With the cold, dark nights drawing in, hide under the covers with a thrilling book! Browse our top picks of suspense and mystery novels for teens and young adults. All of these books and more are free to borrow with your library card.
Want more suggested books? Take a look at our recommendations.
When We Were Monsters
Jennifer Niven
Eight students walk into an exclusive writers’ retreat, but only one will walk out with a life-changing opportunity to realize their creative dreams.
Effy is piecing together a story about the tragic betrayal that led to her mother’s death. Arlo hopes to publish a novel – but he’s also trying to start a new chapter with Effy after he broke her heart and ghosted her three years earlier.
Their mentor is Meredith Graffam, enigmatic writer, director and actress, whose compelling accounts of her own near-death experience on the same retreat decades before continue to spark controversy.
But this celebrated teacher is not all she seems, and her students gradually realize they are fighting for something much more primal than academic advantage. As Graffam’s unorthodox teaching methods push them past breaking point, they reveal their darkest secrets, take unthinkable risks and slowly start to turn on one another. But Graffam never expected they would turn on her…
Bury Your Friends
Benjamin Dean
Noah and his best friends Cameron, Baby, Fliss, Griffin, Miles, Tabitha, Wim, Verity and Hugo are finally graduating from Woodthorn Academy with the world and all its promises laid out before them. To celebrate exam results day, they’re hosting a party weekend at Black Stone, an opulent country estate, for the whole school to attend.
But for one night only the ten friends will have a low-key celebration – after all, it’s how the upper echelons begin their futures. But things take a sinister turn when they find themselves in the crosshairs of a killer making one simple demand: every hour, one person must be evicted from the house or someone inside the house will die.
With nowhere to run and a killer on the prowl, choices must be made. But, as people inside the house start to go missing too, it soon becomes clear that nobody is safe.
Keep Your Friends Close
Cynthia Murphy
Chloe Roberts is on top of the world at Morton Academy. She’s a shoo-in for Head Girl and the lead spot in the school’s secret society: Jewel and Bone. But then her best friend, Nikhita Patel, betrays her, and life comes crashing down.
Things take a darker turn when Chloe stumbles upon the Book of Crime and Punishment – a record of every misdeed committed by Morton students and the fitting penalty. And it’s not long before entries in the book start to match up with murders of Jewel and Bone members.
Anyone could be a suspect. Can Chloe get to the bottom of this twisted game before she’s next on the killer’s hit list?
The Obsession
Natasha Preston
Sixteen-year-old Connie has been dragged into the world of vlogging. Her mum Lou’s vlog is hugely popular, enough to bring in money for a new house, expensive lifestyle – and a lot of criticism.
While Lou and Connie’s older sister Isla are touring colleges, Connie stays home alone, where she becomes increasingly paranoid about comments on the vlog. Plus someone is turning up at her school and following her on her way home.
Then Connie’s best friend is attacked – the third teenage girl attacked in five weeks – and suspicion turns to Connie. Connie doesn’t know who she can trust any more and goes on the run. But will the killer catch up with her?
A Grave Inheritance
Felicity Epps
Mysterious deaths in the family. A young woman left to inherit a fortune. Was it ghostly intervention… or murder? The Society of Free Spirits invites you to investigate, in this YA crime series with a supernatural twist.
After her father and older sister both die suddenly, Dolores is left with the family’s inheritance, and a large house she’s sure is haunted. Teaming up with her occult-obsessed neighbour, Ada, and the mysterious spiritual medium, Violet, the three girls plan to dispel the bad spirits from Dolores’ home.
But when Dolores uncovers a clue that suggests her sister Edith’s death wasn’t due to natural causes, what starts as an investigation into ghostly apparitions develops into the unravelling of something far more sinister…
Ghosts. Murder. The patriarchy. One should never underestimate what a trio of free-spirited young women can handle.
Glorious Rivals
Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Seven Players arrived on Hawthorne Island to play a billionaire’s game. Now only five remain, and the race to the finish line is on.
The heat turns up on the competition – and between the players – and it becomes increasingly clear that no one will emerge from the Grandest Game unscathed.
For there are no coincidences. Everyone is a liar. And someone is watching…
Do you have what it takes to play? Millions, hearts, and lives are on the line in this sequel to ‘The Grandest Game’ by bestselling author Jennifer Lynn Barnes.
The Goldens
Lauren Wilson
Chloe has always dreamed of becoming a bestselling writer. Then she meets enigmatic influencer Clara Holland, and at last, Chloe has something to write about. They bond instantly, and Chloe moves into Clara’s mansion.
But as Clara’s fame skyrockets, she starts behaving strangely, hosting increasingly wild parties, complete with bonfire rituals and moonlit river baptisms. Clara opens up her home to other girls desperate to live like her. The media call it a cult, and soon Chloe begins to hear unsettling rumours from Clara’s past. After one spectacular party, a girl goes missing and the rumours take on a sinister new meaning.
If Chloe can’t escape Clara’s influence, she may be next.
Be Right Back
Bill Wood
A year has passed since the events in Sanera left the town reeling. Buffy, Jonesy, Amber and Cam unmasked the killer of 2001, but now, a new horror stirs.
Back for the inaugural Hallowed Fall Fest where tourists wander the streets in masks and costumes, the bodies start piling up. With each new death, the gang is left a cryptic clue, leading them deeper into a horrifying mystery. An online forum is filled with speculation about local legends, and there is a clue buried within it – if the gang can work it out, they will be able to stop the killer in their tracks, but it’s possible the killer is one step ahead.
It all leads to a grand finale, back where it all began – if they can make it there alive.
This Raging Sea
De Elizabeth
Historic Loch Creek is a witchy New England tourist trap – but it’s just a trap for Briar.
When her best friend, Finn, vanishes from the seaside carnival there’s only one person who can help Briar find him: her biggest enemy, Morgan. As Briar uncovers hidden truths as deep and dark as the water that haunts her, it quickly becomes clear that Finn has gone much further than anyone could have imagined.
He’s lost in time, and neither of them are safe. As past and future collide, a sacrifice is needed.
A spooky gothic romance that transcends time, perfect for fans of Our Infinite Fates and The Wicked Deep.
Needy Little Things
Channelle Desamours
When Sariyah’s birthday celebrations at a music festival turn sour with the disappearance of one of her friends, she knows she can’t rely on the police to find her. The authorities are no more help than they were when her friend’s twin sister, another young woman of color, went missing five years earlier.
Sariyah feels guilty that her uncanny ability to predict people’s needs didn’t help to keep her friends safe. She is determined to find out what’s happened to Deja. But the more she cracks the clues leading to her, the closer she gets to home.
Such Charming Liars
Karen M. McManus
When mother-daughter grifters set out on their final heist, the job gets dangerously personal – and deadly. For all of Kat’s life, it’s just been her and her mother, Jamie – except for forty-eight hours twelve years ago when Jamie was married and Kat had a stepbrother, Liam. That all ended in a swift divorce, and Kat and Liam haven’t spoken since.
Now Jamie is a jewel thief trying to go straight, but she has one last job – at billionaire Ross Sutherland’s 80th birthday party. Kat has figured out a way to tag along to the dazzling Sutherland compound, but neither she nor her mother know about the other surprise guests that weekend: Liam and his father, a serial scammer who has his own sights set on Ross Sutherland’s youngest daughter.
Kat and Liam are on a collision course to disaster, and when a Sutherland dies, they realize they might be in the killer’s crosshairs themselves.