(NOTE: This is a sneak peek of an article posted on The Real Book Spy’s Substack. To read the whole write-up, including reviews of the books listed below, and to get full access to all exclusive, premium content, including all book reviews, author interviews, reading guides, giveaways, and more, follow us on Substack for a behind-the-scenes look at all things thriller & mystery here.)
Get ready for another round of great deals on some of the biggest bestsellers the mystery and thriller genre has to offer this week!
FYI — over on Substack, I’ll update this list throughout the week. So, make sure to bookmark that article and check back in the coming days to see what titles we’ve added!
Price: $2.99
Don’t miss the JOE PICKETT series—now streaming on Paramount+
The first novel in the thrilling series featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett from #1 New York Times bestselling author C. J. Box.
Joe Pickett is the new game warden in Twelve Sleep, Wyoming, a town where nearly everyone hunts and the game warden—especially one like Joe who won’t take bribes or look the other way—is far from popular. When he finds a local hunting outfitter dead, splayed out on the woodpile behind his state-owned home, he takes it personally. There had to be a reason that the outfitter, with whom he’s had run-ins before, chose his backyard, his woodpile to die in. Even after the “outfitter murders,” as they have been dubbed by the local press after the discovery of the two more bodies, are solved, Joe continues to investigate, uneasy with the easy explanation offered by the local police.
As Joe digs deeper into the murders, he soon discovers that the outfitter brought more than death to his backdoor: he brought Joe an endangered species, thought to be extinct, which is now living in his woodpile. But if word of the existence of this endangered species gets out, it will destroy any chance of InterWest, a multi-national natural gas company, building an oil pipeline that would bring the company billions of dollars across Wyoming, through the mountains and forests of Twelve Sleep. The closer Joe comes to the truth behind the outfitter murders, the endangered species and InterWest, the closer he comes to losing everything he holds dear.
The Longmire Defense by Craig Johnson
Price: $1.99
Sheriff Walt Longmire uncovers a cold case that hits very close to home and forces him to put his life on the line with implications that some people would kill to keep buried forever
The hit drama Longmire is now streaming on Paramount+
Sheriff Walt Longmire and Dog are called on a routine search and rescue to Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains, where Walt finds himself on a rock outcropping remembering when his father told him about the first time he saw a man die. In the late forties, Bill Sutherland was shot but the investigation was stymied because no member of the elk camp—where he was found—was carrying the caliber rifle that killed the state accountant. When Dog discovers the missing weapon, the sheriff of Absaroka County is plunged headfirst into a cold case. His investigation quickly finds ties to a hidden mineral fund that someone is willing to kill to keep secret. The embodiment of the fair-minded detective, Walt is pushed to his ethical boundaries. In his relentless pursuit of the truth, he discovers the rifle in question belonged to none other than Walt’s infamous and uncompromising grandfather, Lloyd Longmire.
The English Girl by Daniel Silva
Price: $0.99
The #1 New York Times Bestseller
“Fast-paced intrigue and provocative characters make this a fine addition to an outstanding series.”—People, 4 stars
#1 New York Times bestselling author Daniel Silva delivers another stunning thriller in The English Girl—an action-packed tale of high stakes international intrigue starring art restorer and master spy Gabriel Allon.
When a beautiful young British woman vanishes on the island of Corsica, a prime minister’s career is threatened with destruction. Gabriel Allon, the wayward son of Israeli intelligence, is thrust into a game of shadows where nothing is what it seems…and where the only thing more dangerous than his enemies might be the truth.
Silva’s work has captured the imagination of millions worldwide; his #1 New York Times bestselling series which chronicles the adventures of art-restorer and master spy Gabriel Allon has earned the praise of readers and reviewers everywhere. This captivating page-turner from the undisputed master of spy fiction is sure to thrill new and old fans alike.
American Assassin by Vince Flynn
Price: $2.99
In #1 New York Times bestselling author Vince Flynn’s explosive and “captivating” (Glenn Beck) thriller, witness the young Mitch Rapp as he takes on his first assignment.
Mitch Rapp was a gifted college athlete without a care in the world…and then tragedy struck. Terrorists attacked innocent American citizens, and Rapp’s girlfriend was among the murdered. Two hundred and seventy souls perished on that cold December night, and thousands of family and friends were left searching for comfort. Mitch Rapp was one of them, but he was not interested in comfort. Now he wants retribution.
