The best psychological thriller books to read right now

When Ben and Abi come across a family with a young baby stranded, their car seemingly broken down on a deserted country lane on a foggy night, the pair are compelled to stop. Anyone would, right? Offering the stranded trio a lift, Ben and Abi soon realise their fatal mistake and find themselves in greater danger than they could have ever fathomed. A compelling thriller, One Wrong Turn is the newest release from bestselling author C. M. Ewan.

One woman, trapped and alone miles from anyone who can hear her cries for help, is forced to find her own way to escape and get out alive from the remote farmhouse she wakes up in. When she meets her captor, a man who is convinced she knows why a young girl was murdered decades before, she must decide whether her secret is worth keeping more than her life is worth saving. With fans including Ann Cleeves, Marian Keyes, and Erin Kelly, Sharp Glass, the new thriller from Sarah Hilary, is a must-add to your reading list.

Hall taps into one of the great questions of the modern age: when men routinely say they are "one of the good guys", and so are their mates, why are there so many incidents of violence, coercion and abuse of women by men? Lennie is an artist living in a tumbledown cottage on the coast, and into her life comes Cole, licking his wounds after a rough breakup. But when women start to go missing in the local area, Lennie starts to wonder if Cole's as perfect as he seems. Has she made a dreadful mistake in trusting him?

People Like Her brings the psychological thriller firmly into the social media age, with protagonist Emmy an Instagram sensation thanks to her refreshingly honest posts about being a young mother. But Emmy isn't all she seems, and someone out there knows the truth about her. A tense and thoroughly contemporary thriller.

Hollie Jenson is the presenter of Bad Medicine, a docu-series that aims to expose the perils of extreme therapies. Her next target is a new retreat run by wellness guru, Ariel Rose, who claims to heal pain through her three-day ice rebirth treatment. After hearing about a boy who suspiciously vanished after his stay at the retreat, Hollie is determined to uncover the truth. But as she ventures further into the isolation of the Swiss mountains, she realises she has entered dangerous territory. Can she confront the dark secrets of her past and make it out alive to tell the story? 

Set in 1978, Knoll's book is inspired by the real-life case of a serial killer who targeted a college sorority. A young woman whose friends are brutally murdered gets drawn into the mystery, which will colour her life for four decades. On the other side of America, another is convinced the sorority killer is the same man responsible for the death of her friend. The two women find themselves on a trajectory towards each other which will have shocking consequences.

A worldwide bestseller, this book by Swedish author Edvardsson taps into that great fear of parents, the question that has kept many of us awake at night: what would you do if your child did something seriously, criminally wrong?  That's what happens to Adam and Ulrika when their teenage daughter Stella is accused of murder, and they must navigate the tricky path between protecting their child and realising that they don't know everything there is to know about their beloved daughter.

Award-winning Sarah Hilary comes back with a brand new novel for Spring 2024, which asks the question many of us might wonder in idle moments: just how much do we really know about our neighbours? Blackthorn Ashes is an exclusive new housing development in Cornwall, but its promise of paradise is destroyed  as the bodies start to pile up. Six families. Six people dead. Agnes is determined to get to the truth in this tense and claustrophobic page-turner.

Set in the world of journalism, The Trade Off follows hard-nosed deputy editor Stella, who will do anything for a good story, and rookie reporter Jess, who finds herself out of her depth when a contact is killed. But who can Jess trust, even inside her own organisation? And how important is the truth to her boss?

Writing team Hendricks and Pekkanen follow their bestseller The Wife Between Us with this story of Marissa and Mathew, who seem to the rest of the world to be the perfect couple. But there's trouble in paradise and when Marissa cheats on her husband, she goes to an unorthodox therapist to help repair their marriage. But Avery Chambers has secrets of her own, and Marissa and Mathew realise they are not going to get simple marriage guidance from the maverick therapist as things turn very dark and dangerous.

Lucy is selling the house lived in by her and her boyfriend, and when the estate agent calls to say she's running late and could Lucy show a prospective buyer around the property, she thinks nothing of it. At first. Because Lucy very quickly gets the sense that the man viewing the property isn't just after a new house. He has plans for her. This is a taut, twisty thriller that once again taps into contemporary fears, to hugely suspenseful effect.