Best psychological thrillers
Unreliable narrators and domestic dread. The twist is usually a person.
Ranked by how often each title comes up across 17 reading lists on NextBook — not by our opinion of them.
1 of 12recommended on 13 listsGone Girl
Gillian Flynn
The book that made yours possible, and still the sharper of the two: two unreliable narrators, a missing wife, and a marriage taken apart with real cruelty.
2 of 12recommended on 13 listsThe Girl on the Train
Paula Hawkins
The one everybody read next, and for reasonable cause: three unreliable women, and a commuter's obsession with a marriage she can only see through a window.
3 of 12recommended on 11 listsBefore I Go to Sleep
S.J. Watson
Amnesia as the entire engine: a woman who wakes with no past, a journal she is not sure she can trust, and a husband whose account keeps shifting.
4 of 12recommended on 11 listsBig Little Lies
Liane Moriarty
The same school-gate suburb and the same violence behind a good address, except Moriarty is funny about it and will not leave you feeling grubby afterwards.
5 of 12recommended on 11 listsThe Silent Patient
Alex Michaelides
Built entirely around one withheld fact, and the withholding is the whole point. If the twist was your reason for reading, this is the purest version of it.
6 of 12recommended on 10 listsBehind Closed Doors
B. A. Paris
The most claustrophobic book here: a perfect marriage from the pavement and a prison from inside it. Crude in places, and almost impossible to put down.
7 of 12recommended on 10 listsThe Couple Next Door
Shari Lapena
Lapena's whole business is the respectable street where everybody is lying — the same suburban dread, delivered at twice the speed and half the depth.
8 of 12recommended on 10 listsThe Wife Between Us
Greer Hendricks, Sarah Pekkanen
Explicitly about the discarded first wife and the younger woman taking her place, and it knows precisely which assumption you are going to make about that.
9 of 12recommended on 9 listsThe Woman in the Window
A.J. Finn
A woman who cannot leave her house reports a crime and is told, kindly and repeatedly, that her medication explains it. Christine's predicament with the curtains drawn.
10 of 12recommended on 8 listsSharp Objects
Gillian Flynn
Flynn's first, and the best portrait here of a woman drinking her way through an investigation. Considerably nastier than Hawkins, and much better written.
11 of 12recommended on 7 listsThe Good Girl
Mary Kubica
A woman returned without her memory of the abduction, with everyone around her constructing the account for her. Watson's premise, told from outside as well as in.
12 of 12recommended on 6 listsThe Girl Before
J.P. Delaney
Two women, one minimalist house, and a landlord whose rules keep escalating. Lapena's domestic anxiety relocated into architecture, with a lost baby at the centre.
Start from one you already loved
A genre is a blunt instrument. Pick the psychological thriller book you actually liked and we’ll rank the next one by what you liked about it.
- Books like The Girl on the TrainPaula Hawkins
- Books like The Secret HistoryDonna Tartt
- Books like Gone GirlGillian Flynn
- Books like Before I Go to SleepS.J. Watson
- Books like The Couple Next DoorShari Lapena
- Books like The Silent PatientAlex Michaelides
- Books like Behind Closed DoorsB. A. Paris
- Books like The Wife Between UsGreer Hendricks, Sarah Pekkanen
- Books like The Woman in the WindowA.J. Finn
- Books like Sharp ObjectsGillian Flynn
- Books like The Good GirlMary Kubica
- Books like The Lying GameRuth Ware
- Books like In a Dark, Dark WoodRuth Ware
- Books like We Were LiarsE. Lockhart
- Books like Luckiest Girl AliveJessica Knoll
- Books like The Da Vinci CodeDan Brown
- Books like The NaturalsJennifer Lynn Barnes
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