Archives de catégorie : Mystery

WHO BY FIRE de Greg Rhyno

Dame Polara has spent her life running from her father’s shady job as a PI. Now she must rely on the skills he taught her if she’s to protect herself and the people she care about most.

WHO BY FIRE
by Greg Rhyno
Cormorant Books, February 2024
(via The Rights Factory)

Haunted by a childhood spent picking locks, tailing suspects, and helping her hard-boiled PI father solve cases, Dame Polara has spent most of her adult life running from his shady profession and the memories she associates with it. What Dame wants now is simple — her safe job preserving heritage buildings, adequate care for her father’s mounting health complications, and to raise a family of her own. But life doesn’t seem to be going her way.

After serving her an eviction notice, Dame’s landlord offers her an alternative: she can keep her apartment if she investigates his mysterious wife, whom he suspects of cheating. When the investigation uncovers a serial arsonist burning down the very buildings Dame fights to preserve, she finds herself pulled right back into the seedy underworld of her father’s old profession. Now, she must rely on the skills he taught her if she’s to protect herself and the people she cares about most.

Greg Rhyno is the author of To Me You Seem Giant. This debut novel was nominated for a ReLit Award and an Alberta Book Publishing Award. His writing has appeared in a number of journals including Hobart, Riddle Fence, and Prism International. He completed an MFA at the University of Guelph and lives with his family in Guelph, Ontario.

BLUE HOTEL de Dann McDorman

BLUE HOTEL’s puzzle-like structure, in which each new section of the novel alters the reader’s understanding of what came before, accompanies a deeply felt meditation on death, the nature of reality, and our reasons for being and non-being.

BLUE HOTEL
by Dann McDorman
Knopf, Spring 2025
(via David Black Literary)

A man wakes up in a room with no idea where he is or how he got there. The room has no door nor windows. He has no way to tell the time. He has nothing to eat except for the endless cartons of Cup O’ Noodles (Original flavor) with which he is tormented by his captors. The stubble on his chin doesn’t grow. He loses his mind; he gets his back. Then one day, one hour, one minute, a vintage black typewriter appears on the desk, gleaming like a beetle. He warily taps out his name: J-O-H-N T-H-O-M-A-S. He sits down and begins to write…
Thus begins BLUE HOTEL, during which readers follow John Thomas as he tries to solve the mystery of his imprisonment. His surprising escape, and the discovery of what lies outside his room, launches an exploration during which readers will encounter a strange menagerie of characters: doomsday cultists, a Reality Studies professor, a Big Tech billionaire, an immortal chatbot, a woman who thought she could fly, and two sisters who speak to the dead — plus a few other, rather more surprising personalities…
BLUE HOTEL, Dann McDorman’s follow-up to West Heart Kill, features his trademark mixture of plot twists and philosophical inquiry. It’s a novel filled with bizarre facts and heretical histories, ranging from the origins of artificial intelligence to 19th century revolutionary politics in Canada. BLUE HOTEL’s puzzle-like structure, in which each new section of the novel alters the reader’s understanding of what came before, accompanies a deeply felt meditation on death, the nature of reality, and our reasons for being and non-being.

Dann McDorman is an Emmy-nominated TV news producer, who has also worked as a newspaper reporter, book reviewer, and cabinet maker. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two children.

THE WITCH’S ORCHARD d’Archer Sullivan

Wonderfully atmospheric, with vivid characters, and a dose of superstition and folklore, this novel stands out.

THE WITCH’S ORCHARD
by Archer Sullivan
Minotaur Books, Summer 2025

Former Air Force Special Investigator Annie Gore joined the military right after high school to escape the fraught homelife of her childhood. Now, she’s getting by as a private investigator and her latest case takes her to a small mountain town, not unlike the one where she grew up.

Ten years ago, three little girls went missing from their small town. One was returned, but the others were never seen again. After all this time without answers, the brother of one of the girls wants to hire Annie to see if she can find any new leads—anything that might help give him closure to the event that tore his family apart. Annie knows that a case this old might be a fool’s errand, but the bills are piling up and she can’t turn down a job—not even one that dredges up her own painful past.

In the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Annie begins to track the truth, navigating a decade’s worth of secrets, folklore of witches and crows, and a whole town that prefers to forget. But while the case may have been buried, echoes of the past linger. And Annie’s arrival stirs someone into action.

Archer Sullivan is a ninth generation Appalachian. She’s moved thirty-seven times and has lived everywhere from Monticello, Kentucky to Manhattan, New York and from Black Mountain, North Carolina to Beverly Hills, California. Her work has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Tough, Shotgun Honey, Reckon Review, Rock and a Hard Place and The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2024.

FOUR QUEENS de Rosanne Limoncelli

Comparable novels to FOUR QUEENS would include many titles from the Christie, Sayers, Marsh, and Allingham oeuvres, as well as such recent titles as Claudia Gray’s The Murder of Mr. Wickham, Susan Elia MacNeal’s Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, and Elly Griffiths’ The Locked Room.

FOUR QUEENS
by Rosanne Limoncelli
Crooked Lane, March 2025

In 1938 England, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham – the « Four Queens » of British crime fiction – host a gala dinner to raise money for the Women’s Volunteer Service to help Britain prepare for war as Nazi Germany begins its conquest of the Continent. Baronet Sir Henry Heathcote has graciously loaned his manor home, Hursley House, for the event, for which the London elite have shown up in fancy gowns and sharp tuxedos, dancing to a twenty-piece orchestra; it is a great success. Early the next morning as the house staff tidies up the rooms for its weekend guests, including the Four Queens, Sir Henry is found dead in the library, with his cigar still lit, his eyes open, and his face contorted in horror.

