New thrillers take on the patriarchy, sexual violence, and domestic abuse, with a little killing for fun on the side
The Cornell Seven were not yet in the headlines when the authors of the coming season’s thrillers conceived the plots for their forthcoming books. But the rage that’s erupted in the wake of revelations about the alleged sexual assault of the woman known as Jane Doe at a Cornell fraternity is the same long-simmering anger that fuels many of these stories.
“It’s an evergreen topic, because nothing changes,” says psychological suspense author Kaira Rouda, whose books frequently delve into female anger. “You see it happening in every generation.”
In these eight books, women confront sexual violence, domestic abuse, coercive control, and predatory scams, without any help from the institutions meant to protect them. Some want revenge, some want justice, some want safety. Others simply take what they want—an act that can be transgressive in a publishing industry still often searching for “likable” female characters.
Authors like Edgar winner Jesse Q
Authors like Edgar winner Jesse Q. Sutanto, who belongs to a group chat with fellow writers called Unlikable Female Authors, are fed up with all of it. Sutanto’s forthcoming thriller You Made Me Do This (Thomas & Mercer, Feb. 2027) follows Sienna Langley, a marriage-advice author whose sudden TikTok fame brings unwanted attention from a cyberstalker. On vacation in Bali with her adoring husband, Sienna grows increasingly withdrawn and erratic. Her husband has no idea what’s going on with her, and neither does the reader.
Sutanto was inspired in part by watching a friend’s husband gaslight her and convince others of his version of events. “I saw how he was treating her,” she says, “but a lot of the people that he comes into contact with totally believe him.”
She’s more than frustrated by a society that asks why she didn’t just leave while often failing to believe women who describe coercive control in their relationships. “Abuse doesn’t start at a level 100,” she notes. “Coercive control starts out so subtly, you don’t even recognize it’s happening. It goes on for years and, at the end of it, you’re left as this shell of a person, because your sense of self has been steadily eroded without you even realizing it.”
In Nicola Blackwell’s The Midsummer Girls (Dutton, Apr
In Nicola Blackwell’s The Midsummer Girls (Dutton, Apr. 2027), predator and prey switch places. Billionaire Alex Dormer has an annual Midsummer ritual: luring a young woman to his private island in the English Channel for his own evil purposes. The latest visitor, Tara, appears to be another unsuspecting conquest. But Tara is actually Alissa, whose sister vanished after visiting Dormer 12 years earlier, and she’s come looking for answers.
“I love a revenge thriller, and I love a female hero story,” Blackwell says. She sees female characters across genres “transgressing big time,” adding, “They’re becoming something monstrous, wild, or deadly. They’re becoming the ones you should be scared of.”
The novel, Blackwell’s first, not only explores revenge but also “what the feeling of wanting revenge does to us,” she says. Ancient stones on the island suggest forces at work beyond one man’s madness. “This book is about what happens when women are treated as a commodity, and humanity is lost.”
Reema Zaman imagines a technology that upsets
Reema Zaman imagines a technology that upsets the physical power differential between men and women in her debut novel, In Her Grace (Blackstone, May 2027). “I’m a survivor of sexual assault and a petite woman,” Zaman says, acutely aware of just how vulnerable her size makes her. She recalls wondering what it would be like to have a technology that allows her access to someone else’s physical strength.
That one idea was all Zaman had until two years later when she learned that some conservative figures associated with Project 2025 opposed no-fault divorce. “That’s when the entire plot downloaded into my head,” she says.
First adopted in California in 1969, no-fault divorce lets a spouse leave without proving wrongdoing by the other spouse, such as abuse, abandonment, or adultery. Zaman, who left an emotionally abusive marriage herself, calls it “incredibly liberating and empowering legislation” that enabled her to be free of her abuser in a week. Its adoption has been associated with significant declines in domestic violence, female suicide, and intimate partner homicide.
In the world of Zaman’s novel it’s 2052,
In the world of Zaman’s novel it’s 2052, and a Christian nationalist regime has enacted the Marriage Pact, requiring women to wear intrauterine trackers and ending no-fault divorce. Grace, a former ballerina abused by her billionaire husband, uses Merge—a technology developed by his family that allows one person to control another’s body—to inhabit the body of her husband’s best friend and strangle him. Her trial turns on whether a meticulously planned killing can ever be self-defense.
When Edgar-winning YA author Mindy McGinnis sent out her debut adult thriller, The First Cut Is the Deepest (Putnam, Jan. 2027), she expected enthusiasm. Instead, she says, editors called it disgusting, over the top, and grotesque.
The novel follows Fae, a psychotic Taylor Swift–level superstar with a devoted army of Faethfuls, and Gretchen, a bawdy up-and-coming singer with an inability to self-censor. Their unlikely friendship leads to all kinds of hijinks, some of them not very nice and most of them directed at men.
