Mysteries to Read While Waiting for the New Season of Dead to Me

Who is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews is a stylish character-driven psychological thriller that’s the perfect book for fans of Dead to Me, especially if you love the show for its strong female main characters. This novel follows the story of Florence Dixon, a low-level publishing employee who believes she’s destined for greatness. And when she’s offered a job as the assistant to a brilliant novelist known by the pseudonym Maud Dixon, Florence feels like her chance has finally come. No one knows Maud’s true identity, and the author (who Florence discovers is really named Helen Wilcox) prefers to keep it that way. But when tragedy strikes, Florence realizes that no one knows Maud Dixon’s true identity, and it would be easy enough for Florence to claim the author’s success (and her very identity) as her own.

Her Three Lives is a domestic thriller that turns dark, a story that should appeal to fans of the Netflix series Dead to Me. Up-and-coming social media influencer Jade Thompson has a successful career, a beautiful home, and a handsome fiancé. But then a home invasion shatters their perfect life, and as suspicions rise in the aftermath of the attack, cracks in the couple’s seemingly perfect relationship start to come to the surface.

Guillaume Musso’s Central Park is a novel featuring an unlikely duo teaming up, much like Jen and Judy in Dead to Me. Alice is a Parisian cop who awakens to find herself handcuffed on a park bench with no memory of the night before or how she got there. But that’s not all. She’s handcuffed to an American jazz musician named Gabriel who also claims to have no memory of what happened. They’ll have to work together over the next 24 hours to figure out what happened to them before it’s too late.

Love the twists and surprises in Dead to Me? Then you’ll want to pick up The Family by Louise Jensen. Like Dead to Me, this novel also follows the story of a newly widowed woman. Laura is grieving the sudden death of her husband and struggling to find a way to financially support herself and her teenage daughter Tilly. So when a local community called Oak Leaf Organics offer Laura and Tilly a home, Laura is relieved and grateful. As soon as they settle into their new life, however, suspicious and sinister things begin happening right away.

In The Invitation by Rachel Abbott, a group of friends gather together the night before a wedding, and tragedy strikes. A year later, the friends reunite to play a game. Someone remembers more about that tragic night than they’re letting on, and the group of friends are going to get to the bottom of it by playing this game. Like Netflix’s Dead to Me, The Invitation is a suspenseful story that sees characters testing their friendships and loyalties to one another.

If your favorite things about Dead to Me are the morally gray characters and the sharp dialogue, then check out The Others by Sarah Blau. In this dark, witty thriller, Dina Kaminer—a celebrated feminist scholar—is found murdered with the word “mother” carved into her forehead. Dina’s oldest friend Sheila sees the word as a warning. Two decades earlier, she and Dina joined a group of women in a pact to never have children. Now, more and more women from that pact are turning up dead, and Sheila worries she’s next.