11 Page-Turning Mysteries and Thrillers Set on Remote Islands

In just a few short years, Alex Michaelides has become one of the most exciting voices in the psychological thriller genre. His two previous books, The Silent Patient and The Maidens — both New York Times bestsellers — were plot-twisty gems steeped in intrigue. In his new novel, The Fury, Michaelides delivers a stunning murder mystery with an island setting that’s to die for. Reclusive ex–movie star Lana Farrar heads to her private Greek island for an Easter getaway with a few of her most glamorous friends. At first, the holiday escape is a dream, but things take a turn when violent winds sweep across the island and long-simmering resentments return to the surface. As night descends, one of the guests ends up dead, igniting a beguiling whodunit where everyone is a suspect. The novel is narrated by Elliot Chase, a charismatic guest on the island who may or may not be offering an honest account of the crime — leaving you to sort through the clues and distinguish the truth from the lies.

In Daisy Darker, Alice Feeney delivers a riveting read that’s just as juicy and suspenseful as her other acclaimed thrillers, like Rock Paper Scissors and Sometimes I Lie. The dysfunctional Darker family gather at a crumbling estate on a tiny tidal island to celebrate their Nana’s 80th birthday. The weather is stormy, and so are the relationships — especially when the tide rolls in and cuts the family off from the mainland for eight hours. Then, at the stroke of midnight, Nana turns up dead. An hour later, a second family member follows in her wake. Now the Darker clan — what’s left of them, anyway — must confront their darkest family secrets and unmask the killer if they hope to survive the night.

“It was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime,” reads the teaser to Rachel Howzell Hall’s They All Fall Down. Spoiler alert: It will not be. Hall’s suspenseful tale is set on a remote island off the coast of Mexico in the Sea of Cortez. It’s here that Miriam Macy gathers with six strangers, each drawn to the private island by a surprise invitation. But the too-good-to-be-true invite is a trap. As the seven strangers search for answers about why they are there, their trip of a lifetime becomes a holiday from hell....

Adrian McKinty’s nerve-jangling survival thriller The Island is on its way to becoming an original series on Hulu, so plunge into this bestselling narrative before the adaptation hits the streamer. Heather Baxter and her new husband, Tom, a widower with a young son and a teenage daughter, set out from Seattle for a family vacation in Australia. They soon learn of a remote island that’s off-limits to visitors, and tempted by the allure of adventure, the family finagle their way onto a ferry to visit the forbidden destination — where things take a turn for the terrifying very fast.

C.J. Cooke’s I Know My Name boasts everything we could want in a thrilling read: a swirling mystery, plenty of twists and turns, fully realized characters, and a vibrant setting that sweeps you away. The book centers on a woman who’s washed ashore on a remote island with no recollection of who she is or how she got there. The island’s only other inhabitants are four friends on an annual retreat, and together they help nurse the woman back to health. As her strength returns, however, the woman begins to notice shifty glances and simmering tensions among the group. Could they know more about her predicament than they’re letting on? Meanwhile, in a quiet English suburb outside London, a man named Lochlan frantically searches for his wife, Eloise, who has gone missing.

No roundup of mysteries set on remote islands would be complete without this classic whodunit by the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie. In And Then There Were None, Christie tells the story of 10 strangers lured to a mansion on an island off the Devon coast. All they know is that they’ve been brought to the isolated locale by someone named “U.N. Owen.” Things get deliciously twisted when a recording is played during dinner that accuses each attendee of harboring a guilty secret. A murder follows, then another, and the doomed guests realize they’re being picked off one by one.

Lucy Foley’s New York Times bestseller The Guest List is set on a rugged island off the coast of Ireland, where guests gather for the destination wedding of an up-and-coming TV star and a magazine publisher. The ceremony is sensational. But trouble brews when the partying starts — first in the form of tense toasts, volatile drinking games, and a (deliberately?) ruined wedding dress, then in the form of murder.

Sarah Pearse gained a legion of fans thanks to her debut book The Sanatorium, which was an instant New York Times bestseller and, like The Guest List above, a Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club Pick. The Retreat is Pearse’s follow-up and continues her Detective Elin Warner series. This time the detective investigates the suspicious death of a woman at a wellness retreat on Reaper’s Rock, an island with a dark history that’s believed to be cursed. Warner soon learns that the victim was not meant to be there in the first place, and when a second person dies under suspicious circumstances, she begins to suspect that the resort guests are being targeted.

Raven Black, the first in Ann Cleeves’s acclaimed Shetland Island Mysteries book series, is a Dagger Award–winning novel and the inspiration for the PBS crime drama Shetland. It’s an excellent tale that’s sure to draw you in with its evocative setting and intricate plot. The novel introduces us to detective Jimmy Perez, a local police inspector on Scotland’s remote Shetland Islands who’s trying to solve the murder of young Catherine Ross. Though the locals all suspect loner Magnus Tait, Perez and his colleagues aren’t convinced. They launch an investigation, which puts everyone on the island on edge — and makes everyone a potential suspect.

Rachel Hawkins’s New York Times bestselling island mystery Reckless Girls is a wildly entertaining read with a pulse-quickening plot and an appealingly gothic vibe. The novel is set on Meroe Island, a secluded island in the Pacific Ocean with a history of catastrophe, violence, and murder. Six attractive young people head there for a fun time that turns out to be anything but. One person goes missing and another is found dead, which leaves the remaining members of the group scrambling to unearth the truth about the island and the wicked things that happened there. 

Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island is perhaps the best-known entry on our list of mysteries set on remote islands, thanks in no small part to its blockbuster film adaptation directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio. The thrilling crime drama takes place in 1954 and follows U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels as he investigates the disappearance of a dangerous patient from the Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane on Shutter Island. As Daniels and his partner search for clues, they uncover truths far darker than expected. Lehane — the author of acclaimed crime dramas like Mystic River and Gone, Baby, Gone — is a master storyteller with a truly imaginative mind. We won’t say any more about this one for fear of ruining the twistiest of twists!