Megan Abbott
El Dorado Drive (G.P. Putnam’s Sons 2025) is the story of the three Bishop sisters, who enjoyed a privileged childhood in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, before falling on hard times. Now middle-aged, the three sisters are having difficulty making ends meet. Oldest sister Debra’s husband is in the middle of an expensive cancer treatment, middle sister Pam lost her elegant mansion in a contentious divorce, and youngest sister Harper is $50,000 in debt. Pam is throwing a lavish high school graduation party for her son Patrick in the back yard of her split level rental house on the optimistically named El Dorado Drive. Harper is impressed that Pam has managed to make the depressing yard look festive, while Debra worries Pam has spent money she doesn’t have. Pam’s younger daughter Vivian is upset that their father Doug hasn’t shown up for the celebration, but the sisters aren’t surprised. Doug hasn’t paid any child support, and Pam has just discovered he has been siphoning off his children’s trust funds. Harper’s hard-won sobriety collapses during the party, and the next morning she accepts a job at a horse farm across the state. When Harper returns home at the end of October, her landlord has evicted her for non-payment of rent, and she reluctantly accepts Pam’s offer to stay in Patrick’s old room. Pam and Vivian are fighting constantly, and Pam hopes Aunt Harper can help keep the peace. Harper is astonished that Pam is driving a new Lexus (leased but luxurious) and doesn’t seem as worried about money. Pam and Debra tell Harper about a new club: the Wheel, which is all about social and professional networking, an opportunity for female empowerment. New members gift (not invest!) $5000 to the Wheel, and then slowly make their way up to the top, receiving $25,000. Desperate to pay off her debt, Harper borrows part of the entrance fee from Pam and joins. During the first meeting Harper realizes the Wheel is a pyramid scheme, dependent on inviting (not recruiting!) new members. Harper knows the Wheel isn’t sustainable, but watches both Pam and Debra celebrate receiving their $25,000, hoping her turn will come before she is crushed by her own debt. Narrated from Harper’s perspective, this intense thriller explores the joys and perils of sibling relationships.

Elliot Ackerman
Sheepdogs (Knopf 2025) begins three years after Skwerl is fired from “the Office,” an elite CIA unit, after talking to the press about a disastrous ambush in Afghanistan where a teammate bled out in his arms. Skwerl earned his nickname because he was resourceful and could get you anything you needed, like a squirrel. But Skwerl finds it difficult to make ends meet in the real world, and is grateful when an old colleague introduces him to Sheepdog, a network advertising jobs for veterans. When he reads “searching for a commercial pilot with special operations experience,” Skwerl immediately contacts Aziz Iqbal, “the Big Cheese,” a former Afghan pilot who is barely able to support his pregnant wife Fareeda on a minimum wage salary. Skwerl convinces Cheese that the job of “repossessing” a Challenger 600 private jet is an easy way for the two of them to split a cool million, 20% of the jet’s value. But nothing goes according to plan, the guard appears and Cheese has to knock him out with a wrench. Their employer “H” is furious when Skwerl makes himself a snack and scratches one of the jet’s fancy plates, and then H turns up dead before transferring the money into their account. Desperate to hide the plane, Skwerl contacts Just Shane, a former colleague living off the grid in Colorado, and they take the plane to Just Shane’s remote airstrip, along with Skwerl’s dominatrix girlfriend Sinead and her client Ephraim, an Amish mechanic who might be able to repair the aileron damaged in their escape. Then Fareeda is kidnapped and offered in exchange for the plane, pushing Skwerl’s brain to frantically try to come up with a solution that will get them all out alive. This comic mashup of spy and heist tropes is great fun.

