Books Like Listen for the Lie: 9 Thrillers That Lie to Your Face

According to the Pew Research Center’s 2023 research on true crime podcasts, they are the most common topic in the American charts, making up almost a quarter of the top shows. They also found women who listen to podcasts are nearly twice as likely as men to regularly listen to a true crime show. So Amy Tintera writing a novel where a hit true crime podcast reopens the murder of a woman’s best friend, with the woman herself as the prime suspect, was genius.

I came to thrillers through comedy. I did standup and improv five nights a week, first in Shanghai (which I chronicle in my memoir Where to Nest) and then in Los Angeles. When COVID closed the stages I started writing books instead and never went back. My editor has opinions about this. Her note, verbatim: “We need to take this joke out right here because this scene is supposed to be scary!”

This is one of the reasons I love Lucy Chase, the main character in Listen for the Lie. Kirkus calls her strong and prickly. Five years after her best friend was beaten to death, Lucy drives back into the town that decided she did it, to go to her grandmother’s birthday party, and she cracks jokes the entire way through it. So I went looking for nine more books like Listen for the Lie. My rule was that the liar had to be somebody the narrator had known for years, and the person doing the asking had to be the worst possible candidate for the job.

What Makes a Book Feel Like Listen for the Lie?

It starts with Lucy. Deadline describes it as a night Lucy cannot remember anything about. Lucy has to ask the people who hate her what she did that night, and then decide which of them is lying to her.

The second is there’s a reason a closed case needs to be revisited. Ben Owens is a podcaster, so he cannot compel anybody in Plumpton to say a word to him. What he has is a few hundred thousand listeners. The neighbor who shut the door on the police in 2019 sits down at her own kitchen table and talks to him for an hour. Anybody who has finished a season of a true crime podcast already knows what it sounds like when a stranger with a microphone starts asking questions about somebody else’s town.

The third is tone. Tintera is very funny in places where a thriller is usually solemn, and that mix is most of what people mean when they go looking for books similar to Listen for the Lie. It is also what makes the shelf hard to shop, because most readalike lists sort for atmosphere and never mention whether a book is funny. If dark comedy is the specific thing you want, I keep a separate list of funny mystery novels that are unhinged in the same direction.

Why Is Everyone Talking About Listen for the Lie Right Now?

Because it is headed for television. According to Deadline’s April 2026 report, Rachel Shukert will write and executive produce an adaptation in the works at Peacock, with Sue Naegle and Ali Krug producing through Dinner Party Productions alongside Tintera herself. So a Listen for the Lie TV series is in development, and everyone who read it when it came out is asking the same question again.

The awards came after all that. Tintera’s own site lists it as a New York Times bestseller, a Good Morning America Book Club pick, and a 2025 Edgar Award nominee for Best Novel. Kirkus puts the town at Plumpton, Texas, and names the dead girl as Savannah Harper. In the Listen for the Lie book Lucy cannot get a coffee without passing somebody who thinks she is a murderer, and every one of those people turns up to her grandmother’s birthday party.

And if you are here looking for a Listen for the Lie sequel, Celadon lists none. Celadon’s page lists Tintera’s next adult thriller as The Worst Wife, described there as a darkly humorous, twisted mystery, so the Amy Tintera books to line up next are that one and the backlist. In the meantime, the nine below are the closest matches I have read.

How I Picked These Books

I read small town murder mystery books both because I love them and to study how a writer keeps a whole town of suspects straight without losing the reader, which is a craft problem I have to solve in my own books. My criteria for this includes:

1. The liar has to be somebody she already knows: a stranger with a secret is just a plot. In almost all of these the person doing the lying has been at the dinner table for years, and in one of them it is the narrator herself. That is what makes the betrayal cost you something as a reader.
2. The digging has to cost the person doing it: nobody here has a badge or a partner waiting in the car. Whoever asks the questions pays for every answer in standing or in sleep. You feel the price going up.
3. The ending has to hold up when you go back: I judged the last stretch hardest, then reread the opening chapter to see whether the writer had played straight with me the whole time. Every book below survives that test, which means you get a second read out of it.

