30 Thriller Books That Will Pretty Much Guarantee You Never Get Another Good Night’s Sleep

What happens when a famous painter shoots her husband and then goes completely silent, refusing to say a single word? A criminal psychotherapist is left to try to get her to talk and figure out her motive, naturally.

If you’re already dreading your college reunion, read this book because it can’t get any worse than this. Twenty years after graduating, a group of friends reunites. But when Ali’s best friend stumbles in from the garden covered in blood and claiming that Ali’s college sweetheart/now-husband is behind the attack, Ali is forced to take a good hard look at her memories from college.

If you want a thriller that’s really gonna get your heart racing (and maybe make you hide the book under your bed out of fear), this is it. When Jules takes a job as an apartment sitter at an old, swanky Manhattan building, she quickly learns that something extremely dark is going on there.

This book has it all: Manhattan for the East Coast lovers, Vancouver for the West Coast aficionados, a crumbling Ponzi scheme, threatening messages on a hotel window, and a missing woman.

Reese Witherspoon said this book captivated her “from page one,” so you know it’s gonna be good. Set during a dream honeymoon in Bora Bora, it’ll make the perfect summer read.

Look, Riley Sager knows how to write a kick-ass thriller, and The Last Time I Lied is no different. He manages to take two truths and a lie and turn it into the premise for an ultra-creepy book.

If your mind doesn’t immediately go to Stephen King when you think of picking up a thriller book, then I’m here to educate you. If It Bleeds is a good place to start since it’s a novella, so you’ll be able to get plenty of Stephen King scaries in your system in just a few pages.

As if having your 15-year-old daughter go missing isn’t scary enough, imagine it’s 10 years later, you’re finally getting your life back on track, and you meet a charming guy whose young daughter eerily reminds you of your own. That’s some freaky stuff!

If you can make it through this book without getting totally freaked out, then I have some good news: It also exists as a miniseries on HBO, starring Jason Bateman and Cynthia Erivo, so you can experience it all over again. Lucky you!

If you loved watching The Stranger on Netflix, you’ll reaaally love this book by the same writer. Equally as twisted and mysterious, it’s about what happens when a well-intentioned person opens the wrong door.

After Mackenzie Allen Philips’ youngest daughter goes missing on a family vacay (and evidence surfaces that she may have been murdered at an abandoned shack), he’s shocked when, four years later, he gets a suspicious note inviting him back to the scene of the potential crime.

This book asks a very important Dexter-like question: If a group of shooters are taking out seedy criminals, are they villains or heroes?

If you’re fascinated by feral children (just me?), you’re gonna be really into this book. Thirty years after Wilde was found as a boy living by himself in the woods, he still has no idea where he comes from. So when a young girl goes missing, Wilde and his special skills are enlisted to help find her.

If you’ve ever had a tweet go viral, you know you’ll be haunted by the notifications for months to come. An Absolutely Remarkable Thing takes that idea but makes it a bajillion times more intense.

In case you didn’t know…Thomas Harris is the guy who wrote The Silence of the Lambs. In other words, he’s, like, the MOST qualified person to mess with your brain. Cari Mora is about a young woman named Cari who has to escape from a psychopath while she’s taking care of a mega-mansion in Miami.

Revenge? Wedding industry drama? Oodles and oodles of money? What could ever go wrong?! I mean, probably a million things, which is why you should read this book as soon as humanly possible.

Slide your way into the official “But the book was better than the movie!” club by picking up The Girl on the Train, the dark, twisted thriller that inspired the 2016 Emily Blunt major motion picture.

Uh…this psychological thriller is about a woman who moves into the house where her husband grew up and a family was brutally murdered. It’s literally about a murder house. I will never understand why people don’t just GTFO, but if they did…we wouldn’t have such thrilling novels.