Two decades of cutthroat partisan politics have left the CIA and the country in an increasingly vulnerable position. Cold War veteran CIA Operations Director Thomas Stansfield knows he must prepare his people for the next war. America must confront Islamic terrorism with full force. Stansfield directs his protégée, Irene Kennedy, and his old Cold War colleague, Stan Hurley, to form a new group of clandestine operatives who will work outside the normal chain of command—men who do not exist.
What type of man is willing to kill for his country without putting on a uniform? Six months of intense training have prepared him to take the war to the enemy’s doorstep, and he does so with brutal efficiency. Rapp starts in Istanbul, where he assassinates the Turkish arms dealer who sold the explosives used in the terrorist attack. Rapp then moves on to Hamburg with his team and across Europe, leaving a trail of bodies. All roads lead to Beirut, though, and what Rapp doesn’t know is that the enemy is aware of his existence and has prepared a trap. The hunter is about to become the hunted, and Rapp will need every ounce of skill and cunning if he is to survive the war-ravaged city and its various terrorist factions.
This is “a bold and brawny tale that never wavers or lets up. The voice of today’s postmodern thriller generation, Flynn has never been better” (The Providence Journal) in this unforgettable novel of a young man primed to become an American assassin.
The Recovery Agent by Janet Evanovich
Price: $2.99
#1 New York Times bestselling author and “thriller master” (Mystery and Suspense Magazine) Janet Evanovich returns with the launch of a “tense, suspenseful, funny, and wise” (Lee Child) series blending wild adventure, hugely appealing characters, and pitch-perfect humor.
Lost something? Gabriela Rose knows how to get it back. As a recovery agent, she’s hired by individuals and companies seeking lost treasures, stolen heirlooms, or missing assets. She’s reliable, cool under pressure, and well-trained in weapons of all types. But Gabriela’s latest job isn’t for some bamboozled billionaire, it’s for her own family, whose home is going to be wiped off the map if they can’t come up with a lot of money fast.
Inspired by an old family legend, Gabriela sets off for the jungles of Peru in pursuit of the Ring of Solomon and the lost treasure of Lima. But this job comes with a huge problem attached to it—Gabriela’s ex-husband, Rafer. It’s Rafer who has the map that possibly points the way to the treasure, and he’s not about to let Gabriela find it without him.
The Lions of Lucerne by Brad Thor
Price: $2.99
In his daring and chilling first novel, #1 New York Times bestselling author Brad Thor draws us into a sinister labyrinth of political intrigue and international terrorism, serving up an explosive cocktail of unrelenting action as one man is pushed to the edge.
On the snow-covered slopes of Utah, the President of the United States has been kidnapped and his Secret Service detail massacred. Only one agent has survived—ex-Navy SEAL Scot Harvath. He doesn’t buy the official line that Middle Eastern terrorists are behind the attack and begins his own campaign to find the truth and exact revenge. But now, framed for murder by a sinister cabal, Harvath takes his fight to the towering mountains of Switzerland—and joins forces with beautiful Claudia Mueller of the Swiss Federal Attorney’s Office. Together they must brave the subzero temperatures and sheer heights of treacherous Mount Pilatus—where their only chance for survival lies inside the den of the most lethal team of professional killers the world has ever known.
Final Appeal by Lisa Scottoline
Price: $1.99
“Scottoline is a master.”—Philadelphia Inquirer
Murder, intrigue, and romance collide in New York Times bestselling author Lisa Scottoline’s clever and fast-paced legal thriller.
Starting over again after her divorce, Philadelphia lawyer Grace Rossi works part time for handsome Judge Armen Gregorian in the federal appeals court.
Assigned to an explosive death penalty appeal, a long day of work unexpectedly leads to a night of passion with the chief judge. But when Gregorian is found dead the next morning, an apparent suicide, Grace knows she must uncover the truth.
Suddenly this working mother finds herself investigating a murder, unearthing a secret bank account, and following a trail of bribery and judicial corruption hidden even from the FBI. In no time at all, Grace under fire takes on a whole new meaning. With the help of an undercover federal agent, she will risk everything to see justice done.
