You’ll adore these suspenseful thrillers set in dangerous locations if you enjoy stories where the setting serves as an independent opponent. These thrilling tales feature innocent tourists having the trip of a lifetime and thrill-seekers getting more than they bargained for, and they blend adventure, tenacity, and danger to produce some of the most terrifying page-turners you’ll read this year!
Daisy Darker
Alice Feeney
Daisy Darker was born with a broken heart. Now after years of avoiding each other, Daisy Darker’s entire family is assembling for Nana’s 80th birthday party in her crumbling gothic house on a tiny tidal island. The family arrives, each of them harboring secrets. When the tide comes in, they will be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours. But at the stroke of midnight, as a storm rages, Nana is found dead. And an hour later, the next family member follows… Trapped on an island where someone is killing them one by one, the Darkers must reckon with their present mystery as well as their past secrets.
Release Date: August 30, 2022
Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six
Lisa Unger
What could be more restful, more restorative, than a weekend getaway with family and friends? An isolated luxury cabin in the woods, complete with spectacular views, a hot tub and a personal chef. Hannah’s loving and generous tech-mogul brother found the listing online. The reviews are stellar. It’s his birthday gift to Hannah and includes their spouses and another couple. The six friends need this trip with good food, good company and lots of R & R, far from the chatter and pressures of modern life. But the dreamy weekend is about to turn into a nightmare. A deadly storm is brewing.
Release Date: November 8, 2022
The Island
Adrian McKinty
After moving from a small country town to Seattle, Heather Baxter marries Tom, a widowed doctor with a young son and teenage daughter. A working vacation overseas seems like the perfect way to bring the new family together, but once they’re deep in the Australian outback, the jet-lagged and exhausted kids are so over their new mom.
When they discover remote Dutch Island, off-limits to outside visitors, the family talks their way onto the ferry, taking a chance on an adventure far from the reach of iPhones and Instagram. But as soon as they set foot on the island, which is run by a tightly knit clan of locals, everything feels wrong.
Release Date: May 17, 2022
The Guest House
Robin Morgan-Bentley
Jamie and Victoria are off for a last quick vacation before the arrival of their first baby. The remote country guesthouse Victoria chose seems like the perfect retreat—miles away from the distractions of work and their regular life. And the older couple that run the establishment, Barry and Fiona, are more than accommodating.
But when Jamie and Victoria awake on their first morning, they find the house deserted. Barry and Fiona are nowhere to be seen. All the doors are locked. And their cell phones and car keys have disappeared.
Release Date: September 13, 2022
Reckless Girls
Rachel Hawkins
Beautiful, wild, and strange—Meroe Island is a desolate spot in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with a mysterious history of shipwrecks, cannibalism, and even rumors of murder. It’s the perfect destination for the most adventurous traveler to escape everything… except the truth.
Six stunning twentysomethings are about to embark on a blissful, free-spirited journey—one filled with sun-drenched days and intoxicating nights.
But as it becomes clear that the group is even more cut off from civilization than they initially thought.
Release Date: January 4, 2022
Project Namahana
John Teschner
Two men, unified by a string of disappearances and deaths, search for answers—and salvation—in the jungles of Kaua‘i. Together, they must navigate the overlapping and complicated lines between a close-knit community and the hated, but economically-necessary corporate farms—and the decades old secrets that bind them.
Project Namahana takes you from Midwestern, glass-walled, corporate offices over the Pacific and across the island of Kaua‘i; from seemingly idyllic beaches and mountainous inland jungles to the face of Mount Namahana; all the while.
Release Date: June 28, 2022
The Last to Vanish
Megan Miranda
Ten years ago, Abigail Lovett fell into a job she loves, managing The Passage Inn, a cozy, upscale resort nestled in the North Carolina mountain town of Cutter’s Pass. Cutter’s Pass is best known for its outdoor offerings—rafting and hiking, with access to the Appalachian trail by way of a gorgeous waterfall—and its mysterious history.
As the book begins, the string of unsolved disappearances that has haunted the town is once again thrust into the spotlight when journalist Landon West, who was staying at the inn to investigate the story of the vanishing trail, then disappears himself.
Release Date: July 26, 2022
The Lioness
Chris Bohjalian
Tanzania, 1964. When Katie Barstow, A-list actress, and her new husband, David Hill, decide to bring their Hollywood friends to the Serengeti for their honeymoon, they envision giraffes gently eating leaves from the tall acacia trees, great swarms of wildebeests crossing the Mara River, and herds of zebras storming the sandy plains. Their glamorous guests—including Katie’s best friend, Carmen Tedesco, and Terrance Dutton, the celebrated Black actor who stars alongside Katie in the highly controversial film Tender Madness—will spend their days taking photos, and their evenings drinking chilled gin and tonics back at camp, as the local Tanzanian guides warm water for their baths.
Release Date: May 11, 2022
Jackal
Erin E. Adams
Liz Rocher is coming home . . . reluctantly. As a Black woman, Liz doesn’t exactly have fond memories of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a predominantly white town. But her best friend is getting married, so she braces herself for a weekend of awkward, passive-aggressive reunions. Liz has grown, though; she can handle whatever awaits her. But on the day of the wedding, somewhere between dancing and dessert, the couple’s daughter, Caroline, disappears—and the only thing left behind is a piece of white fabric covered in blood. As a frantic search begins, with the police combing the trees for Caroline, Liz is the only one who notices a pattern: A summer night.
Release Date: October 4, 2022
The Disinvited Guest
Carol Goodman
Lucy Harper still has traumatic memories and lingering health problems from the 2020 pandemic. So, when a new virus surfaces years later, she and her husband, Reed, seek refuge on his family’s private island off the coast of Maine. Ostensibly safely sequestered with their five closest friends and family, Lucy should feel at ease. So why does she feel the weight of the island’s dark history pushing down on the group?
As Lucy uncovers Reed’s family secrets and the island’s history as a quarantine hospital for typhus patients, she becomes obsessed with the past and feels her own grip on reality slipping.
Release Date: July 12, 2022