(NOTE: Don’t forget that as TRBS continues to transition to Substack, we’re running a Founding Member promotion. Still haven’t subscribed to our Substack? Read this quick article to see why you should change that today!)
Welcome to October, thriller fans!
Yes, October is here, and with it comes one of the strongest months for new mysteries and thrillers we’ve seen all year… and a pretty sweet giveaway!
Yes, as teased above, this month’s lineup is absolutely loaded with new books from some of the biggest names in the genre, including Michael Connelly, Lee Child and Andrew Child, Louise Penny, Peter James, Walter Mosley, James Patterson, Freida McFadden, Lee Goldberg, Brian Freeman, and more.
Basically, there’s something for just about every kind of reader coming out this month, from serial killers and assassins to police procedurals, historical mysteries, psychological thrillers, espionage, and even a former hitman for the Pope. So whether you’re looking for your next favorite book or just trying to figure out which October releases deserve a spot on your TBR pile, we’ve got you covered.
Check out everything hitting bookstores this month below!
THIS MONTH’S GIVEAWAY (for Paid Subscribers On Substack Only)
*A signed copy of London Station by David McCloskey and an exclusive marketing box that features other “book swag.” (Note: these boxes are sent to critics and influencers and are not available for purchase anywhere.)
For a shot to win, make sure you’re subscribed to The Real Book Spy Substack. All paid subscribers are automatically entered to win, and we’ll choose one person at random and announce the winner on October 29th. Good luck!
Every Mystery & Thriller Coming Out This Month
The Ferryman’s Daughter by Yasmin Angoe
Release Date: October 1st
The daughter of an infamous murderer gets caught up in a copycat’s sick game in this thriller about legacy, self-determination, and corrosive secrecy from the bestselling author of Not What She Seems.
Forensic science teacher Sanaa Karrem buried her past as deep as she could. When her serial killer father, known as “the Ferryman,” disappeared eighteen years ago, she tried to disappear with him. She changed her name, built a new life. And for a while, it all felt like a distant nightmare.
But when bodies turn up with pennies on their eyes, Sanaa recognizes her father’s signature. The nightmare becomes real again. Soon, Sanaa starts receiving threatening messages and increasingly disturbing “gifts.” The killer is toying with her, and she can’t tell anyone―not even her own fiancé, Detective Marcus Morelli, lead investigator on the case.
As the body count rises, Sanaa leans on her expertise as a former medical examiner to close in on the killer. What she finds is a horrific manifestation of her father’s legacy, hitting shockingly close to home. But what disturbs her most is how much that legacy still lingers within her…
MY REVIEW: Yasmin Angoe (who has fast become one of my go-to authors) has a killer premise here, but what makes The Ferryman’s Daughter work so well is that she refuses to treat it like a gimmick. Sanaa Karrem has spent eighteen years trying to outrun the truth about her father, an infamous serial killer known as the Ferryman. Then bodies begin appearing with pennies over their eyes (his signature), and suddenly the life she built under a new name starts coming apart—fast. Angoe turns that setup into something darker, more deeply personal, and wonderfully unsettling than anything she’s written to date. Sanaa’s background in forensic science gives the investigation some juice, and Angoe clearly did her research, while her refusal to tell her detective fiancé who she really is creates another layer of tension that grows stronger with each turning page.
But underneath the murders and mayhem is a terrific question about identity, as Angoe forces readers to question how much of our parents we really carry with us…. whether we want to or not.
Sinister, emotionally charged, and loaded with suspense, The Ferryman’s Daughter is an outstanding start to Angoe’s new Bloodlines series.
Release Date: October 6th
A brand-new, haunting thriller from Freida McFadden, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Housemaid!
Some secrets don’t die―they wait.
When Julia Barlow loses her job and her apartment, she has nowhere left to go but Pemberton, her family’s sprawling seventeenth-century estate in rural Massachusetts. Officially, she’s there to check in on her aging grandmother. Unofficially, she’s hoping the old house will give her a place to disappear.
Instead, Pemberton begins to unravel her.
Every night, the grandfather clock stops at exactly 3:41 a.m. The lights flicker without warning. And a disembodied voice cries for help outside Julia’s bedroom door.
As Julia digs into the house’s dark history, she uncovers the story of a woman executed for witchcraft in 1692―and realizes the past may not be finished with Pemberton yet. When decades of family lies begin to surface, Julia must confront a terrifying truth: Pemberton may be haunted by women whose voices refuse to stay silent.
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden comes The Witch, a chilling, twist-filled thriller about secrets―those we inherit, those we bury, and those people will burn to keep silent.
MY REVIEW: Freida McFadden goes Gothic, and like everything else she’s done lately, this one will keep you up long after bedtime… and sleeping with the lights on when you do finally lay down.
