Chilling New Mystery and Thriller Books Coming December 2024

Havoc may have a kooky premise, but make no mistake: this suspenseful psychological thriller is as twisted as any Hitchcock classic.

At 81 years old, wealthy widow Maggie Burkhardt is deep in retirement, wiling away her days in luxury hotels around world. A compulsive fixer of people’s lives, Maggie has found an excellent way to keep herself entertained: secretly meddle in the lives of others

That’s what she plans to do with the young mother and son who arrive at her current hotel of residence on the banks of the Nile. What she doesn’t realize is that the unassuming son, eight-year-old Otto, maybe even more diabolical than her. 

Opposite ends of the age spectrum face off in a battle of the wits in this addictive thriller from the critically acclaimed author of A Beautiful Crime and The Lost Americans.  

When Madeline Brimley left small-town Georgia to pursue her acting dreams, she expected to never return. That was before her eccentric Aunt Rose passed, leaving Madeline her bookstore in an old Victorian mansion in the quaint college town of Enigma.

Running The Old Juniper Bookstore should be a dream for Madeline, but not long after she arrives, it’s clear someone has it out for her and her bookstore.

The threats escalate until one day, someone is murdered in her store. To make matters worse? Madeline is the prime suspect.

To clear her name and stop the killer before they strike again, Madeline must found out who the real culprit is. What she doesn’t realize is that she’s in danger of a lot more than a prison sentence…

A remote castle in the heart of the English countryside. A secret party.

Bessie and her closest friends are prepared for what they know will be the best spring break of their lives, but when one of them dies amid the festivities, it becomes clear that this party will be the wrong type of unforgettable. 

Now, a deadly storm has trapped the partygoers inside with the killer. As the bodies pile up, and internal suspicion grows, Bessie and her friends will have to summon up mettle they never knew they had in them if they want make it out of this spring break alive.  

Newly broke chef Paul Delamare gets something of a lucky break when his old friend, Michelin-star-winner Christian Wagner, asks Paul to fill in for him as a choux pastry instructor at the Chester Square Cookery School.

It’s not exactly a prestigious position, but it’s work, and Paul even finds himself enjoying showing the students how to temper chocolate and get their hollandaise just right. 

Everything goes awry when someone is found murdered with the same cleaver Paul used in his knife skills demonstration earlier in the day.

Now, the only way for Paul to clear his name is to find the real killer—avoid becoming their next victim. And of course, he still has his lessons to think about… 

Mystery novel superfan and cliché unemployed English major Claudia Lin has scored her dream job as a co-lead at Veracity, a dating detective agency for New Yorkers who want to know if their partners are telling the truth.

Claudia gets more than she bargained for when, rather than uncover the wrongdoings of unfaithful lovers, she and her colleagues uncover a sprawling, dangerous AI conspiracy within their own company.

After a client suddenly dies, Claudia takes the opportunity to convince his ex, an industry insider, to spill the truth about what Veracity is up to. The stakes are raised when Claudia finds out her own brother might be the next victim of Veracity’s nefarious plot.

As evidence and love interests pile up, Claudia is thrust into the role of detective and spy—and if there’s anything she’s learned from the spy genre, it’s that someone she trusts will betray her.

Writer Saoirse White hasn’t been able to pull herself together since her husband’s death, and her insurmountable writer’s block isn’t helping. In search of a change of scenery to get her out of her rut, Saoirse moves to Providence, Rhode Island.

More specifically, she moves into the historic home of Sarah Helen Whitman, a poet, spiritualist, and object of Edgar Allan Poe’s affections. 

Saoirse hoped the association with the poet would spur her own artistic creation, and at first, it does.

Encouraged by three transcendentalist enthusiasts of Whitman whom she takes on as friends, as well as a fellow poet and love interest, Saoirse writes more than she has in years, rediscovering herself in the process. But the deeper she digs, the more of her past she unearths—parts she had buried for a reason. 

Bit by bit, the new life Saoirse has carefully constructed for herself is usurped by the old one she thought she could run from in this twisted psychological thriller. 

In a tight-knit English town, best friends Chrissy and Alice are torn apart when their sons Leo and Robbie, also best friends, get into a fight that leaves Robbie dead and Leo in prison.

As Leo’s parole date approaches, the whole town fears the implications of his return, no least because of the bitter animosity that has grown between Chrissy and Alice. 

When Chrissy arrives at the facility where Leo is held, however, she receive some shocking news: he has disappeared. Is this part of a twisted attempt from Alice to get revenge? Or is it something much, much darker…

When the body of abusive boyfriend Ryota is found floating in Tokyo Bay, and his girlfriend, Sonoko, is nowhere to be found, the Detectives Kusanagi and Utsumi of the Tokyo Homicide Squad assume she killed him.

Her alibi, however, is airtight: Sonoko Shimauchi was hours away in Kyoto when Ryota disappeared. So who killed him?

The perplexed detectives wind up seeking the advice of their old consultant Manabu Yukawa, known in the department as “Detective Galileo.” The trio follow new leads, like the elderly owner of a hostess club and Sonoka’s foster mother, an eccentric artist, to track down the killer.

But all roads lead back to Sonoko herself, who eludes the detectives at every turn. 

As Galileo uncovers the hidden threads of history and coincidence that connect the suspects in the case, he finds that many of those threads lead dangerously close to his own traumatic past.

Is this a simple murder case? Or it one part of a web that is much, much larger. 

This speculative thriller reimagines the story of King Lear in a near-apocalyptic world, where it rains so much that the land has reshaped itself and old rituals have come back into practice.

In this world live three estranged sisters, Isla, Irene, and Agnes, reunited for the first time in years by the death of their architect father.

Though he was revered, he was also cruel, and he deals one final blow to his daughters with a shocking twist in his will that alters the course of their lives forever. 

As their lives spiral out of control and they find themselves at the center of an ominous prophecy, Isla, Irene, and Agnes must band together or risk losing everything—even the very world they live in. 

After opening her the bakery and cat shelter she has always dreamed of, Emmie’s life should be perfect. Instead, she finds out her husband is cheating on her, his mistress is pregnant, and she’s moving into their house.

It’s no surprise that when he drops dead of arsenic poisoning in the middle of her shop after eating one of her signature Santa’s Surprise cupcakes, everyone thinks she did it. 

Lucky for Emmie, her grandmother’s friend’s nephew is a successful lawyer in New York, and he just so happens to be home for the holidays…and incredibly hot.

The only problem? He also thinks she’s guilty. But he’s still agreed to help.

Can the two overcome their differences and prove Emmie’s innocence in time for Christmas? Or will Emmie spend the most wonderful time of the year behind bars?