Mystery/Thriller

5 Best Mystery & Thriller Beach Reads Of All Time!

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Jamie Canaves

Contributing Editor

Jamie Canavés is the Tailored Book Recommendations coordinator and Unusual Suspects mystery newsletter writer — in case you’re wondering what you do with a Liberal Arts degree. She’s never met a beach she didn’t like, always says yes to dessert, loves ‘80s nostalgia, all forms of entertainment, and can hold a conversation using only gifs. You can always talk books with her on Bluesky, Litsy, Goodreads, and her newsletter Multitudes Contained.

Welcome to Beach Read season! What does that mean? Probably something slightly different to every reader as we enter the summer season in the US and many people take vacations, pop out to the pool, beach, or participate more in outdoor activities. While relaxing and stretching out with a good book and a cold drink, many readers want something that will be absorbing, fun, and that they can put down and pick up as they try and de-stress and be one with the spirit of summer.

To ring in the season, Book Riot put together The Best Beach Reads of All Time list, with everyone shouting many of their all-time favorites. I’m sharing a few of my fellow Book Riot writers’ mystery and thriller selections, and I thought I’d also add a couple more of my own.

2 of My Favorite Mystery & Thriller Beach Reads

cover fo Stillhouse Lake by Rachel Caine

Stillhouse Lake by Rachel Caine

If you like to relax with a bonkers premise and the real definition of a page-turner, this is a great beach read that was all the rage in 2017. Imagine finding out that your husband is a serial killer and that he killed his victims in the home you were raising your family in. Then the public refuses to believe you had no idea, so you are forced to constantly be on the run with your kids, trying to hide. That all sounds stressful enough, yes? Now put a dead body behind your new house…

Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

So few books have comps that actually fit, but this YA does totally match its comps of Gossip Girl and Get Out—and I would even toss in a sprinkling of I Know What You Did Last Summer. All those titles feel like something to watch on vacation, so naturally a dark academia—with an anonymous blackmailer—would be a fitting beach read!

3 of Rioters’ Favorite Mystery & Thriller Beach Reads

I picked three more beach reads that fellow Rioters selected for our big list, but if you want to see all the books they shouted about (including more mystery books and all genres) check out The Best Beach Reads of All Time!

cover of Dial A for Aunties

Dial A For Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto

A cozy murder mystery romp set at a resort wedding is exactly what a beach read should be: fun, compelling, and relatively lighthearted. If I’m on vacation, I want to sit back and immerse myself in a story so good, I don’t want to put it down, even for pool or beach time. That’s Dial A for Aunties. An accidental death, a bunch of meddling aunties trying to dispose of a dead body, and a former flame showing up at the most inopportune time — that’s exactly the kind of nonstop story I’m after. It’s the perfect blend of mayhem and humor that will have you laughing and guessing until the last page.

—Rachel Brittain

cover of Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Did somebody demand a page-turner? Gillian Flynn’s 2012 psychological crime thriller is so good it launched me into reading her entire catalog of mindfuckery and resulted in a truly excellent David Fincher adaptation. Missing women mystery and thriller books are no strangers to beach reads lists, but I dare you to name one more deliciously twisted and surprising than Gone Girl. The book was a New York Times Best Seller, and I can’t count the number of noses I’ve personally seen stuck in this book, from beaches to airports to public spaces and coffee shops, over the many years since the book came out.

— S. Zainab Williams

Blacktop Wasteland cover

Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby

A good guy doing bad things for good (well, let’s say at least understandable) reasons will always work. Books about cars always work. We are off to a good start. But it is the web of racial, cultural, and economic strings that pull on the characters of Blacktop Wasteland that elevate this from another very good crime novel into the rare territory of compelling, page-turning novels that are about something. Cosby has been steadily growing in popularity, but I think you can still get on board and be an early fan. You won’t be sorry.

— Jeff O’Neal


Browse the books recommended in Unusual Suspects’ previous newsletters on this shelf. See upcoming 2025 releases, and mysteries from 2024 and 2023. Check out this Unusual Suspects Pinterest board and get Tailored Book Recommendations! Until next time, come talk books with me on Bluesky, Goodreads, Litsy, and Substack.

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The following comes to you from the Editorial Desk.

We love a good cover, and this week, we’re highlighting a list of the best short story covers. Trust us when we say that these will look so demure on your bookshelves!

Read on for an excerpt and become an All Access member to unlock the full post.


In the course of writing about great book covers, there’s one thing that I’ve noted several times: short story collections have some of the most innovative, memorable, and eye-catching covers of them all. Why is that? Perhaps part of it is because short story collections are a harder sell to the average reader, so the first line of marketing has to be for the bookshop browser, whether they’re perusing on or off line. Perhaps part of it is that many great short story collections are coming from smaller presses, so pushing boundaries with design is part of what’s possible because there are fewer stakeholders to please in the process. Perhaps it’s also simply that short story collections, by nature of their diversity, invite more creativity into the cover design process.

Whatever the reason or reasons, I suspect anyone who appreciates a good book cover is here for it.

Let’s take a look at some of the banging short story book covers that have hit shelves this year, as well as look at some of the upcoming covers of collections you’ll want to pop on your TBR ASAP. If you’re reading this when the piece publishes in mid-May, know you’ll be reading it in time to partake in Short Story Month, too. Any month can be short story month, of course, but May gives extra reason to dive into bite-sized fiction.

As always, caveats abound here. It is still unnecessarily difficult to track down cover designers and artists for book covers, especially if you don’t have the book in your hand to double-check. Many publishers still don’t put this information on the landing pages for these books, so it takes good Googling and a lot of luck to dig up names to credit.

autocorrect book cover

Autocorrect by Etgar Keret, translated by Jessica Cohen and Sondra Silverston (May 27)

If you’re looking for a collection of darkly funny stories, this cover is not going to steer you in the wrong direction. It’s a squirrel that’s clearly been launched right into the book title, and he looks completely unfazed by it all. There’s a lot of nice movement in this design, especially as it is very simplistic.


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