There are authors, and then, there are the genre experts. You know, the kind of writers whose works are so perfectly suited to their classification, they set the standard for the entire category? Think about it: What would horror even be without Stephen King? And how did we ever define romance before Nicholas Sparks and Danielle Steel swooped in and made us all fall head over heels for love? Ruth Ware has taken center stage in recent years after bursting onto the mystery-thriller scene like an absolute phoenix with 2015’s In a Dark, Dark Wood. Garnering comparisons to the Queen of Crime, Ms. Agatha Christie herself, Ware quickly established herself as a master of her craft, landing on The New York Times Best Sellers list not long after her first book hit shelves—and the best Ruth Ware books make it easy to see why.
Not to be confused with the young adult novels penned by Ruth Warburton (also Ware, for the record, under a different pen name so as not to confuse her younger fans), the British author's top titles are the perfect blend of mystery and psychological thriller, putting her readers in the mind of the culprit. "Crime and psychology are inseparable really—as readers, we have to understand why someone would do something as extreme as killing another person, something that’s totally foreign to most of us, no matter what the stakes," Ware told Crime Reads. "For the novel to work, we readers have to be persuaded that that’s plausible."
Not sure where to start? We've ranked all of Ware's most gripping works, including The Woman in Suite 11, the sequel to her smash-hit The Woman in Cabin 10. (You might have caught the new Keira Knightley-led Netflix film.) Below, find the best Ruth Ware books, ranked, from “readable” to “mind-blowing page-turner.”
It’s almost a unanimous truth amongst Ware’s fans that her 2017 novel The Lying Game is the weakest link in her literary arsenal. The premise is promising enough: Four former friends are forced to face the consequences of the lies they told in boarding school after years spent trying to forget. But the slower pace of this one, which spends more time on the scenery than the character development, doesn’t compare to the regular pearl-clutching suspense Ware's readers are used to feeling.
Zero Days certainly isn’t slow. However, fans say it’s a departure from Ware’s other works because it’s so jam-packed with action, à la Mr. & Mrs. Smith. (And not so incidentally, it’s about a husband-and-wife duo who break into buildings and hack their security systems.) But without the usual gothic atmosphere and style she’s come to be known for, Ware’s 2023 book falls flat for some. Perhaps it'll do better on the small screen—Universal International Studios has already optioned it for a series.
As the long-awaited sequel to The Woman in Cabin 10 (seriously, fans waited nearly a decade for its release), The Woman in Suite 11 is easy enough to get back into the swing of and receives plenty of praise for its quick and thrilling pace. Still, it’s not Ware’s best, with some expressing disappointment that its heroine, Lo Blacklock, didn’t mature as much as she should’ve in the 10 years despite becoming a wife and a mother. It seems she learned little from her work vacay gone wrong, and unfortunately for Lo, she’s headed out on another for a billionaire’s luxury hotel launch.
Ware's 2024 novel is like Love Island gone very, very wrong. The reality TV-inspired book follows Lyla and her movie star boyfriend, Nico, as they head to Ever After Island to compete for a shot to be crowned "the perfect couple" on national TV. The characters embody cliches galore (to be expected for a book about reality show contestants, no?), and the villain is obvious, making this one a bit hit or miss. Even still, the plot's survivalist turns are entertaining enough to keep you invested.
Ware has said in interviews that she spent years hiding her novels under the bed, thinking they weren’t good enough, but her debut novel, In a Dark, Dark Wood, earned instant acclaim and hit The New York Times Best Sellers list early on. Even more so: Reese Witherspoon's production company, Hello Sunshine, snatched up the rights to the book’s film, which is still in early development. All of that is even more impressive, considering this book is just middle-of-the-road in the Ware catalog. It's set at a hen party, or British bachelorette party, where protagonist Nora Shaw winds up in the hospital, unable to recall what happened while celebrating her former BFF’s impending nuptials.
The copious characters of this novel about life at a start-up app company are being picked off “one by one” during their off-site company retreat in the French Alps. But Ware offers so many to keep track of that it can be difficult to keep ‘em all straight. Still, if you’ve got the wherewithal for it, it’s an entertaining, little locked-room mystery—some have even said Christie-esque.
“A feeling of overwhelming wrongness” is how one Goodreads reviewer described Ware’s twisted tale about a tarot card reader named Hal who comes into a large sum of money with the passing of old Mrs. Westaway. Only old Mrs. Westaway’s a stranger, and the more connections Hal uncovers about her deceased benefactor, the creepier things get. In short? It’s Ware in all her gothic mystery glory.
