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If these mystery, thrillers, and true crime books are any indication, publishing is starting 2025 with a bang! As usual, I aimed to find something for all the reading tastes in the crime genre—from the cozy end to the dark, with different categories, subgenres, and tropes!
Your offerings this month for fiction include a Succession-style family reunion that leads to murder, a fun middle grade series about crime-fighting kids, a drag queen sleuth, and a culinary cozy mystery. We also have a twisty thriller centering two missing strangers on the same plane, an FBI procedural solving cryptic clues, a cryptozoologist and bookstore owner on a murder case, a romance + cozy murder mystery blend set at a wedding, and more! And in the nonfiction department, there’s the history of the rape kit and a blend of history, classic literature, and true crime. There are plenty of great offerings to start the reading year with your best sleuthing foot forward!
The Inheritance by Trisha Sakhlecha
For fans of Succession, remote settings, and slow-burn family reunions that ultimately turn deadly!
With Raj’s billion-dollar Delhi-based company’s future to be announced, the Agarwals have all gathered off the coast of Scotland. And they’ve all brought secrets. What could go wrong?!
The Secret History of the Rape Kit: A True Crime Story by Pagan Kennedy
For readers of eye-opening nonfiction and true crime memoirs.
Pagan Kennedy dives not only into the history of how the rape kit came to be—Marty Goddard was working in a Chicago teen crisis center when she observed that many of the teens had fled sexually violent homes, which kicked off her quest for answers—but also what happened to Goddard, who seemed to disappear in the late ’80s.
A Copycat Conundrum (The Misfits #2) by Lisa Yee and Dan Santat
For fans of fun middle grade mysteries and secret crime-fighting teams!
This is a ridiculously fun series that follows Olive Cobin Zang at her new school, which is testing out a secret program using a group of children for crime-solving. Using adults and teens didn’t work out well, and so far, Olive and her Misfits schoolmates are doing a great job. Now Olive is trying to help a friend who is receiving concerning anonymous letters, and the Misfits have stumbled upon “earthquakes” that are only affecting a few blocks at a time, followed by thefts!
While you can start with this book and not be lost, it does reveal twists from the first book. If you want to start at the beginning, pick up A Royal Conundrum, which was named the Barnes & Noble Children’s & YA Book Awards Overall Winner in 2023.
Murder in the Dressing Room by Holly Stars
For fans of fun, witty cozy mysteries!
Misty Divine works onstage and offstage: offstage she’s an accounts assistant at a hotel and onstage she performs at Lady’s Bar, a cabaret club in Soho. But when her drag mother, Lady Lady, is murdered, and Misty thinks the cops are not doing a proper job, she adds sleuth to her résumé!
She Doesn’t Have a Clue by Jenny Elder Moke
For readers of cozy mystery and romance, stories with author MCs, and wedding settings!
Mystery author Kate Valentine makes a bad decision to attend her ex-fiancée’s wedding. She winds up starring in one of her own mystery books (and a romance novel!) when the bride is poisoned and her ex is accidentally invited as her plus one to the wedding. Falling back in love and sleuthing is on this wedding’s menu!
Star-Crossed Egg Tarts (Magical Fortune Cookie #2) by Jennifer J. Chow
For fans of culinary cozy mysteries and wedding settings!
Felicity Jin and her mom run Jin Bakery, spreading happiness through their treats with the bonus that Felicity’s fortune cookies contain accurate predictions. The not-so-warm and fuzzy feeling? The dead groomsman at the wedding they are catering.
If you want to start at the beginning, pick up Ill-Fated Fortune.
The Sinners All Bow: Two Authors, One Murder, and the Real Hester Prynne by Kate Winkler Dawson
For fans of history, classics taught in school, and true crime written by journalists and podcast hosts.
This is a fascinating look at two women, a murder that inspired three books, and the murder trial of a Methodist minister. Catharine Read Arnold Williams was a Victorian writer who wrote a book that many now believe to be the framework of the true crime genre as we know it. It was about the death of Sarah Maria Cornell, which was originally ruled a suicide but then questioned as murder. That same murder is the basis for The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. In this book, Kate Winkler Dawson digs into the murder using the original “true crime” book to sift through fact and fiction using modern resources, experts, and historical documents.
If this trifecta of history, classics, and true crime is your jam, also pick up Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep.
The Business Trip by Jessie Garcia
For fans of thrillers, twists, missing person cases, and multiple POV!
Stephanie and Jasmine are strangers—one traveling for business, the other running from abuse—who have three things in common: they travel on the same plane, send text messages to friends and coworkers about meeting the same man, and then go missing…
A Killer’s Code (Daniela Vega #3) by Isabella Maldonado
For fans of FBI procedurals, cross-country hunts, and cryptic clues!
There will be spoilers from past books in this summary, so if you want to start at the beginning, pick up A Killer’s Game.
Gustavo Toro was an informant for the FBI who had previously been an assassin. He died in a mission gone wrong and left FBI agent Dani Vega—former military codebreaker—cryptic clues that she and her team must follow in order to unmask a criminal mastermind.
We Are Watching by Alison Gaylin
For fans of psychological thrillers and stories about conspiracy cults.
Widowed after a car accident while driving her child to college, Meg Russo has thrown herself back into work running the local bookstore. But that offers no peace now that a group of zealots are harassing her at the store, one even making it seem like her husband’s death wasn’t an accident. It turns out that a book Meg wrote years ago is being used as a “prophesy” (the title of the book) by the group, who think a date in the book will bring about doomsday—unless, of course, Meg repents or dies at, the group’s hands…
Beast of the North Woods (Monster Hunter #3) by Annelise Ryan
For fans of fun murder mystery series!
Morgan Carter is a bookstore owner and cryptozoologist in Wisconsin who believes in plausible existability: it’s not that she believes in things like Big Foot but rather that without proof that it doesn’t exist, then there’s still the chance that it does. Now a fisherman has been killed by a hodag—according to a witness—except hodags were invented by a hoaxer and aren’t real. Since the witness is related to Carter’s employee, she takes on the case.
If you want to start at the beginning, pick up A Death in Door County!
Been Wrong So Long It Feels Like Right (King Oliver #3) by Walter Mosley
For fans of ex-police detectives turned PIs and family dramas!
Chief Odin Oliver went to prison for robbery and murder when his son, PI Joe King Oliver, was barely a teen. Now middle-aged, King’s grandmother wants him to find her son, Chief. The job comes with a ticking clock because she wants Chief found before her operation. If that wasn’t enough for King to deal with, he also has another case where a wealthy man hired him to find his missing wife, but King realizes things are not what they seem.
If you want to start at the beginning of this thoughtful, great series, pick up Down the River Unto the Sea!
A Serial Killer’s Guide to Marriage by Asia Mackay
For fans of fun, fictional serial killers!
Hazel and Fox were serial killers with an endless supply of awful men to dispose of. Then they got pregnant and opted for suburban family life. That is until Hazel decides to kill again without telling Fox…
For more mystery, thriller, and true crime reads, check out our mystery/thriller archives. While you’re there, catch up on our picks for the best mysteries, thrillers, and true crime of 2024 and 2025 mysteries to get excited about.
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