One-Sitting Thriller Reads to Finish at the Beach 

Some of the best thrillers revolve around mundane domestic life, painting chilling portraits of the people we interact with every day, be it the kids, the spouse or the newly hired nanny. Leïla Slimani’s award-winning French novel, The Perfect Nanny (translated by Sam Taylor) opens with not one but two murders—two children dead at the hands of their seemingly perfect nanny. 

The rest of the slim novel explores the events leading to such an act, unveiling the layers of classism, xenophobia and patriarchy holding up French society and how that complicates one’s relationships with family, friends and employees. Overall, an engaging and thoughtful read.  

If you feel that you’ve read so many thrillers that the genre just can’t surprise you anymore, think again. I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid is a small book that caught me off-guard with an engaging storyline and an eviscerating twist. 

On the surface, it seems to be a fairly straightforward story about a woman on a road trip with her boyfriend to meet his parents while secretly nursing doubts about him. But there’s a whole lot more going on in between the lines, building up to a shocking and satisfying end. 

Oyinkan Braithwaite’s debut novel, My Sister, the Serial Killer is darkly funny, smartly written, and utterly entertaining. It follows the story of two sisters—one of whom is the eponymous serial killer, while the other enables her crimes while envying her life. 

The beautiful Ayoola has a bad habit of killing her boyfriends and counts on the older and more responsible Korede to clean up her messes, until Korede’s crush, Tade starts nursing feelings for Ayoola. Disturbing and satirical, My Sister, the Serial Killer is a short and fantastic read. 

If you enjoy Gothic fiction, you can’t go wrong with the works of Shirley Jackson, especially the devastating and atmospheric book, We Have Always Lived in the Castle which also happens to be the author’s final novel before her death, three years later. The story revolves around the chilling mystery of Blackwood House and its inhabitants, including the ones formerly murdered and the few currently living. 

With sparse but evocative prose, Jackson carefully builds up a web of horror and terror till you’re caught right at the heart of it. A dark and unsettling folktale that unravels like a fever dream.

This one’s a marvelous thriller set during COVID pandemic and actually written during the lockdown era. The story follows two people who meet in the supermarket aisle and decide to move in together during the sudden pandemic even though they barely know each other. Of course, one of them ends up dead. 

Carefully constructed and charmingly written, 56 Days deftly captures how life felt like in the early months of lockdown while weaving an unputdownable novel around it.  

If you don’t mind dystopian thrillers, you can check out Lois Lowry’s YA novel, The Giver published in the early 90s. It takes place in a society that appears utopian at first glance—a world free of pain and struggle—but at a terrible cost. The story is told through the eyes of the twelve-year-old Jonas who is assigned a special role and struggles with the philosophical quandaries presented to him. 

The story lightly delves into themes pertaining to eugenics, religion, racism and memory, and manages to be a thought-provoking ride. 

Finally, classics are classics for a reason, and you can’t go wrong with one such as Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None that has sold over a 100 million copies worldwide. 

The premise is simple—ten strangers are summoned to an isolated island by an eccentric millionaire and are killed one by one, as per the lines of a nursery rhyme. A darkly thrilling book that you’ll definitely want to revisit, over and over.