One of the weird side effects of a serious mystery/thriller reading habit is that you get uncomfortably familiar with certain trends and tropes. Read enough of these crime fiction stories, and you start noticing things. As non-murderers, we really shouldn’t be this familiar with so many murder specifics.
 
And yet, here we are. For today’s collection, we’ve gathered up 96 (!) new mystery and thriller novels and sorted them according to several recent genre trends we’ve noticed. Our methodology, as you shall see, is largely improvised but surprisingly useful. Mystery/thriller storylines tend to cluster around particular events and settings, and those trends often reflect current societal anxieties.
 
For instance, the tricky commute trend features murders on planes, trains, automobiles, and other modern forms of conveyance. Then there’s the weird prescient murder trend, in which the victims somehow predict their own murders, cozy or otherwise. Our major recent surge: our present cultural obsession with true-crime stories.
 
(Oh, and a final interesting trend features authors on either the sleuthing or receiving end of the murder business. Well, clearly we know what crime novelists worry about…)
 
The books featured here are all new or recent—going back to about 2020—and we’ve also sprinkled in some upcoming 2024 titles to whet your darker appetites. Click through the book cover image for more details about each title. Add any interesting leads to your Want to Read shelf, and feel free to continue the lateral thinking in the comments section.