“This townland doesn’t like being balked. If it isn’t fed what it wants, it’ll make its own fodder.”
If your reading tastes lean dark, unsettling, suspenseful, and impossible to put down, this season’s new lineup of releases is jam-packed with must-read mysteries, psychological thrillers, gothic horror novels, and twisty crime stories. Summer 2026 is bringing everything from locked-room murders and serial killer hunts to chilling haunted houses, unreliable narrators, and emotionally explosive suspense novels. Today at What We Reading, we’re gathering the most anticipated mystery, thriller, and horror books coming out this summer. Whether you love fast-paced detective fiction, slow-burning psychological suspense, dark academia mysteries, or terrifying horror novels that linger with you long after the lights go out, these scary, eerie, and Spring mystery books all deserve a spot on your TBR pile. Here are the best new thriller, mystery, and horror books to read in Summer 2026.
The Caretaker – Marcus Kliewer
Kicking off our list of new dark and twisty reads coming in Summer 2026 is Marcus Kliewer’s latest novel, 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 the position to be picky. She has rent to pay, groceries to buy, and a younger sister to provide for. Besides, it’s only three days’ work…
Three days, cooped up in a stranger’s house, surrounded by the Oregon Coast wilderness. What starts as a peculiar side gig soon becomes a walking nightmare. An incomprehensible evil may dwell on this property – and Macy Mullins might just be the only thing standing between i, and the rest of humanity.
Release date: 21 April 2026
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The Insomniacs – Allison Winn Scotch
In the city that never sleeps, it’s not always easy to share what’s on your mind with the people who know you best. Huddled in an all-night diner over coffee and pancakes, a lonely middle-aged mother, an injured baseball pro, an elusive retiree, and a young waitress examine the thoughts that plague them in the middle of the night.
Within a few months, this group of strangers have become a fragile family. And when one of them goes missing, they’re thrust into a propulsive mystery pulled straight from a true crime podcast. Though ill-prepared and unequipped, they begin to piece together the clues left behind. In this new suspenseful mystery thriller, the group are forced to wrestle with the question of how well you can really know anyone – and, once you do, how much are you willing to risk to save them?
Release date: 14 April 2026
The Keeper – 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 it splits the townland in two.
Retired Chicago detective Cal Hooper has friends here, and he owes them loyalty; his fiancée Lena wants nothing to do with Arddnakelty’s tangles. As the feud becomes more and more vicious, their settled peace starts to crack apart. And when they uncover a scheme that casts a new light on Rachel’s death and threatens the whole village, they find themselves in the firing line.
Release date: 31 March 2026
Safari Murder Party – Rachel Moore
After three years working seventy-hour weeks as an assistant to the most terrifying CEO in the magazine world, Fletcher Spence finally finagled a spot on Cartwright Media’s annual corporate retreat – a famously luxurious week on the Cartwrights’ private island. Her plans for the dream promotion hit a snag, however, until her boss’s dramatic death reveals his last will and testament: Whoever survives the week will inherit the company.
So now she’s stuck on her billionaire boss’s safari park island, surrounded by wild animals and on the run from coworkers who’ve swapped coffee cups for machetes and briefcases for hunting rifles. In this darkly funny, slightly unhinged, heart-pounding new thriller novel, two office rivals must team up to escape wild animals and even wilder coworkers on a corporate retreat gone wrong.
Release date: 19 May 2026
Nothing Tastes As Good – Luke Dumas
Retail worker Emmett Truesdale has never fit the Southern California mould of six-pack, suntanned masculinity. Over three hundred pounds, he carries the weight of his childhood trauma and millennial ennui around his waist and in his soul. After trying every diet under the sun, he remains stuck. Desperate for help, he enrols in a clinical trial for a new weight loss product called Obexity. 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, and when the police warn of a cannibalistic serial killer on the loose, he fears Obexity is turning him into a monster. Nerve-racking, sinister and surreal, Nothing Tastes as Good is a delicious new horror book coming in Summer 2026 that promises to keep you guessing until the final page.
Release date: 31 March 2026
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The Curse Of Hester Gardens – Tamika Thompson
Nona McKingley raised three boys in the Hester Gardens section of Medford, Michigan, an impoverished community divided by those who follow their faith in God and those who turn to crime to survive. With her drug dealer husband behind bars and her eldest son shot to death at eighteen, Nona has devoted herself to ensuring her other children escape a similar fate.
But then, strange things begin happening to Nona. Even more concerning is the state of Nona’s living sons. Her youngest, Lance, is hanging around with a bad crowd, and Marcus becomes moody and secretive. Nona fears that someone – or something – is seeking revenge for an act she made in a moment of weakness to protect her family. And now everyone in Hester Gardens must pay the price.
