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2026 is flying by.
Can you believe that spring is almost over?
Normally, I’m as ready as anyone for the summer months to move in, because along with the beach days and warm sun, summer usually happens to be the best season for new thrillers and mysteries—though a trend has emerged in recent years where publishers are stacking the early spring months with household names, giving summer a run for its money.
For that reason, I figured now was the right time to look back at the 20 best titles that hit bookstores this spring, and just like our monthly Reading Guides, I’ve even chosen a few books that I personally think stand a touch above the rest.
First, though, just to be clear—I’m only including the best books to be released between March 1, 2026, and May 31, 2026. So, if your favorite book of the year came out in February, and you don’t see it here, that’s why. Also, yes—you can bet that I’ll be dropping a Summer Reading Guide very, very soon. So, get your book-buying budget in order!
Okay, so, to round out the Spring Reading Guide, my Featured Selections are Shadow Strike by Brad Taylor, A Deadly Episode by Anthony Horowitz, The Fourth Option by Jack Carr and M.P. Woodward, and Tom Clancy Rules of Engagement by Ward Larsen.
The Tree of Light and Flowers by Thoas Perry
Release Date: March 3
Jane Whitefield is used to protecting vulnerable people, but after she gives birth, the fugitives she must rescue are her own family.
A violent car crash brings on the premature birth of the baby that Jane Whitefield and her husband have hoped for, but it also shatters the period of calm in their lives like an earthquake triggering a tectonic shift.
Within weeks, Jane’s peaceful time as a new mother in a safe, harmonious home starts to revert to her harrowing previous life. She had spent over a decade rescuing and sheltering people from dangerous foes, taking them to new locations, and teaching them to live under new identities. It was something that she’d hoped to never have to do again.
Nearly simultaneously, as though the events were connected, people who are thousands of miles apart in vastly different circumstances start to move. Some of them are in terrible need of help finding a route to safety. Some are dedicated to serving justice. Others are determined to capture the woman who makes people disappear so they can force her to reveal where their potential victims are now. All of these travelers are soon on their way to the old house in western New York.
Suddenly the people requiring Jane’s special skills include not only multiple fugitives, but also Jane herself, her husband, and their newborn, as the danger she faces comes from people who know how to find her. She’ll need to use everything she’s ever learned in order to survive.
Release Date: March 10th
At the suggestion of his girlfriend, June, Peter Ash rides to the aid of an investigative reporter who may have stumbled on a story more explosive than even he can handle in this propulsive new thriller from the bestselling and award-winning series.
Katelyn Thorsen, known as KT to her friends and enemies, is an independent journalist who receives a very specific death threat. Fortunately, Peter Ash has arrived in town to protect KT at the request of his girlfriend, June Cassidy. From the moment of his arrival, he’s thrown into a maelstrom of violence trying to protect KT and her daughter and discover the source of the death threat.
Even after June and Peter’s best friend Lewis arrive in Seattle to help, this challenge may be too much for them – with enormous consequences should they fail.
Served Him Right by Lisa Unger
Release Date: March 10th
“A twisty and pacy thriller.” —Nita Prose, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Maid series
A woman’s brunch with friends quickly turns dark in this gripping thriller from New York Times bestselling author Lisa Unger
Ana Blacksmith has gathered her closest friends and sister Vera for a brunch to celebrate her recent breakup from her boyfriend Paul. But when shocking news about Paul arrives, all eyes are on Ana, the angry ex with a bad reputation. Suspicions only intensify when Ana’s best friend falls deathly ill after the brunch.
But Ana is not the only one who had a score to settle with Paul. As the investigation unfolds, rumors of a secret network that uses ancient methods to obtain justice begin to emerge. Vengeance is sweet, but it can also be deadly. Ana and Vera are determined to find the truth before Ana takes the fall and their own long-buried history comes to light.
