If any of the titles garnered starred reviews in the four library journals, that is indicated after the plot summary of the title. Amazon does a good job of coming up with these monthly lists and especially its year-end best list.
This month there is only one mystery list from amazon where in the past there have been two – best series books and best standalone books. I hope that is just a casualty of summer vacations and that amazon will go back to two lists in the fall. I’ve only read one of these 10 books – WE ARE ALL GUILTY HERE by Karin Slaughter. DP contributor Mike Dillman really liked GUESS AGAIN by Charlie Donlea. This short list of 10 books is dominated by psychological suspense titles.
Disclaimer: this is not intended to advertise amazon.com or encourage you to buy books from that site. It is for information purposes only.
Amazon Editor’s Picks: Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense – August, 2025
SHE DIDN’T SEE IT COMING, Shari Lapena (Viking/Pamela Dorman Books, $30.00, July)
Bryden and Sam have it all: thriving careers, a smart apartment in a luxury condominium, supportive friends and a cherished daughter. The perfect life for the perfect couple.
Then Sam receives a call at his office. Bryden – working from home that day – has failed to collect their daughter from daycare. Arriving home with their little girl, he finds his wife’s car in the underground garage. Upstairs in their apartment her laptop is open on the table, her cell phone nearby, her keys in their usual place in the hall.
Except Bryden is nowhere to be seen. It’s as if she just walked out.
How can she have disappeared from her own home? And did she even leave the building at all?
TOO OLD FOR THIS, Samantha Downing (Berkley, $30.00, August). Lottie Jones thought her crimes were behind her. Decades earlier, she changed her identity and tucked herself away in a small town. Her most exciting nights are the weekly bingo games at the local church and gossiping with her friends.
When investigative journalist Plum Dixon shows up on her doorstep asking questions about Lottie’s past and specifically her involvement with numerous unsolved cases, well, Lottie just can’t have that. But getting away with murder is hard enough when you’re young. And when Lottie receives another annoying knock on the door, she realizes this crime might just be the death of her…Booklist Starred Review
THE LOCKED WARD, Sarah Pekkanen (St. Martin’s, $29.00, August). Was it bitter, all-consuming jealousy? Pathological sibling rivalry? Pure insanity?
Whatever the cause – and everyone has a theory – it’s the Crime of the Decade when glamorous Georgia Cartwright, who was adopted as a newborn, is accused of killing the biological daughter of her wealthy, Southern family.
Georgia is locked in a psychiatric institution where the most violent offenders are held while she awaits trial. The only words she whispers when her estranged twin sister Amanda visits are, “I didn’t do it. You’ve got to get me out of here.”
Amanda doesn’t trust Georgia, but she can’t abandon her in a place so eerie and menacing that it seems to exist in another dimension. Is Georgia the victim of a powerful family that’s so depraved murder is the least of their crimes? Or is Amanda being led down a path of madness into the web of a master manipulator? her…Booklist Starred Review
WE ARE ALL GUILTY HERE, Karin Slaughter (Morrow, $32.00, August). Welcome to North Falls—a small town where everyone knows everyone. Or so they think. Until the night of the fireworks. When two teenage girls vanish, and the town ignites.
For Officer Emmy Clifton, it’s personal. She turned away when her best friend’s daughter needed help—and now she must bring her home. But as Emmy combs through the puzzle the girls left behind, she realizes she never really knew them. Nobody did.
Every teenage girl has secrets. But who would kill for them? And what else is the town hiding? knock on the door, she realizes this crime might just be the death of her, Booklist Starred Review
SHEEP DOGS, Elliot Ackerman (Knopf, $29.00, August). Skwerl and Cheese are down on their luck and about to find themselves tangled in the heist of their lives. Skwerl, once an elite member of the CIA’s paramilitary unit, was cast out after a raid gone wrong in Afghanistan. Big Cheese Aziz, a former Afghan pilot of legendary skill, now works the graveyard shift at a gas station.
Recruited into a shadowy network of “sheepdogs,” they embark on a mission to repossess a multi-million-dollar private jet stranded on a remote African airfield. But as they wind through a labyrinth of lies and hidden agendas, they discover that nothing is as it seems. Their contact vanishes, their handler’s motives are suspect, and the true source of their payday remains a mystery.
