Authors Like Gillian Flynn

Daphne du Maurier

British · Rebecca (1938), My Cousin Rachel (1951)

Du Maurier was born in London in 1907 and spent most of her life in Cornwall, where she died in 1989. Rebecca is narrated by a young second wife whose husband's dead first wife still dominates his house, Manderley; My Cousin Rachel leaves the reader unsure whether the woman at its centre is a poisoner. In 1941 a critic pointed out similarities between Rebecca and Carolina Nabuco's Brazilian novel A Sucessora (1934); du Maurier and her publisher denied any copying.

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Ruth Rendell

British · A Judgement in Stone (1977), A Dark-Adapted Eye (1986, as Barbara Vine)

Rendell (1930–2015) wrote more than sixty novels, including the Inspector Wexford series that began with From Doon with Death in 1964. A Judgement in Stone names the killer and the motive in its first sentence. Under the name Barbara Vine she wrote slower psychological novels about family secrets; A Dark-Adapted Eye won the Edgar Award for best novel.

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Megan Abbott

American · Dare Me (2012), The Fever (2014), Give Me Your Hand (2018)

Abbott was born in Detroit in 1971 and has a PhD in English and American literature from New York University. She began with noir set in mid-century America, winning the Edgar Award for best paperback original with Queenpin, then turned to teenage girls and ambitious women: Dare Me is set among high-school cheerleaders, and Give Me Your Hand between two women scientists bound by a secret. She has also written for HBO's The Deuce.

Tana French

Irish · In the Woods (2007), The Likeness (2008), Broken Harbour (2012)

French was born in Vermont in 1973, grew up partly in Ireland, Italy and Malawi, and trained as an actor at Trinity College Dublin. In the Woods, the first of her Dublin Murder Squad novels, won the Edgar Award for best first novel; each book in the series is narrated by a different detective with something to hide. Broken Harbour is set on a half-empty housing estate after the Irish property crash.

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Paula Hawkins

British · The Girl on the Train (2015), Into the Water (2017)

Hawkins was born in Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe), in 1972, and worked as a business reporter for The Times before writing fiction. The Girl on the Train is narrated partly by Rachel, a heavy drinker who watches a couple from her commuter train and becomes caught up in the woman's disappearance; it was filmed in 2016 with Emily Blunt.

Liz Nugent

Irish · Unravelling Oliver (2014), Lying in Wait (2016), Strange Sally Diamond (2023)

Nugent was born in Dublin in 1967 and worked as a stage manager before writing fiction. Unravelling Oliver opens with a respected author beating his wife into a coma and then works backwards to explain him; Lying in Wait begins with a judge's wife admitting to a killing. Strange Sally Diamond won Crime Novel of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards in 2023.

Caroline Kepnes

American · You (2014), Hidden Bodies (2016)

Kepnes was born on Cape Cod in 1976 and, like Flynn, worked as an entertainment reporter for Entertainment Weekly. You is narrated by Joe Goldberg, a New York bookshop manager who becomes obsessed with a customer and addresses her as ‘you’ while he takes over her life. It was adapted for television in 2018 and ran on Netflix until 2025.

Ashley Audrain

Canadian · The Push (2021), The Whispers (2023)

Audrain was born in Newmarket, Ontario, in 1982 and was publicity director at Penguin Canada before writing fiction. The Push is narrated by Blythe, a mother who comes to believe her daughter Violet is dangerous and cannot make her husband believe her. It won the Arthur Ellis Award for best first novel.

Ottessa Moshfegh

American · Eileen (2015), My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

Moshfegh was born in Boston in 1981. Eileen, narrated by a young secretary at a juvenile prison in 1960s Massachusetts who lives with her alcoholic father, won the PEN/Hemingway Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. My Year of Rest and Relaxation follows a young woman in New York who tries to sleep for a year with the help of prescription drugs.

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Margaret Atwood

Canadian · The Handmaid's Tale (1985), Alias Grace (1996)

Atwood was born in Ottawa in 1939. Alias Grace retells the case of Grace Marks, a servant convicted in 1843 of the murders of her employer Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery in Canada West, now Ontario. It won the Giller Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and it never settles whether Grace was guilty.

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