The Best Psychological Thrillers to Add to Your TBR in 2019

Looking to make some quick cash, Jessica Farris agrees to be a part of a psychological study about ethics and morality. What Jessica doesn’t know when she signs up is just how deep the study will dig into her consciousness. Psychologist Dr. Fields seems to know everything Jessica is thinking, including what she is hiding. If you enjoyed this writing duo’s novel The Wife Between Us, you won’t want to miss their latest release.

Looker by Laura Sims

Release date: January 8

In her debut novel, Laura Sims tells the story of a woman whose life is unraveling. She is childless and recently separated, and her only true passion seems to be obsessing over her neighbor, a fabulous and successful actress. But after an interaction with her object of obsession takes a disastrous turn, the narrator finds herself spiraling into madness.

Spin by Lamar Giles

Release date: January 29

DJ ParSec (or Paris Secord, to her friends) is a rising star when she’s found dead on her turntables by the two people in the world who care for her most, Kaya, Paris’s pre-fame best friend, and Fuse, her number one groupie. Now Kaya and Fuse, once sworn enemies, must work together to get to the bottom of what happened to Paris, especially since the police have little in the way of leads. Mixing hip hop culture, psychological thriller, and mystery, this young adult novel is a genre-bending story that is not to be missed.

A Danger to Herself and Others by Alyssa Sheinmel

Release date: February 5

The latest novel from best-selling author Alyssa Sheinmel is being described as a cross between We Were Liars and Girl, Interrupted. Hannah has been institutionalized, but she knows she doesn’t belong there. She knows that as soon as everyone figures out she’s not a danger to herself and others, she’ll be back to her normal life, preparing her college applications and finishing out her senior year of high school. But then new girl Lucy shows up at the institution, forcing Hannah to face all of the secrets of her past she’d been trying so desperately to forget.

Don’t Wake Up by Liz Lawler

Release date: February 5

In this debut novel, Dr. Alex Taylor wakes up on a gurney surrounded by her colleagues after she’s been attacked and raped. Unfortunately, without any physical evidence of the crimes, she has difficulty getting anyone to believe what happened to her. In fact, Alex begins to doubt her own story, until she meets the next victim. In a time when women’s stories of sexual assault are often doubted or discredited, Liz Lawler’s psychological thriller examines the repercussions of disbelieving victims.

One Fatal Mistake by Tom Hunt

Release date: February 5

Karen Mayo is a single mother, raising her son Joshua on her own in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Joshua is doing well in school and is on is way to his dream college. Everything seems to be going right for him, until he confesses something terrible: Joshua took a man’s life in a fatal accident, and then fled the scene without alerting the police. Now Karen must help her son cover up his crimes, drawing them both into a web of deceit that will change their lives forever.

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley

Release date: February 12

Drawing comparisons to authors like Ruth Ware and Tana French, The Hunting Party is a novel about a group of old college friends who go to a hunting lodge in the Scottish Highlands for a New Years holiday. Two days later, on New Year’s Day, they are all snowed in, and one of them is dead. Someone in the lodge, someone they’ve known for years, is a murderer. But who?

The Secretary by Renée Knight

Release date: February 12

Christine Butcher is as a personal assistant to Mina Appleton, a celebrated head of an ethical supermarket chain. Mina Appleton is demanding, but Christine understands what is expected of her: absolute discretion and loyalty. For 20 years, Christina works faithfully, silently witnessing everything that goes on in her employer’s life. But those years of loyalty and discretion will eventually come at a cost, and Christine finds that there is a dangerous line between obedience and obsession.

The Lost Night by Andrea Bartz

Release date: February 26

What really happened the night Edie died? In 2009 Edie was living in a Brooklyn loft with a group of recent graduates, partying it up in New York City. Then, at the end of a long drunken night, Edie is found dead with a suicide note. No one can believe it, and a decade later, Edie’s friend Lindsay is still haunted by the death. After a chance reunion leads Lindsay to discovering an unsettling video of the night Edie died, Lindsay begins to question whether the death was a suicide at all or if Edie was in fact murdered.

Call Me Evie by J.P. Pomare

Release date: March 5

For the past two weeks, 17-year-old Kate Bennett has been held captive in a cabin in a remote beach town. Her captor Bill tells her that he’s keeping her there to protect her, that she did something terrible back in Melbourne and he had to take her away. But Kate can’t remember the night in question at all, and for some strange reason, Bill keeps calling her Evie. This psychological thriller debut is being described as perfect for fans of Room and Sharp Objects. 

The Woman in the Dark by Vanessa Savage

Release date: March 12

After Sarah’s depression leads her to overdose on sleeping pills, she and her family move to the seaside house where her husband grew up in the hopes of finding a fresh start. There’s only one catch: for the past 15 years, the home has been referred to as the “Murder House,” standing empty after a family was stabbed to death within its walls. Sarah’s husband Patrick believes they can bring the house back to its former glory, and Sarah is ready to dedicate herself to the project. But the talk around town is that the house is haunted, and Sarah starts finding writing on the walls and creepy gifts on their doorstep. Patrick’s own stories about his past in the house are starting to seem a little suspicious. Can Sarah uncover the secrets of the Murder House before another family is destroyed?

