There are action-filled and heart-pounding stories that keep us hooked and there are the ones with spine-chilling stillness that are so gripping we think about them for months. Either way, a thriller is the most satisfying literary genre that feeds your adrenaline well, gets your brain churning with much fodder to chew on, and most importantly, gives you a sense of purpose -- a mission to gulp down a story at one go! That's why we love thrillers -- our heart races when we read them, our eyes glide through every word effortlessly to look for the next thing that'll excite us. Here are some of the best thrillers of all time, with the most unsettling versions of escapism, keen protagonists, and bombastic mysteries.

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
This is one of the most compelling psychological thrillers where nothing is quite as it seems. Marshal Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule visit Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to investigate the disappearance of a patient. Multiple-murderess Rachel Solando is loose somewhere on island, despite having been kept in a locked cell under constant surveillance. The case becomes even darker with hints of radical experimentation, horrifying surgeries, and lethal countermoves made in the cause of a covert shadow war. No one is going to escape Shutter Island unscathed, because nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is remotely what it seems on the outside.

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
Camille Preaker, a reporter recently discharged from psych hospital faces a troubling assignment. In order to solve the mystery and follow the lead of the murders of two teen girls, she needs to return to her hometown Wind Gap. Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. She must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and survive this homecoming and adjust with her mother and her half-sister.

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
After widower Maxim de Winter proposes marriage to the narrator, the naive 20-year-old arrives all newly married to the large Cornwell estate. But she soon realises that de Winter might still not be over his dead wife Rebecca, whose shadow still looms heavily over the estate like a ghost that creeps every bone out of her. As the evil threatens her marriage with the handsome Maxim, the course of the novel gets dark and fascinating, making it one of the most widely read classic tales of all time.

Postmortem (Kay Scarpetta Series) by Patricia Cornwell
The setting of the story is in Richmond, Virginia, where three women have been brutally strangled in their own bedroom. The killer leaves behind a few clues; among them are a mysterious substance which fluoresces under laser light, traces of semen, and in the area of the last murder, an unusual smell. Dr Kay Scarpetta, Chief Medical examiner with an unerring eye, calls on the latest advances in forensic research to unmask the killer. A riveting read, Cornwell's 'Postmortem' is a classic thriller in every sense.

It by Stephen King
The novel is told through narratives alternating between two periods, and is largely told in the third-person omniscient mode.The novel narrates the story of seven children in Derry, Maine, who are terrorized by one eponymous being, only to face their own personal demons in the process. The book was previously adapted into a 1990 mini-series and a movie in the year 2017 with the same name.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
The novel narrates the story of a quadruple murder of a Kansas farmer, his wife, and two of their four children by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues. As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy.