Spice up your Thanksgiving with one of these intriguing thrillers or mysteries set on or near Thanksgiving. Whether you like a cozy mystery or prefer an edge of your seat thriller there's something for everyone to enjoy during the Thanksgiving holiday. 


Compiled by:
Elizabeth G.
Black Friday

Alex Kava
Kava
Series: Maggie O'Dell #7

On the busiest shopping day of the year, a group of idealistic college students believe they're about to carry out an elaborate media stunt at the largest mall in America. They think the equipment in their backpacks will disrupt stores' computer systems, disrupting capitalism for a moment. What they don't realize is that their backpacks contain explosives and they're about to become unwitting suicide bombers. FBI profiler Maggie O'Dell must put her own political troubles aside to figure out who's behind this terrorist plot—a massacre that's all the more frightening when a tip reveals that Maggie's brother is one of the doomed protesters.


A Catered Thanksgiving

Isis Crawford
MYS Crawfor
Series: Mystery with Recipes #7

Whipping up Thanksgiving dinner can be stressful for anyone, but that goes double for the Field family. Everything has to be perfect or they risk getting cut out of dominating patriarch Monty's lucrative will. That's where sisters Bernie and Libby's catering company, A Little Taste of Heaven, comes in. Surely with their lumpless mashed potatoes and to-die-for gravy, even the super-dysfunctional Fields can get along for one meal. But no one can dress up disaster when the turkey goes boom right in Monty's scowling face, sending him to that great dining room in the sky. With everyone harboring their own cornucopia of secrets, discovering who wanted to carve up Monty won't be easy. Worse, the Field Mansion is draped under a snowstorm, trapping them with a killer determined to get more than his piece of the pie. Bernie and Libby will have to find out who the culprit is, fast, before the leftovers--and their chances of surviving--run out for good. . .


The Diva Runs Out of Thyme

Krista Davis
MYS Davis
Series: Domestic Diva mysteries #1

Few can compete with Natasha Smith when it comes to entertaining, but her childhood rival, Sophie Winston, certainly tries. Natasha may have stolen the spotlight, and Sophie's husband, but Sophie is determined to rob her of the prize for the Stupendous Stuffing Shakedown. She just needs the right ingredient. But Sophie's search for the perfect turkey takes a basting when she stumbles across a corpse. And when the police find her name and photo inside the victim's car, Sophie will have to set her trussing aside to solve the murder, or she'll be serving up prison grub. 


The Grave Soul

Ellen Hart
MYS Hart
Series: Jane Lawless mysteries #23

Guthrie Hewitt calls on restaurateur and private investigator Jane Lawless because he has fallen for Kira Adler. His trip home with Kira over Thanksgiving made him uneasy. All her life, Kira has been haunted by a nightmare in which she witnesses her mother being murdered. She knows it can't be true because the dream doesn't line up with the facts of her mother's death. But after visiting Kira's home for the first time, and receiving a disturbing anonymous package in the mail, Guthrie starts to wonder if Kira's dream might hold more truth than she knows. 


In the Blood

Lisa Unger
Unger

Lana Granger lives a life of lies. She has told so many lies about where she comes from and who she is that the truth is like a cloudy nightmare she can’t quite recall. About to graduate from college and with her trust fund almost tapped out, she takes a job babysitting a troubled boy named Luke. Expelled from schools all over the country, the manipulative young Luke is accustomed to control­ling the people in his life. But, in Lana, he may have met his match. Or has Lana met hers? When Lana’s closest friend, Beck, mysteriously disappears, Lana resumes her lying ways—to friends, to the police, to herself. The police have a lot of questions for Lana when the story about her where­abouts the night Beck disappeared doesn’t jibe with eyewitness accounts. Lana will do anything to hide the truth, but it might not be enough to keep her ominous secrets buried: someone else knows about Lana’s lies. And he’s dying to tell.


The Keeper

John Lescroart
Lescroa
Series: Dismas Hardy novels # 15

On the evening before Thanksgiving Hal Chase, a guard in the San Francisco County Jail, drives to the airport to pick up his step-brother for the weekend. When they return Hal's wife, Katie, has disappeared without a clue. By the time lawyer Dismas Hardy hears about this the original missing persons case has become a suspected homicide, and Hal is the prime suspect. Hardy calls on his friend, former homicide detective Abe Glitsky, to look into the case. Against a backdrop of conspiracy and corruption, ambiguous motives and suspicious alibis, an obsessed Glitsky closes in on the elusive truth. As other deaths begin to pile up he realizes, perhaps too late, that the next victim might be himself. 


Strangers at the Feast

Jennifer Vanderbes
Vanderb

On Thanksgiving Day 2007 three generations of the Olson family gather. Eleanor and Gavin worry about their daughter, a single academic, and her newly adopted Native American child, and about their son, who has been caught in the imploding real-estate bubble. While the Olsons navigate the tensions and secrets that mark their relationships, seventeen-year-old Kijo Jackson and his best friend Spider set out from the nearby housing projects on a mysterious job. A series of tragic events bring these two worlds ever closer, exposing the dangerously thin line between suburban privilege and urban poverty, and culminating in a crime that will change everyone’s life. 


Thankless in Death

J. D. Robb
MYS Robb
Series: In Death series #37

As the household of NYPSD Lieutenant Eve Dallas prepares for an invasion of family and friends for Thanksgiving, an ungrateful son decides to stop the nagging from his parents - by ending their lives. Soon Jerald Reinhold is working his way through anyone who has ever thwarted him in his path to an easy life. Eve is increasingly frustrated in her efforts to cover all the potential victims as Jerald stays a terrifying step ahead. As the festivities begin, Eve is desperate to identify which victim on Jerald's long list will be the next, so she can stop the killing spree. 


Wicked Autumn

G. M. Malliet
MYS Malliet
Series: Max Tudor mysteries #1

Max Tudor has adapted well to his post as vicar of St. Edwold’s in the idyllic village of Nether Monkslip. The quiet village seems the perfect home for Max, who has fled a harrowing past as an MI5 agent. Now he has found a measure of peace among urban escapees and yoga practitioners, artists and crafters and New Agers. But this new-found serenity is quickly shattered when the highly vocal and unpopular president of the Women’s Institute turns up dead at the Harvest Fayre. The death looks like an accident, but Max’s training as a former agent kicks in, and before long he suspects foul play. 


The Wolfe Widow

Victoria Abbott
MYS Abbott
Series: Book Collector #3

As Thanksgiving approaches, Jordan Bingham is grateful for her job researching rare books for Vera Van Alst, the infamous curmudgeon of Harrison Falls, New York. But when an uninvited guest makes an appearance, much more than dinner is disrupted and Jordan is thankful just to be alive. Vera doesn’t normally receive visitors without appointment, but she agrees to see the imperious Muriel Delgado upon arrival. Shortly thereafter, Jordan is told that her position is being terminated. Evicted from the Van Alst House, Jordan is determined to find out what hold Muriel has over her erstwhile employer. When Jordan discovers a deadly connection between Muriel and the Van Alst family, it’s up to her to put the house in order and stop a killer from going back to press.