Everyone in This Bank Is a Thief by Benjamin Stevenson
Release Date: March 17th
Mariner Books
Ten suspects. Ten heists. A puzzle only Ernest Cunningham can solve in this delightfully clever and twisty new novel in Benjamin Stevenson’s bestselling series—perfect for fans of Richard Osman and Anthony Horowitz.
I’ve spent the last few years solving murders. But a bank heist is a new one, even for me. I’ve never been a hostage before.
The doors are chained shut. No one in or out. Which means that when someone in the bank is murdered, everyone is a suspect.
THE BANK ROBBER, THE MANAGER, THE SECURITY GUARD, THE KID, THE FILM PRODUCER, THE PRIEST, THE RECEPTIONIST, THE PATIENT, THE CAREGIVER, ME.
Turns out, more than one person planned to rob the bank today. You can steal more from a bank than just money.
Who is stealing what? Are they willing to kill for it? And can I solve the crime before the police kick down the door and rescue us?
Killing Me Softly by Sandie Jones
Release Date: March 31st
What do you do when love turns deadly?
THE PERFECT COUPLE
Charlie and Freya used to be the picture-perfect couple. Happy and in love, Freya enjoyed a rewarding job heading up a charity’s fundraising efforts, and Charlie was fast becoming one-to-watch on the London culinary scene―if you couldn’t be them, you wanted to be with them.
A TERRIBLE TRAGEDY
They had it all . . . until one night a devastating accident tears their lives apart, and they’re awoken by police at their door, asking whether they are aware that their car had been involved in a hit and run.
A BITTER FEUD
Torn apart by accusations and guilt, the trust that Freya and Charlie once shared is shattered as they turn on each other, looking for someone to blame for the fallout. Told from both Freya and Charlie’s perspectives, a cat and mouse game ensues, both of them desperate to have someone to point the finger at. But is it more important to be right, or to win? Can Freya stay one step ahead of the man who knows her best? Or will Charlie’s stoic conviction to get what he wants be the death of her?
Sandie Jones’s next addictive novel is a wickedly twisty tale of obsession, and the deadly consequences of loving someone too much.
Release Date: April 7th
Lucas Davenport must track down a ruthless Russian hit team, in this latest thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author John Sandford.
Leonard Summers—not his real name—is on the run. A former high-ranking Russian intelligence officer who defected to the U.S. after providing critical information about Russian spies in U.S. government service, Leonard, his wife Martha, and son Bernard have spent the past year holed up in a CIA facility near Washington. After the CIA makes a deal with the U.S. Marshal Service’s Witness Protection Program (WPP), Leonard’s family is transported to Minneapolis. The plan is to hide them in a wooded Minneapolis suburb that resembles their former home and dacha near Moscow.
The Summers are received at their destination by Lucas Davenport and fellow marshal Shelly White. Unbeknownst to them, the WPP group has been tracked by a Russian hit team. And while nobody in the WPP has ever been attacked…Leonard might be the first victim. As shots are fired and enemies dodged, Lucas must move quickly to uncover where the leak is coming from, before the hit team can strike again.
Release Date: April 14th
Walter Nash began a journey down a dark path of seemingly no return, and now he finds himself questioning everything that got him there in this thrilling sequel to Nash Falls from #1 New York Times bestselling author David Baldacci.
Walter Nash, working under the alias of Dillon Hope, is on the road to revenge after becoming an informant for the FBI against a global criminal operation headed up by Victoria Steers. Steers has ripped everything Nash held dear away from him. He has nothing left to lose and with long, rigorous training under his belt the gentle and sensitive Nash has transformed into something he never thought he’d be: a physically imposing man with lethal skills. And now he has only goal left in life: taking down Victoria Steers.
In order to succeed, he’s going to need to cross enemy lines and work the job from the inside. But Steers is shrewd and only brings those with her complete trust into her inner circle. Nash must rely on every ounce of his hard-earned skills in order to prove himself an ally to Steers if he’s ever going to get close enough to decimate her criminal empire.
Yet, despite hating the woman for destroying his life, Nash finds himself oddly drawn to Steers in ways that he never could’ve imagined. And what he ultimately discovers will turn all he believed upside down, forcing Nash to do something truly unfathomable.
So, will the truth set Nash free?
Release Date: April 21st
New York Times bestselling author and former special forces officer Brad Taylor is back with a dynamic political thriller featuring Pike Logan as he goes head-to-head with an old enemy—and renowned assassin.
After its proxies are devastated and its offensive capability pummeled in the latest war in the middle east, a rogue group of Iranian regime officials create a brazen plot to strike back at their hated enemies once and for all. They envision a series of operational dominos culminating in a devastating attack, and the first step is the assassination of the Israeli prime minister. And there’s only one assassin with the skills to pull it off: Abdul Rahman, known in the shadows as the Ghost.
When a routine prison transfer is ambushed, the Ghost escapes and is given the assignment. The only Operator who can hunt him down is the man who stopped him before: Pike Logan.
Pike and his team soon learn that the mission involves something bigger than just the escape of his old enemy. Working with Mossad agents, the pursuit leads the Taskforce to Argentina. They work to unravel the scope of the attack, and the chase leads them through the tempestuous waterfalls of Iguazu and the Triple Frontier, to the vibrant streets of Buenos Aires, and the tiny village of Ushuaia at the “End of the World”.
As the team races against the clock, Pike learns the stakes are much greater than a single life – the consequences extend into the heartland of America itself. The Ghost may hold the key to an escalation that will upend the worldwide balance of power, and if Pike fails, the fallout won’t just be personal – it’ll be global.
A Deadly Episode by Anthony Horowitz
Release Date: April 28th
They’re making a major feature film of the first Hawthorne/Horowitz mystery novel. Except—they’re behind schedule, they’ve run out of money and . . . oh! The star has just been murdered.
Ex-Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne is dead.
Or, rather, the actor playing him in the film adaptation of The Word is Murder is. Rising star David Caine has been stabbed, and it seems that everyone on the set had a motive.
Caine had just fired his PA. He had fallen out with his director, slept with the screenwriter, humiliated his co-star and dropped his agent days before he was about to sign a multi-million-dollar deal to appear in the next Spider-Man movie.
But what if Caine’s murderer had made a mistake? What if it was the real Hawthorne who was the intended victim? For it turns out that the brilliant detective may have got it wrong ten years earlier. An innocent man has died in jail. And perhaps someone has decided that Hawthorne must pay the price.
From the film set on the south coast of England, the story moves to Reeth, in Yorkshire, the village where Hawthorne grew up. A burned-down school, a car accident that isn’t what it seems, blackmail and murder in an Elizabethan country house . . . somehow they combine to unlock the secret of what has happened in Hastings.
For once, the local police are helpful. DS Sarah Milnes gives Hawthorne carte blanche to investigate and there may even be a hint of romance in the air. Which leaves his hapless sidekick, Horowitz, on his own, stumbling his way to the truth.
A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, A Deadly Episode is an intriguing page-turner that once again demonstrates why Anthony Horowitz is the reigning king of the modern whodunit.
How to Cheat Your Own Death by Kristen Perrin
Release Date: April 28th
From the gritty streets of 1960s Soho to the lofty galleries of present-day West London, two interlocking mysteries decades apart unfold in this latest instalment in the award-winning, New York Times bestselling Castle Knoll Murder Mystery series
Some secrets are deadlier than others
1968: Frances Adams is loving her new London life, and she’s stepped into a world of glamour thanks to her new friend, Vera Huntington–a magnetic socialite as mysterious as she is provocative. Vera dances around London like she owns it, taking Frances with her.
Present day: When Annie Adams heads to London to visit her famous artist mother, Laura, the last thing she expects to find is a dead body. Least of all for it to be Laura’s new protégée, left in an alley with her heart surgically removed from her chest.
