For the dedicated mystery-thriller reader, calendar maintenance is an important discipline. As it happens, 2025 is lining up to be an especially busy year. No kidding. Pretty much every rock-star mystery writer seems to have a book coming out in the next 12 months. Plus, we’ve got the usual slate of promising debut novelists and even the occasional moonlighting movie star.
 
To help with scheduling, we’ve assembled this month-by-month guide to 2025’s most anticipated mystery and thriller novels. Publication dates can be slippery, but we’ve got everything sorted through April, with a bonus category for May and beyond. We’ve also added a quick primer at the bottom of the page for YA mysteries and thrillers.
 
Some highlights, in no particular order: Beloved U.K. author Alice Feeney is back on shelves in January with Beautiful Ugly, concerning a missing spouse, a remote Scottish island, and a creepy doppelgänger dilemma. Legendary crime writers Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers make a surprise reappearance—as characters—in Marie Benedict’s historical mystery The Queens of Crime. And Freida McFadden returns with The Crash, a New England update to the rich tradition of the snowbound thriller.
 
In the debut aisle, Canadian author Liann Zhang is getting a lot of buzz for her upcoming April novel, Julie Chan Is Dead, featuring twin sisters, social media influencers, and the perils of being extremely online. Plus: Trouble on the Appalachian Trail from Amity Gaige; a much-anticipated sequel story from Jeneva Rose; and some really good advice from Lisa Jewell.
 
Click on the book cover images for more details on each individual title. If anything looks promising, click the Want to Read button to add it to your own digital shelf.

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