Release date: 31 March 2026
The Anniversary – Alex Finlay
One fateful night in 1992, the lives of two seventeen-year-olds are changed and intertwined forever. Quinn Riley is arrested after he innocently tries to break up a fight but ends up killing someone. Jules Delaney survives an attack by the elusive and terrifying May Day Killer. A year later, Jules is struggling with trauma and guilt. Quinn is newly released from juvenile detention and returns home to investigate the unsolved murder of his mother.
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. Alex Finlay’s The Anniversary is the new, utterly compelling thriller story of the hunt for a serial killer. It’s also a novel about fate, innocence lost, and two souls who find that sometimes being broken is the only way for the light to get in.
Release date: 12 May 2026
Japanese Gothic – Kylie Lee Baker
October, 2026: Lee Turner doesn’t remember how or why he killed his college roommate. The details are blurred and bloody. All he knows is that he needs to flee New York and go to the one place that might offer refuge – his father’s home in Japan. But is something terribly wrong with the house: no animals will come near it, the bedroom window isn’t always a window, and a woman with a sword appears in the yard when night falls.
October, 1877: Sen is a young samurai in exile, hiding from the imperial soldiers in a house behind the sword ferns. A monster came home from war wearing her father’s face, but Sen would do anything to please him, even turn her own sword on her mother. One of these people is a ghost, and one of these stories is a lie. Something is hiding beneath the house of sword ferns in this wildly inventive new horror book, and Lee and Sen will soon wish they had never unburied it.
Release date: 14 April 2026
Invasive Species – Ellery Adams
Something’s not right in Cold Harbour. While this sleepy small town has seen its fair share of monsters in cheating bosses and leering bosses, none are as hungry as Mrs Smith. The mysterious resident has finally emerged from her crumbling mansion on the hill, mesmerising the townspeople with her beauty. Her secret? Nine human sacrifices to feed her immortality.
Natalie Scott is more worried about Mrs Smith blocking her first real estate sale – the one that will take her from stay-at-home mother to working woman extraordinaire. But Natalie’s twelve-year-old daughter, Jill, and her Icelandic housekeeper, Una, can sense something deeper at play. Armed with library books and a whole lot of grit, Jill and Una team up to save this town once and for all. But as the rest of Cold Harbour slowly sinks into anger, fear, and jealousy, they’ll need to confront what it really means to be a monster.
Release date: 14 April 2026
The Last Book Club – Joanne Rock
Making friends in a new town can be murder, so when Jordyn is invited to attend a book club meeting in her new Saratoga Springs neighbourhood, it’s safe to say she’s excited. But she has no intention of making friends with the tight-knit group. She’s planning revenge. Jordyn’s foster sister was a member of the book club until she was killed in a hit-and-run after a meeting one year prior.
All the members of the book club have serious motives, and Jordyn is determined to read between the lines and find her sister’s killer. When the book club hosts a murder mystery party, secrets begin bubbling to the surface – and the murder part of the game becomes stranger than fiction. This hotly anticipated bookish mystery will thrill readers looking for stories brimming with twists, turns, and tantalising secrets.
Release date: 26 May 2026
A Murder Most Camp – Nicolas DiDomizio
Mikey Hartford IV has coasted through his twenties in a distracted blur of yachts, sex and partying. But when his father discovers his latest million-dollar impulse buy and changes the terms of his trust, the party’s finally over. Now, unless Mikey can make a positive contribution to the world before his thirtieth birthday, he’ll never see another yacht again. Camp Lore, a struggling summer camp, is where Mikey has to work to prove he can “do good” alongside his twelve-year-old aunt.
But Mikey isn’t sure he’ll be able to survive the camp’s ramshackle living conditions, let alone the gaggle of preteens who won’t leave his side. And when his campers become obsessed with a local legend, Mikey’s chances of not making it through the summer become dangerously real – but it turns out there’s a murder hidden beneath Camp Lore. And someone will stop at nothing to keep it that way in this anticipated new cosy mystery book by Nicolas DiDomizio.
Release date: 28 April 2026
I Know A Place – Nat Cassidy
There are locations in this world where the light doesn’t seem to reach. Where, no matter how illuminated the place might be, shadows creep in too strongly to fight back. A suspiciously empty gas station rest stop in the middle of the night, littered with googly eyes. A doctor’s office with a bottle of booze and a tear-stained folder on the desk. A yoga retreat in the middle of the desert, silent except for the screaming.
These supernatural and sinister locations are your destination, and bestselling horror author Nat Cassidy will be your guide in his new horror book coming in Summer 2025, I Know a Place. This collection of short stories is a travelogue down twisting side streets and through alleyways where the darkness has eyes… and teeth.
Release date: 5 May 2026
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 limit of both creator and subject, eclipsing all bounds of morality and sanity in this new horror novel from serial bestselling novelist Nick Cutter.
Release date: 19 May 2026
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).