Scotland Yard is summoned and appears in the form of Detective Chief Inspector Lilian Wyles, who has distinguished herself in the Criminal Investigation Division as its first female officer, and Detective Chief Inspector Richard Davidson. Many of the guests have apparent motives, among them Sir Henry’s politically ambitious son, his sexually rebellious daughter, his left-leaning Spanish son-in-law, his recently jilted fiancee, a young Indian secretary to the Home Secretary, and even the Four Queens are not beneath suspicion. But DCI Wyles, for whom this is her first murder investigation, has a knack for gaining the trust of female suspects and witnesses, and she quietly recruits the Four Queens to use their exceptional puzzle-solving talents to help identify the murderer.

Rosanne Limoncelli’s debut locked-room murder mystery Four Queens centers on the concept that all four of these famous female crime authors could have come together in pre-war England and the fascination of seeing them work together using their respective unique detection skills gleaned from their work to solve an actual murder. DCI Wyles, who has a complex backstory, rises to the occasion and would be a returning character in subsequent mysteries featuring the four queens of crime.

Rosanne Limoncelli is a writer, filmmaker, and professor living in Brooklyn. She has written, directed and produced short narrative films, features, documentaries and educational films. Rosanne also writes poetry, short fiction, educational texts and novels. Her short fiction first appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and her most recent work can be seen in Suspense Magazine and Noir Nation. Currently, she is the Senior DIrector of Film Technologies at the Kanbar Institute and the Martin Scorsese Center of Virtual Production in Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, where she teaches writing and filmmaking to students and professors and often serves as an education and technology consultant and as a speaker at conferences and universities. She received her BFA from the Department of Film & TV at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and her MA and PhD in Teaching Reading,Writing, and Media from NYU’s Steinhardt School.

THE EXPERT OF SUBTLE REVISIONS de Kirsten Menger-Anderson

Steeped in math and misfortune, THE EXPERT OF SUBTLE REVISIONS is a taut, genre-bending historical mystery perfect for readers looking for their next dark academia fix.

THE EXPERT OF SUBTLE REVISIONS
by Kirsten Menger-Anderson
Crown, March 2025

In Half Moon Bay, California, 2016, a young woman waits for her father’s sailboat to arrive at port. They have agreed to meet on this day and time. Yet he never shows. He had told her this day might come. And if it did, she was ready. Go to the library in Berkeley, find a certain book, follow the instructions. But what if the instructions lead to more questions than answers?

In 1933, a young man arrives in Vienna to begin a new post as a professor of mathematics at the University. There he finds himself part of the Engelhardt Castle, a group of intellectuals that have recently been dubbed a target by a growing, anti-academic mob. The circle includes the preeminent minds of their time, and a cast of characters desperate to get invited into their midst, many of whom will stop at nothing to get there. As fascism rises, and polarization increases, moderate voices are drowned out. There are whispers of a machine, a music box, which can transport someone through time. But no one can confirm if it’s a rumor, or true.  And the only people who know first-hand are not talking.

What does a young woman who lives off the grid and spends her free time editing Wikipedia entries and picking fights with people online have to do with a circle of intellectuals debating time and space in Vienna on the eve of World War II? Kirsten Menger-Anderson’s beautiful meditation on time, love, and obsession shows us how we never truly know what happened in the past, and often how the past eerily mirrors the future.

Steeped in math and misfortune, THE EXPERT OF SUBTLE REVISIONS is a taut, genre-bending historical mystery perfect for readers looking for their next dark academia fix.

“A touching and deftly constructed story about the most precious thing we have—time. From modern-day San Francisco to Croatia before the Great War and 1930s Vienna, Kirsten Menger-Anderson follows her characters as they try to solve the mysteries of science, faith, and love. A glorious book.”―Laila Lalami, author of Pulitzer Prize-finalist The Moor’s Account

“The Expert of Subtle Revisions begins with a mysterious disappearance and ends with a moving discovery. Along the way, Kirsten Menger-Anderson weaves together history, time travel, and a haunting love story. She also manages to raise stirring questions about identity, family, and what it means to record and revise history, especially one’s own. A powerful and original novel that defies expectations in almost every chapter.”―Stephen McCauley, author of My Ex-Life and The Object of My Affection

“Smart. Propulsive. Addictive. Kirsten Menger-Anderson’s The Expert of Subtle Revisions grabbed hold with the opening sentence and didn’t let go until its surprising and satisfying conclusion. Brilliantly plotted and filled with deft twists and unforgettable characters, this dual-timeline novel about obsession, madness, and love is a must-read for fans of both mystery and historical fiction. I loved this book.”―Peggy Townsend, author of The Beautiful and the Wild

Kirsten Menger-Anderson is the author of Doctor Olaf van Schuler’s Brain (Algonquin), a finalist for the Northern California Book Award in fiction and one of Time Out Chicago’s top ten books of the year. Her short stories and essays have appeared in publications including Ploughshares, the Southwest Review, LitHub, and Undark. She currently lives in San Francisco with her family.