Annie is no stranger to murder–after all, she’s solved a few already. And something about this case feels familiar. She’s read about one just like it in the journals of her late great aunt Frances, whose friend Vera was killed in the 1960s in the exact same way.
As Annie investigates, threats pile up on Laura’s doorstep, and it soon becomes clear that she’s next. With her mother’s life on the line, can Annie find the killer before it’s too late?
Release Date: April 28th
They know everything. They see everything. They control everything … except the one man who can stop them.
From Matthew Betley, award-winning author of The Neighborhood and the bestselling Logan West series, comes a no-holds-barred thrill ride that will grip you from page one through an explosive conclusion you’ll never see coming.
To the world, Owen Pierce is just another handsome, successful Miami lawyer. But to the secret American organization known as the Council, he’s one of the most dangerous assassins in the world.
When Owen lost everything, it was the Council that gave him purpose. He became their most dangerous weapon, the man they send to eliminate high-value, hard-to-reach criminals who escaped the judicial system.
But when a mission to take out a cartel leader goes disastrously wrong, Owen starts to uncover the sinister truth of the Council and what they’re really after. And with the Council’s plan in its final stages, that makes him a dangerous liability. Before you can say “Mission Impossible,” Owen and his team go from the Council’s top operatives to their number one target.
But the Council has made one critical mistake–they chose Owen because he lost everything … and that means he has nothing left to lose.
Propulsive, shocking, and packed with high-octane action, devilishly clever twists, and emotionally gripping themes, The Council is Matthew Betley’s biggest blockbuster thrill ride yet.
The Fourth Option by Jack Carr and M.P. Woodward
Release Date: May 12th
When law enforcement, the courts, and the prison system fail, there is a fourth and final option. #1 New York Times bestselling author Jack Carr launches a new thriller series, co-written with New York Times bestselling author M.P. Woodward.
Disillusioned by the government and institutions he dedicated his life to serving, former Navy SEAL and CIA ground branch operative Chris Walker is about to end his life when he receives a call that saves it. The wife of a teammate he lost in Afghanistan has now lost her son to the opioid crisis and needs Walker’s help. Thrust into a conspiracy that goes deeper than he ever imagined, Walker must go up against the system and the very Constitution he once swore an oath to support and defend in order to find justice for his friend’s widow.
With ambitious FBI agent Jarrett Stanton on his tail, Walker—accompanied by his loyal Belgian Malinois K-9 and using his off-the-grid VW pop-up camper filled with a hidden cache of weapons—takes justice into his own hands, exposing corruption and issuing a long-forgotten brand of lethal outlaw justice.
In the tradition of the great “stranger comes to town” Westerns of the past comes a modern interpretation of the mysterious vigilante gunslinger legend from “the hottest author on the thriller scene today” (The Real Book Spy). Get ready for a new kind of hero. Justice is coming.
The Last Mandarin by Louise Penny & Mellissa Fung
Release Date: May 12th
A standalone thriller co-written by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Gamache series and an award-winning journalist.
In a fast-paced, all-too-real thriller co-written by #1 New York Times bestselling author Louise Penny and award-winning journalist Mellissa Fung, global politics become personal for two unlikely heroines. Alice Li, a first-generation Chinese-American, is an erstwhile food blogger who has lived in the shadow of her mother, Vivien Li. A Chinese dissident who escaped China after Tiananmen Square, Vivien is now a globally recognized human rights activist and passionate advocate for a free and democratic China.
When security and fire alarms go off simultaneously all around the world, setting off a panic, the signal is traced back to China. As world leaders scramble to respond, Vivien and Alice are called to the White House in hopes Madame Li can decode the Chinese intentions
Riptide by Chad Robichaux & Jack Stewart
Release Date: May 12th
A shadow war rages. Only one man can drag it into the light.
Still haunted by his former teammate’s betrayal and the unveiling of a conspiracy that runs deeper than he imagined, Foster Quinn is once more thrust back into the world he thought he left behind. In the sweltering heat off the coast of Key West, a mission to seize a billionaire’s yacht ends in a chilling revelation: America’s enemies aren’t just beyond our borders―they might be sitting in Congress.
