Our celebration of the best books of the century so far rolls on this week with the best mystery and thriller reads.

• Crime fiction has shifted shape in the last 25 years. The perspectives in these stories have slowly grown more diverse. We still reach for classic tropes, but new subgenres have taken shape.
• Domestic suspense has peeled back the wallpaper on seemingly perfect lives.
• Thrillers explore our anxiety about technology, power structures, and identity. Technology itself has drastically changed the landscape of crime, both in how it gets committed and how it gets solved.

The titles on this list aim to capture the full breadth of that evolution, featuring a diverse spread of settings, subgenres, tropes, and themes.

🔎 Check out the full list and buckle up for twists, turns, and thrilling rides.

If it feels like everyone is reading Tayari Jones’s Kin , it’s because they are. Jones notches a twofer this month, with honors from both Oprah and the Eclectix book club created by Dawnshaeé Reid. We’re feeling good about the odds on our prediction that it will be the It Book of March.

Here are some of the month’s other highlights:

• Read With Jenna: Wait for Me by Amy Jo Burns, a novel about two female folks singers connected across decades by the music they love
• Roxane Gay’s Audacious Book Club: Tell Me How You Eat by Amber Husain, an exploration of "food, power, and the will to live"
• The Stacks Book Club: Paradise by Toni Morrison, the third book in the Nobel Prize-winning legend’s "trilogy" that began with Beloved and Jazz.
• Good Morning America Book Club: The Secret Lives of Murderer’s Wives by Elizabeth Arnott, a thriller about three women who work to catch a serial killer after their lives are intertwined by their husbands’ crimes

→ See more book club selections here.

Shop Stanley’s newest collaboration with Nest, a non-profit dedicated to the social and economic advancement of global artisans. The collection features four unique designs handcrafted by creators from around the world, translating traditional techniques into bold, wrap-around graphics. Explore the Nest collection now.

Independent booksellers call the shots at the Indies Choice Book Awards , which return this year after being on hiatus since 2019.

Titles that appeared on the American Booksellers Association’s Indie Next List,  Kids’ Indie Next List, and/or Indies Introduce  lists in 2025 are eligible to win $2,000 (and boundless glory) in each of seven categories.

Highlights from the shortlists, which were revealed yesterday, include:

Adult Fiction:

• Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
• The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
• Heart the Lover by Lily King
• Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab
• Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

Young Adult:

• Legendary Frybread Drive-In: Intertribal Stories edited by Cynthia Leitich Smith
• The Last Bookstore on Earth by Lily Braun-Arnold
• Sisters in the Wind by Angeline Boulley
• They Bloom at Night by Trang Thanh Tran
• Angelica and the Bear Prince by Trung Le Nguyen

Awards will also be given for adult nonfiction, picture books, and middle grade. We’re especially happy to see categories honoring the best debuts in both adult and children’s books.

Bookseller voting is open through March 25. The winners will be announced April 8.

The Folio Society has released its Spring 2026 collection and there some really timely (and timeless) editions for readers of all stripes. Here are a few highlights:

🏺 For those getting ready for Hot Greek Summer: This edition of Emily Wilson’s translation of The Iliad features eight color, illustrated maps, a slipcase blocked in gold foil, and original illustrations by artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins. A lot of people are going to be reading The Odyssey this summer in advance of Christopher Nolan’s adaptation, but you can say you’ve brushed up on the Iliad, too, in style. 

🚀 It’s Not Too Late to Rep a Modern Sci-Fi Classic: Project Hail Mary was already a phenomenon before the first teasers for the Ryan Gosling-led adaptation came out last year. The hypemeter is off the chart now that early reviews are so strong and morepeople are discovering Andy Weir’s rollicking, gripping, and humane sci-fi adventure. Get in on this ultra-premium edition while you can. Sure, there are metallic paper endpapers and a die-cut slipcase. But what is really doing it for me is the font: Kepler. 

🎁 If You Are Looking for a Gift For Me: Station Eleven is one of my favorite books of the last two decades, so a beautiful edition is not a tough sell for me. But what puts this one over the edge is that the covers of the book and the slipcase it comes in show the same critical scene from the book 20 years apart, giving visual reinforcement to Station Eleven’s signature before-and-after narrative structure. 

You can browse the rest of the new additions to The Folio Society’s line-up here.

We’re teaming up with Sourcebooks to give away a $250 gift card to Powell’s Books to one lucky winner! To enter, simply fill out the form for a chance to win.

Sourcebooks is an independent, mission-driven publisher built on one simple belief: books change lives. What started in a spare bedroom in 1987 has grown into a global home for diverse voices and hundreds of bestsellers. Proudly based in the Midwest, they’re a "people-first" team dedicated to innovation, creative ethics, and finding your next favorite read.

Listen up, Audible+ subscribers! Here are a few new additions you should know about, including sci-fi/fantasy, romance, mystery/thriller, and nonfiction picks.

• 🦖 Boy, with Accidental Dinosaur by Ian McDonald, narrated by Daniel Henning — Who can resist the tagline "How to Train Your Dragon meets Mad Max"? This story of an orphan who aspires to be a dinosaur buckaroo (and steals an abused dino to make it happen) also has a queer romance subplot.
• 🏖️ Rich Girl Summer by Lily Chu, narrated by Phillipa Soo and Steven Pasquale — Event planner Valerie Peng has been hired for the summer to pose as a wealthy client’s long-lost daughter to smoke out some lying relatives. To pull it off, she’ll need the help of her client’s right-hand man, Nico—but the more time they spend together, the more sparks fly.
• 📺 From The Wiz to Wakanda: Afrofuturism in Pop Culture (The Great Courses) by Grace D. Gipson — In these six Great Courses lessons, Grace D. Gipson of Virginia Commonwealth University introduces listeners to the history of Afrofuturism and its most notable works.
• 🔍 Middlebridge Mysteries by Ken Cuperus, narrated by Anna Cathcart and Eric McCormack — Readers of Mistletoe Murders will be excited to pick up this spin-off series following Violet Wilner during her first year studying criminology at Middlebridge University, where she stumbles into a mystery of her own. Fellow XO, Kitty fans, this is narrated by Anna Cathcart, who plays Kitty!
• 💰 It Happened One Heist by Shenee Howard, narrated by Amber Riley and a full cast — In this romantic suspense story, museum curator Amara Grant is pulled into a heist to find missing jewels, alongside the intriguing bodyguard Dante. This is a full cast production starring Amber Riley ( Glee, Savvy Sheldon Feels Good as Hell)!

Lindsay Branham is the author of Heartwood: The Wisdom and Healing Kinship of Trees, out now from Hachette/Balance. Here, she shares three works that inspired her writing and can help you to feel more connected to nature.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard : There is no other book that walked me straight into a sensory, emotional, and passionate love affair with both nature and writing than this. Dillard’s attention to the subtle, to the shifts of seasons and light in one valley in Virginia, to how she connects the particular to the ecological, biological, and cosmological, bewitched me. Dillard wrote this at age 29 in 1974 and helped catalyze the genre of nature writing. Her meditative wisdom echoes the attention of a mystical old soul deeply connected to place. This book inspired me to write mostly about one place and I return to this over and again to remember how to feel nature.

Undrowned by Alexis Pauline Gumbs: The first time I read Undrowned , I remember thinking — interspecies kinship is possible. Gumbs casts a spell to listen deeply to the more-than-human world. From that cauldron of communication, she then invites us to protect this living world. The line, “If I could breathe a rainbow, I would grow myself toward you,” is one of my favorite phrases ever written. This little manual on wonder woke my heart up and convinced me that if Gumbs could learn from marine mammals, I could learn from the trees.

Red by Terry Tempest Williams. When I think of a writer who enduringly writes from the heart about fierce and tender love for place and the grief of watching that place warp under climate change, policy, and carelessness, it is Williams. Red is full of imaginative, compassionate kinship with the slick rock desert. The book is a portal that teaches how to belong to lands that make us in turn. Her work combines the spiritual with the political and gave me permission to do the same. I am deeply moved by her sincere attention and delicate sensitivities that bring us into a world of both exquisite beauty, silence, and age. 

Level up your reading life with Book Riot All Access! Unlock the industry’s best deep dives, join in with community features, explore new books with the New Release Index, and conquer the Read Harder Challenge alongside fellow bibliophiles. Get more from your reading life with All Access. Join today!

Did you know? At age 18, Jack Kerouac created an "Immediate Reading List" to guide his reading as an emerging writer.

📚 Get a bookshelf for your bookshelf, because you can never have too much of a good thing.**

🚫 Dive into the data on whether book bans actually work.

💕 Swoon over the best new romance books out in March.

🧩 Ease into cryptic crosswords with a new game from the creator of Wordle.

🎧 Listen to Book Thief author Markus Zusak discuss the book’s 20th anniversary.