“Intuition, my father used to say, is just an observation that you don’t realize you’ve made.”
If you’re hunting for the best mystery books of 2026, the most addictive thriller novels, or the horror books everyone is talking about this year, you’ve come to the right place. From dark psychological thrillers packed with shocking twists to gripping crime mysteries, serial-killer investigations and spine-tingling stories, 2026 has already served up plenty of outstanding page-turners. Whether you’re looking for a suspense novel that will keep you guessing until the final page or a horror book that will leave you sleeping with the light on, we’ve picked out our favourite releases so far. We’re featuring acclaimed authors, breakout newcomers, and titles that are making a buzz across the literary world. So, read on for the best mystery, thriller and horror books of 2026 – and unearth your next dark, twisty obsession.
Quick Picks (Top 5)
- The Caretaker – Marcus Kliewer
- Nothing Tastes As Good – Luke Dumas
- A Good Person – Kirsten King
- Dissection of a Murder – Jo Murray
- Wolf Worm – T. Kingfisher
The Caretaker – Marcus Kliewer
Kicking off our list of the best horror and mystery books of 2026 is Marcus Kliewer’s latest psychological bestseller, The Caretaker. Macy Mullins can’t say why the job posting grabbed her attention – it had the pull of a fisherman’s lure, barbed hook and all – vaguely ominous. But after an endless string of failed job interviews, she’s not exactly in a position to be picky. She has rent to pay, groceries to buy, and a younger sister to care for. Besides, it’s only three days’ work.
Three days, cooped up in a stranger’s house, surrounded by Oregon Coast wilderness. What begins as a peculiar side gig soon becomes a waking nightmare. An incomprehensible evil may dwell on this property – and Macy Mullins might just be the only thing standing between it and the rest of humanity.
Nothing Tastes As Good – Luke Dumas
Retail worker Emmett Truesdale has never fit the Southern California mould of six-pack, suntanned masculinity. Desperate for help, he enrols in a clinical trial for a new weight loss product called Obexity. The treatment is as horrifying as the results are miraculous, and as Emmett sheds pounds at superhuman speed, every part of his life improves overnight.
Unfortunately, Obexity comes with some killer side effects, including lost stretches of time and overwhelming cravings. Worse, people who were cruel to him have begun disappearing; when the police warn of a cannibalistic killer on the loose, he fears that Obexity is turning him into a monster. But how can he give it up now that people are finally starting to treat him like a human?
A Good Person – Kirsten King
Lillian and Henry have been enjoying each other’s company, especially in bed. Even though Lillian’s best friend calls it a “situationship,” Lillian is determined to lock Henry down – and she has a plan. But when Henry blindsides Lillian with a breakup, Lillian exacts revenge by performing a drunken hex on him. What she doesn’t plan for is becoming a prime suspect in his murder case when he’s found dead. As Lillian grapples with the loss of her sort-of boyfriend, she’s hit with another reckoning: Henry had a long-term girlfriend he’s left behind.
Desperate to control the narrative, clear her name, and assume her rightful place as Henry’s mourning girlfriend, Lillian’s pursuit of the truth will throw her into a dangerous tailspin. A deliciously addictive novel that explores our darkest, most human impulses, A Good Person is a gripping new mystery thriller book from 2026.
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Dissection Of A Murder – Jo Murray
When Leila Reynolds is handed her first murder case, she’s shocked by the victim: a well-known, well-respected judge, whose death has sent shockwaves through the legal community. She’s also incredulous – she’s nowhere near experienced enough to handle such a high-profile case – yet the defendant is insistent: he wants her, and only her, to represent him. Except he’s refusing to talk. To make matters worse, Leila learns her opponent is the most ruthless prosecutor she’s ever known: her husband.
It’s an impossible situation, yet Leila is determined to sway the judge to her side – until she’s blindsided once again by a shadowy figure from her past. Suddenly, Leila finds herself fighting not only for her client and marriage, but also to keep her own secrets buried. And if she has to rewrite the rules to win, so be it.