The 9 Best Books Like Listen for the Lie

1. I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai (2023)

A film professor and podcaster named Bodie Kane is invited back to the New Hampshire boarding school where she spent four years she describes as largely miserable, and gets pulled into the 1995 murder of her classmate Thalia Keith and the conviction of the school’s athletic trainer, Omar Evans. Makkai’s own page for the book calls the flaws in that case increasingly apparent. Start here if the podcast half of Listen for the Lie is what hooked you.

This is the one I hand to readers who want a novelist to interrogate the true crime machine while she uses it. Makkai keeps noticing that every adult who was at Granby in 1995 remembers a version of Thalia that happens to be convenient for them, and that Bodie is not exempt from that. The prose is doing literary work underneath a plot that behaves like a thriller, which is how its Wikipedia entry comes to record six weeks on the New York Times bestseller list alongside a Carol Shields Prize longlisting. It is 448 pages and it moves; bleak, with jokes in the corners.

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2. Perfect Modern Wife by Kristen Van Nest (2025)

What inspired me to write Perfect Modern Wife was finding myself having the same conversation over and over again: a lot of my friends were out-earning their male partners but still expected to do all the cooking and cleaning when they came home exhausted from work. And this is becoming even more common. According to a King’s College London study, one out of three Gen Z men agree a wife should always obey her husband, compared to only one out of ten Baby Boomer men. That means Gen Z men are twice as likely as Boomers to hold traditional views about decision-making in marriage, and 24% believe women shouldn’t appear “too independent or self-sufficient.” While all this was going on, my high school homecoming king married one of the most famous farm trad wife influencers.

In the book, successful executive Audrey visits her old friend Jessica at a wellness retreat run by their estranged friend-turned-#tradwife influencer McKinley. Audrey expects organic smoothies and sunset selfies. Instead, she finds McKinley crawling across the kitchen floor at 3 AM, hands raw and bleeding, chanting about being the “perfect modern wife.” As Laura Donovan, Business Insider writer and author, summed it up, this 53-page survive-the-night psychological thriller novella is: “Don’t Worry Darling meets Blink Twice meets… what could be the not so far off future under our current administration.”

It is on this list because everybody at that retreat is lying to Audrey with a pie in their hands, and because she cannot get one straight answer about where her friend is. One reviewer got the register better than my own jacket copy did: ★★★★★ “…the balance of psychological tension and dark humor makes the experience both chilling and entertaining.” — Sarah, Goodreads Reviewer.

It has been optioned by horror writer/director Joanna Tsanis to turn into a film. And if you want to read my book, lucky for you, I’m currently giving away this book like Listen for the Lie for free. Get it before this promo ends!

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3. The It Girl by Ruth Ware (2022)

April was the first person Hannah met at Oxford, and by the end of that year April was dead. A decade later Hannah and Will are expecting their first child, the man convicted of the murder has died in prison, and a young journalist turns up with evidence that throws it all into doubt. Ware’s own page puts the question the book runs on: did Hannah’s testimony put an innocent man in prison? Read this one if what you want is the friend-shaped hole rather than the podcast.

Ware understands Hannah’s position better than anybody else on this list. Hannah was the witness, so reopening the case means reopening her own account of herself as a student, and the book is honest about how much of that account was put together by a grieving student being asked leading questions. Ware’s own page ends on the line that should worry you: if the killer was not the man they convicted, it is someone she knows. Per Ruth Ware’s Wikipedia entry this is her 2022 novel, and Gallery/Scout Press runs it to 464 pages. There is not a single joke in it, so save it for a night you have free.

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4. Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson (2023)

Ernest Cunningham is driving to a Cunningham family reunion he is already dreading, a storm strands everybody at the mountain resort, and then a body turns up in the snow. The Cunninghams have exactly one thing in common, which is that every single one of them has killed somebody. Penguin’s synopsis opens with the narrator’s own line: “I was dreading the Cunningham family reunion even before the first murder.” Take this one if you want the funniest book on the list.

