Riley Sager

New York Times bestselling thriller novelist Riley Sager writes from the intersection of what entertains him and what he knows readers have come to love and expect from a Riley Sager novel.

- Amy Jones

It’s the perfect combination of an atmospheric setting, disturbing occurrences (e.g., unsolved murders, campers going missing, seemingly haunted houses), characters who are flawed yet redeemable, and of course, an ending you'll never see coming. With his ninth book published in June, for the ninth year in a row, Sager knows exactly the kind of experience he wants to give his readers. “I always want my books to be something that you can read on a summer night and still get a little chill, but not be truly scared,” he says. “I love mood. I love atmosphere. I love spooky movies that might not be all that scary, but just a little bit of spookiness goes a long way.”

Part of why that “little bit of spookiness” works in his novels is because Sager is always trying to do something slightly different from what he’s written before. He says, “I’ve been trying with my past few books to expand the boundaries a little bit of what a Riley Sager book could be. And so, we have: It’s set entirely on a train in the '50s [With a Vengeance]. Before that, it was a male narrator in suburbia [Middle of the Night], and before that, it’s Lizzie Borden—but not really—on a cliffside mansion in Maine [The Only One Left]. There is always this purposeful nudging because every writer wants to grow their readership while still retaining the readers that they had.”