With the stakes skyrocketing and the women in their lives drawn into the fray, this unlikely spy duo find themselves deep in the underbelly of modern war and intelligence. Publishers Weekly Starred Review
MEAN MOMS, Emma Rosenblum (Flatiron, $28.99, July). Meet Frost, Morgan, and Belle?a wealthy, gorgeous group of New York City moms, the queen bees of downtown Manhattan. Their children attend Atherton Academy, the top private school in the city, and their social lives revolve around elaborate themed parties. On the first day of school, the arrival of a new mom and mysterious beauty from Miami, Sofia, shakes up their world. When Sofia quickly integrates herself into their clique, inexplicably bad things start to happen to the women. Is someone at school out to get them? Kirkus Starred Review
THE DEAD HUSBAND COOKBOOK, Danielle Valentine (Sourcebooks, $27.99, August). When infamous chef, restaurateur, and television personality Maria Capello’s husband died, the media circus was intense…and quick to cast the blame. Whispers claimed Maria murdered her husband to build her culinary empire on his bones, and that there was an all-too-grisly reason his body was never recovered. Yet for the past few decades, the Capello family maintained their stoney silence – until now.
Thea Woods has no idea why she was chosen to work with Maria on her sure-to-be-infamous memoir, but she doesn’t question her luck. Spirited away to the Capello’s rustic upstate farm, she’s soon embroiled in the mystery – and cut off from the rest of the world. It should be the job of a lifetime, but something’s not quite right with the close-knit clan, and Damien Capello isn’t the only one to go mysteriously missing over the years. As the true story of Maria’s past unfolds and the stench of rot hidden behind the kind coastal grandmother veneer rises, Thea finds herself trapped…and desperately afraid.
Because there are reasons why Damien’s body was never found…and why, in over thirty years, Maria Capello has never revealed the secret ingredient in her most famous recipe. Booklist Starred Review
YOU BELONG HERE, Megan Miranda (S&S/Marysue Rucci Books, $28.99, July). Beckett Bowery never thought she’d return to Wyatt Valley, a picturesque college town in the Virginia mountains steeped in tradition. Her roots there were strong: Beckett’s parents taught at the college, and she never even imagined studying anywhere else—until a tragedy her senior year ended with two local men dead, and her roommate on the run, never to be seen again…
For the last two decades, Beckett has done her best to keep her distance. Then her daughter, Delilah, secretly applies to Wyatt College and earns a full scholarship, and Beckett can only hope that her lingering fears are unfounded. But deep down she knows that Wyatt Valley has a long memory, and that the past isn’t the only dangerous thing in town…Booklist Starred Review
HIGH SEASON, Katie Bishop (St. Martin’s, $29.00, August). On a beautiful summer’s night twenty years ago, troubled seventeen-year-old Tamara Drayton was found floating face-down in the pool of her family’s idyllic mansion in the south of France, leaving her twin brother, golden-boy Blake, to pick up the pieces of their shattered family.
Also left behind was their sister Nina who, at six years old, became the youngest person ever to testify in a French murder trial. Because she’s the only one who saw what happened?who watched as her babysitter, Josie Jackson, pushed Tamara under the water, and held her there until she stopped breathing.
Didn’t she? Twenty years later, Nina’s memories have faded, leaving her with no idea of what really transpired that night. When a new true crime documentary about her sister’s murder is announced, Nina thinks this might be her chance to finally find out.
GUESS AGAIN, Charlie Donlea (Kensington, $30.00, July). Ten years ago, 17-year-old high school volleyball star Callie Jones vanished from her quiet Wisconsin lake community. A highly publicized search followed but her body was never found. The case went cold, but the echoes still linger.
Ethan Hall, a former renegade detective turned ER doctor, left law enforcement to escape the horrors of the kid crime division. But on the tenth anniversary of Callie’s disappearance, his former partner, Pete Kramer, makes a desperate request. Pete is the veteran detective who originally investigated the case. Now he’s dying, and to ease his conscience and get closure for the Jones family, he needs Ethan to return to the haunting work he left behind—and solve what happened to Callie, once and for all.
Word soon spreads and everyone in the small town of Cherryview feels a rush of hope that answers will finally be found. Amid a sweltering heatwave, Ethan’s investigation gains momentum, but reexamining old evidence won’t be enough. He needs a new way into the case, no matter how dangerous or unconventional.