Reading List

Authors Like Lucy Foley

Q: What should I read after The Guest List?

Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None (1939) and Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies (2014): one has the island, the other the hidden victim at a social event.

Q: Does Lucy Foley have a new book?

Yes. Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel, a new Miss Marple mystery set in a Swiss mountain hotel, was published in September 2026.

Q: Which Lucy Foley book should I read first?

Start with The Guest List (2020), her best-known novel, then The Hunting Party (2018), which uses the same closed-circle structure.

Q: Is Lucy Foley writing Miss Marple?

Yes. Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel (2026) continues Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple series.

Before she wrote crime, Lucy Foley worked as a fiction editor at Headline and Hodder & Stoughton. Then came The Hunting Party (2018): old university friends see in the New Year at a remote Highland estate, the snow closes the roads, and one of them dies. In The Guest List (2020) a wedding party gathers on an island off the west coast of Ireland, a body is found during the reception, and the reader is not told whose it is until late in the book. The Paris Apartment (2022) and The Midnight Feast (2024) followed. In September 2026 she published Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel, a new Miss Marple mystery, in which a guest steps into a gondola alive and is found dead at the top of the mountain. The ten writers below share her method: a closed group, a place no one can leave, and secrets that come out one narrator at a time.

By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Psychological thrillers · Closed-circle mysteries · Updated October 2026

Quick answer

If you love Lucy Foley, start with Agatha Christie, whose And Then There Were None (1939) is the original island of suspects, and whose Miss Marple Foley now writes. For friends trapped by snow, read Ruth Ware’s One by One; for a death whose victim is hidden until the end, Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies. Further down are writers who break the rules Foley plays by.

10 authors like Lucy Foley

The original closed circle

Agatha Christie

British · The Murder at the Vicarage (1930), Murder on the Orient Express (1934), And Then There Were None (1939)

Christie was born in Torquay in 1890, worked in a hospital dispensary during the First World War, and wrote 66 detective novels. And Then There Were None, in which ten strangers are lured to an island off the Devon coast, was first published in Britain under a title containing a racial slur, changed for the American edition in 1940. She died in 1976.

Foley’s isolated houses and islands come straight from Christie, and in 2026 she began writing Miss Marple herself. Christie builds the puzzle from the outside; Foley tells it from inside the suspects’ heads.

— Lisanne

Every book by Agatha Christie →

The house that keeps a secret

Daphne du Maurier

British · Jamaica Inn (1936), 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 follows a young second wife at Manderley, where her husband’s dead first wife is present in every room. In 1941 critics pointed out similarities between Rebecca and the Brazilian writer Carolina Nabuco’s A Sucessora (1934); du Maurier said she had never heard of the book.

The grand house in The Midnight Feast and the apartment building in The Paris Apartment work the way Manderley does: the building holds the past, and the newcomer is the last to learn it.

— Lisanne

Every book by Daphne du Maurier →

Inside the killer’s head

Patricia Highsmith

American · Strangers on a Train (1950), The Talented Mr Ripley (1955)

Highsmith was born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1921 and lived most of her later life in Europe. Her five Ripley novels follow a charming murderer who is never caught. Her diaries and notebooks, published in 2021, and her biographers record openly racist and antisemitic views. She died in 1995.

Foley hides who did it; Highsmith tells you at once and makes you watch him get away with it. Read her for the same envy and social climbing inside a privileged circle, with the comfort of a solution taken away.

— Lisanne

Every book by Patricia Highsmith →

The motive, not the mystery

Ruth Rendell

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

Rendell was born in London in 1930 and wrote the Inspector Wexford novels alongside darker standalone books, some as Barbara Vine. A Judgement in Stone names the killer, her victims and her motive in its first sentence. She was made a life peer in 1997 and died in 2015.

Rendell argues with the whodunit Foley writes: the question is never who, only why. Her Barbara Vine novels share Foley’s interest in family secrets that wait decades to come out.

— Lisanne

Every book by Ruth Rendell →

A clique and a killing

Donna Tartt

American · The Secret History (1992), The Goldfinch (2013)

Tartt was born in Greenwood, Mississippi, in 1963. The Secret History follows a small group of classics students at a Vermont college and reveals in its prologue that they killed one of their own. The Goldfinch won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2014.

The Hunting Party has the same cast as The Secret History: clever, privileged friends from university, bound together by what one of them knows. Tartt is slower and more literary, and tells you the crime on the first page.

— Lisanne

Every book by Donna Tartt →

Ireland, and the friends who lie

Tana French

Irish · In the Woods (2007), The Likeness (2008), The Searcher (2020)

French was born in Vermont in 1973, grew up in Ireland, Italy and Malawi, and trained as an actor in Dublin. In the Woods, the first of her Dublin Murder Squad novels, won the Edgar Award for best first novel. The Likeness sends a detective undercover into a house shared by five students.