Claire Booth
Throwing Shadows (Severn House 2025) begins when a hiker stumbles out of the Ozark backwoods near Branson, Missouri, raving about a dead man. The man is carrying an fancy new pack, and though his clothing is torn and dirty, it looks expensive. Deputy Sam Karnes calls the report in and Sheriff Hank Worth and Chief Deputy Sheriff Sheila Turley drive out together. Sheila is just back at work after a violent attack, barely ambulatory with a cane and in constant pain. Sheila waits in the car while Sam, who grew up in the area, takes Hank to Murder Rocks, a teen hangout rumored to be the site of an abandoned cache of Confederate gold. Sam is an experienced hunter and tracker, and follows the sign to a bloody hatchet. While they are in the woods, Sheila follows the ambulance with the hiker to the hospital. Identified as Mingo Culver, the hiker reluctantly admits he is a fan of the Hidden Hoarders podcast, currently featuring the legendary gold of Murder Rocks, and hoped to be the first listener to search. Sam is thrilled when two dog teams arrive to help search for the body, heading off with one while Hank, who is not a consummate woodsman, stumbles after the other. After locating not just one but two bodies, the small law team is stretched thin trying to continue the investigation while also preventing determined treasure hunters from breaking through the barriers to continue the search for gold. Hank is still dealing with the personal fallout of his last investigation, when his wife’s father was suspected of murdering her mother. Interspersed podcast episodes and primary source Civil War letters and diary entries reveal the history of Alf Bolin, an outlaw who preyed upon travelers moving north and burying the gold and silver he stole. This excellent police procedural with a dash of history is the seventh in the series.

Michael Connelly
The Proving Ground (Little, Brown and Company 2025) finds Los Angeles lawyer Mickey Haller working his first civil case after leaving criminal defense. The negligence suit against Tidalwaiv Technologies, an artificial intelligence company, claims their AI chat bot encouraged 16-year-old Aaron Colton to shoot his girlfriend Rebecca Randolph after she broke up with him. Tidalwaiv buries Mickey’s team in over twelve terabytes of discovery materials, all heavily redacted, making it nearly impossible to find any evidence. Tidalwaiv’s current and former employees have all signed Non-Disclosure Agreements, and their lawyers are determined to block any discussion in court. Tidalwaiv offers the parents a huge cash settlement, but Rebecca’s mother is determined to protect other teenagers from the potentially dangerous chatbots, and insists on a public admission of guilt. Mickey and his team track down the company ethicist who was fired for speaking out against the bot programming strategy, learning the chatbot software was created by an exclusively male team of programmers who ignored the her warnings that the misogynistic tendencies of some of the programmers was creeping into the bot responses to vulnerable teens. The testimony of the child psychiatrist who specializes in media addiction is chilling, highlighting the effect of social media on adolescents who crave peer acceptance, and pointing out text exchanges between Aaron and the chatbot that reinforced all the worst traits of a teenage boy. Civil suits don’t have the cachet of criminal defense, and Mickey is driving a Chevy Bolt instead of being chauffeured in a Lincoln, but the stakes are just as high in this powerful eighth in the series.

Janice Hallett
The Killer Question (Atria Books 2025) features Sue and Mal Eastwood, the proprietors of The Case Is Altered, a pub in Hertfordshire County, northwest of London. Located on a narrow lane that dead-ends at a tumbledown pier on the River Colne, The Case Is Altered was once a thriving business, but has declined along with the river traffic. Since reopening the pub, Sue and Mal have worked hard to build a new customer base, adding a pub quiz every Monday night. Mal loves creating the questions and five teams are now Monday night regulars. Then a new team appears, led by a man known only as the General, which dominates the weekly quiz, earning close to the maximum number of points each week. Mal is sure they are cheating, but they observe the no phones rule and he can’t figure out how. The entire novel is narrated in texts, emails, phone messages, quiz sheets, one-star pub ratings, and other documents. Interspersed transcriptions from police recordings and interviews reveal Sue and Mal’s previous careers as police officers, working their final case for the Hulme Police before retirement. Operation Honeyguide was formed to investigate the kidnapping of Beata Novak, a 29-year old Polish nail technician, and Chloe Cunningham, a 22-year-old working for her family’s property business. Both women were in relationships with local drug dealer Darren Chester, who worked for the Maddox Brothers, and the police believe they were kidnapped after Chester absconded with Maddox funds, taken to pressure him into returning the money. The personalities of Sue (kind and motherly), Mal (who can’t restrain himself from sharing everything he knows about everything), as well as the members of the various Quiz teams gradually emerge from their messages as they squabble and comfort and plot. A murder upends everything in this clever mystery full of surprising reveals.

