Riley Sager

Author

Riley Sager is the pen name of an American author who has become one of the most successful and distinctive voices in contemporary horror-tinged thriller fiction. His novels combine the atmosphere and tension of classic horror with the plotting and pace of a modern thriller, and each features a title that nods to the slasher and horror... film tradition. Riley Sager is a pseudonym — the author has chosen to keep his real identity private, and little biographical information has been made public beyond the fact that he is a former journalist who lives in Princeton, New Jersey. Final Girls (2017) was his debut — a thriller about a woman who survived a massacre at a holiday home and is now one of three "Final Girls," the sole survivors of separate mass killings, who find their lives intertwined when one of them apparently dies by suicide. The novel was a New York Times bestseller and drew comparisons to both Agatha Christie and classic slasher films. The Last Time I Lied (2018), Lock Every Door (2019), Home Before Dark (2020), Survive the Night (2021), The House Across the Lake (2022), The Only One Left (2023), and Middle of the Night (2024) followed, each offering a standalone thriller with a different setting and a distinctive horror-inflected premise. Sager has a gift for titles, settings, and opening hooks that are impossible to resist. Sager writes with a deep love of horror conventions and a clever ability to subvert them. His novels are full of atmosphere, misdirection, and the kind of creeping dread that builds to devastating twists. The audiobook editions of Sager's thrillers are atmospheric and gripping, with narrators delivering the mounting tension and horror of his storytelling. His books and audiobooks are essential for thriller and horror fans who love clever plotting, atmospheric settings, and the delicious thrill of being genuinely scared. Read more Show less