The Monogram Murders, A Hercule Poirot Mystery by Sophie Hannah
Price: $1.99
“Equal parts charming and ingenious, dark and quirky and utterly engaging. Reading The Monogram Murders was like returning to a favorite room of a long-lost home” -Gillian Flynn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Gone Girl
Since the publication of her first novel in 1920, more than two billion copies of Agatha Christie’s books have been sold around the globe. Now, for the first time ever, the guardians of her legacy have approved a brand new novel featuring Dame Agatha’s most beloved creation, Hercule Poirot.
‘I’m a dead woman, or I shall be soon…’
Hercule Poirot’s quiet supper in a London coffeehouse is interrupted when a young woman confides to him that she is about to be murdered. She is terrified – but begs Poirot not to find and punish her killer. Once she is dead, she insists, justice will have been done.
Later that night, Poirot learns that three guests at a fashionable London Hotel have been murdered, and a cufflink has been placed in each one’s mouth. Could there be a connection with the frightened woman? While Poirot struggles to put together the bizarre pieces of the puzzle, the murderer prepares another hotel bedroom for a fourth victim . . .
Stuart Woods’ Golden Hour by Brett Battles
Price: $1.99
Former CIA operative Teddy Fay returns for another heart-pounding Hollywood-fueled adventure in this latest installment in the New York Times bestselling series.
Teddy Fay is ready to embark on the European press tour of Peter Barrington’s latest film Storm’s Eye, when he receives an unexpected visit from Lance Cabot, director of the CIA. Several CIA agents have been turning up dead. The commonality? They were all part of a mission Teddy was involved in: Golden Hour. Lance wants Teddy to use his trip as a cover to investigate who is behind these killings.
From Venice and Budapest to their last stop at a film festival in Berlin, Teddy must dodge excited fans, enamored women, and a few too many assassins who seem dead set on tracking down Golden Hour agents. And if Teddy doesn’t work fast enough, his identity—and life—might just be the next target in the killer’s ruthless plot for revenge.
Home Before Dark by Riley Sager
Price: $1.99
In the latest thriller from New York Times bestseller Riley Sager, a woman returns to the house made famous by her father’s bestselling horror memoir. Is the place really haunted by evil forces, as her father claimed? Or are there more earthbound—and dangerous—secrets hidden within its walls?
What was it like? Living in that house.
Maggie Holt is used to such questions. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved into Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. They spent three weeks there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later recounted in a nonfiction book called House of Horrors. His tale of ghostly happenings and encounters with malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon, rivaling The Amityville Horror in popularity—and skepticism.
Today, Maggie is a restorer of old homes and too young to remember any of the events mentioned in her father’s book. But she also doesn’t believe a word of it. Ghosts, after all, don’t exist. When Maggie inherits Baneberry Hall after her father’s death, she returns to renovate the place to prepare it for sale. But her homecoming is anything but warm. People from the past, chronicled in House of Horrors, lurk in the shadows. And locals aren’t thrilled that their small town has been made infamous thanks to Maggie’s father. Even more unnerving is Baneberry Hall itself—a place filled with relics from another era that hint at a history of dark deeds. As Maggie experiences strange occurrences straight out of her father’s book, she starts to believe that what he wrote was more fact than fiction.
Have You Seen Her by Catherine McKenzie
Price: $1.99
An “edge-of-your-seat” (Jessa Maxwell, author of The Golden Spoon) thriller about three women with dark secrets whose lives intersect in the picturesque and perilous Yosemite National Park from the USA TODAY bestselling author of Please Join Us.
Equipped with a burner phone and a new job, Cassie Peters has left her hectic life in New York City for the refuge of her hometown of Mammoth Lakes, California. There, she begins working again with Yosemite Search and Rescue, though she is still haunted by a case she worked on a decade ago.
She quickly falls into old patterns, joining a group of fellow seasonal workers and young adventurers who have made Yosemite their home during the summer. There, she meets Petal, a young woman living in a trailer with her much older wife, keeping a detailed diary of the goings on of the park, and Jada, a recent college graduate on a cross-country road trip with her boyfriend, documenting their journey on Instagram.
When these three women cross paths, Cassie’s past catches up with her, and the shocking consequences ripple out far beyond what any could have imagined. “Taut and atmospheric with as many jagged peaks and valleys as its dramatic setting, this captivating page-turner will keep you guessing until the end” (Katherine St. John, author of The Vicious Circle.
If You Were Hereby Alafair Burke
Price: $1.99
From New York Times bestselling author Alafair Burke comes a suspenseful, tightly plotted story of friendship, lies, and betrayal.