Elizabeth Kaufman
Ruth Run (Penguin Press 2025) begins when a funds transfer is halted, and 26-year-old microchip designer Ruth realizes her secret career as a bank robber has been discovered. Six years ago Ruth discovered a flaw in a firewall chip that gave her access into any network using the chip, and slowly amassed a small fortune by skimming more than $250 million from the banking system. Ruth quickly destroys her hard drive and shoves her important documents, a change of clothes, a blond wig, Red Sox cap and $25,000 in twenty-dollar bills into her shoulder bag, fleeing her Silicon Valley apartment. The only weak spot in Ruth’s plan is Thom, a colleague at the world’s largest network equipment company, who does the coding Ruth never learned to do. Arriving at their office, Ruth learns Thom has been called away by security and is horrified to find a picture of the two of them on his cubicle wall. Ruth orchestrates Thom’s escape by pulling the fire alarm and the two head out for Sacramento. A familiar man waves as they are pulling out, and Ruth recognizes him as a former colleague known as Hydrant Mike. What Ruth doesn’t know is that Mike has been secretly surveilling her since he first noticed her as a university student, with small cameras and recording devices hidden in her apartment and the bag she bought with her first small theft. Mike works for a government agency investigating cybercrime, but has kept Ruth and her thefts a secret, fantasizing about their connection though only he is aware of it. Realizing they are somehow being tracked, Thom and Ruth separate, and she hitches a ride with a trucker, unaware that he is dangerous. This debut caper novel by a former network security specialist is full of strange and wonderful characters.

Jess Kidd
Murder at Gulls Nest (Atria Books 2025) begins in 1954, when Nora Breen, formerly sister Agnes of Christ, leaves her 30-year life as a nun behind to search for Frieda Brogan, a former novice whose regular weekly letters from the Gulls Nest boarding house in the small seaside town of Gore-on-Sea in Kent, England, cease arriving. Nora grew close to Frieda when she became ill, diagnosed with a weak heart and lungs and advised to take the sea air for six months. Frieda’s final letter declared that every resident of Gulls Nest was concealing a secret, and that she had determined to figure them all out. Nora revels in her new freedom, especially the lightness of her head and full vision free of the restricting wimple and veil. At Gulls End, she conceals her relationship with Frieda, saying only that she is a retired nurse, and asking her fellow residents all about themselves. The boarding house is run by Helena Wells, a beautiful woman with a young daughter who doesn’t speak and seems nearly feral. Irene Rawlings, the formidable housekeeper, sets the rules and serves nearly inedible food. The other guests include Professor Poppy, an elderly former Punch and Judy showman; young couple Stella and Teddy Armstrong; barman Bill Carter, who collects curios; and Karel Ježek, a photographer from Prague. Nora was never much good at patience and humility and finds to her delight that her cleverness and inquisitive nature, which earned her constant reproof, are exactly the skills needed to locate a missing young woman. She visits Detective Inspector Rideout to share Frieda’s final letter and her suspicion that Frieda did not leave of her own accord. Rideout is first amused by Nora’s conviction that she is uniquely qualified to discover what happened to Frieda and then impressed by her powers of observation and deduction. This engaging cozy mystery is the first in a series starring the quirky and compassionate Nora Breen.

Con Lehane
The Red Scare Murders (Soho Crime 2025) begins in 1950 New York City when private investigator Mick Mulligan is asked to look into the murder of Irwin Johnson, the detested owner of a cab company. Harold Williams, an African American driver for Johnson’s cab company, was arrested and found guilty. The circumstantial evidence wasn’t strong, but Harold has both his race and membership in the Communist Party against him. A former Hollywood cartoonist, Mick was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee after refusing to rat out his friends. After losing his well-paying job and comfortable house, Mick’s wife divorced him, leaving him bitter, lonely, and barely able to make his child support payments for the two-year-old daughter who is rapidly forgetting who he is. Harold’s execution is only two weeks away, and New York City labor leader Duke Rogowski hires Mick as a last ditch effort to find evidence that might buy Harold a stay of execution. Mick figures Duke is just trying to look good, but soon realizes the evidence against Harold is likely fabricated and the list of people who wanted Irwin dead is quite long: his betrayed wife, the angry husbands of his various mistresses, and the rival cab company mobster owners. This riveting mystery starring the engaging Mick is seeped in the noir atmosphere of 1950 New York City.

