You can rely on your pals when the going gets tough, right? Check out this book list if you enjoy thrillers about friendship groups entangled in perilous situations. It includes mental thrillers, mystery thrillers, twisting whodunits, and more. You’ll stay up late reading these creative page-turners!
The Wild Girls
Phoebe Morgan
It’s been years since Grace, Felicity, Alice, and Hannah were together. The “Wild Girls,” as they were once called, are no longer so wild. Alice is a teacher. Hannah has a new baby. Grace is a homebody. Only Felicity seems to have retained her former spark.
Then Felicity invites them all on the weekend of a lifetime—a birthday bash in Botswana. It will be a chance to have fun and rekindle their once bomb-proof friendship… and finally put that one horrible night, all those years ago, behind them for good. But soon after arriving at the luxury safari lodge, a feeling of unease settles over them.
Release Date: April 26, 2022
The Thursday Murder Club
Richard Osman
In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves the Thursday Murder Club.
When a local developer is found dead with a mysterious photograph left next to the body, the Thursday Murder Club suddenly find themselves in the middle of their first live case.
As the bodies begin to pile up, can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer, before it’s too late?
Release Date: August 3, 2021
Wahala
Nikki May
Ronke wants happily ever after and 2.2. kids. She’s dating Kayode and wants him to be “the one” (perfect, like her dead father). Her friends think he’s just another in a long line of dodgy Nigerian boyfriends. Boo has everything Ronke wants—a kind husband, gorgeous child. But she’s frustrated, unfulfilled, plagued by guilt, and desperate to remember who she used to be.
Simi is the golden one with the perfect lifestyle. No one knows she’s crippled by impostor syndrome and tempted to pack it all in each time her boss mentions her “urban vibe.” Her husband thinks they’re trying for a baby. She’s not.
Release Date: January 11, 2022
Never Have I Ever
Joshilyn Jackson
Amy Whey is proud of her ordinary life and the simple pleasures that come with it—teaching diving lessons, baking cookies for new neighbors, helping her best friend, Charlotte, run their local book club. Her greatest joy is her family: her devoted professor husband, her spirited fifteen-year-old stepdaughter, her adorable infant son. And, of course, the steadfast and supportive Charlotte. But Amy’s sweet, uncomplicated life begins to unravel when the mysterious and alluring Angelica Roux arrives on her doorstep one book club night. Sultry and magnetic, Roux beguiles the group with her feral charm. She keeps the wine flowing and lures them into a game of spilling secrets.
Release Date: April 28, 2020
One of Us Is Lying
Karen M. McManus
Only, Simon never makes it out of that classroom. Before the end of detention Simon’s dead. And according to investigators, his death wasn’t an accident.
On Monday, he died. But on Tuesday, he’d planned to post juicy reveals about all four of his high-profile classmates, which makes all four of them suspects in his murder. Or are they the perfect patsies for a killer who’s still on the loose?
Everyone has secrets, right? What really matters is how far you would go to protect them.
Release Date: January 1, 2018
The Escape Room
Megan Goldin
In the lucrative world of finance, Vincent, Jules, Sylvie, and Sam are at the top of their game. They’ve mastered the art of the deal and celebrate their success in style—but a life of extreme luxury always comes at a cost.
Invited to participate in an escape room challenge as a team-building exercise, the ferociously competitive co-workers crowd into the elevator of a high-rise building, eager to prove themselves. But when the lights go off and the doors stay shut, it quickly becomes clear that this is no ordinary competition: they’re caught in a dangerous game of survival.
Release Date: July 7, 2020
The Hunting Wives
May Cobb
Sophie O’Neill left behind an envy-inspiring career and the stressful, competitive life of big-city Chicago to settle down with her husband and young son in a small Texas town.
It seems like the perfect life with a beautiful home in an idyllic rural community. But Sophie soon realizes that life is now too quiet, and she’s feeling bored and restless.
Then she meets Margot Banks, an alluring socialite who is part of an elite clique secretly known as the Hunting Wives.
Release Date: May 20, 2021
The Institute
Stephen King
In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents—telekinesis and telepathy—who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, “like the roach motel,” Kalisha says. “You check in, but you don’t check out.”
Release Date: September 1, 2020
Friends Like These
Kimberly McCreight
Six college friends have reunited for a glamorous weekend in the Catskills, a decade after a fatal accident that nearly destroyed them. Keith, once the ringleader of the group, was a handsome charmer on the fast track to success. Now he’s spiraling into addiction and stands at the edge of losing it all.
This weekend is the last chance to save him. But Keith, it turns out, is not the only one who needs saving. By dawn on Sunday morning, a car has been found deep in the woods—one of the friends is dead, another is missing. When a local detective turns up to investigate, it’s clear the group is hiding something ominous.
Release Date: September 7, 2021
The Vacation
T.M. Logan
It was supposed to be the perfect getaway: Kate and her three best friends, spending a week with their families in a luxurious villa in the south of France. Through the decades they’ve stayed closer than ever, and seven days of drinking crisp French wine and laying out under the dazzling Mediterranean sun is the perfect celebration of their friendship. But soon after arriving, Kate discovers an incriminating text on her husband’s cell phone.
A text revealing that he’s having an affair. And that the other woman is one of her best friends. But which one?
Release Date: July 21, 2020
How to Kill Your Best Friend
Lexie Elliott
Georgie, Lissa, and Bronwyn have been inseparable since dominating their college swim team; swimming has always been an escape from their own problems, but now their shared passion has turned deadly. How can it be true that Lissa, the strongest swimmer they know, drowned? Granted, there is something strange about Kanu Cove, where Lissa was last seen, swimming off the coast of the fabulous island resort she owned with her husband. Lissa’s closest friends gather at the resort to honor her life, but Georgie and Bron can’t seem to stop looking over their shoulders.
Release Date: August 17, 2021
Shiver
Allie Reynolds
When Milla accepts an off-season invitation to Le Rocher, a cozy ski resort in the French Alps, she’s expecting an intimate weekend of catching up with four old friends. It might have been a decade since she saw them last, but she’s never forgotten the bond they forged on this very mountain during a winter spent fiercely training for an elite snowboarding competition.
Yet no sooner do Milla and the others arrive for the reunion than they realize something is horribly wrong. The resort is deserted. The cable cars that delivered them to the mountaintop have stopped working.
Release Date: January 19, 2021