Ern narrates by the rules of Golden Age detective fiction, promising upfront that he will not cheat you, which sounds insufferable and is the most fun I have had with a mystery in years. It also fits the brief precisely, because every liar snowed in at that resort is a relative, and Ern is the one who has to prove which relative did this particular one. Deadline reported in August 2026 that Amazon MGM Studios ordered a series with Penn Badgley starring and David Hemingson showrunning, after an earlier attempt at HBO. HarperCollins has the US edition at 384 pages under its Mariner imprint.

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5. All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers (2022)

Margot Davies was six when her next-door neighbor January Jacobs was murdered, and she has grown up into a big-city journalist who cannot leave it alone. Then a five-year-old called Natalie Clark goes missing from the next town over under circumstances that rhyme. Penguin Random House’s page lays out both threads. For readers who want the true crime industry written by somebody inside it.

Flowers hosts Crime Junkie, which her Wikipedia entry records at ten million weekly listeners, and her debut novel became a New York Times bestseller after its release on August 16, 2022. What she is good at is the part of small town murder mystery books that outsiders get wrong, which is the way a town closes ranks around a dead child and settles on a story that lets everybody stay neighbors. This is the bleakest one here and there is no comedy in it anywhere.

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6. The Night Swim by Megan Goldin (2020)

Rachel Krall is a household name because of her true crime podcast, and the new season takes her to a small town being torn apart by a rape trial: the accused is a local golden boy destined for Olympic swimming, and the complainant is the beloved granddaughter of the police chief. Then the letters start arriving about a girl called Jenny Stills. The publisher’s listing has the setup. This is the one to take if you want the podcast structure played completely straight.

The letters are why this one stays with you. Somebody has been writing to Rachel to say that Jenny Stills did not drown, and the official version says she did. It is the angriest book on this list by a mile, and Goldin does not let you laugh once. Have a plan for what you read afterwards.

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7. How to Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie (2022)

Grace Bernard is in prison for a murder she did not commit, which is inconvenient, because the US edition opens on a narrator who has calmly killed six members of her own family by the age of twenty-eight. Her absentee millionaire father rejected her dying mother’s pleas for help, so Grace worked through his relatives one at a time. The Overlook Press describes it as a darkly funny thriller about a social-climbing serial killer eliminating her wealthy relatives. Take it if you want the narrator to be the liar.

Lucy cannot remember her night; Grace remembers every one of hers and would like to tell you about them in detail. The class rage is the real content here, and the Overlook edition runs 368 pages that I can only describe as MEAN, in the most enjoyable way. Mackie’s Wikipedia entry records that Netflix commissioned an adaptation in 2024 with Anya Taylor-Joy attached to star.

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8. Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent (2023)

Reclusive Sally Diamond tries to incinerate her dead father, and the widespread outrage that follows thrusts her into the media spotlight. Gallery/Scout Press describes what comes next: the repressed memories of a horrific early childhood, and a man watching her from the other side of the world who calls her Mary. Pick this one if you want the lie told by the people who raised her.

Nugent writes the most uncomfortable books in Irish crime fiction, and I mean that as a recommendation. Sally is funny without any idea that she is being funny, which is a very hard trick, and Nugent never once invites you to laugh at her. The US edition came from Gallery/Scout Press in July 2024, and the novel won the Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book of the Year at the 2023 Irish Book Awards. Content warning for captivity and child abuse. Nugent keeps it off the page and you feel it anyway.

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9. We Were Never Here by Andrea Bartz (2021)

Emily is on her annual reunion trip with her best friend Kristen, in the mountains of Chile, and walks into their hotel suite to find blood and broken glass and a dead backpacker. Kristen says he attacked her. Bartz’s own site puts the worst part plainly: the scene is horrifyingly similar to last year’s trip, when another backpacker wound up dead. For readers who want the friendship itself to be the crime scene.

It closes the list because it asks the same question Lucy spends her whole book on, which is how well anybody knows the friend who knows them best. Emily spends the book doing what Lucy does, auditing a friendship for evidence, except Emily has the additional problem of being the alibi. It was a Reese’s Book Club pick and an instant New York Times bestseller, peaking at number three per its Wikipedia entry, and The Hollywood Reporter has a Netflix feature in the works from Berlanti/Schechter Films.

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What These Books Get Right About Being the Suspect

Every book here runs on one fact that crime fiction usually skips: the first person a small town suspects is whoever is standing closest, and after that, the suspicion never fully lifts. Lucy moves to Los Angeles and it follows her there. Hannah builds a decade of new life before a journalist turns up on her doorstep. Margot Davies has a press card and a byline and is still, at home, the girl who lived next door.

Almost nobody in these books has an institution behind them. No unit, no evidence room, nobody to check the story against. When they want a fact they have to go ask somebody who has every reason to lie to them, in that person’s kitchen, and then drive home and decide alone whether they believed it. That is the suspense engine in most podcast thriller books.

The towns in these books are full of people who settled on a version of events years ago and then built friendships and jobs on top of it, so reopening the case asks them to give up a great deal more than the truth is worth to them. I grew up in a town like that, and the neighbors in these novels are exactly right. Unfailingly polite and no use to anybody. If that is what you are here for, I built a whole list around it in thrillers where nobody believes her, and there is a domestic-suspense version of the same pressure in my books like The Housemaid list.

What to Read Next

If it is the jokes you are chasing, go straight to my list of funny thriller books, which ranks the ones that are actually funny and has Listen for the Lie on it too. For the ordinary-woman-versus-everyone shape, authors like Gillian McAllister gives you nine writers and the right book to start each one on.

FAQ: Books Like Listen for the Lie

What Are the Best Books Like Listen for the Lie?

The closest matches are I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai, The It Girl by Ruth Ware, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson, All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers, The Night Swim by Megan Goldin, How to Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie, Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent and We Were Never Here by Andrea Bartz. Perfect Modern Wife by Kristen Van Nest is number two on this list. One reviewer described McKinley, the friend running the retreat, in a way that would fit half this shelf: “You’re never quite sure if she’s a victim, a true believer, or something much darker.” — –Keres–, Goodreads Reviewer.

Is There a Listen for the Lie Sequel?

Not so far. Celadon’s page lists no sequel and gives Tintera’s next adult thriller as The Worst Wife, which it describes as a darkly humorous, twisted mystery. So the Amy Tintera books to queue up next are that one and her backlist, and the Listen for the Lie book you already own contains all of Lucy’s story.

Is Listen for the Lie Being Made Into a TV Show?

Yes. Deadline reported in April 2026 that Rachel Shukert will write and executive produce an adaptation in the works at Peacock, produced by Dinner Party Productions with Sue Naegle and Ali Krug, alongside Tintera. No cast or air date for the Listen for the Lie TV series has been announced, so anything you read about casting is speculation.

Which of These Books Are Funny and Which Are Bleak?

The funny ones are Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone, which is close to a comedy, and How to Kill Your Family, which is very funny and also mean. Strange Sally Diamond is funny in an uncomfortable way you may not want at bedtime. The Night Swim and All Good People Here have no jokes in them at all, and The It Girl is a straight thriller. Pick by what you can handle at midnight.

What Should I Read With Only One Evening?

Take Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone if you want the fun version, or my 53-page novella if you want the whole shape of this genre in one sitting. If it is short and creepy you are after more generally, I keep a list of short horror books that are all finishable in a night.

Are These Small Town Murder Mystery Books or Podcast Thriller Books?

Both, and that overlap is exactly why books similar to Listen for the Lie are so hard to shop for. All Good People Here, The Night Swim and I Have Some Questions for You all run on a reporter or podcaster reopening a case in a town that had closed it. The It Girl, We Were Never Here and Strange Sally Diamond keep the closed-community pressure and drop the microphone. If you want the version where nobody can leave the building at all, that is my list of books like The Guest List.

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