Ken Liu
All That We See or Seem (S&S/Saga Press 2025) introduces Julia Z, who was briefly famous as a 14-year-old “orphan hacker.” Now in her mid-20s, Julia tries to keep a low profile in a Boston suburb, supporting herself an an occasional digital bounty hunter. Lawyer Piers Negri shows up at her apartment, asking Julia to find his kidnapped wife Elli Krantz, a famous dream artist who guides audiences through a shared virtual landscape. Piers shows Julia a video of Elli sent by the kidnappers, asking Julia to verify it isn’t AI and to search for clues about Elli’s location. Just after Piers departs, Julia’s AI assistant Talos alerts her to suspicious activity outside, and Julia realizes Piers has been followed, leading two dangerous men to her apartment. Quickly packing Talos, her drone Puck, and a change of clothes, she evades the men with a simple hardhat and clipboard disguise and meets Piers at his home. Piers explains that the collective dreams are anonymous, but while searching through Elli’s office and dream studio, Julia realizes Elli has been secretly recording one-on-one dream sessions with the Prince, the head of an international criminal enterprise. As ransom, the Prince demands all of Elli’s stored data, which must contain secrets the Prince does not want anyone to know. Determined to save Elli, Julia and Piers begin searching through a copy of the huge datafile as it transfers, hoping to find something they can use as leverage. Julia’s intuitive talent for communicating with her AI assistant and her drone that can morph into many useful shapes keeps them one step ahead of the Prince and his scary enforcer Victor in this all-too-realistic near-future speculative thriller.

Lori Rader-Day
Wreck Your Heart (Minotaur Books 2026) is the story of Dahlia “Doll” Devine, whose mother left her at the mercies of the foster system when she was six. The only consistent adult in her life is Alex McPhee, owner of Chicago’s McPhee’s Tavern, where Doll performs with a country cover band and helps with bar chores. Though never diagnosed, Alex is clearly on the autism spectrum and struggles with social cues and unplanned changes in his very specific routines. The week before Christmas Doll’s boyfriend Joey vanishes with the rent money, and she barely manages to salvage a few costumes and her beloved guitar “Peggy Lee” before being locked out of their apartment. At McPhee’s Tavern Doll discovers a woman she hasn’t seen for 20 years — her mother Marisa, hoping for forgiveness. Doll doesn’t trust Marisa, though she swears she no longer drinks or uses drugs, and changes into her stage outfit, pouring drinks until it is time for her show. The next morning a young woman arrives at the bar looking for her mother, who vanished the night before, and Doll discovers she has a half-sister: Sicily, known as Sis. The news is a shock to Sis as well, but she latches onto Doll, begging her to help find their mother. A murder in the alley behind McPhee’s Tavern ratchets up the tension as Doll tries to deal with uncertainty about her feelings about Sis and Marisa while also struggling to figure out who she is as a musician. This big-hearted thriller is highly recommended.

S.J. Rozan & John Shen Yen Nee
The Railway Conspiracy (Soho Crime 2025) begins in 1924, when Judge Dee Ren Jie returns to London after several months in China fighting his opium addiction. Dee’s first task is to prevent the sale of a stolen “dragon-taming” mace from a Russian thief to the Japanese buyer with the help of academic Lao She and London pickpocket Jimmy Fingers. Madame Wu Ze Tian, the mace’s owner, thanks Dee with an invitation to a banquet, introducing him to A.G. Stephen, the Director of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, who is concerned about the state of China and the controversial construction of the Eastern Railway. Stephen invites Dee to visit his bank the following week to continue the discussion. Lao is delighted to meet Yoshio Markino, a painter whose fog paintings he much admires at the banquet, and enjoys conversing with Dora and Bertram Russell. Two days later Stephen is dead, and Dee determines he was poisoned. A young Chinese communist Lao knows is murdered soon after, and Dee fears both men were killed because of a conspiracy surrounding the Chinese Eastern Railway. This second in the Dee and Lao series deepens their Sherlock/Watson relationship within a fair-play traditional mystery with liberal dashes of kung fu exploits.

