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  1. Genres
  2. ›Mystery

Best Mystery Books

Mystery and detective fiction

2,086 summaries

Showing 313–336 of 2,086

  1. The Affair

    Lee Child

    ★ 4.1 (83k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    Before becoming a drifter, Major Jack Reacher goes undercover in a small Mississippi town. He gets caught in a murder case that pits military secrets against a beautiful, mysterious sheriff, making him choose between his uniform and his conscience.

  2. Maisie Dobbs

    Jacqueline Winspear

    ★ 3.9 (82k) average on GoodreadsHistorical Fiction

    After World War I, a former servant turned psychologist opens her practice in 1929 London, only for her first infidelity case to become a murder investigation that forces her to confront her own war experiences.

  3. The Man in the Brown Suit

    Agatha Christie

    ★ 4.0 (82k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    An English girl named Anne is caught in a web of stolen diamonds, international plots, and a hunt for a killer called 'The Colonel,' after a deadly fall in a London tube station, a strangled ballerina, and a dangerous trip to Africa.

  4. Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy

    Ally Carter

    ★ 4.1 (82k) average on GoodreadsYoung Adult

    When a prestigious all-boys spy school visits, Cammie Morgan’s world of covert operations and teenage crushes collides with a dangerous security breach that frames her, forcing her and her Gallagher Girls to clear her name and save their academy’s top-secret status.

  5. The Poet

    Michael Connelly

    ★ 4.2 (82k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    A crime reporter, investigating his detective brother's apparent suicide, uncovers a chilling trail of poetic clues left by a serial killer who hunts cops, turning his personal tragedy into the most dangerous story of his career.

  6. State of Fear

    Michael Crichton

    ★ 3.7 (81k) average on GoodreadsPolitics

    An intelligence agent races from Parisian labs to Antarctic volcanoes to connect seemingly unrelated events as a global conspiracy to weaponize natural disasters unfolds, aiming to stop eco-terrorists before they cause catastrophic climate chaos.

  7. The Black Dahlia

    James Ellroy

    ★ 3.8 (81k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    In postwar Hollywood, two detectives hunt the killer of the Black Dahlia. The case mirrors the darkness in themselves and the city they protect.

  8. Fingersmith

    Sarah Waters

    ★ 4.0 (81k) average on GoodreadsHistorical Fiction

    In Victorian London's criminal underworld, a con man's plot to defraud an heiress traps a pickpocket and her mark in a web of secrets, betrayals, and forbidden desires, blurring the lines between love and deception.

  9. Size 12 Is Not Fat

    Meg Cabot

    ★ 3.7 (80k) average on GoodreadsYoung Adult

    A former pop star, now an assistant dorm director, becomes a detective when students die mysteriously, forcing her to prove the deaths are not accidents despite everyone's dismissal.

  10. Elevation

    Stephen King

    ★ 3.7 (80k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    In Castle Rock, a man losing weight without shrinking discovers his strange condition might help unite a prejudiced community.

  11. Night Film

    Marisha Pessl

    ★ 3.8 (80k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    A disgraced journalist enters the cult-like world around a reclusive horror film director and his mysteriously dead daughter, risking his sanity and life to solve a decades-old mystery.

  12. Behind Her Eyes

    Sarah Pinborough

    ★ 3.8 (80k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    A secretary's affair with her married boss turns dangerous when she befriends his fragile wife and uncovers a supernatural secret that upends everything she knows about their marriage.

  13. Drowning Ruth

    Christina Schwarz

    ★ 3.7 (80k) average on GoodreadsHistorical Fiction

    In 1919 Wisconsin, a young mother's drowning beneath a frozen lake reveals dark family secrets, leaving her sister and daughter to face a chilling legacy.

  14. A Painted House

    John Grisham

    ★ 3.7 (80k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    In 1952 Arkansas, a seven-year-old farm boy's innocent summer in the cotton fields turns dark when he witnesses a murder and is forced to keep secrets that threaten to unravel his family and their community.

  15. The Moonstone

    Wilkie Collins

    ★ 3.9 (79k) average on GoodreadsHistorical Fiction

    A cursed Indian diamond, plundered and left to an English heiress, unravels a web of secrets, betrayals, and a baffling disappearance within a Victorian country house.

  16. The Caves of Steel

    Isaac Asimov

    ★ 4.2 (79k) average on GoodreadsScience Fiction

    In a future where humanity is split between an overcrowded Earth and advanced Spacer colonies, a xenophobic detective must overcome his prejudice to partner with a humanoid robot—who uncannily resembles the murder victim—to solve a crime that threatens to ignite an interstellar war.

  17. A Stranger in the House

    Shari Lapena

    ★ 3.6 (79k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    A woman wakes from a car crash with amnesia, only to find her perfect suburban life unraveling as police suspect her, and a sinister presence invades her home, revealing that everyone, even her husband, is a stranger with deadly secrets.

  18. Warcross

    Marie Lu

    ★ 4.2 (78k) average on GoodreadsFantasy

    A teenage hacker, trying to escape poverty, accidentally glitches into the world-famous virtual reality game Warcross, only to be recruited by its enigmatic billionaire creator to uncover a dark conspiracy that threatens to shatter their digital empire.

  19. Dead Ever After

    Charlaine Harris

    ★ 3.5 (78k) average on GoodreadsFantasy

    In the final Sookie Stackhouse story, she must deal with betrayal and murder, facing difficult truths about loved ones while fighting to clear her name for a crime she did not commit.

  20. Airframe

    Michael Crichton

    ★ 3.7 (77k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    After a routine flight turns into a bloody mid-air mystery, a corporate investigator races to find out what happened on the crippled jet before public opinion and corporate rivals ruin the airline's reputation.

  21. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

    John le Carré

    ★ 4.1 (77k) average on GoodreadsThriller
  22. The King of Torts

    John Grisham

    ★ 3.7 (77k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    A public defender's routine murder case turns into a complex conspiracy against a pharmaceutical company, offering him a life-changing fortune or professional ruin.

  23. Broken Harbor

    Tana French

    ★ 3.9 (76k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    Detective Scorcher Kennedy unearths a chilling conspiracy behind a family's murder in a desolate, half-built luxury estate, forcing him to confront the dark, buried secrets of his own past tied to the same haunted ground.

  24. The Maze of Bones

    Rick Riordan

    ★ 3.9 (76k) average on GoodreadsFantasy

    Orphaned siblings Amy and Dan Cahill are thrust into a global scavenger hunt against their cutthroat relatives, deciphering cryptic clues to a world-altering fortune hidden by their powerful ancestors, all while readers can join the chase online.

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