10 Dark and Twisty International Thrillers We Devoured

Bestselling Brazilian novelist Raphael Montes is renowned for his unique voice and imaginative storytelling. English readers were delighted to get their hands on a new translation of his internationally acclaimed hit The Secret Dinner, a sharp satirical thriller that tackles class and income inequality with dark humor and delicious twists. The novel follows four struggling students in Copacabana, Rio, who, like many their age, rely on a patchwork of part-time jobs to keep the lights on. When their rent spikes, the friends cook up a new hustle to make ends meet: catering to Rio’s ultra-elite through exclusive dinner parties. But what begins as a get-rich-quick scheme soon spirals into something sinister as the stakes intensify and the consequences turn deadly. “Dark, compelling, and wickedly smart” (bestselling author Lisa Jewell), The Secret Dinner is the book we can’t stop talking about. 

Bestselling Swedish author M. T. Edvardsson is a master at crafting gripping psychological thrillers built on clever plot structures and complex central characters. The Woman Inside introduces you to Bill Olsson, a widower and single father whose life begins to unravel after his lodger Karla is accused of murdering the wealthy couple whose house she cleans. Before long, every character becomes a suspect with a secret to hide. The Woman Inside is the second of Edvardsson’s novels to be published in English — the first was A Nearly Normal Family, which inspired the hit Netflix series of the same name. Both thrillers typify his signature Nordic noir style, with a foreboding sense of domestic tension and suburban mystery.

Squeamish readers might want to skip this bloody internationally bestselling dystopian thriller by Argentine author Agustina Bazterrica. If you can get past the premise, though, you’re in for a wild ride. After a global virus contaminates all animal meat, cannibalism becomes legal. The book follows Marcos, a morally conflicted supplier of human meat who works in the industry to support his ailing father. But when he’s gifted a woman being raised for slaughter, he finds himself in a complicated relationship that blurs the lines of morality. Bleak and provocative, with an edgy sense of humor, Tender Is the Flesh raises important questions about the ethics of late-stage capitalism and industrial farming. (You may just want to avoid snacking as you read….)

Would you help your sister bury a body? What about three? Readers screamed with delight over Nigerian writer Oyinkan Braithwaite’s award-winning 2018 debut — her 2025 follow-up, Cursed Daughters, was equally well received. A wickedly funny thriller, My Sister, the Serial Killer follows siblings Korede and Ayoola, who both have their eye on the same handsome doctor. The problem is that three of Ayoola’s boyfriends have wound up dead. Will Korede stay out of Ayoola’s way when the handsome doctor asks for her number? Or will she finally reckon with the lengths she’s gone to protect her beautiful, murderous sister?

Danish author and screenwriter Søren Sveistrup is a master of world-building and suspense who created the acclaimed Nordic noir TV series The Killing. The Chestnut Man, Sveistrup’s debut novel, is a gory, fast-paced serial killer thriller that we highly recommend. When a murderer in Copenhagen begins leaving handmade chestnut dolls with victims’ bodies, two detectives must work together to solve the perplexing case. They soon discover that a fingerprint on one of the chestnut dolls belongs to the missing 12-year-old daughter of a government minister. How do these crimes connect? And can the detectives put aside their past squabbles to successfully find the killer before more lives are lost? 

This international bestseller by Kanae Minato offers a chilling look at grief, revenge, and unrelenting despair. Minato has been called Japan’s queen of grisly crime mysteries, and this is the perfect introduction to her work. Confessions tells the story of Yuko Moriguchi, a teacher facing a failed engagement and the death of her four-year-old on the school’s grounds. Before leaving the school forever, she delivers a final lesson that upends everything her students thought they knew. Told in the style of Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Minato’s novel interweaves multiple perspectives and first-person confessions to reveal the mystery surrounding the death and its fallout. Its twist-filled plot has left readers’ jaws on the floor, which makes it a great pick for your next mystery and suspense book club gathering. 

Based on a true story, this chilling horror thriller is a treat for readers who can’t stop watching HGTV and fixer-upper Instagram reels. Popular for both her crime novel series and her children’s books, Iceland’s Yrsa Sigurðardóttir knows how to keep her readers coming back for more. One of her scariest stand-alone works, I Remember You brings terrifying claustrophobic tension to a story of three friends working together to renovate a remote, dilapidated house. What was supposed to be a fun project takes an eerie turn when they start to feel that someone, or something, doesn’t want them there. Even scarier, their ghostly encounters may have something to do with a young doctor’s missing son and an elderly woman who recently died by suicide. 

Japanese crime novelist Natusuo Kirino’s first novel published in English was an international hit in 2004 and is frequently included on lists of best mystery novels of all time. Out follows four night-shift workers at a bento factory in the Tokyo suburbs whose lives are upended when one of the women murders her abusive husband and asks for help. But hiding the body and covering up the crime is just the beginning of an escalating series of events that will change their lives forever. Set against the backdrop of Tokyo’s gritty back streets, this story of women pushed to their limits was called “a knuckle-clenching thriller” by Entertainment Weekly.

For fans of shows like Killing Eve, the darkly comedic thriller The Old Woman with the Knife is as funny as it is riveting. The award-winning debut from South Korean author Gu Byeong-mo follows an assassin who is in her mid-60s and faces a new threat as she nears the end of her career. Hornclaw’s life is slower than it once was; she spends most of her days in a small apartment with her old dog, Deadweight. But while other women her age are retiring and taking up gardening, Hornclaw isn’t ready to quit just yet. She’s too good at what she does. After suffering an injury, she forms an unexpected bond with a doctor and his family. Unfortunately, connections can be deadly in her line of work, and this might be one misstep she can’t undo. 

The first of a Spanish trilogy to be translated into English, The Silence of the White City follows a shrewd but troubled detective (is there any other kind?) on the hunt for a brutal serial killer terrorizing Vitoria. Inspector Unai López de Ayala is put in charge of investigating a series of ritualistic killings that are unnervingly similar to a spree that terrorized citizens two decades before. More distressing: The police thought they caught the killer 20 years ago, and he’s been in prison ever since. Did they get the wrong man? Or did the original killer have a partner? Blending noir and police procedurals with Basque culture, Eva Garcia Sáenz’s first entry in the White City trilogy will have you running out to grab the second and third.

Published in the early 2000s, F.H. Batacan’s poetic, literary thriller is considered the first Filipino crime novel and was made into a film in 2017. Set in one of the most economically devastated neighborhoods in Manila, where corruption runs rampant and people struggle to get by, the novel begins when two young boys are found murdered in a dump heap, and two Jesuit priests make it their mission to seek justice. As Father Saenz, a forensic anthropologist, and his protégé Father Lucero, a psychologist, hunt for the terrifying killer targeting young poor boys, they face the realities of economic disparity and rampant corruption within the government, the church, and the country’s elite. A must-read for any thriller fan, Smaller and Smaller Circles is a sharply observed exploration of class, religion, and the Catholic Church’s central role in Filipino society.