After losing virtually everything, Julia Barlow retreats to Pemberton, her family’s centuries-old Massachusetts estate, where strange noises, flickering lights, and a grandfather clock that stops at the exact same time each night suggest something inside the house refuses to stay buried. Creepy? You bet. Impossible to put down? When is McFadden not? Without giving anything away, the story itself moves between Julia and the horrifying events surrounding a woman accused of witchcraft in 1692, as the plot slowly tightens the connection between past and present. The old house is practically a character itself, and McFadden—who knows how to manipulate her readers’ emotions with every passing word—makes terrific use of family history, inherited secrets, and the question of whether what Julia is experiencing is supernatural or something much more human.
Her trademark sleight of hand is still here, but wrapped inside a darker and more haunting story than readers might expect. Creepy, clever, and wickedly entertaining, The Witch proves McFadden can bring her particular brand of suspense just about anywhere.
Where the Road Ends by Brian Freeman
Release Date: October 6th
The murder of a judge and his wife turns Jonathan Stride’s world upside down and leaves him facing a shocking crossroad in this electrifying mystery from New York Times bestselling author Brian Freeman
Jonathan Stride’s partner, Maggie Bei, is driving home after midnight when a call comes in: shots fired at the home of a Duluth judge.
Moments later, she finds Gordon and Tracy Hartwick murdered in their bed. But someone is hiding in the judge’s house, and as Maggie lays chase, she’s forced to make a split-second decision that leaves the intruder dead.
When Stride arrives at the scene, he has to give Maggie devastating news. The intruder had no gun. He wasn’t the killer. She shot an innocent man.
With Maggie facing a firestorm over her actions, Stride must discover who really killed Gordon and Tracy Hartwick–and what secrets they were hiding that put them in the gunsights of a murderer. The shattering finale will change Stride’s world in ways he can’t imagine and leave everyone he loves asking the same question: When you reach the end of the road, where do you go from there?
MY REVIEW: Brian Freeman gives Jonathan Stride one of his more emotionally complicated cases in Where the Road Ends. When Maggie Bei responds to the murder of a Duluth judge and his wife, she pursues an apparent intruder and makes a split-second decision that changes everything: the man she shoots is unarmed—and apparently wasn’t the killer. That immediately gives Freeman two mysteries to work with, and he wastes no time pulling readers into ‘em both. So, who murdered the Hartwicks, and what will happen to Maggie because of what she did? You’ll have to read to find out, obviously. Just know that Freeman steadily peels back the secrets surrounding the victims while forcing Stride to confront a situation where solving the murder might not be enough to protect the people closest to him.
While there may be a better payoff here for longtime readers of the series, Where the Road Ends remains a strong, character-driven addition to one of crime fiction’s most reliable series.
Petrified Dreams by Joe R. Lansdale
Release Date: October 6th
With women going missing across the Deep South, dynamic detective duo Hap and Leonard zero in on a horrific, chimerical villain protected and abetted by Texas’ most powerful figures in this thrilling conclusion to the beloved series.
“Joe R. Lansdale is to crime fiction what Willie Nelson is to country music: . . . raw, gritty, soulful, and lastly, timeless.”―May Cobb, author of The Hunting Wives
The sun never sets on justice, but it may finally be setting on the beloved crime fighting duo of Hap Collins and Leonard Pine. The two opposites―brothers from another mother―have called the detecting business quits, but when a prop plane holding the bodies of several kidnapped women crashes into their favorite watering hole, the boys know they’re in for one last effort. With the help of a victim’s sister, they learn that a network of men has stolen vulnerable young women on behalf of a horrifying, charismatic villain known as The Artist, a sculptor of living things, including his own body, and protected by the elite of the South. But the Artist refuses to be found, and every lead brings Hap and Leonard into the crosshairs of something even more dangerous. Finding The Artist is a long shot, and getting out alive is even less likely.
Perhaps the darkest, funniest, and most intense of the Hap & Leonard mysteries, Petrified Dreams concludes the revered series as audaciously as one would expect from the mojo master of Southern crime and wit.
MY REVIEW: If this really is the final ride for Hap Collins and Leonard Pine, Joe R. Lansdale sends them out exactly the way he should—bloody, funny, strange, and facing some truly awful people.
Retirement doesn’t last long after a small plane crashes into the lake where Hap and Leonard are fishing and the wreckage exposes the bodies of murdered young women. Their search for answers eventually puts them on the trail of a grotesque figure known as the Artist and opens the door to something much larger and uglier than either man expected. Lansdale has always understood that this series’ magic isn’t simply the violence or the mystery (though, rest assured, there’s plenty of both here)—it’s Hap and Leonard themselves. Their friendship, banter, stubborn sense of justice, and willingness to wade into places sensible people would run from remain the heart of the book.
Petrified Dreams gets extremely dark, but Lansdale’s trademark humor keeps cutting through. A fitting, hard-hitting farewell to two unforgettable characters.