Editors took particular issue with Gretchen, McGinnis says,
Editors took particular issue with Gretchen, McGinnis says, which stung because “she is literally my internal monologue.” After more than a year and a half without a bite, McGinnis’s agent asked if she wanted to pull back at all in the manuscript. The answer was a hard no.
“People struggle with the idea that a woman might just kill for fun,” McGinnis says. “Because that’s what men do. With men, it’s just like—well, it’s probably a sex thing. When women are doing it, everybody is like, What’s the real motivation? And it’s like, We’re pissed. We’re pissed. We’re done.”
Even though it took time for the book to find a home, McGinnis is confident it will find its readers. “I want to know the number of women who read this and just go, ‘Fuck yeah.’ ”
In Helen Fellman’s ’Til Death Do Us Part(Harper
In Helen Fellman’s ’Til Death Do Us Part(Harper Perennial, May 2027), readers meet a wedding planner who can pull off a perfect event—and the perfect murder. She offers brides-to-be an unusual add-on: for a fee, she’ll kill the groom after the ceremony. Naturally, she obtains the brides’ recorded consent and only extends this service to women about to marry abusive, or otherwise problematic, men.
“I wanted a brave woman who feels like she can stand up to men and give them the punishment that I think—not that I’m condoning violence—they sometimes deserve for the pain and torment that they inflict on women,” Fellman says. Women spend their lives being judged through men’s eyes, she adds, “and I wanted a character that is like, Fuck that, we don’t have to put up with this shit anymore.”
She chose weddings as a plot point, in part, to interrogate an institution originally intended to make women men’s property. But she also wanted the book to entertain: “Everyone loves a wedding; they’re tremendous fun.”
As are McGinnis and Fellman’s books, because
As are McGinnis and Fellman’s books, because the curious thing is, they’ve created characters who are actually hard not to like.
Sisters are doin’ it for themselves
Virginia Trench conceived Mr. Disappear (Crown, Nov.) after watching The Tinder Swindler, a documentary about a con man who persuaded women he met online to hand over large sums of money. She was furious that he seemed to escape meaningful punishment. “As with so many crimes committed against women, the lack of consequences for the oftentimes male perpetrators just makes my blood boil,” she says.
Trench’s con man, Rhys, has left a string of damaged people, mostly women, in his wake. One of them is Alex, who’s living under an assumed identity and driving for Uber. Unable to go to the police but determined to stop him, Alex connects with Liz, a journalist and frazzled new mother who feels most like her old self while tracking Rhys through an online forum. Together they try to recruit his latest mark, Quinn, who believes she has met the love of her life, to join forces and bring Rhys down.
For Trench, the three women’s different circumstances matter
For Trench, the three women’s different circumstances matter as much as their shared enemy: each has been shaped by patriarchal expectations about romance, marriage, and motherhood, and it’s left them isolated. Trench says she wanted to “pull them out of their isolation and help them find support.” She also wanted them to get “the outcomes the system doesn’t deliver—to take matters into their own hands and enter their vigilante eras.”
In Tracy Clark’s You’ll Never Find Me (Thomas & Mercer, Jan. 2027), Esmee Manning flees her powerful father after discovering a dangerous family secret, only to face more violence beyond her family’s home. Living under a new identity, she gets support through an underground network of women who help her build a life for herself and her son. “This is a weird world that we’re living in,” Clark says. “Women’s rights and women’s issues are in jeopardy. I wanted to write about women who don’t and won’t accept that. I wanted to talk about how women rise above whatever traumas they might have, and women who protect and support other women.”
Take Back the Night(Park Row, Jan. 2027), by Kimberly Belle, Heather Gudenkauf, and Kaira Rouda, takes that solidarity onto a college campus. After a series of sexual assaults goes uninvestigated, five women host a radio show naming the assailant. When he disappears soon afterward, they become suspects, though none is charged. Years later, a streaming documentary promises new evidence, drawing three of the women back together to investigate and protect their families.
The premise came easily to the coauthors
The premise came easily to the coauthors. “Ask any woman in your life,” Belle says. “Everybody has a story. And they always say, ‘Write what you know,’ right?”
The authors also felt strongly about acknowledging the courage and conviction of survivors who tell their stories. “Throughout history we see these really strong women speaking up,” Gudenkauf says. “Whether it’s Jane Doe, or they’re involved in the Epstein files, there will always be strong women who come forward, and we need to celebrate them. We need to share their stories with the world.” W
Kate Rope is a journalist and author whose most recent book isStrong as a Girl. She’s currently working on her first novel, a perimenopausal rage thriller.
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A version of this article appeared in the 11/09/2026 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: All The Rage