Wolf Worm – T. Kingfisher
The year is 1899, and Sonia Wilson is a scientific illustrator without work, prospects, or hope. When the reclusive Dr Halder offers her a position illustrating his vast collection of insects, Sonia leaps at the chance to move to his North Carolina manor house and put her talents to use. But soon enough, she finds there are darker things at work than the Carolina woods.
With the aid of the housekeeper and a local healer, Sonia learns that Halder’s entomological studies have taken him down a dark road full of parasitic maggots that burrow into human flesh, and that his monstrous experiments may grow to encompass his newest illustrator as well in this dark new 2026 gothic horror novel from New York Times bestselling author T. Kingfisher.
The Keeper (Cal Hooper #3) – Tana French
On a cold night in the remote Irish village of Ardnakelty, a girl goes missing. Sweet, loving Rachel Holohan was about to be engaged to the son of the local big shot. Instead, she’s dead in the river. In a close-knit small town, a death like this isn’t simple. It comes wrapped in generations-old grudges and power struggles, and splits the town in two.
Retired Chicago detective Cal Hooper has friends here now, and owes them loyalty, but his fiancée Lena wants nothing to do with Ardnakelty’s tangles. As the feud becomes more vicious, their settled peace begins to crack apart. And when they uncover a scheme that casts new light on Rachel’s death and threatens the whole village, they find themselves in the firing line in this new and final entry to the Cal Hooper trilogy.
Hope Rises (Walter Nash #2) – David Baldacci
Walter Nash, working under the alias of Dilon Hope, is on the road to revenge after becoming an informant for the FBI against a global criminal operation headed up by Victoria Steers. Steers has ripped everything Nash held dear away. He has nothing left to lose, and with long, rigorous training under his belt, Nash has transformed into a physically imposing force. And now there’s just one thing left to achieve in his life: take down Victoria Steers.
In order to succeed, he’s going to need to cross enemy lines and work the job from the inside. Yet, despite hating the woman for destroying his life, Nash finds himself oddly drawn to Steers in ways that he could have never imagined. And what he ultimately discovers will turn all he believed upside down, forcing Nash to do something unfathomable.
The Anniversary – Alex Finlay
On one fateful night in 1992, the lives of two seventeen-year-olds are changed and intertwined forever. Quinn Riley, a boy from the wrong side of the tracks, is arrested after he innocently tried to break up a fight but ends up nearly killing someone. Jules Delaney, high school royalty, survives an attack by the elusive and terrifying May Day Killer – a serial predator who strikes every May 1st in midwestern small towns.
Over the next decade, their lives are revisited on a single day each year – May 1st. As secrets unravel and the paths of Quinn and Jules collide, two mysteries edge closer to the truth. All the while, the May Day Killer is still out there – and the clock is racing toward another May 1st.
Fabulous Bodies – Chuck Tingle
Fashion influencer by day and grave-robber by night, Poppy Stringer is on call when Eddie Michaels – a flamboyant, piano-slamming rockstar and queer icon – unexpectedly dies. All Poppy needs to do is retrieve Eddie’s body from the medical examiner’s office, but what starts out as a routine delivery soon veers off course when Eddie wakes up.
In this latest Chuck Tingle horror book, Poppy must now fight for her life in a blood-soaked night of carnage and fabulous entertainment all across Palm Springs.
The Divorce – Freida McFadden
Naomi was living the quintessential love story. Boy meets girl. They fall in love, get married, buy a dream house, start a family. Then – he kicks her out, hires the city’s best divorce lawyers, drains their accounts, and takes up with a new twenty-something. It’s a brutal end to the story. Naomi should accept defeat: move into a dingy apartment, get back into the workforce, and piece together the shattered remnants of her life.
Instead, Naomi fixates on her husband’s new girlfriend. What begins as cynical curiosity soon twists into obsession – and then into something far darker. As Naomi uncovers secrets she never imagined, she realises that her own life may be in danger. The latest psychological thriller by serial bestseller Freida McFadden, The Divorce is a subversive tale where love curdles into vengeance.
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Dead But Dreaming Of Electric Sheep – Paul Tremblay
Meet Julia Flang, a twenty-something former semi-professional gamer, living with her retired uncle, and working two jobs she doesn’t like. Out of the blue, her estranged mother offers her a temp job to chaperone a man in a vegetative state – one with proprietary AI implanted in his head – from California to the East Coast.