Sherry Thomas
The Librarians (Berkley 2025) begins when Hazel Lee starts a new job as a clerk at a branch library in Austin, Texas, two days before Halloween. Astrid, a young librarian with a Swedish accent, introduces Hazel to Sophie, the branch administrator, and Jonathan, the program director. Hazel gets right to work and Astrid is both amused and impressed when Hazel responds to the elderly patron, who loves to try and shock new staff with his request for Fifty Shades, by listing all the books in the library that begin with those two words: Fifty Shades of Kale, Grace, Bipolar, Chicken, etc. The next day Hazel is pleased that the library is hosting a Board Game Night, her favorite pastime. Sophie’s teenage daughter Elise loves board games, and hopes the event will attract a younger crowd. The event does skew younger and many attendees come in costume, including a woman dressed as a fortune teller with an all-too-realistic third eye in the middle of her forehead. The next morning the body of Jeannette Oberman is found dead in her car, and the library staff is horrified to recognize the picture in the news article as the fortune teller from Game Night. The police interview the library staff, who are all concealing something. Helen has spent most of her life in Singapore and would prefer not to share anything about her past, Astrid isn’t really Swedish, Jonathan has a secret crush, and Sophie can’t tell the truth about Elise’s birth. Fearing that the police investigation will uncover uncomfortable truths, the librarians band together to solve the crime themselves, with unexpected results. This first contemporary mystery from the author of the Lady Sherlock mysteries is great fun.

Kristen L. Berry
We Don’t Talk About Carol (Bantam 2025) begins when Sydney Singleton is helping her mother and sister Sasha clean out her grandmother’s house in Raleigh, North Carolina. She finds a faded picture of a young girl who looks just like Sydney, and remembers finding the same picture many years ago, and then told by her Grammy, “We don’t talk about Carol.” Her mother admits Carol was her aunt, who disgraced the family by running away to become a Motown singer when she was 17. Sydney and her husband Malik have been trying unsuccessfully to start a family for years, and she decides to distract herself from the current round of fertility treatments by resurrecting her journalist skills from her previous job on the crime beat at the San Francisco Chronicle. Sydney’s mother won’t talk about Carol either, but a neighbor who visits with a sympathy casserole tells Sydney that several teenage girls vanished in the 1960s, all from houses along the creek that runs behind Grammy’s house. She gives Sydney an old yearbook with a remembrance page for the six missing Black girls aged 16-18 who vanished between 1963 and 1965. Hidden in Carol’s old room, Sasha and Sydney find Carol’s high school diary, revealing her passion for music and a romance. Sydney is horrified to find there was very little news coverage of the disappearances and begins searching for relatives, hoping some will be willing to talk to her. Malik is concerned that Sydney is endangering a possible pregnancy, reminding her that she gave up her newspaper job for one in PR because she couldn’t handle the stress of the crime beat. But Sydney can’t let the story go, searching through copies of police records a relative shares, posting on a true crime site, and trying to convince the Raleigh police to reopen the cold cases. This character-driven debut novel explores the racial imbalance in crime investigations and celebrates the power of community.

Becky C. Brynolf
I Found a Body (Crooked Lane Books 2025) begins in 2019 when influencer Kylie May is filming a livestream on her phone outside her “permaculture getaway” at Back to Earth Holidays near Bath, England. Kylie isn’t a fan of the simple life or the environment, but is doing damage control after the backlash from her fans after promoting a cute gym kit that turned out to be constructed by children in Bangladesh. She is horrified to discover that the picturesque flock of sheep she saw near the stream the previous evening has vanished, but babbles on about the healthy air before noticing the nearly naked body of a woman in the water. Detective Sergeant Mona Hendricks is driving her 13-year-old daughter Cassie to school when Cassie insists on showing her the live stream of Kylie looking pale and sick, pointing at the body behind her: “I found a body.” Recently relocated to the Avon and Somerset police force, Mona is partnered with over enthusiastic Trainee Constable Theo Knight, known as PC Muscles, and pressured to bring the high profile case to a close as rapidly as possible. Unfortunately Kylie decides investigating the murder of Lana Cottrell herself is her chance to break out of the influencer pack, and frightens an important witness into disappearing. Nine years later the case is still unsolved. Mona has been dismissed from the force and is living in a decrepit bedsit when Kylie appears at her door explaining she has new evidence and together they can finally bring the killer to justice. The dual timelines alternate with online fan forums who dissect Kylie’s every expression, criticize the police in general and Mona in particular, and argue amongst themselves. This clever debut mystery plants fair play clues while exposing the narcissism of social media influencers who place self-promotion above anything else.

