Mystery & Thriller Books Coming in August

Blind Tiger is a suspense novel set in the year 1920 during the time of prohibition. Laurel Plummer is a widow who is looking for a fresh start when she meets Thatcher Hutton. Thatcher has just come home from fighting in WWI and has just jumped a train to escape a confrontation only to end up in this small town in Texas. When Thatcher and Laurel first meet, they're immediately drawn to each other. Then they find themselves on opposite sides of a moonshine war—not to mention a killer is on the loose. This novel is an unforgettable mix of romance, suspense, and historical fiction that you won't want to miss. 

Related: Curl Up With These Page-Turning Historical Thrillers

The Family Plot is the story of a family who is obsessed with all things true crime. The Lighthouse family has reunited after the death of their patriarch, but when they arrive for the memorial, they discover something shocking—Andy Lighthouse has been axed to death and buried in his father's plot. Everyone handles the murder differently. While some members of the family attempt to distract themselves, Andy's twin Dahlia is determined to find out what happened to her brother. 

Zoje Stage's latest mystery suspense novel Getaway is a wild and unforgettable story of survival. It all starts when three friends hike into the wilds of the Grand Canyon together. As they get deeper into the wilderness, they're certain they're being followed. Soon the friends realize that no matter how far they try to run, they can't leave the world behind,  and they can't escape their secrets. 

In James Patterson and J.D. Barker's latest suspense book The Noise, sixteen-year-old Tennant is checking rabbit traps with her eight-year-old sister Sophie when a strange vibration reaches them from the forest. The sound continues to get worse and becomes overwhelming. Their father snatches the two girls up and takes them to a storm cellar to escape from the noise. But it keeps getting louder...

Related: Our James Patterson Summe Reads Round-Up

Dog Island is a novel in translation by French author Philippe Claudel. The Dog Islands are so named because from overhead, they look like the shape of a dog. When the bodies of three young Black men wash up on the shore of one of the islands, the small community of people who live there agree that they must cover the deaths up to protect the tourism industry and avoid scandal. But then a detective arrives on the island, and he has a lot of questions.

Related: Mystery Suspense Books Set in Coastal Towns

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is back with another must-read novel. This time, she's written a historical mystery. Velvet Was the Night is set in Mexico City in the 1970s. Political unrest is consuming the city, but Maite is more concerned with her issues of Secret Romance. Then Leonora, the art student who lives next door, goes missing under mysterious circumstances, and Maite becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to her. But Maite isn't the only one looking for Leonora. 

Newlyweds Lina and Cain don’t make it out to their property on gorgeous Lake Tarawera as often as they’d like, so when Cain suggests they rent the house out to vacationers, Lina reluctantly agrees. While the home has been in her family for generations, they could use the extra money. And at first, Lina is amazed at how quickly guests line up, and at how much they’re willing to pay.
But both Lina and Cain have been keeping secrets, secrets that won’t be put off by fresh paint or a new alarm system. And someone has been watching them—their mundane tasks, their intimate moments. When a visit takes a deadly turn, Lina realizes someone out there knows something they shouldn’t…and that welcoming strangers into your home is playing a dangerous game.

Stephen King fans will be pleased to know the prolific and best-selling author is back with a new thriller for August: Billy Summers. Billy Summers is a hitman for hire—and he's the best at his job. One of the best snipers in the world. The only catch? He won't take the job unless his target is truly a bad guy. Now he's looking to get out of the game, but not before one last hit. 

The Madness of Crowds is the 17th novel in Louise Penny's Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, Head of Homicide at the Surete, has been asked to provide security for a controversial professor who's speaking at a local university. At first, Gamache doesn't understand why they need such high-level security at such a non-event, but when he looks into the professor and discovers an agenda he finds truly horrifying. So terrible that he asks for the lecture to be canceled. As the professor's ideas begin to spread, they become more and more dangerous, and madness begins to take hold. 

When the bodies of two Indigenous women are found in the wilderness of northern California, it is only the latest horrific development in a string of similar crimes in the area. Despite all evidence to the contrary, officials rule the deaths isolated incidents, which soon join the ranks of countless other unsolved cases quickly dismissed by law enforcement.
In a town where too many injustices are tolerated or brushed under the rug, only a few people remain who refuse to let a killer walk free. But Private Investigator Sharon McCone is one of those few. She is hired by an organization called Crimes against Indigenous Sisters to go undercover in Meruk County—a community rife with secrets, lies, and corruption—to expose the truth.
In an isolated cabin in the freezing, treacherous woods, McCone must work quickly to unravel a mystery that is rooted in profound evil—before she becomes the killer’s next target.

When Ruth Turner walks into the Sheriff’s office in Jefferson County’s Port Townsend claiming her sister Ida Wheaton has been missing for over a month, Detective Megan Carpenter’s instincts tell her that she needs to do more than just file a report.

Racing over to Ida’s secluded farmhouse in the hills above Snow Creek, Megan finds Ida’s teenage children alone and frightened. She can’t help but notice there’s no TV. No video games. Nothing of the outside world. Something about the Wheaton family doesn’t add up and triggers a painful childhood memory for Megan – when one day, in a flash, both her parents were gone.

Then the body of a woman is discovered in an abandoned pickup truck close to the Wheatons’ home and Megan’s convinced the cases are connected.

If she has any chance of catching the killer, Megan must first unravel the secrets of the isolated Snow Creek community. But Megan has dark secrets of her own…

Hidden in the back of her closet is a box of tapes containing every single recording of her therapy sessions over thirteen years ago. Can she finally confront the past she’s spent years trying to block out? And will reliving her own painful story help her solve the complex case unravelling in the hills above Snow Creek before another innocent life is lost?

Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies...especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold.
Yet, even as Jade drags us into her dark fever dream, a surprising and intimate portrait emerges...a portrait of the scared and traumatized little girl beneath the Jason Voorhees mask: angry, yes, but also a girl who easily cries, fiercely loves, and desperately wants a home. A girl whose feelings are too big for her body.