‘Tis the season to get a little spooked, dear reader. Though I’ll be honest, I read psychological and crime thrillers year-round these days, because nothing feeds my need to read quite like it.

A bit of page-turning suspense is something psychological thrillers have in abundance. The best ones leave you off-kilter, wanting more and pondering the plot long beyond the final page.

Although not a recorded term until 1925, the themes of contemporary psychological thrillers have their roots in Gothic Victorian fiction. Whether exploring the psychology of a sociopath, narrating a mystery or crime, or just dissolving the reader’s sense of reality, the genre offers a deep dive into human minds and behaviour.

Much of the genre’s popularity is down to how the books chime with our own reality. Whereas in horror fiction the enemy might be a supernatural figure, in psychological fiction the baddie is much more likely to be someone a bit closer to home.

This means the genre often explores domestic relationships, family ties, small communities or friendships, with most psychological thrillers having common themes of unreliable narrators, morality and multiple narratives or realities.

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While giants of the genre Stephen King and Patricia Highsmith helped make psychological thrillers mainstream, the contemporary international success of books such as and The Girl On The Train, along with Freida McFadden and Colleen Hoover’s blockbuster books, has only increased the popularity of psychological fiction.

Below, we’ve drawn up a list of seven absolute favourites, from new releases and the best of the 2000s to some utter classics. We could eulogise about these books forever.

I took by Colleen Hoover on holiday to Greece in June, and I don’t think I spoke to my partner at all for the three days it took me to read this book. Beginning with a terrible morning for young author Lowen Ashleigh, the narrative follows her as she takes on responsibility for a world-renowned author’s (Verity Crawford) book series when a terrible accident leaves her unable to finish it herself, even moving into the Crawford home alongside the remnants of the Crawford family.

But the vibe in the house is strange. Verity is strange. She is supposedly paralysed, but Lowen catches her staring and – on one freakish occasion – even thinks she sees her move. And when Lowen discovers Verity’s old diaries and their dark, twisted contents, everything in the homestead becomes far more threatening than appearance would make it seem.

I loved this book, and I couldn’t recommend it enough; it's a spooky, spooky narrative.

Often cited as one of the greatest literary thrillers, lauded author Stephen King’s tome is the horror story of a writer’s imprisonment by a demented fan. After killing off his most famous protagonist, Misery, in his latest novel, author Paul Sheldon is involved in a horrible car crash.

When he wakes up in agony, he’s in the bed of Annie Wilkes who pulled him from the wreckage and brought him back to her isolated mountain home. Bedbound with broken legs, he soon discovers former nurse Annie is his number one fan and intends to hold him hostage until he writes Misery back into existence. Gruesome, terrifying and bleak, this is King at his darkest.

Ah, another book from another holiday that prevented me from actually engaging with my beloved partner. This time, I read on a sun lounger in Turkey, and steadily gave myself trust issues.

A story of female solidarity and a warning against the dangers of first impressions, sociopathy, male ego and the gleam of memory, this book is one I’ve returned to more than once – which is rare for me. Nick weaves his way into the lives of women; he charms them, and then he disappears for days at a time. When Nina Swann introduces Nick as her new squeeze shortly after her late husband’s untimely death, her daughter Ash feels something is off. He seems too good to be true. And, reader, he is.

This book jumps between the perspectives of a diverse group of women, all of whom just feel that something isn’t right. If there was ever a book to make me reinvest in my trust of my own intuition, it’s this one.

You may have seen the classic David Fincher 1999 movie, but have you read the book? If not, get ready for a cynical, darkly satirical and very confusing ride – all in a good way. Palahniuk’s novel follows the experience of an unnamed insomniac protagonist who finds relief from his own suffering by impersonating seriously ill people at support groups.

After meeting a mysterious man named Tyler Durden, he becomes involved in an underground fight club as a form of radical therapy for disaffected men. Whether you know twist or not, the intrigue is in the way the novel gets there and its exploration of masculinity, dissatisfaction and isolation.

Now for something a little less contemporary and a little more classic. Like a lot of good romances, starts with a holiday fling. A fling that turns serious when our shy protagonist falls for the elusive and rich widower Maxim de Winter. He proposes, she accepts, and she is set to move into his stately (although slightly haunting) home, Manderley.

When she arrives, however, things are a little . Maxim becomes colder, more distant, and she is left friendless in a sprawling home. Worse still, though, is that Maxim’s deceased wife – the titular Rebecca – is felt everywhere throughout the home, where the new Mrs de Winter walks in her shadow... and the feeling that Maxim has a horrible, hidden secret looms large in her mind.

