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  1. Genres
  2. ›Mystery

Best Mystery Books

Mystery and detective fiction

2,086 summaries

Showing 169–192 of 2,086

  1. The Blind Assassin

    Margaret Atwood

    ★ 4.0 (136k) average on GoodreadsLiterary Fiction

    Decades after her sister's mysterious death, an older woman uncovers a complex story of forbidden love, family secrets, and a science fiction novel-within-a-novel, revealing a truth more shocking than any fiction.

  2. Gerald's Game

    Stephen King

    ★ 3.5 (134k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    Trapped and handcuffed to a bed in an isolated house with her dead husband beside her, Jessie must confront her darkest memories and a lurking, unspeakable horror to survive.

  3. The Dinner

    Herman Koch

    ★ 3.2 (133k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    Over a multi-course meal, two affluent couples navigate polite conversation as they secretly deal with their sons' crime and the decisions they must make to protect them.

  4. Guilty Pleasures

    Laurell K. Hamilton

    ★ 4.0 (133k) average on GoodreadsFantasy

    In a St. Louis overrun by the undead, necromancer Anita Blake hunts a serial killer for the city's most powerful vampire, battling her forbidden desire for the creatures she's sworn to destroy.

  5. Déjà Dead

    Kathy Reichs

    ★ 3.9 (133k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    Forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan unearths a chilling pattern in dismembered remains, plunging her into a hunt for a serial killer that puts her closest loved ones, including her own daughter, directly in the crosshairs.

  6. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

    Stephen King

    ★ 3.6 (133k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    Lost in the ancient woods, nine-year-old Trisha McFarland, with only a Walkman and the imagined presence of her baseball hero Tom Gordon, must outwit a lurking, supernatural entity or become another forgotten whisper in the Appalachian shadows.

  7. The Austere Academy

    Lemony Snicket

    ★ 4.0 (133k) average on GoodreadsFantasy

    At a boarding school filled with tyrannical teachers, devious plots, and an abundance of crabs, the Baudelaire orphans must outwit their guardians and uncover a sinister secret before they become the next victims.

  8. The Surgeon

    Tess Gerritsen

    ★ 4.1 (133k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    A Boston detective hunts a surgeon who meticulously tortures and murders women, only to discover the killer's methods chillingly mirror a past attack on a doctor who believed she'd already killed her assailant.

  9. The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

    Stuart Turton

    ★ 3.9 (132k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    Trapped in an aristocratic manor, a man must relive the same day in a different body, each a potential suspect, to unmask Evelyn Hardcastle's killer before the cycle, and his memory, is lost forever.

  10. The Woman in White

    Wilkie Collins

    ★ 4.0 (132k) average on GoodreadsHistorical Fiction

    An art teacher falls for his student and uncovers a plot involving stolen identity, an asylum, and a spectral woman, all connected by a dark secret.

  11. All the Missing Girls

    Megan Miranda

    ★ 3.8 (131k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    A woman returns to her hometown, where another girl has gone missing, mirroring a disappearance from a decade ago. She must untangle years of secrets to uncover the truth behind both cases.

  12. House of Leaves

    Mark Z. Danielewski

    ★ 4.1 (131k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    An ordinary house on Ash Tree Lane turns into an impossible, expanding maze, trapping a family in its terrifying story of creature darkness and a reality-defying abyss.

  13. Clear and Present Danger

    Tom Clancy

    ★ 4.1 (131k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    When Colombian drug cartels assassinate the FBI Director, Jack Ryan and the enigmatic Mr. Clark must navigate a shadowy war where the gravest threat might not be the enemy abroad, but the betrayals lurking within their own government.

  14. Eye of the Needle

    Ken Follett

    ★ 4.2 (129k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    A Nazi master spy races against time to deliver critical D-Day intelligence, only to find his escape and the fate of the war resting with a lonely Englishwoman on a remote island.

  15. Four to Score

    Janet Evanovich

    ★ 4.2 (128k) average on GoodreadsRomance

    With suspects vanishing, bodies piling up, and caught between a vice cop and a mysterious bounty hunter, Stephanie Plum navigates her childhood rival, a gambling grandma, and a transvestite rock musician while trying to catch a thief and stay alive.

  16. Summer Knight

    Jim Butcher

    ★ 4.3 (128k) average on GoodreadsFantasy

    A down-on-his-luck wizard, Harry Dresden, needing to escape a debt to his fae godmother, investigates a murder among the warring Summer and Winter Courts, where the fate of reality rests on his ability to navigate faerie politics.

  17. Mystic River

    Dennis Lehane

    ★ 4.2 (128k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    Twenty-five years after a traumatic childhood abduction, three men are violently reunited when the daughter of one is murdered, forcing a detective to investigate his own haunted past and the prime suspect—another childhood friend.

  18. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

    David Grann

    ★ 4.1 (127k) average on GoodreadsHistory

    In the 1920s, a series of murders targeting the oil-rich Osage Nation leads a new FBI to send an undercover team into a web of greed and conspiracy to find those behind a terrifying period of violence.

  19. The Chamber

    John Grisham

    ★ 3.8 (127k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    A young lawyer confronts his family's dark past and a ticking clock as he fights to save his Klansman grandfather from the gas chamber for a 1967 bombing.

  20. Death on the Nile

    Agatha Christie

    ★ 4.1 (127k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    A luxurious Nile cruise turns deadly when the glamorous Linnet Ridgeway is murdered, leaving Hercule Poirot to untangle jealousy and hidden motives under the Egyptian sun.

  21. The Institute

    Stephen King

    ★ 4.2 (127k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    In a secret facility, children with psychic powers are harvested, forcing a defiant boy to escape his captors before his unique ability is weaponized.

  22. Dolores Claiborne

    Stephen King

    ★ 3.9 (126k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    Accused of murdering her employer, a sharp-tongued island woman reveals a lifetime of secrets, including the truth behind her abusive husband's death and her complex bond with the manipulative heiress she served.

  23. The Turn of the Key

    Ruth Ware

    ★ 3.9 (126k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    A nanny's job in a Scottish mansion turns into a nightmare of surveillance, sinister children, and malfunctioning smart home technology, ending in a child's death and her wrongful imprisonment.

  24. The Big Sleep

    Raymond Chandler

    ★ 4.0 (126k) average on GoodreadsThriller

    In Los Angeles, detective Philip Marlowe navigates a world of dangerous women and deadly secrets, uncovering blackmail and murder to find that some truths are best left buried.

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