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Find a list of this year’s most anticipated August 2026 thriller books releasing this month!
August is giving us SO many unbelievably anticipated new thriller books this month, and I’m so incredibly excited to dive in! From The Unknown by Riley Sager dropping on August 4th to Heart of Glass by Jennifer Hillier releasing on August 25th, we’re so lucky to be getting 14 incredible new thriller books releasing across every single week this month!
Related: How to read Riley Sager books in order
August 2026 Thriller new releases
The Unknown by Riley Sager
Release date: August 4 2026
In 1926, five women disappeared from a remote island in Vermont. Now, one hundred years later, it’s happening again.
Struggling actress Marin Keane is shocked when she lands a role in a major motion picture about the unsolved mystery of New Avalon, an island on sprawling Lake Faraday in Vermont. She’s even more surprised when she learns that the role requires a weeklong research trip to that very spot.
The Women in White by Sarah Pekkanen
Release date: August 4 2026
Extrasensory perception.
The Gift.
A Sixth Sense.
Or something else….
In 1964, four remarkable young women at a prestigious university became the subjects of parapsychology experiments by a visionary scientist. On the cusp of a historic breakthrough, the women mysteriously vanished and the program was erased from history.
The Amateur by Chris Bohjalian
Release date: August 4 2026
1978: It is the first Thursday in August and temperatures are flirting with ninety when Mira Winston, eighteen years old, drives a golf ball from her tee toward the practice net near the clubhouse and caddy shack. The golf ball, weighing 1.6 ounces, tears through the net, traveling 150 miles per hour, and slams, with sickening force, into the temple of a high school junior named Kenny Foster, rupturing an artery and unleashing a torrent of blood. Kenny brings his hand to the side of his head, then topples onto his side. He’s dead before the ambulance even arrives.
You’ll Be Sorry by Lisa Gardner
Release date: August 4 2026
For Raquel and Theo Collins, it appeared to be love at first sight. Raquel, a renowned interior designer, and Theo, a brash financial wizard met and married in a matter of months, only to confront a terrible tragedy. Now, unbearably aware of the distance between them, they’ve come to a remote town in New Hampshire to begin anew.
Perched on a ledge with stunning views, the Dixon’s family lodge was once a crown jewel of the mountains. Until late one August night, when both parents and their four children vanished, leaving behind a trail of bloody footprints, and a mystery that has endured for thirty years. Now, its latest occupants, the Collinses, are arriving, and the former grand lodge is once more stirring to life.
Majestic Hills by Dawn Turner
Release date: August 4 2026
A Black couple leaves their downtown Chicago condo for a new suburban subdivision, only to find themselves at the center of a maelstrom in this gripping page-turner from the award-winning author of Three Girls from Bronzeville.
Tired of the daily drama in his emergency room, Dr. Langdon Blaque is in search of a place where he can leave the world behind. He loves his job and has no delusions about the suburbs being perfect, but he wants peace and quiet. His wife Josephine, a lawyer, grew up listening to her father’s stories about the Jim Crow South, and sundown towns. She prefers the city. Still, she agrees to move with the caveat that they stay for a year and reassess.
One of the Family by Mark Edwards
Release date: August 4 2026
A week in paradise—with the family from hell.
When Patrick is invited by his girlfriend to join her and her family on a luxury holiday in a remote and beautiful part of Scotland, he has no idea that he is about to be plunged into a nightmare of a family, sinister behavior…and a plot to murder the patriarch’s younger fiancée.
Mia by Leslie Bazzett
Release date: August 11 2026
There’s no one, there’s only you.
When Sally, an American living in San Miguel de Allende, meets Louise outside her children’s school, she’s eager to immerse herself more deeply in the life of the city. In Mexico for just a year with her husband, an architect, Sally is entranced by Louise—her elegance, her harshness, her stories about Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac—and the two quickly become inseparable. Soon enough, Louise has begun calling her Miaand, at first playfully, then in earnest, introducing Sally as her daughter to a growing circle of friends.
The Enigma Challenge by S.C. Godfrey
Release date: August 11 2026
You have solved the kickoff puzzle. There will be five additional puzzles to solve. The Enigma Challenge begins now.
Zoe Wilder has the unflashy, solitary life of an academic, studying ciphers in literature at a California university. When her research takes her to a cryptology conference in Madrid, she’s not expecting to trigger the Enigma Challenge, a clandestine puzzle competition few dare to enter.
My Sister Is Going to Kill Me by Nina Simon
Release date: August 18 2026
What’s a family vacation without a little murder?
Liv and Mandy Chisholm’s yearly sister trip is a sacred tradition, an attempt to bond as their lives increasingly diverge. Liv, the ever-practical older sister, packs the color-coded itineraries. Mandy, a bedazzled human tumbleweed, brings the spontaneity.
The Secret Dinner by Raphael Montes
Release date: August 18 2026
Four childhood friends, eager for a taste of city life, swap rural Brazil for an apartment in Copacabana, Rio. But they have no idea of the fate that awaits them there. . . .
Dante, Piglet, Miguel, and Hugo are your average students trying to make ends meet with part-time jobs, excited about the bright futures at their fingertips. So when their rent skyrockets, they struggle to keep their new lives and big dreams afloat. They need to make money however they can. In order to keep their apartment, the friends adopt an unorthodox plan and are soon sucked into a dark world of secret dinner parties catering to the twisted fantasies of Rio’s elite.
Better Than Revenge by Bea Fitzgerald
Release date: August 18 2026
Their feud made them iconic. One decision made them infamous.
After all, where’s the fun in rivalry if there’s no bloodshed?
Nadine Heywood and Harper Moore have been rivals since their first days at drama school, a feud that has consumed them. A feud more passionate, more clawing than the gossip magazines ever note. Hollywood’s It-Girl versus the acclaimed starlet, caught in an obsession that can only lead to one thing: someone’s downfall.
Heart of Glass by Jennifer Hillier
Release date: August 25 2026
Twenty-five years ago in Seaside, Washington, a charming drifter named Sam met three inseparable teenage girls at the local amusement park. Days later, one of them was found dead, her body surfacing in a flooded cranberry bog not far from where she was murdered.
Barb and Nicolette were shocked to learn that the man they all met at Wonderland was the Carnival Killer. After he’s arrested for the murders of five young women – one of whom was their best friend, Lorelei – Nicolette moved to the city to pursue her dreams of being famous. Barb stayed behind in Seaside, eventually becoming a reporter for the local paper. Their past safely behind them, they’ve both moved on with their lives.
Find Me by Holly Craig
Release date: August 25 2026
Don’t stop until you find me.
When their brother Pete went missing two years ago on Mount Mercy, officials shook their heads. “He never should have been here; he was warned. Mount Mercy takes things.” After a disastrous first attempt to locate him, they called off the search.
They Say a Girl Died Here by Sarah Pinborough
Release date: August 25 2026
Anna Maybourne never imagined herself living in a place like Harper’s Creek, a nowhere town full of dusty farmland plagued by drought. It’s supposed to be a new start for her and her family, but after dropping out of college, Anna feels stuck in place―working a part-time job, watching her little sister grow up, and taking care of her grandmother with dementia, whose paranoid episodes have started to unnerve her. The only interesting thing about her new town, it seems, is the string of grisly murders attributed to a killer called the Farmhandman―and the clue she discovers that reveals the case is yet unsolved.
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