Friday, June 05, 2026

Ten brilliant thrillers set in the near future

A former white water kayaker who competed on the World Cup circuit, Perrin Pring is now a park ranger. She has worked and lived across the U.S., riding horses in the Rocky Mountains, driving Jeeps in the wilds of the desert, greeting the sunrise in Hawaii, and running chainsaws in the Sierra Mountains. She holds an MFA in creative writing and screenwriting from UC Riverside Palm Desert and a BA from Tufts University. Her writing has appeared in Backcountry Journal, the Coachella Review, and Kelp Literary. She lives in the Rocky Mountain West.

Pring's new novel is Cash and Gravity.

At CrimeReads the author tagged ten "page-turning, edge of your seat, near-ish future thrillers that span the gambit of tastes." One title on the list:
Blake Crouch, The Wayward Pines Trilogy

Near-future. Thriller. Trilogy. If you want to get lost one propulsive book after another, watch Secret Service Agent Ethan Burke wake up in bucolic Idaho town only to discover that nothing is what it seems.
Read about another title on Pring's list.

Pines, the first volume in the trilogy, is among Jon Bassoff's eight top novels set in strange, unsettling towns.

--Marshal Zeringue