The Best Page-Turners for Commuters 

Looking for a little yearning with your 9-to-5? Bestselling author Emma Brodie has you covered with this “beautiful tale of star-crossed lovers” that “alternately burns with a fiery romance and crackles with whimsical nerdy delights” (Publishers Weekly; Nikki Erlick, author of The Measure). 

AJ Graves dreams of writing for Saturday Night Live but fears she’ll never escape a dead-end job behind the counter of the video rental store in her small Massachusetts town. 

That is, until the arrival of Noah Drew changes everything. However, his arrival only precedes his disappearance in this “messy, yearning, character-driven love story” about the inescapable pull of soul mates (Martha Stewart).

Hailed by a panel of experts as the “best locked room mystery of all time,” this classic whodunit by John Dickson Carr recently made a major appearance (under its British title The Hollow Man) in the newest Knives Out mystery, Wake Up Dead Man. 

Besides a must-read for fans of that film, The Three Coffins really is one of the most riveting mystery novels of the golden age of detective fiction, starring Carr’s popular series protagonist, Dr. Gideon Fell, who must solve not just one but two impossible murders. 

Famed for its legendary and fourth-wall-breaking “Locked Room Lecture,” The Three Coffins is filled front to back with similar delights, and “one is always sure of a good crime puzzle and excellent entertainment” when reading anything by the “master of the impossible crime” (New York Times; Publishers Weekly).

Did you ever want to be able to read a classic film noir that’s also a con story that’s also a love story—maybe more than one? You’ll be able to when the latest novel from bestselling author Silvia Moreno-Garcia hits stands. 

“A pulpy noir-telenovela mashup that would make James M. Cain jealous,” The Intrigue is “clever, taut, and just flat-out fun” (Los Angeles Times; Kirkus Reviews).

Telling the “devilish tale of a con man in 1940s Mexico who meets his match in the niece of his latest victim,” this is for fans of The Postman Always Rings Twice and classic crime movies—all with a decidedly modern twist, as only Silvia Moreno Garcia can provide (Publishers Weekly).

Soon to be a major motion picture, this scientifically plausible thriller sees Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Kraus bringing “the rigor of a scientist and the sensibility of a poet” to a “deep-sea thrill ride [that] will have readers on the edge of their seats” (New York Times; Publishers Weekly). 

Jay Gardiner is grappling with the demons left behind by his father’s suicide when he finds himself plunged into a much more immediate problem: the belly of a sixty-ton sperm whale that has swallowed him during a dive. 

With only an hour until his oxygen runs out, he has to find a way to save himself in this “moving character study disguised as a riveting, cinematic survival thriller” (Booklist).

From the bestselling author of Baseball Life Advice comes this “brutally honest and eloquently crafted” new memoir of “infertility, motherhood, and the worry and work demanded of women” (Publishers Weekly). 

For those who prefer to read something immediate and personal on their way to and from work, The Lost Season gives a glimpse into the author’s relationship to the sport she writes about so memorably, to motherhood, her struggles with infertility, her own anxieties, and even her relationship with horror movies—where you might actually find a quote from a familiar name. 

Declared one of Indigo’s Most Anticipated Books of 2026, the only problem will be putting it down once you make it to the office.

Japanese horror writer Sesuji became something of a viral sensation in his native Japan thanks to his stories inspired by found footage horror and internet “creepypasta” videos. 

This influence came full circle when Koji Shiraishi, a legend in Japanese found footage horror circles, made the movie adaptation of Seseji’s novel About a Place in the Kinki Region.

The novel itself reads like a found document, allegedly made up of blog posts, YouTube video transcripts, magazine articles, and more, tracing the disappearance of an editor who was working on an article about mysterious happenings in the eponymous region of Japan. 

The joy of tugging at the many disparate threads is what makes this unputdownable book a perfect read for your next commute.

Jean Ray has been hailed as the “Belgian Poe,” but too few of his stories have been translated into English—until this recent series from Wakefield Press and translator Scott Nicolay. 

While Jean Ray’s best-known book might be Malpertuis (which was made into a 1971 movie starring Orson Welles), the best one for your commute is this one-of-a-kind whodunit that’s been described as “Miss Marple meets H. P. Lovecraft.” 

Sidney Triggs is a retired officer in a sleepy town in the British countryside—a town that’s about to get a lot less sleepy as it is plagued by murders, ghost stories, and “a palpable feeling of dislocation and vertigo as, like some mischievous pied piper, Jean Ray leads his readers inexorably to the edge of reason” (The Times Literary Supplement).

Looking for something a bit more nonfictional for your commute? 

Why not pick up this “gleefully grisly cultural history” that’s a “sarcastic, witty and quirky look at the history of a rather simple tool often found at the scene of a crime” (Publishers Weekly; Associated Press). 

Styled as a history of axe murder, from Lizzie Borden to the Axeman’s Jazz, Whack Job is “an engrossing historical analysis of how the axe has evolved as an instrument of change, retribution, and menace” from an author who “knows her stuff” (Booklist; Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine).