6 Mystery &Thriller Books Recommended by Presidents

There are two versions of Manhattan's Lower East Side. One is a pricey cultural center of art, while the other is a rough, downtrodden crimescape.

After a street kid shoots a young hipster to death, violence ripples through the city.

Readers are taken through the story by Eric Cash, an aimless 35-year-old whose lost his artistic purpose to the daily grind. But just how reliable is his version of the events?

Genetic research is making remarkable leaps and bounds everyday. Enough progress that it seems like the advancements are getting out of control…

From missing body parts to hair colors going extinct, there's a cure for everything. But what if the fix is worse than the problem?

In this satirical sci-fi thriller, several characters—including genetically modified animals—struggle to survive amidst a world of relentless genetic research, capitalistic greed, and legal interventions.

Armand Gamache, the former head of the Sûreté du Québec, receives a strange invitation to an abandoned farmhouse. There, he finds that he's been named the executor of a total stranger's will.

Curious—and still on suspension—Gamache can't resist digging into the truth. Especially when he learns the other two executors are Myrna Landers, the bookseller from Three Pines, and a young builder—neither of which have ever met the deceased, either.

The instructions contained within the will are so peculiar that Gamache and the others suspect the woman had to have been out of her mind. But what if she wasn't?

When a dead body turns up, the will starts to look a lot less crazy and a lot more menacing.

But Gamache has his hands full with even more trouble, as the events of six months ago that led to his suspension are still being investigated.

The opioids he lost in favor of taking down the cartels have mostly been retrieved. However, there is one exception—a devastating one.

Narcotics have turned up in inner city Montreal—enough to kill thousands. And Gamache is scrambling to find answers before the deadly drugs hit the streets.

A rare Tom Clancy novel set outside the Ryanverse, this standalone thriller envisions what World War III might look like.

It's the mid-80s, and war has broken loose between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces. Rather than an apocalyptic conflict wrought by weapons of mass destruction, however, this war is fought entirely through the use of conventional weaponry.

Beneath the freezing waters of the Atlantic Ocean, a Soviet submarine commander has decided to send the nuclear submarine Red October west. The Americans are desperate to take it, and the Russians are determined to get it back.

As the race for this dangerous craft ensues, there's only one man who can hunt it down.
 
Genius CIA analyst Jack Ryan doesn't care much for fieldwork, but when photographs of Red October cross his path, he's suddenly a valuable player in a high-stakes hide-and-seek game between two major world powers.

The Russian intelligence unit SMERSH is determined to bring an end to Special Agent James Bond. But losing him would be a devastating blow to the British Secret Service.

When beautiful Russian spy Tatiana Romanova reaches out to 007 for help, he suspects it's a trap. But she's offering to hand over the coveted Spektor decoding machine if he helps her defect, and Bond can't resist the chance to give the British a leg up in the Cold War.

In the end, who will outmaneuver whom?