Using a cell phone modelled after a video game controller, Julia fumblingly navigates the man she calls “Bernie” from the company campus and onto planes and through one of the largest airports in America. All the while, the man endures an ever-changing and worsening nightmare that offers clues as to who he is – and who he must track down. And, as their two lives intertwine, Julia and Bernie become unlikely allies and fugitives on a collision course with reality in this new 2026 horror book by Paul Tremblay.
Five – Ilona Bannister
Ilona Bannister’s new psychological thriller novel introduces readers to five seemingly random people waiting for a train. But these are not just any five people. From the beginning, we know that one of them is going to die very soon. In five minutes, the next train to London will arrive, killing one of them. But before this happens, we as the audience get to learn their stories.
None of these people is a saint. They are the candidates for this morning’s misfortune. Except they don’t know it. Only you know. And you, our complicit reader, will not be able to resist deciding who deserves to walk away, and who deserves just five more minutes to live. An incredibly original novel that breaks the fourth wall and asks us readers to be judge, jury, and executioner, Five promises to be one of the most unforgettable thriller novels from 2026.
Hunger And Thirst – Claire Fuller
1987: Troubled sixteen-year-old Ursula finds herself with a new job in the postroom of a local art school, a bed in a halfway home, and some new friends, including wild-child Sue. When Ursula is invited to join a squat at The Underwood, a mysterious house whose owners met a terrible end, she can’t resist the promise of a readymade family. But as Sue’s behaviour becomes more extreme, Ursula carries out her friend’s terrible dare. It’s a decision that will haunt her for decades.
Thirty-six years later, Ursula is a renowned, reclusive sculptor living under a pseudonym in London when her identity is exposed by a true-crime documentary-maker who is digging into an unsolved disappearance. But it isn’t just the filmmaker who has found Ursula, and as her past catches up with her present, Ursula must work out whether the monsters are within her or without.
My Husband’s Wife – Alice Feeney
Eden Fox, an artist on the brink of her big break, sets off on a run before her first exhibition. When she returns to the home she recently moved into, Spyglass, an enchanting old house in Hope Falls, nothing is as it should be. Her key doesn’t fit. A woman, eerily similar to her, answers the door. And her husband insists that the stranger is her wife.
Six months earlier, a reclusive Londoner called Birdy, reeling from a life-changing diagnosis, inherits Spyglass. This unexpected gift from a long-lost grandmother brings her to the pretty seaside village of Hope Falls. But then Birdy stumbles upon a shadowy London clinic that claims to be able to predict someone’s date of death, including her own. Secrets begin to unravel, and as the line between truth and lies blurs, Birdy feels compelled to right some old wrongs.
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The Dorians – Nick Cutter
On a remote island in the Canadian wilderness, five elderly volunteers from different walks of life are given a tantalising offer: to stall their biological clocks or even reverse them, restoring their lost youth. The chance to put death on pause – forever, perhaps.
The remarkable secret lies in the high-tech harnessing of an ancient and extraordinary biological agent… one with no conscience, yet possessed with a single-minded purpose that has helped it persist for aeons: the will to survive. The dark heart of unbridled human ambition finds its apex in an unholy experiment that now tests the limits of both creator and subject, eclipsing all bounds of morality and sanity in this new horror novel from Nick Cutter.
Finlay Donovan Crosses The Line (Finlay Donovan #6) – Elle Cosimano
Life hasn’t been easy for Finlay Donovan lately. Her nanny and partner-in-crime, Vero, has been extradited from Virginia to Maryland, where she’s facing criminal charges for a theft she swears she didn’t commit. A prisoner to an ankle bracelet as she awaits her trial, Vero is forced to live with her overbearing mother and nosy aunt. And if she doesn’t figure out who really stole her former sorority’s treasury funds, her next home may be a prison cell.
But proving her innocence may be an impossible feat. Finlay decides a trip to Maryland is in order. After all, Vero stood by her through her darkest moments, and Finlay will be damned if she lets her best friend and children’s nanny be convicted for something she didn’t do. She sets out on a mission to suss out the real thief and bring Vero home.
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
