9 Eerie Thriller Books to Curl Up With this Fall

I am a fan of thriller books year-round, but there really is no better season to curl up with a mysterious novel than the fall. Leafs are falling, rain is drizzling and you can find me deep in a murder mystery full of twists and turns! Horror movies? Nope, absolutely not. But a suspenseful thriller book? I’m there.

To be honest, I typically struggle at the beginning of these books. They move very slowly and are packed with fine details, and I can only get through a chapter or two before I doze off. But by the middle of the book, I can’t put it down. There are so many questions!

Read on to learn about six of my favourite thriller books to curl up with this fall, as well as three that I plan to read soon!

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

An obvious choice, Gone Girl is a classic thriller, offering a touch of mystery in the beginning with endless questions, and it just gets more and more confusing and suspenseful. When Amy Dunne goes mysteriously missing, all eyes are on her husband Nick, who is acting very strange. Nick claims to have nothing to do with his wife’s disappearance, but the police are skeptical. What happened to Amy? Will she be found alive? And did Nick have something to do with her exit?

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

This is the book that got me hooked on suspenseful thriller books. Paula Hawkins is a genius! I remember being bored out of my mind, living in Edmonton, AB in the summer, and diving right into this book.

Rachel is the girl on the train, and the story is based around her observations of a couple that she watches each day from the train as she passes their house. She doesn’t know them, but she’s created their life story in her mind. When the woman goes missing, Rachel inserts herself into the search for answers and as she does, new facts are revealed about Rachel herself.

This story is twisty until the very end, and just when you think you know what’s going on, you realize you have no idea!

The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware

I’m not going to lie, I struggled a bit with this book in the beginning. I think it was mainly because the author, Ruth Ware, is British and there is quite a bit of British slang and language to work through, but once I got into the thick of the plot, I was hooked.

A journalist working for a travel magazine, Lo Blacklock, is invited to enjoy the maiden voyage of the exclusive cruise ship, the Aurora. At first, everything is going swimmingly (ha!), until Lo discovers that a woman has been thrown overboard – or has she? Lo is sure that this event happened, yet everyone on the ship is accounted for. Is her mind just playing tricks on her?

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn

Unable to leave her home due to her agoraphobia, Anna Fox becomes tormented by what she sees from her window. While enjoying her favourite pastime of spying on her neighbours, Anna is convinced that she witnessed something horrible happen across the street. Everyone else on the other hand, is convinced that Anna’s excessive drinking conjured this event. What really happened across the street, and how is Anna going to find out without leaving her home?

The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware

Upon receiving a letter regarding a substantial inheritance, Hal travels to meet her extended family and collect what’s hers. But is it hers? Hal doesn’t actually know these people, or the woman who left Trepassen House to her. She fools the Westaway family, with whom she shares a last name, but nothing else – as far as she knows. There is plenty for Hal, the Westaways and the reader to discover in this thriller!

Into the Water by Paula Hawkins

With a wide array of characters, and Paula Hawkins brilliant ability to constantly confuse and keep you guessing, the plot for Into the Water is sometimes difficult to follow, but it’s completely worth it in the end. I honestly felt a chill the whole time that I was reading this thriller book!

Jules returns home after the death of her sister Nel to care for her niece and uncover the truth about what happened to her sister. She is told that Nel jumped into the Drowning Pool, but Jules suspects that there is something more sinister at play in her sister’s death.