If you liked
Books like Five Decembers
Loved Five Decembers by James Kestrel? Here are 10 books with a similar appeal — drawn mostly from mystery & thriller, ranked by how confidently we'd recommend them next.
10 books · ranked
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1
The Housemaid
Millie, broke and with a past she's hiding, takes a live-in housekeeping job with the wealthy Winchester family — and discovers that the perfect family she works for conceals something far darker than her own secrets. McFadden's twist-driven domestic thriller became a BookTok phenomenon and one of the bestselling thrillers of the decade.
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2
We Begin at the End
Walk, a small-town California police chief, releases his childhood best friend Vincent from prison thirty years after Vincent killed Walk's sister — and the return sets off a chain of events involving Vincent's niece Duchess, a self-declared outlaw raising her younger brother. Whitaker's CWA Gold Dagger-winning novel is both a literary character study and a propulsive thriller about guilt, loyalty and the children paying for adults' worst days.
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3
Notes on an Execution
On the night of his execution, a serial killer's life is reconstructed not through his own perspective but through the women connected to him — his mother, his sister-in-law, the detective who caught him. Kukafka's Edgar Award-winning novel deliberately withholds the killer's voice, redirecting the true-crime genre's usual fascination with the perpetrator toward the women whose lives intersected with his.
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4
The Tainted Cup
In an empire defended from monstrous leviathans by genetically and magically altered humans, investigator Ana Dolabra and her assistant Dinios Kol are called to solve the murder of an imperial officer killed by a tree that grew through his body overnight. Bennett's Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning novel combines fantasy worldbuilding with a genuine Holmes-and-Watson detective dynamic and a richly imagined bureaucratic empire.
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5
The Silent Patient
Alicia Berenson, a famous painter, shoots her husband five times and never speaks another word. Theo Faber, a psychotherapist, becomes obsessed with treating her and uncovering why. Michaelides's debut psychological thriller — with one of the most discussed twists in recent crime fiction — became one of the bestselling thrillers of its decade.
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6
Good Girl, Bad Girl
Forensic psychologist Cyrus Haven is asked to assess Evie Cormac, a teenage girl found hiding in a house with a murdered man years earlier, whose true identity has never been established — while investigating the murder of a teenage figure skater. Robotham's CWA Gold Dagger-winning novel launched a series built around Cyrus and Evie's relationship and the mystery of who Evie really is.
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7
Down the River unto the Sea
Joe King Oliver, a former NYPD detective framed and imprisoned years earlier on charges that destroyed his career and marriage, is approached by the woman who set him up — now wanting his help — while he investigates the case of a journalist accused of killing two police officers. Mosley's Edgar Award-winning novel is a hardboiled meditation on corruption, race and the New York City justice system from one of crime fiction's most distinctive voices.
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8
Gone Girl
A wife vanishes and her husband becomes the prime suspect; the twisty thriller that redefined the genre.
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9
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Journalist Mikael Blomkvist teams up with the brilliant, damaged hacker Lisbeth Salander to investigate a 40-year-old disappearance from a wealthy Swedish family — and uncovers something far darker. Larsson's novel launched the Millennium series and introduced one of the most compelling anti-heroines in crime fiction.
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10
Still Life
In the Quebec village of Three Pines, a woman is found dead in the woods on the morning after Thanksgiving. Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec arrives to investigate — and finds a village of artists, eccentrics and buried secrets. Penny's debut introduced one of crime fiction's most beloved series and established Three Pines as a genuinely compelling literary setting.