Miracle Creek by Angie Kim

Release date: April 16

Husband and wife duo Young and Pak Yoo run an experimental medical treatment device known as the Miracle Submarine. Patients can enter the Miracle Submarine for therapeutic “dives” that could cure issues like autism and infertility. Then out of nowhere, the Miracle Submarine explodes, killing two people in the process, and the Yoos find themselves in the middle of a complicated murder trial. As the trial goes on, strange secrets surrounding the case are revealed: trysts in the woods, mysterious notes, child abuse charges. In this debut, Author Angie Kim draws from her life experiences as a Korean immigrant, former trial lawyer, and mother of a real life “submarine” patient.

The Last Time I Saw You by Liv Constantine

Release date: May 7

Liv Constantine follows up her bestselling The Last Mrs. Parrish with this novel about the events following a brutal high-society murder. Dr. Kate English is living the perfect life: she’s an heiress to a large fortune, she’s in a loving marriage with a beautiful daughter, and her career is going well. Then her mother Lily is found dead, brutally murdered in her own home. Not knowing where else to turn, Kate reaches out to her estranged best friend Blaire, who decides to take the investigation into her own hands. Things get stranger with Kate receives an anonymous text: You think you’re sad now, just wait. By the time I’m finished with you, you’ll wish you had been buried today.

The Night Before by Wendy Walker

Release date: May 14

After Laura Lochner strikes out in love yet again, she flees the end of her bad relationship by leaving her Wall Street job and heading to her sister Rosie’s home in the Connecticut suburb where they both grew up. There, Laura decides to take one more chance on love with a man she meets on an Internet dating site. But then she never returns from her date, and Rosie becomes desperate to find out what happened to her sister. What might this man have done to her sister? Or worse, what has she done to him?

The Summer of Ellen by Agnete Friis

Release date: May 21

Jacob, a middle-aged architect living in Copenhagen, has been haunted by one question for decades: What happened to Ellen in the summer of 1978? Back then, she was a beautiful young girl living on a hippie commune near a rural Jutland farm where Jacobs and his brother Anders grew up. To find answers, Jacob must return to the farm and relive old memories he has tried desperately to suppress.

The Escape Room by Megan Goldin

Release date: May 28

Vincent, Jules, Sylvie, and Sam are all big names in Wall Street finance when they are ordered to participate in a corporate team-building exercise that requires them to escape from a locked elevator. To escape, they’ll have to put aside their tense rivalries to work together and find the answers to the elevator’s puzzles. As the game continues, however, the room’s clues turn more and more ominous.

Her Daughter’s Mother by Daniela Petrova

Release date: June 18

Lana Stone was never meant to meet the woman who donated her egg so that she could have a baby. But when Lana sees the her out in public, she follows her through the streets of New York’s Upper West Side. Then they are brought face-to-face, and an unlikely friendship is born. Her name is Katya, and through her, Lana finds the strength to get over her breakup with the baby’s father. Then Katya mysteriously disappears, and Lana becomes the key suspect in the investigation. Determined to find out what really happened to her friend, Lana begins to dig into Katya’s past, unearthing secrets she is unprepared to learn.

The Best Lies by Sarah Lyu

Release date: July 2

Remy Tsai was happy once. She had her boyfriend Jack and her best friend Elise, a person who really got her, who understood everything about her. But everything changes when Jack is murdered, and it was Elise who shot him. As the police investigate what happened in this murder, Remy does the same, looking into her past with both Jack and Elise and trying to understand what could have led up to this unspeakable crime.

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

Release date: August 8

On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, things are disappearing. First it’s inconsequential objects, but then it’s body parts. Most inhabitants of the island don’t even notice the missing items, and those who do live in fear of being caught by the “memory police,” a team committed to making sure that what has disappeared remains forgotten. When a young novelist realizes that more than her career is in danger, she hides her editor beneath her floorboards, and together, as fear and loss close in around them, they cling to literature as the last way of preserving the past. Ogawa’s new novel is a mixture of allegory, literary fiction, and psychological thriller.

The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware

Release date: September 5

Last but certainly not least, we get a brand new Ruth Ware novel later this year! When Rowan Caine sees the ad for a live-in nanny with a staggeringly generous salary, she knows it’s too good of an opportunity to miss. So she finds herself at Heatherbrae House by the beautiful Scottish Highlands, working for a picture-perfect family. What she can’t know when she arrives is what is to come: a murdered child and herself in prison awaiting trial for murder. Now, she writes this story to her lawyer from inside the prison, trying to make sense of the events that led up to the child’s death. She knows she wasn’t always the best nanny, and she knows she lied to get the job. But she still maintains that she is not guilty of murder, which means someone else is.

But why wait? Looking for even more of the best psychological thrillers you can get your hands on right now? Check out this list. Happy reading!