As fans of Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train will tell you, there’s something deeply unsettling about not being able to trust your own memory. The Woman in Cabin 10 takes that idea and runs with it, courtesy of heroine Lo Blacklock, who swears she saw a woman go overboard on the cruise ship she’s aboard. But Lo was tipsy when it happened, all passengers were accounted for, and no one wants to hear what she has to say. The whodunnit of it all keeps the reader's attention right up to the end. It was one of Goodreads’s most popular books when it was published in 2016, and, years later, it's still undeniably Ware's most famous and one of her most gripping books.
Topping even Ware’s most well-known novel is her 2022 story of on-campus mayhem. The It Girl follows Oxford University’s very own Serena van der Woodsen, April Clarke-Cliveden, who winds up dead after just one year, and her recently formed bestie, Hannah Jones. A decade after April's death, Hannah is content enough to let sleeping dogs lie when it comes to her killer, Oxford porter John Neville. Except he might not actually be the killer, and the school “friends” Hannah thought she knew might have a terrible secret they’ve been hiding for years. The It Girl is juicy, it’s a page-turner, and it’s a must-read for Ware stans.
Topping the list of the best Ruth Ware novels is her homage to Henry James's 1898 gothic horror The Turn of the Screw. Mystery lovers all but devoured this modern take about a live-in nanny in a remote Victorian home who winds up in prison for the murder of her charges. She swears she’s innocent, which means someone else isn’t—and the twists and turns this mystery takes to find out who left readers with chills, goosebumps, and nails bitten down to the quick. Don’t say we didn’t warn you…
What is Ruth Ware’s most popular book?
2016’s The Woman in Cabin is widely cited as Ruth Ware’s most popular book. While it’s unknown exactly how many copies have been sold, Ware’s publisher Simon & Schuster cites it as a “multi-million copy mega-hit,” indicating that it accounts for a large portion of the more than 10 million books she’s sold collectively worldwide.
This is also the first of Ware’s novels to get the Hollywood treatment, with Netflix’s film adaptation starring Knightley being released on Oct. 10, 2025.
Which Ruth Ware books are being adapted into movies or TV series?
So far, one of Ware’s books, The Woman in Cabin 10, has been adapted for film, with two more set to follow suit and another in development for a series.
The Netflix version of Ware’s smash hit took some liberties with the script—particularly when it comes to the ending—but Ware was aware of the changes. "I think it was right to go a different direction," she told PEOPLE. "The twists and turns in the book would've been impossible to pull off onscreen…It's a first-person book, so we never know what's going on outside of what Lo can see and tell us."
Next up from the British author’s collection will likely be her über-popular debut, In a Dark, Dark Wood. The 2015 novel is in development at New Line with none other than book club queen Reese Witherspoon on board to produce.
In 2023, Universal International Studios beat out 10 other bidders for the rights to Ware’s Zero Days, according to Deadline. Updates on this one are slim, but fans on #BookTok are having fun guessing who might play husband-and-wife hackers Jack and Gabe.
The Lying Game is also coming, but doesn't have a release date quite yet. With news of its development at Prime Video breaking in October 2025, it may take a while to come to fruition. Still, it's making progress: Killing Eve's Suzanne Heathcote is attached to write, and Ware is set to co-executive produce.
How to read Ruth Ware’s books in order:
If you’re looking to read Ruth Ware’s adult novels chronologically, you’ll want to start with In a Dark, Dark Wood (2015), followed by The Woman in Cabin 10 (2016), The Lying Game (2017), The Death of Mrs. Westaway (2018), The Turn of the Key (2019), and One by One (2020). Ware took a two-year hiatus after that before returning with The It Girl (2022), Zero Days (2023), One Perfect Couple (2024), and The Woman in Suite 11 (2025).
Why Trust Us
At Marie Claire, we're voracious readers who love everything from literary fiction and memoirs to the romantasy novels that #BookTok can't put down. We're up on both legendary authors and the rising names whose new releases should be on your TBR stack. But not only are we reading the books on our lists, we’re doing our journalistic duty by diving deep into public response, looking on Reddit, Goodreads, and other review sites before ultimately deciding where to place each book on our list. That means you’re not (exclusively) beholden to our own objective tastes and viewpoints, though they are woven in for good measure. We truly believe that having unique perspectives from different readers is of the utmost importance—after all, variety is the spice of life, are we right?