Susie Dent
Guilty by Definition (Sourcebooks Landmark 2025, UK 2024) is set in Oxford, England, where Martha Thornhill is the new senior editor for the Clarendon English Dictionary (CED). Martha has spent the last ten years in Berlin, working for a small academic press and trying to escape the pervasive sadness of the disappearance of her older sister Charlie. Martha has moved back into the family house to keep an eye on her father, further crushed by the recent death of her mother from cancer. Martha loves her job researching words with her three team members (Alex, Simon, and Safi) until a mysterious letter arrives addressed to the editors and signed Chorus. They ignore it at first, but then each receive a postcard with a picture of the CED on the front and a pointed quote hinting at betrayal on the back. Going back to the letter they figure out the first word of each line forms a phrase that sounds like a crossword clue, resolving into MMX: 2010, the year Charlie went missing. The letter ends with a quote from The Merchant of Venice: “Truth will come to life. Murder cannot be hid long.” Martha takes the letter and postcards to the police, expecting to be brushed off, but Detective Oliver Caldwell is very familiar with the case, one of his first after joining the force. He shares the case notes with Martha, who wasn’t aware of many of the details since she had just left home for university. Further letters from Chorus prove harder to decipher, but the CED team are clever and very determined to solve each puzzle. Dent is an etymologist and infuses the characters in this clever debut mystery with her passion for language, beginning each chapter with a dictionary definition of an obscure word, and leaving the reader feeling a bit finifugal on the final page, not wanting the book to end.

Amran Gowani
Leverage (Atria Books 2025) begins when San Francisco hedge fund manager Ali “Al” Jafar has the worst trading day of his life, losing $300 million for Prism Capital. Called into the top floor office of Prism founder Paul Kingsley, Al is sure he will be fired instantly. Instead Al is given an ultimatum: three months to earn that $300 million back or become the fall guy for the government insider-trading investigation of Prism. Al knows making the money back on that short timeline is impossible, but chooses three months of desperate struggle over an immediate jail sentence. The mounting pressure erodes Al’s already fragile sense of self-worth, making him even more aware of how much of an outsider he is at Prism, and how little support he has outside of work. Al never knew his father, and has a difficult relationship with his mother. He reaches out Damon, his only friend from college. Damon agrees Al has little chance of fighting the frame-up, and gives him a number to call from a burner phone, with instructions to leave a message that he is a hedge fund manager looking for a little R and R. A return call from Simon Heldstrum brings Al to New York City to mingle with shady individuals who provide tips that are incredibly successful in exchange for a percentage of earnings. Al knows he is incriminating himself for real now, but the money piling up in his Prism account almost compensates for his compulsion to begin each day researching ways to commit suicide. This darkly comedic debut thriller by a former Wall Street analyst pits a brilliant but mentally unstable antihero against the depraved masters of finance.

Jakob Kerr
Dead Money (Bantam 2025) begins when a night cleaner discovers the body of Trevor Cannon, the CEO and founder of tech firm Journy, in his top floor office with the stunning view of the Golden Gate Bridge. Three weeks later Mackensie Clyde, the “problem solver” for Silicon Valley’s top venture capitalist Roger Hammersmith, is informed by her boss that he has a new assignment for her: work with the FBI to solve the murder of Trevor Cannon. Journy is the jewel of Hammersmith Venture’s investment portfolio, and Hammersmith has lost patience with the inability of the police to identify the killer. The crime scene was completely clean, not a shred of evidence, and the single shot through the forehead from a distance appears to be the work of a professional killer. Hammersmith tells Mackensie that Trevor did something strange just before he died, amending his will with a “dead money” provision freezing his assets until someone is tried for his murder. All 20 billion of Trevor’s shares, including Hammersmith’s 5 billion investment, is frozen, and since the company can’t do anything without a controlling interest, it is stuck in limbo. Hammersmith has used his influence to get the FBI involved, and Mackensie is added as advisor to work with the FBI, using her intimate knowledge of the way the tech industry works to assist the FBI. Special Agent Jameson Danner of the FBI Criminal Investigative Division isn’t convinced that Mackensie, with only a law degree, has anything useful to offer, and isn’t inclined to share anything with her. But when information about recent changes Trevor made to the building security system prove that only the top five executives had access to Trevor’s top floor office, Danner is forced to admit he doesn’t speak their language and needs Mackensie’s help. Interspersed sections fill in Mackensie’s background growing up in poverty with a single parent and the barriers she conquered to make a successful life for herself. Kerr’s background as a lawyer in the tech industry adds depth to this impressive debut thriller.

Ragnar Jónasson
The Mysterious Case of the Missing Crime Writer (Minotaur Books 2025, Iceland 2023) begins in 2012 when Helgi Reykdal, a young detective at the Reykjavik police department with a passion for Golden Age detective stories, is assigned to investigate the disappearance of bestselling crime novelist Elín S. Jónsdóttir. When the tenth book in Elín’s detective series was published a decade earlier, she announced it was both the conclusion of the series and her writing career. At the age of 60 she was ready to retire. Helgi learns that Elín happily lived alone, and enjoyed hiking and meeting friends weekly. The prior week she missed first an afternoon coffee date with her best friend Lovísa and then a lunch with her publisher Rut Thoroddsen. Both women tell Helgi that not showing up for a meeting is completely out of character for Elín, who always let them know if something unexpected happened. At Elín’s home Helgi is impressed by the bookshelves lining every wall, admiring the well-read collection of crime fiction from around the world, including some rare copies of Icelandic translations of Agatha Christie novels. Unsure of his own abilities as a detective, Helgi wishes his predecessor Hulda Hermannsdottir had been able to pass on her knowledge and experience, but she vanished before he arrived, leaving only a box of personal effects in the office he inherited. Interspersed sections from two bank robbers in 1965, Hulda’s interview with one of the robbers in 1976, and the transcript of a 2005 interview with Elín add fair play clues to Helgi’s second case.

Philip Miller
The Diary of Lies (Soho Crime 2025) finds Edinburgh investigative journalist Shona Sandison in London hoping to win the UK Media Scoop of the Year award for her piece “Brexit Act Revealed,” an exposé of the government’s plans to pass the Great British Freedom Act, which would undermine Scottish autonomy. During a break at the ceremony a man in a tuxedo introduces himself as Reece Proctor from Dovetail, a policy think tank, offering her a tip on a big story. When she wins the Scoop award, Shona dedicates it to her journalist father Hugh Sandison, who died in the early days of COVID. Meanwhile, Shona’s old friend Hector Striken, who has left Scotland and journalism for a media position in London at the Capacity and Resilience department, overhears a discussion of an operation called Grendel at a Zoom meeting. Hector meets a friend after work and after far too many drinks confesses he isn’t comfortable at his job and is considering quitting, using the strange Grendel conversation as an example. The next day he emails Shona advising her to look into the department’s Grendel plan, and then is killed in a hit-and-run accident. Shona follows Proctor’s directions for a meeting at an townhouse with a For Sale sign, discovering his murdered body. The killer attacks her but luckily the Scoop of the Year Award in her bag is solid enough to disable him long enough to escape. Interwoven entries from a diary from a retired intelligence officer weave loose threads from an earlier case into Shona’s current investigation in this excellent third in the series.

Joan O’Leary
A Killer Wedding (William Morrow 2025) is set in Ireland’s Ballymoon Castle Hotel, where Graham Ripton, grandson and heir to Gloria Beaufort’s billion dollar beauty empire “Glo,” is marrying Jane Murphy. Christine Russo, newly promoted senior editor at Bespoke Weddings, has charmed Gloria into insisting Christine cover the wedding all by herself, to editor-in-chief Sandra Yoon’s chagrin. Christine is unexpectedly invited to the intimate family-only dinner two days before the wedding, meeting everyone except Gloria for the first time: Gloria’s two sons Trey and Ben, their wives Clementine and Lyle, Jane’s mother Maggie, and wedding officiant Father Kenneth. Christine hasn’t spent much time with the ultra-rich and is alternatively amazed and horrified by their attitude and behavior, especially Clementine’s bizarre fashion sense and Ben’s obvious alcoholism. Maggie and “Plain” Jane seem to be the only normal people. Event Coordinator Elliot Adler herds her around, arranging time for interviews and throwing fits when things aren’t up to his exacting standards. The family members either ignore Christine completely or look at her suspiciously when they realize she may have overheard something incriminating. At the age of 85 Gloria still holds the reins of Glo tightly, though she has recently passed on her Charleston Grow 2 Glow charity foundation to Graham. Early on the morning the day before the wedding Christine hears a scream coming from Gloria’s room, and runs down the hall to find Gloria dead on the floor, surrounded by the family. She has been shot through the head, but there is no gun in the room, so clearly a murder. Elliot reminds everyone that 350 wedding guests are on their way, and the family decides to cover up the murder until after the wedding. Christine tries to sneak out of the room but Ben insists she is part of it now, and they all need to work together to keep the secret. Interspersed chapters fill in the backstories, giving everyone except Ben and Lyle’s toddler son a motive for murder in this glamorous and deadly debut mystery.

