Thrillers and mysteries sell differently than any other genre. Readers do not just finish them, they immediately hand them to someone else and demand they read it too. These are the best selling thriller and mystery novels of all time, the books that turned a page turning plot into decades, sometimes a century, of steady sales. For a broader look at all time bestsellers, see our highest selling books of all time roundup.
The Best Selling Thriller and Mystery Novels of All Time
| Book | Author | Format | Pages | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| And Then There Were None | Agatha Christie | Paperback | 247 | 4.4 (58,166) |
| The Girl on the Train | Paula Hawkins | Paperback | 336 | 4.1 (496,019) |
| The Silent Patient | Alex Michaelides | Paperback | 368 | 4.4 (419,709) |
| Gone Girl | Gillian Flynn | Paperback | 422 | 4.1 (168,976) |
| The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo | Stieg Larsson | Paperback | 600 | 4.5 (35,975) |
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Ten strangers are lured to an isolated island and killed off one by one, and the mystery of who is responsible has never lost its grip on readers since 1939. It is widely cited as the best selling mystery novel ever written and one of the best selling novels in any genre, and its Amazon listing still carries a #1 Best Seller badge nearly ninety years later.
Verified Amazon details: William Morrow Paperbacks, reissue published 18 January 2011, paperback, 247 pages, rated 4.4 out of 5 from 58,166 ratings, #1 Best Seller in British and Irish Horror at the time of writing.
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
An unreliable narrator watches a couple from her train window every day, until the woman she has been imagining a life for disappears. It became one of the fastest selling adult thrillers of the decade and helped ignite the domestic thriller boom that later titles on this list rode as well.
Verified Amazon details: Riverhead Books, reprint published 12 July 2016, paperback, 336 pages, rated 4.1 out of 5 from 496,019 ratings at the time of writing.
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
A famous painter shoots her husband and then never speaks another word, and the psychotherapist obsessed with making her talk narrates a story that keeps rewriting itself until the final pages. It became one of the fastest selling adult debut novels of recent years and remains inside Amazon’s overall top 200 books years after release.
Verified Amazon details: Celadon Books, reprint published 4 May 2021, paperback, 368 pages, rated 4.4 out of 5 from 419,709 ratings at the time of writing.
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
A woman vanishes on her fifth wedding anniversary and the husband immediately becomes the prime suspect, in a novel that reinvented the modern psychological thriller and popularised the unreliable narrator twist that countless later bestsellers have borrowed from.
Verified Amazon details: Ballantine Books, reprint published 22 April 2014, paperback, 422 pages, rated 4.1 out of 5 from 168,976 ratings at the time of writing.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
A disgraced journalist and a brilliant, damaged hacker investigate a decades old disappearance that unravels a much darker family history. Published after the author’s death, it became an international phenomenon and launched the bestselling Millennium series that continues to sell in dozens of languages.
Verified Amazon details: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, later printing published 23 June 2009, paperback, 600 pages, book 1 of the Millennium series, rated 4.5 out of 5 from 35,975 ratings at the time of writing.
What Makes a Thriller Sell for Decades
The best selling thriller and mystery novels of all time share a structural trick more than a subject. They plant a question in the first chapter that the reader cannot walk away from, an impossible murder, a missing person, a narrator who might be lying, and they withhold the answer just long enough to make finishing the book feel urgent. That urgency is what turns a single reader into ten, because nobody wants to be the one person in their friend group who has not figured out the twist yet.
Classic mystery versus modern psychological thriller
And Then There Were None represents the classic puzzle box mystery, where the pleasure is in spotting clues alongside the detective. The Silent Patient, Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train represent the modern psychological thriller, where the unreliable narrator and the twist itself are the main event. Both approaches have proven equally durable on bestseller lists, just decades apart.
Best Selling Thriller and Mystery Novels FAQ
What is the best selling mystery novel of all time?
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie is widely cited as the best selling mystery novel ever written, with estimates of over 100 million copies sold since 1939.
Which modern thriller sold the fastest?
The Girl on the Train and The Silent Patient are both frequently cited among the fastest selling adult thrillers of the past decade, based on publisher reporting at the time of release.
Should I start with the book or the film adaptation?
All five of these titles have film or television adaptations, but the books consistently include more red herrings and internal narration that the screen versions cut for time, so reading first tends to preserve more of the mystery.
Final Word on the Best Selling Thrillers and Mysteries Ever
From a 1939 island mystery to a 2019 psychological thriller, the best selling thriller and mystery novels of all time prove that a well built question never goes out of style. For more evergreen picks, browse our highest selling books of all time list, and for what is trending in fiction right now, see our dark romance books breaking BookTok in 2026.
