If you’re in search of plans this weekend, you might perhaps be thinking of a movie (Clayface is out on Friday) or maybe a show (Hulu’s new mystery Phony premiered its first two episodes on Tuesday). However, you might also be looking for a great book; after all, few things are better than cuddling up with a great book and a cup of the hot beverage of your choice. Add in some rain, and you have yourself the perfect night in.
Now, you can’t control the weather, but you can control what you read. And if you are indeed interested in a great book to read this weekend, you can’t go wrong with a thriller. Luckily for you, there are more than a few worthy thriller books out there that will make for an ideal weekend read. One or two you can probably finish in the span of two days! So consider reading these three novels that will surely be worth your time.
‘The Turn of the Screw’ (1898)
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Image via Penguin</figure>
Let’s start with one of the foundational classics of the thriller genre, as well as a timeless tale of horror, paranoia, and psychological dread. Henry James‘ The Turn of the Screw tells the story of an unnamed governess hired to look after two children, Flora and Miles, living in the secluded Bly Manor in Essex. There, strange occurrences and an overall feeling of terror make her suspect that the kids might be subject to a supernatural haunting.
The Turn of the Screw is one of the godfathers of the psychological thriller with a heavy dose of horror. The governess doesn’t know if her fears are rooted in reality, or if Bly Manor and its suspicious inhabitants are somehow playing mind games with her — the children certainly don’t help, for example. James presents this story with admirable restraint, painting an atmospheric, gloomy, and overall somber vision of Bly Manor without ever going into the outright macabre, thus allowing the reader to fill in the gaps, much like the governess herself. Many adaptations of the book exist, but truly, the only one that comes close to its quality is the 1961 version starring Deborah Kerr.
‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’ (1963)
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Image via Victor Gollancz</figure>
Now, for a second variety of thriller, we have a spy story that has become synonymous with the genre. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is one of the most celebrated and seminal works by master of the form John Le Carré. In it, operative Alec Leamas is sent to East Germany at the height of the Cold War. His mission is to pose as a defector and accuse counterintelligence officer Hans Dieter-Mundt of being a double agent.
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is one of the bleakest and most thrilling spy novels ever written. As with most of Le Carré’s works in the spy genre, it prominently features the intelligence agency known as The Circus. Here, The Circus is just as dirty and amoral as any German organization, with Le Carré framing espionage as a business of corrupt men trying not to fix the world but rather keep it broken. Leamas is one of the writer’s best creations: tired to the point of surrender, struggling to make sense of love in a world that constantly tells him it’s not worth it. There is a sense of defeated pessimism in the novel, especially in the now-infamous ending, but it’s what makes it such an outlier in the world of espionage literature.
‘The Witch’ (2026)
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Image via Poisoned Pen Press</figure>
Lastly, let’s end with something more recent. Freida McFadden, whose hit book The Housemaid was turned into an extremely successful guilty-pleasure movie just last year, is back this year with another domestic thriller in the same vein. The Witch follows Julia Barlow, a young woman who moves to Pemberton, her family’s estate in Massachusetts, to care for her aging grandmother. There, she will uncover a dangerous connection to witchcraft and unearth dark family secrets.
Blending McFadden’s tried-and-true domestic thriller formula with a welcome dose of supernatural dread, The Witch makes for an engrossing read. This one is almost entirely devoid of any romantic or tantalizing element; instead, the focus is on the intense psychological strain Julia undergoes as she slowly discovers the potentially lethal secrets that Pemberton hides. Benefiting from a dual narrative and McFadden’s confident approach to a genre she now all but dominates, The Witch is a perfect weekend read that will have you looking around to make sure no echoes are coming from the walls in your house.
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