Journalist McKenna Jordan is chasing the latest urban folktale—the story of an unidentified woman who heroically pulled a teenaged boy from the subway tracks, seconds before the approach of an oncoming train. When McKenna locates a video snippet that purportedly captures the incident, she thinks she has an edge on the competition scrambling to identify the mystery heroine.
McKenna is shocked to discover that the woman in the video bears a strong resemblance to Susan Hauptmann, a close friend—and a classmate of her husband’s at West Point—who vanished without a trace ten years earlier. The NYPD concluded that the nomadic Susan—forced by her father into an early military life, floundering as an adult for a fixed identity—simply started over again somewhere else.
But McKenna has always believed the truth went deeper than the police investigation ever reached. What might have been a short-lived metro story sends her on a twisting search that leads across New York City—and to dark secrets buried dangerously close to home.
The New Couple in 5B by Lisa Unger
Price: $1.99
“Spine-tingling fun.” —People
“Lisa Unger, you’ve done it again.” —Sarah Michelle Gellar, Emmy Award-winning actress
A couple inherits an apartment with a spine-tingling past in this unputdownable thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six.
Rosie and Chad Lowan are barely making ends meet in New York City when they receive life-changing news: Chad’s late uncle has left them his luxury apartment at the historic Windermere in glamorous Murray Hill. With its prewar elegance and impeccably uniformed doorman, the building is the epitome of old New York charm. One would almost never suspect the dark history lurking behind its perfectly maintained facade.
At first, the building and its eclectic tenants couldn’t feel more welcoming. But as the Lowans settle into their new home, Rosie starts to suspect that there’s more to the Windermere than meets the eye. Why is the doorman ever-present? Why are there cameras everywhere? And why have so many gruesome crimes occurred there throughout the years? When one of the neighbors turns up dead, Rosie must get to the truth about the Windermere before she, too, falls under its dangerous spell.
Death Comes to Marlow by Robert Thorogood
Price: $1.99
“Fiendishly clever.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Judith and Co have to bring all their bonkers interview techniques and leaps of logic into play to uncover the truth.” —Crime Fiction Lover
BBCOne show creator of Death in Paradise, Robert Thorogood delights in giving the Christie-mystery a busy-body twist. Judith (our favorite skinny-dipping, whiskey-sipping, crossword puzzle author), along with Becks the vicar’s wife, and Susie the dogwalker find themselves in a head-scratching, utterly clever country house, locked-room murder mystery.
Holiday festivities are now January doldrums when Judith gets a call—Sir Peter Bailey, a prominent Marlovian is inviting notable citizens to his house the day before his wedding to celebrate.
Judith decides to go—after all, it’s a few houses up the Thames and free champagne, for sure. During the party, a loud crash inside stops the festivities. The groom-to-be has been crushed to death in his study. The door was locked from the inside so the police say suicide, obviously.
Friends. Sir Peter cannot be left for dead like that…Judith and the Marlow Murder Club are on the case.
Price: $1.99
A man with a secret life risks everything to clear his name in this “ingenious suspense thriller”(The New York Times Book Review) from the bestselling author of the Penn Cage series.
By day, Harper Cole trades commodities from his isolated home in the Mississippi Delta. By night he leads quite a different life, serving as a systems operator for an exclusive, annonymous erotic online service that caters to the rich and famous. But now a stranger has penetrated the network’s state-of-the-art security, brutally murdering six celebrated female clients.
Falsely accused of these horrible crimes, Harper realizes there’s only one way to lure the elusive madman offline and into the open. But as he enacts his daring plan, Harper will put everything and everyone he holds dear directly in the path of a brilliant, unstoppable killer.
Praised as “One of the hardest working, most thoughtful, and fairest reviewers out there” by New York Times bestselling author Lisa Scottoline, Ryan Steck has “quickly established himself as the authority on mysteries and thrillers” (Author A.J. Tata). Steck also works full-time as a freelance editor in addition to running TRBS. He is the author of FIELDS OF FIRE, which #1 New York Times bestselling author Jack Carr says “will leave you speechless and begging for more,” LETHAL RANGE, OUT FOR BLOOD, GONE DARK, and TED BELL’S MONARCH. For more information, follow him on Twitter, Facebook, and BookBub. For even more content and book news, subscribe to The Real Book Spy Substack!