Zoë Rankin
The Vanishing Place (Berkley 2025) begins when a small malnourished girl covered in blood emerges from the New Zealand bush, entering the store in the tiny town of Koraha, devouring fresh strawberries and gulping down milk. When Police Constable Lewis Weston arrives she says her name is Anya, and then not another word. Police officer Effie is living on the Island of Skye, Scotland, when the call comes through from Lewis in New Zealand, informing Effie that the traumatized little girl that just emerged from the bush looks just like she did at the same age, with striking green eyes and bright red hair. Lewis helped Effie run away from her family 17 years earlier, when she was only 15 and he was just starting out as a police trainee. Lewis tells Effie he is sure Anya came from Effie’s old family home hidden deep in the bush, a place so isolated the locals call it “The Vanishing Place.” Lewis begs Effie to return since she is the only one who can find the isolated cabin and Anya’s family. When Effie arrives, Anya rushes to her side and clings to her desperately. Effie is sure they are related, and perhaps Anya is the child of one of her siblings. Effie treks to her old family home and discovers the body of a dead man with a crude cross carved into his bare chest. Anya is too frightened to talk, whispering that Effie is breaking the rules by not being silent, but eventually begins to nod and shake her head, revealing she is eight years old and lived with her mum. Flashbacks reveal Effie’s backstory, starting with her mother’s death in 2001 while giving birth to the fourth child in their isolated off-grid cabin. Effie’s father disappears immediately after her mother’s death, leaving little Effie to take care of the newborn boy as well as her younger siblings. He reappears with a neighbor woman, who helps to care for the children, keeping them in her house in Koraha for periods of time until their father periodically reappears to take them back to the bush. As Effie tries to form a relationship with Anya, she reexamines her own past from an adult perspective, finally confronting the violent episode that led to her escape from her father and New Zealand. This excellent debut thriller explores the long term effects controlling adults can have on vulnerable children.

Tanya Scott
Stillwater (Atlantic Monthly Press 2025) is the story of Australian Jack Quinlan, who didn’t meet his father Michael Quinlan until his mother died of a drug overdose when he was seven. Quin takes him to stay with Gail, the mother of his best mate Kevin, currently in prison. Just as Jack is starting to settle in Kevin is released and takes an immediate dislike to Jack. Quin and Kevin fall back into a life of crime and Jack spends time in foster care whenever Quin is arrested. When Jack is 12, Sydney crime boss Gus Alberici appears to collect money Quin owes him, and take a liking to Jack, setting him up with boxing lessons after Jack admits his bruises are from school bullies. Gus give Jack a phone, and he is soon transporting drugs and money in his school backpack. Now 25, Jack has legally changed his name to Luke Harris, and is barely making ends meet as a university student in Melbourne. His job as a part time disability support worker, sends him to the elegant home of Jonathan Whylie to help with his son Phil, a large man close to Luke’s age with autism, severe anxiety, and intermittent psychotic episodes. Phil’s regular carer is in the hospital and Jonathan pays him twice his usual rate in cash to fill in. Luke knows he should be studying for his exams, but needs the money to fix his ancient Subaru. Phil likes him and Luke is attracted to Phil’s younger sister Emma, who eventually convinces him to come out for a drink to meet her friends. On the way out of the bar Luke brushes by a man who immediately recognizes him as Jack Quinlan, and Gus soon appears at his apartment, tossing him a burner phone and insisting he locate Quin and Kevin, who disappeared years earlier with a big pile of money Gus thinks belongs to him. Drawn back into the life he so desperately tried to escape, Luke resurrects his Jack skills to keep himself alive in this high-intensity debut thriller.