When a powerful Texas businessman recruits Foster to investigate the political malfeasance behind the death of his son, Foster is pulled into a web of corruption that leads him from a luxury megayacht in the Caribbean to a tech mogul’s grand estate in the Pacific Northwest. As he hunts down the men pulling the strings, Foster must resist the temptation in his search for justice to be swept away by revenge. He’ll need all his training and resilience to unravel a plot driven by greed and masked by patriotism. Especially when the war becomes personal, and he realizes it’s coming to his own turf.
The sequel to the USA Today bestseller Silent Horizons, Riptide is an exhilarating, ripped-from-the-headlines thriller that blurs the line between duty and revenge―and leaves no one above suspicion.
Tom Clancy Rules of Engagement by Ward Larsen
Release Date: May 19th
When a member of his Cabinet is killed in a plane President Jack Ryan suspects that the “accident” is anything but in this latest shocking entry in this #1 New York Times bestselling series.
The White House is stunned when the Secretary of Commerce is killed in a plane crash in Turkey. President Jack Ryan isn’t ready to write this off as a simple accident. Not only has he lost a good friend, but the Secretary was on an important mission: on the surface he was making an appearance at an economic conference, but the CIA was also using the flight as cover to extract an important asset from the Middle East.
Soon, Lt. Commander Katie Ryan and her team are working with the investigators to find the cause of the tragedy, but one shocking revelation changes everything. There were supposed to be 16 people on the plane, but there are only 15 bodies.
The quest for answers will lead the team deeper and deeper into a quagmire of lies and deception that will force President Ryan to face an unprincipled enemy with global ambitions.
Release Date: May 19th
Sworn to protect a scenic island meant to be far from the evils of the mainland, Detective Sergeant Stilwell can feel danger closing in.
Detective Sergeant Stilwell knows that his posting on Catalina Island is no paradise, but to most residents, it seems blissfully separated—by twenty-two miles of ocean—from the troubles of Los Angeles County. But now a threat is coming to his safe haven.
Acting on a tip from a confidential informant, Stilwell and his deputies watch a plane land in the middle of the night at the Airport in the Sky, a remote airstrip in the mountains. A duffel bag of drugs is dropped and the deputies move in, but things quickly go sideways. While Stilwell chases the fleeing pickup man into the mountainside brush, shots are fired on the runway and the plane flies off.
An internal inquiry follows, putting Stilwell on the bench until he is cleared of responsibility for the disastrous operation. But he is determined to find out who brought deadly violence to his island, and begins his own secret investigation into the drug deal gone wrong.
While under orders to remain in the sheriff’s substation, he finds in the lost and found a valuable backpack that was never claimed. He traces it to a woman who disappeared while hiking on the island four years ago. But then why was the pack only turned in two months back? Now thoroughly intrigued, he follows the mystery all the way to the LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Unit and Detective Renée Ballard.
Stilwell and Ballard work the case from both sides of the channel, and soon realize they are on the trail of a criminal who revels in taunting the authorities. Meanwhile, frustrated at being shut out of an investigation on his own island, Stilwell risks his already shaky standing in the department to pursue a case whose reach is wider than he ever imagined.
Page-turning, packed with intrigue, and bringing together an unstoppable investigative team, Ironwood continues the Catalina series with all of Michael Connelly’s signature “relentless narrative drive…evocative atmosphere, realistic dialogue, and well-developed characters” (Washington Review of Books).
Mist and Malice by Rachel Howzell Hall
Release Date: May 19th
A small-town PI is drawn into a killer conspiracy in a breathtaking novel of suspense by the New York Times bestselling author of the Anthony Award–nominated These Toxic Things.
Private investigator Sonny Rush, the newest resident of Haven, California, knows that this fogbound coastal hamlet is every bit as dangerous as her hometown of Los Angeles. And when teenager and repeat runaway Honor Butler shows up at Sonny’s door with terror in her eyes, Sonny is immediately pulled into a new case that lands close to home.
