--- title: Your House Will Pay: The 100 Best Mystery and Thriller Books description: Find out why 'Your House Will Pay' by Steph Cha made the list. canonical: https://time.com/collections/best-mystery-thriller-books/6309249/your-house-will-pay/ article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-10-03T12:01:32.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-03T00:21:24.009Z og:title: Your House Will Pay: The 100 Best Mystery and Thriller Books og:description: Here’s why it made the list og:url: https://time.com/collections/best-mystery-thriller-books/6309249/your-house-will-pay/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltacfc59bf7d107648/698a407422fb85aa4be2f0ff/YourHouseWillPay.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Your House Will Pay: The 100 Best Mystery and Thriller Books og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Your House Will Pay: The 100 Best Mystery and Thriller Books twitter:description: Here’s why it made the list twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltacfc59bf7d107648/698a407422fb85aa4be2f0ff/YourHouseWillPay.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Oct 03, 2023 # Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha by [TIME Staff](/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff  From the author of the _Juniper Song Mysteries_ trilogy, Steph Cha, _Your House Will Pay_ is a harrowing literary mystery that grapples with racial tensions between Black and Korean American communities in Los Angeles. The 2019 novel approaches the systemic mistreatment of Black Americans by threading together the events of the city’s [1992 riots](https://time.com/6049185/los-angeles-rodney-king-misunderstand-what-happened/ "undefined")—which were catalyzed by both the beating of [Rodney King](https://time.com/4245175/rodney-king-la-riots-anniversary/ "undefined") by four white police officers and the 1991 shooting of teenager Latasha Harlins by a Korean convenience store clerk—with a parallel contemporary police shooting. In the early 1990s, fictional 16-year-old Ava Matthews is killed in a Korean convenience store just weeks after King’s beating. The woman who shoots Ava faces no legal ramifications, leaving the teen’s family destroyed as the story jumps forward to the present day, where her brother Shawn, a reformed convict, is still haunted by Ava’s death. Meanwhile, Grace Park is working as a pharmacy technician in her family’s business, unaware of the secret her parents are holding on to. As present-day protests and public grief shake the city, two fractured households, the Matthews and Park families, must revisit their pasts. Cha weaves grief, injustice, and empathy together into a nuanced fictionalization of [real pain](https://time.com/5851792/asian-americans-black-solidarity-history/ "undefined"). The novel won a 2020 L.A. _Times_ Book Prize. —_Armani Syed_ **Buy Now:** _Your House Will Pay_ on [Bookshop](https://bookshop.org/a/4973/9780062868848 "undefined") | [Amazon](https://amzn.to/47ODIZb "undefined") ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/best-mystery-thriller-books/6309249/your-house-will-pay/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/best-mystery-thriller-books/6309249/your-house-will-pay/"},"headline":"Your House Will Pay","datePublished":"2023-10-03T12:01:32.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-03T00:21:24.009Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/best-mystery-thriller-books/6309249/your-house-will-pay/","keywords":["Books"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltacfc59bf7d107648/698a407422fb85aa4be2f0ff/YourHouseWillPay.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"creator":"TIME Staff","articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltacfc59bf7d107648/698a407422fb85aa4be2f0ff/YourHouseWillPay.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/best-mystery-thriller-books/6309249/your-house-will-pay/","name":"Your House Will Pay"}}]}] ```