sign that it is time to find out the truth once and for all. 

This thriller, set in the South of France, the sophomore novel from Katie Bishop (The Girls of Summer), will make for the perfect mid-August read.