Desperate, hungry, and in need of someone she can trust, Honor tells Sonny a horrifying story about where she’s been―and what she’s been forced to do. Then, hours later, the forest near Sonny’s cottage yields the remains of a missing day laborer, a man whose wife has been searching for answers for months. Soon, coincidence sharpens into conspiracy.
As Sonny digs deeper, the threads of these cases twist together into something horrifying: a ruthless network preying on the vulnerable, protected by the very people meant to uphold the law. With every step closer to revealing Haven’s corruption, Sonny risks pulling the lives of her loved ones into the cross fire―and exposing the shadows of her own past. Because in this town, loyalty can be fatal, and survival means deciding who you’re willing to betray.
The Brothers McKay by Craig Johnson
Release Date: May 26th
A masterful new novel in the beloved New York Times bestselling Longmire series
When Pepper McKay, one of the most hated men in Absaroka County, is found murdered on his ranch in Crazy Woman Canyon, suspects aren’t in short supply. But Sheriff Walt Longmire’s attention is on those who had gathered for a family meeting that evening, McKay’s very different sons: a smooth-talking charmer, a cosmopolitan journalist, a reclusive monk, and a half-Native ranch hand who keeps the place running. Each had a motive. Each claims he’s innocent.
As Walt investigates what happened that night at the O-Kay Lodge, he’s pulled into a tangle of old grudges and long-buried secrets. Then the case takes a sharp turn: a second body surfaces, and a wildfire tears through the canyon, trapping Walt and forcing him into a fight for his life as both the killer and the elements close in.
The twenty-second novel in the Longmire series, The Brothers McKay is a murder mystery and a survival thriller that tests the sheriff’s hard-won sense of justice—all while paying sly homage to Dostoevsky’s classic.
The Fial Target by Nora Roberts
Release Date: May 26th
A young author becomes the object of a fan’s desire―and rage―in the gripping thriller by the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of Hidden Nature.
He showed up at Arden Bowie’s debut author appearance with a copy of her novel and an eager smile. He showered her with compliments and got her autograph. Then he came to her next event. And the one after that.
Dustin was just an aspiring writer who wanted advice, Arden reassured herself. But after giving in to one of his incessant invitations and chatting with him over coffee, she discovered that ignoring her inner alarm bell had been a terrible mistake…
An introvert at heart, Arden had long craved solitude―but now, after a harrowing assault, she finds herself hiding behind locked doors and startling at every sound. And her relief at his imprisonment is tempered by anxiety when Dustin’s wealthy mother helps to get him a paltry five-year sentence at a psychiatric facility.
Arden decides to write a new story for herself, moving to a tiny Oregon town and befriending Gideon, an ex-LAPD detective. But while she learns to thrive, Dustin remains his delusional, twisted self, as fixated as ever and now seething with anger. He still believes Arden’s purpose on earth is to serve and please him. And his job is to protect her. But who will protect her from him?
Murder by Design by Lee Goldberg
Release Date: May 26th
In a world carefully constructed for murder, solving crimes takes a keen mind and eye in a witty, clever, and fresh reinvention of the whodunit by #1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Goldberg.
Edison Bixby is wealthy, handsome, and, due to a traumatic brain injury, impulsively rude. He’s also a brilliant insurance investigator who solves baffling crimes by figuring out how the design of the man-made world around us makes them possible. Enter Wally Nash: a struggling actor hired to keep Bixby from offending everyone he meets.
Their first case together looks like a simple accident. Caroline Crowley took a nasty fall down a staircase at a shopping mall in front of dozens of witnesses. Video clearly shows the deadly misstep. But Bixby is certain she was murdered by design, subtly manipulated into causing her own demise. The mall itself made the crime intentional, if not inevitable.
Now Bixby must prove his outrageous theory before a very cunning killer gets others on his hit list to murder themselves, too.
