Fifteen years after three girls vanished from her cabin, Emma Davis returns to Camp Nightingale as an art instructor. She tells herself she is there to find closure, but she is still haunted by the night Vivian and the other girls disappeared into the woods.

When Emma begins finding clues connected to the camp’s past—and three more girls go missing—the summer starts looking frighteningly familiar. The Last Time I Lied is a twisty camp mystery filled with buried secrets, suspicious characters, and plenty of reasons not to wander into the woods after dark.

Esme and Kayla are returning to Camp Pine Lake as counselors in training, years after something terrible happened during their own time as campers. They agreed never to talk about it, and Esme is determined to enjoy a summer of s’mores, swimming, and cute counselors.

That plan falls apart when they receive a note warning them that “the lake never forgets.” Someone knows what happened all those years ago, and the secret Esme and Kayla buried is beginning to surface.

Camp Mirror Lake is not a real summer camp. It is an immersive horror attraction where guests pay to live through scenes from a classic slasher movie. Charity Curtis plays the final girl, helping make every staged attack feel terrifyingly real.

During the final weekend of the season, Charity’s coworkers begin disappearing—and then one of them turns up dead. Suddenly, the rules of the game no longer apply. Charity and her girlfriend, Bezi, must survive the night while uncovering what really happened at Mirror Lake.

Claire is used to imagining everything that could possibly go wrong. Still, even she is not prepared to arrive at an isolated summer camp and find its lodge burned to the ground.

Claire and two other late arrivals, Reyva and Mariana, appear to be the only survivors. Then they discover a body in the woods and realize the fire was no accident. Stranded without help, the three girls must determine what is hunting them before it prevents them from ever leaving the island.

If isolated lakes, missing people, and danger lurking near the water are your kind of thriller, you’ll find even more suspenseful reads on my list of lake thrillers.

Twenty years ago, four teenagers disappeared from a summer camp. Two were later found murdered, but the other two—including Paul Copeland’s sister—were never seen again.

Paul is now a prosecutor and a widowed father. When a newly discovered body appears to be connected to the old camp murders, he begins to wonder whether his sister could still be alive. Finding out means returning to the people, relationships, and family secrets he left behind that summer.

In 1975, thirteen-year-old Barbara Van Laar disappears from her Adirondack summer camp. Barbara is the daughter of the wealthy family that owns the camp—and she is not the first Van Laar child to vanish. Her older brother disappeared fourteen years earlier and was never found.

As the search unfolds, secrets emerge from both the Van Laar family and the working-class community that depends on them. The God of the Woods is more of a layered, slow-building mystery than a traditional camp slasher, but the missing camper and isolated setting make it a natural fit for this list.

After Mars’s twin sister dies under horrifying circumstances, Mars travels to the secluded summer academy where she spent her final days. There, Mars meets the Honeys, a beautiful and unnervingly close group of girls who seem to know more about the death than they are willing to admit.

The deeper Mars ventures into the camp’s traditions and secrets, the stranger—and more dangerous—the summer becomes. This one mixes mystery, horror, and a dreamy atmosphere that gradually turns deeply unsettling.