Thriller Books of 2021

Will Evan Smoak give up his role as The Nowhere Man in exchange for a pardon? Can he live a normal life?

Smoak is an assassin, an equalizer, a force for good, but he’s willing to give it all up. That is, until he gets a call for help he can’t ignore. A call from his mother, who gave him up for adoption when he was just a baby.

But now a brother and sister assassin team are after him, along with a cabal of powerful people. And more than just his life hang in the balance.

This Vietnam War-era crime thriller follows Gibby, accused of murder after his female companion taunts a prison bus and is murdered after the ensuing riot. Gibby isn’t the only suspect. His brother, Jason—also present on the empty stretch of road—is a key suspect in both that murder, and a second.

A gritty crime thriller from a master of Southern suspense, The Unwilling wades unflinchingly into a world of drugs, violence, prison, war, and motorcycle gangs.

Reverend Jack Brooks and his daughter, Flo, move to the English countryside looking for peace. But what he finds is nothing of the sort. Here, in a community rocked by unaccounted disappearances going back thirty years and continuing to this day.

Hauntings intensify when Flo comes across ghosts in the old chapel. But Jack and his daughter won’t get any help from the denizens of the village, where everyone seems to have a secret, a darkness they’re eager to protect, and no trust of the reverend and his teenage girl.

Matt Pine, a student at NYU, receives devastating news that his parents and siblings have been found dead in Mexico. The cause of death: an apparent gas leak.

Matt’s only living close relative is his brother, who has been locked away for a crime he didn’t commit. And now the rest of Matt’s family is dead.

A coincidence?

It’s never that simple.

It starts in a small Congolese village. Something is evolving, growing, spreading. Outward from this epicenter, plants and animals grow more dangerous, while humans turn catatonic. And whatever this is won’t stop. It’s sweeping across Africa.

Commander Gray Pierce and Sigma Force have one job: to keep the world safe, even as they go from predator to prey. Will they discover the secret to this mystery? Or will the human species face an extinction event like never before?

James Reese is back in this geopolitical clash of the titans.

An enemy in the Middle East seeths thanks to assassinations and extra-judicial killings. America is ready, with a young, well-liked president. A man with a secret.

Can Reese stop a foreign agent with a bioweapon and save his country? This fouth installment will leave you gasping for breath. 

Joe Goldberg is done with cities, done with the muck and the posers, done with Love. Now, he’s saying hello to nature, to simple pleasures on a cozy island in the Pacific Northwest. For the first time in a long time, he can just breathe.

He gets a job at the local library–he does know a thing or two about books–and that’s where he meets her: Mary Kay DiMarco. Librarian. Joe won’t meddle, he will not obsess. He’ll win her the old fashioned way.

Matthew Keating is a former Navy SEAL— and a former President of the United States, now relocated to rural New Hampshire after a brave but ill-fated military mission cost him his second term. All he wants is to sink into anonymity with his family (and his Secret Service detail). But when he’s briefed on an imminent threat against his daughter, Keating’s SEAL training may prove more essential than all the power, connections, and political acumen he gained as President.