Mystery/Thriller/Suspense

Freida McFadden has become one of the defining thriller brands of the decade, and The Witch shows her stretching in a new direction. Only her second hardcover original, it nudges her twist-driven domestic suspense towards the gothic. After three weeks on the US hardcover chart it has slipped from the top to No. 7 on Publishers Weekly's list, but the ebook is now No. 2 in Amazon's entire US Kindle Store and No. 1 in its mystery and thriller chart. In the UK it is No. 6 in the Kindle chart.

Julia Barlow, out of a job and an apartment, retreats to Pemberton, her family's seventeenth-century estate in rural Massachusetts, ostensibly to look after her ageing grandmother. Then the grandfather clock starts stopping at 3:41 every morning, the lights flicker and a voice cries for help outside her door. Digging into the house's history leads her to a woman executed for witchcraft in 1692.

The dual timeline is the book's main attraction, and the historical strand gives it more texture than some of McFadden's recent work. Booklist praised its "breathtaking twin climaxes". Whether the haunting is real is a question the novel keeps deliberately open, and we will not answer it here.

As always with McFadden, character depth comes second to momentum. Short chapters and a steady supply of reveals are the point, and readers who find her twists mechanical are unlikely to be converted. For her many fans, though, and for anyone wanting a quick, atmospheric read for the darker evenings, it delivers exactly what it promises.

Satire about publishing has become a genre of its own since Yellowface, and Josh Silver's adult debut is one of its sharpest entries. It comes from Crooked Lane Books, an independent house better known for crime fiction, and it has quietly become a word-of-mouth hit: eight weeks on Publishers Weekly's trade paperback list and counting.

Mallory Maddox was once a literary sensation. Seven years of writer's block later, she is desperate for a comeback. Then she meets Leo, a young gay man living rough and battling addiction, and recognises in his life exactly the story she needs. The novel follows what happens when one person decides another's suffering is raw material, and Silver keeps the reader complicit, uncomfortable and often laughing.

The early reviews suggest the balancing act works. Publishers Weekly's starred review praises how much sympathy Silver generates for his badly behaved leads, and the New York Times called it funny and nasty. That mix of cruelty and tenderness is the book's signature. Mallory is monstrous but never a cartoon, and Leo is far more than a victim.

Readers should know that the novel deals frankly with addiction, homelessness and sex work, and its humour is pitch-black. The thriller elements serve the satire rather than the other way round, so anyone expecting a conventional twisty page-turner may be wrong-footed. For readers who enjoy fiction that skewers the culture industry while asking who gets to tell whose story, this is one of the year's most provocative independent-press successes.

The Heights is Ian Rankin's first standalone thriller in roughly twenty years, and it finds the creator of John Rebus on fine form in an unfamiliar setting. Published by Orion in October and described by its publisher as an instant Sunday Times bestseller, it was praised in Laura Wilson's Guardian crime round-up as being well up to his usual high standard.

The setting is The Heights, a luxurious new high-rise looming over Hyde Park, built for the global super-rich. Its residents are used to discretion, security and getting their own way. When the night concierge is found murdered in the lobby, that bubble bursts, and Detective Sergeant Gillian Gish arrives to start asking questions. She is a London native, cynical, bolshie and quietly decent, and the gulf between her world and theirs drives much of the novel's energy.

Rankin structures the story like a traditional closed-circle mystery. Each floor brings new suspects with secrets to protect, and a couple of subplots complicate matters further. He keeps the many strands clear and moving, and his eye for the absurdities of extreme wealth gives the book a satirical edge.

What lifts it above a simple puzzle is Gish herself, a heroine with a clear moral compass and a dry wit that makes her excellent company. The final twists are neatly set up and satisfying. Rebus fans will not feel short-changed, and newcomers have an ideal starting point.

Liz Nugent has a gift for narrators who make readers squirm, and The Truth About Ruby Cooper, published in March by Sandycove, the Irish imprint of Penguin, is one of her most daring books. It was reviewed in The Irish Times crime column, chosen as RTÉ's Book of the Week, and has been shortlisted at the 2026 An Post Irish Book Awards. Nugent's website reports that it went to number one in the Irish charts.

The story begins in Boston, where Ruby Cooper and her sister Erin are raised within a tight church community that values appearances. When Ruby is sixteen, an incident occurs that splits the family and sets off a chain of consequences lasting decades. As adults the sisters live on opposite sides of the Atlantic, Ruby in Dublin and Erin in Boston, but neither can escape what happened.

Nugent is less concerned with a single shocking revelation than with how a family constructs and defends its version of events. She examines rivalry between siblings, the way communities assign guilt, and how a lie can become an inheritance. Ruby herself is complex and often unsettling company; Nugent gives her a voice that is sharp, funny and self-justifying, and refuses to make her simply a victim or a villain.

The novel deals with sexual violence and an accusation that divides a family, and it handles those themes in a way that will provoke debate. Some readers may find it hard going. But the craftsmanship is undeniable, the structure is beautifully controlled, and the final pages land with real force. It is essential reading for fans of dark, character-driven suspense.

The Jasmine Murders, published by Aleph Book Company in New Delhi and reviewed in The Hindu in March, introduces a new crime-solving partnership in Indian fiction. Roopa Unnikrishnan, making her debut as a novelist, sets the story in the early 1960s in Manamadurai, a provincial town in southern Tamil Nadu.

Jayan, a young officer, has taken up his post as Assistant Superintendent of Police, and he brings with him his new wife, Uma, whom he married just forty days earlier. Both are from Kerala, so they are newcomers in more ways than one: learning the language and customs of the town while still discovering each other. When a string of crimes unsettles the community, Jayan is under pressure to find answers, and Uma, sharp-eyed and quietly determined, becomes an unofficial partner in the investigation.

Much of the book's appeal lies in its setting. Unnikrishnan evokes the heat, the scent of jasmine, the social hierarchies and the fault lines that run beneath small-town life, and she captures a newly independent India still shaped by colonial institutions. The author has said the couple were partly inspired by her parents, and the gradual deepening of their marriage is one of the novel's quiet pleasures.

The plotting is solid rather than flashy, and readers expecting relentless twists may find the pace gentle. But the story builds to a vivid finale on the coast near Dhanushkodi, and the characters are engaging enough that a series feels very welcome. Recommended for fans of historical mysteries with a strong sense of place.