The Likeness is the closest thing to a Foley plot on this list: a tight group in a big old house, and a death they are all hiding something about. French goes deeper into character and leaves more unresolved.

— Lisanne

Every book by Tana French →

Two narrators, one marriage

Gillian Flynn

American · Sharp Objects (2006), Gone Girl (2012)

Flynn was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1971 and worked as a critic at Entertainment Weekly. Gone Girl alternates between a husband suspected of his wife’s disappearance and the wife’s diary, and she wrote the screenplay for David Fincher’s 2014 film.

Foley’s rotating, unreliable narrators owe a lot to Gone Girl, which made the twist in the telling the point. Flynn is angrier and darker about women and what they are expected to be.

— Lisanne

Every book by Gillian Flynn →

Snowed in with old friends

Ruth Ware

British · In a Dark, Dark Wood (2015), The Woman in Cabin 10 (2016), One by One (2020)

Ware grew up in Sussex and worked as a waitress, bookseller and press officer before her first thriller. In a Dark, Dark Wood sets a hen party in a glass house in a Northumberland forest; One by One traps a tech start-up’s staff in a ski chalet in the French Alps after an avalanche.

The closest living match: Ware and Foley both write the weekend away that goes wrong, the old friendship with a secret in it, and the remote place nobody can leave. One by One pairs naturally with Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel.

— Lisanne

Who is the body?

Liane Moriarty

Australian · Big Little Lies (2014), Nine Perfect Strangers (2018), Here One Moment (2024)

Moriarty was born in Sydney in 1966 and worked in advertising before writing fiction. Big Little Lies opens with a death at a school trivia night and withholds who died until the end; it became an HBO series in 2017. Nine Perfect Strangers gathers its cast at a remote health retreat.

The Guest List uses Moriarty’s trick: a death at a social event, told in many voices, with the victim kept back. Moriarty is funnier and more interested in marriages and school-gate politics.

— Lisanne

Every book by Liane Moriarty →

A closed town in the heat

Jane Harper

Australian · The Dry (2016), The Lost Man (2018), Exiles (2022)

Harper was born in Manchester in 1980, moved to Australia as a child and worked as a journalist. In The Dry a federal agent returns to his drought-stricken hometown for the funeral of a childhood friend accused of killing his family.

Harper swaps Foley’s snow and sea for drought and distance, but the shape is the same: a small community, an old secret and nobody able to leave. She writes the landscape as the trap.

— Lisanne

Every book by Jane Harper →

Where to start if you loved Lucy Foley

If you loved The Guest List, read Agatha Christie.

And Then There Were None: ten guests on an island, and no way off.

If you loved The Hunting Party, read Ruth Ware.

One by One: colleagues snowed into an Alpine chalet after an avalanche.

If you loved the old friends with a secret, read Donna Tartt.

The Secret History: a college clique, a murder, and the years afterwards.

If you want the rules broken, read Ruth Rendell.

A Judgement in Stone: killer, victims and motive, all in the first sentence.

If you want more Lucy Foley, start with The Guest List.

Then read The Hunting Party (2018), The Paris Apartment (2022), The Midnight Feast (2024) and her Miss Marple novel Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel (2026).

Frequently asked questions about authors like Lucy Foley

Who writes like Lucy Foley?

Agatha Christie, Ruth Ware and Liane Moriarty are the closest. Christie invented the closed circle Foley uses, Ware writes the same weekend away that goes wrong, and Moriarty hides the victim the way The Guest List does.

What should I read after The Guest List?

Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None (1939) and Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies (2014): one has the island, the other the hidden victim at a social event.

Is Lucy Foley like Ruth Ware?

Very. Both are British, both write remote settings, old friendships and several narrators with something to hide. Ware’s One by One is the closest match to The Hunting Party.

Does Lucy Foley have a new book?

Yes. Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel, a new Miss Marple mystery set in a Swiss mountain hotel, was published in September 2026.

Which Lucy Foley book should I read first?

Start with The Guest List (2020), her best-known novel, then The Hunting Party (2018), which uses the same closed-circle structure.

Is Lucy Foley writing Miss Marple?

Yes. Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel (2026) continues Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple series.

Sources

List last reviewed 31 October 2026.

Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. Every comparison here is a judgement about method and subject, not an algorithmic match. See more on her personal bookshelf.

Authors Like Lucy Foley

10 authors like Lucy Foley

Agatha Christie

Daphne du Maurier

Patricia Highsmith

Ruth Rendell

Donna Tartt

Tana French

Gillian Flynn

Ruth Ware

Liane Moriarty

Jane Harper

Where to start if you loved Lucy Foley

Frequently asked questions about authors like Lucy Foley

Who writes like Lucy Foley?

What should I read after The Guest List?

Is Lucy Foley like Ruth Ware?

Does Lucy Foley have a new book?

Which Lucy Foley book should I read first?

Is Lucy Foley writing Miss Marple?

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