If you like thrillers and you’ve not read yet, where have you been? I’ve tried to keep the contents of this list to the type of thing you’ve probably not read yet, but Gillian Flynn’s is a modern masterpiece, and I just couldn’t miss it.

For me, this book defines the psychological thriller genre. On the morning of their fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne’s wife, Amy, disappears. Nick is an immediate suspect in the investigation, a fact that confuses and befuddles Nick. The fog of confusion thickens, however, when Nick learns that Amy’s friends believe she was afraid of him. Thicker still when the police suggest that his computer has incriminating searches on it – searches he never made. What’s happening? And where is Amy?

is a warning to never underestimate your partner, never underestimate women, and never underestimate the power of everyday misogyny.

An all-time classic of the genre, Highsmith’s tome follows Tom Ripley – a well-versed scammer – during a trip to Italy to persuade a New York businessman’s prodigal son to return to the US. Once there, the two grow close, with Ripley becoming so infatuated with Dickie Greenleaf that he wants to become him. As tensions rise between the two men and Dickie’s girlfriend Marge, Ripley’s talent for murder and self-invention becomes all too clear.

This is my most recent read, and again, I devoured it. I regularly travel for work, and Nicci French’s lasted me two train journeys at most.

Tyler Green has been in prison for nearly thirty years, but today he gets released. For his re-entry to society, he wants just one thing. He wants a dinner party with his best friends from university – the same friends that he believes framed him for murder thirty years ago. And some friendships can’t survive the truth.

The third book in a series with the same detective – Maud O’Connor – this book can be easily read as a standalone or in chronological order, but it’s by far my favourite of Maud’s mysteries. Plus, I’ve never read a book that so acutely highlights the female experience of working in a male-dominated field quite so aptly, casually and effectively.

Didn’t know that The Silence of the Lambs began as a book? Me neither. But now I’m reading it, and I’m loving it. We all know the story; FBI rookie Clarice Starling is assigned to the case of a rampant, active serial killer known only as Buffalo Bill. In order to understand and gain access to his innermost workings, Clarice turns to someone who might think similarly to Bill: imprisoned psychopath and killer, Dr Hannibal Lecter. But it’s not as easy as a simple research mission; Lecter wants tit for tat; he wants to swap information on killers for information on Clarice.

The first book in an internationally bestselling trilogy, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo begins with the hiring of disgraced financial reporter Mikael Blomkvist by a wealthy Swedish industrialist to investigate the 40-year-old murder of his niece, Harriet, believing that she was killed by a member of his own family.

He soon teams up with private investigator and computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, whose own past is just as mysterious. Together, they begin to uncover corruption, financial intrigue and a dark family history. The complex, gripping and fast-paced plot is matched by two intriguing main characters who keep the reader guessing.

Kia Abdullah is a writer I’ve recently discovered and, embarrassingly enough, fallen in love with. Abdullah’s style is so brimming with intellect, cultural awareness and worldly research that her books aren’t only fascinating, but somewhat educational. That, and they’ve given me a renewed love for a genre I never had much interest in: courtroom thriller.

Lily and Safa were inseparable growing up, but now Lily is a heroine of morning television and Safa, suffering an unfair, unwarranted fall from grace at the hands of a white male colleague, is writing for a paper much less renowned than she is used to. When the nationals pick up that Lily might be hiding bruises on her body, Safa tries to rekindle their one-strong friendship, only to be rebuffed and dismissed.

But when things escalate in the coming days, and the police are called to Lily’s house, and a body is discovered, Lily is eerily calm and worryingly silent, while Safa endeavours to give a voice to the voiceless in all communities and embarks on her own journalistic investigation. She will uncover the truth, but at what cost?

Part psychological thriller and part story of disaffected university students, Tartt’s tome follows a group of clever misfits at an elite New England college and the chain of events that led to the death of a classmate. Although from a lower-class family, newbie Richard is accepted into the clique of students who are all under the cult-like influence of their charismatic Greek classics professor.

When one member of the group threatens to reveal the group’s role in the murder, tensions rise and the second half of the novel explores the psychological consequences of hiding such a terrible secret.

Set in 1954, Lehane’s psychological thriller follows widower US Marshal Edward “Teddy” Daniels and his new partner Chuck Aule to Shutter Island, home to a hospital for the clinically insane. Sent there to investigate the disappearance of a patient who was incarcerated for drowning her three children, a storm immediately traps them there for four days.

We soon learn of Teddy’s own mental state and the deep-seated trauma he has, following his wife’s death in an apartment fire. Throughout the novel, dream sequences reveal hidden truths that Teddy refuses to admit, while the reader is kept guessing about which narrative to believe.

Read more: Best new books to read this autumn, from romance to historical fiction