Archives de catégorie : Mystery

THE FINDER de Marilyn Medlock

A southern gothic suspense about a young woman who can hear the voices of the dead, and when she hears a recently killed woman implore “Find her…” she is set on a course to uncover the secrets of a powerful Charleston family.

THE FINDER
by Marilyn Medlock
Crooked Lane, May 2027
(via Aaron Priest Literary)

Alice Belrose has been suppressing her innate gift—the ability to converse with the dead—because her mother also spoke to the dead, and now she’s living in a psychiatric hospital, fragile in both mind and body. But when Alice is asked by the matriarch of one of Charleston’s wealthiest and most powerful families to sit with the body of a woman just brought to the nearby mortuary, Alice’s gift can no longer be denied. Because Alice can hear the dead woman’s voice imploring: Find her… Those two words set Alice on a mysterious and treacherous course to uncover the secrets of the dead woman’s past–secrets that others in this close community will kill to keep buried.

Marilyn Medlock, who also writes under the name Amanda Stevens, is the award-winning author of over fifty novels, including the modern gothic series, The Graveyard Queen. Her books have been described as eerie and atmospheric, “a new take on the classic ghost story.” Born and raised in the rural south, she now resides in Houston, Texas.

KENNEDY JONES HAS A PROBLEM de Liz Kay

KENNEDY JONES HAS A PROBLEM
by Liz Kay
(via Writers House)

Kennedy Jones has a problem. She has a lot of problems actually. One, she has aphids in her garden again this year. Two, she has buried a lot of bodies under her garden, and after the last one, there is the distinct possibility that police are closing in. Three, the secluded property she lives on is being developed into an artists’ colony and the (admittedly hot) general contractor seems a little too interested in whether Kennedy had anything to do with his dead cousin.

Kennedy tries lying low and keeping tabs on the case by dating a sweet but dumb deputy, but when the police throw out the words “serial killer” and start connecting victims that aren’t even hers, Kennedy realizes she’s not the only murderer in town. Recruiting the help of one of the artists at the colony—a failing novelist turned true-crime writer, Kennedy races to uncover her competition before they can pin their crimes on her—or do something much worse.

The novel combines Liz’s trademark wit with a highly propulsive mystery and a darkly charismatic protagonist. It marries the hijinks of Finlay Donovan is Killing It and You’d Look Better As a Ghost with the darkly comic horror of Final Girl Support Group, This Girl’s a Killer, and My Sister, the Serial Killer.

Liz Kay holds an MFA from the University of Nebraska, where she was the recipient of both an Academy of American Poets Prize and the Wendy Fort Foundation Prize for exemplary work in poetry. Her poems have appeared in such journals as Beloit Poetry Journal, RHINO, Nimrod, Willow Springs, The New York Quarterly, Iron Horse Literary Review, Redactions, and Sugar House Review. She is the author of the Something to Help Me Sleep {dancing girl press}, The Witch Tells The Story And Makes It True (Quarter Press), Monsters: A Love Story (G. P. Putnam’s Sons), and Fallout (Red Hen Press, forthcoming). Liz teaches and directs the Creative Writing Program at Metropolitan Community College in Omaha, Nebraska.

THE IVORY CITY d’Emily Bain Murphy

The Devil in the White City meets Pride and Prejudice in this romantic historical murder mystery set at the 1904 World’s Fair.

THE IVORY CITY by Emily Bain Murphy
Union Square & Co., November 2025
(via Park, Fine & Brower)

The St. Louis World’s Fair, 1904: A miniature city of palaces and pavilions that becomes a backdrop for romance, betrayal—and murder.

Cousins Grace and Lillie have been best friends since birth, despite Grace’s vastly inferior social status ever since her mother married for love instead of wealth. When Lillie invites Grace to the biggest event of the century—the legendary World’s Fair, also known as “The Ivory City”—Grace hopes her fortunes might be about to change.

But when a member of their party is brutally killed at the fair, and suspicion falls on Lillie’s brother Oliver, Grace must prove Oliver’s innocence before her beloved cousins’ family is ruined forever. Along the way, she’ll discover that the city’s wealthy elite—including Oliver’s handsome but irritable friend Theodore—aren’t quite who they appear to be. And amidst the glitz, glamor, and magic of the Ivory City lurks a danger that just may claim her life.

« Murphy’s intense research helps to immerse readers in the lush setting…A good pick for fans of Deanna Raybourn and Andrea Penrose. »―Library Journal, STARRED Review

Emily Bain Murphy is the author of two critically acclaimed young adult novels—The Disappearances, which was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, and Splinters of Scarlet—as well as the popular historical mystery novel Enchanted Hill. Murphy lives in St. Louis with her husband, three children, and a rescue bunny, where she’s always on the lookout for beautiful old mansions hiding new stories.

GOOD INTENTIONS de Marisa Walz

A deft and immersive psychological suspense debut about a luxury party planner who becomes obsessed with a woman she encounters in a hospital waiting room.

GOOD INTENTIONS
by Marisa Walz
St. Martin’s Press, February 2026

Cady has worked hard to have a good life. She has a thriving luxury event-planning business, the man she’s loved since she was seventeen, and a social calendar she can barely keep up with. She also has Dana, her identical twin, her beyond best friend, her most trusted confidante. When Cady gets a call that Dana has been in a serious accident and arrives moments too late to say goodbye, her world falls apart.

But to Cady’s family’s growing concern and confusion, it’s not Dana’s death that consumes her. It’s Morgan, a grieving mother Cady encountered in the hospital waiting room, the day her sister died. It can’t be a coincidence, that they both experienced tragedy at the same moment, in the same place―Cady doesn’t believe in coincidences. Instead, she is convinced that she must help this stranger overcome her tragedy, in order to come to terms with her own.

Or…is there more to it? Is it possible that Cady wants something else from Morgan? Something she can’t even admit to herself?

Slyly twisted and deeply provocative, GOOD INTENTIONS captures the moral ambiguity that can arise in the face of impossible choices. Like the aftermath of a car accident―and against your better judgment―you won’t be able to look away.

Marisa Walz is a Federal Reserve executive who also writes novels about people behaving badly. She lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband and two young children.

MURDER MOST DELICIOUS de Danielle Postel-Vinay

Thursday Murder Club meets Butter—with a dash of the healing fiction of Days at the Morisaki Bookshop—in this heart-warming and delectable mystery set in Paris featuring two women in need of comfort: an American sommelier who has lost her sense of taste and an agoraphobic detective afraid to leave her quaint Parisian neighborhood.

MURDER MOST DELICIOUS
by Danielle Postel-Vinay
HarperCollins, May 2026
(via Writers House)

Olivia Branch has a legendary palette—or, rather, had. She was a master sommelier—a distinction given to only 269 people in the world, and only a handful of them women–with a mental catalogue for the scent and taste of wines that ran into the thousands. She was even, for a time, the youngest-ever Head Sommelier at the most prestigious French restaurant in New York City. That is, until Covid robbed her of one of her greatest weapons: her sense of taste.

While Olivia manages to keep this a secret for as long as she possibly can, her cover is blown one disastrous evening when she fails to identify one of the most important wines of her career. Reeling from the public humiliation, adrift, and massively depressed, she gets a miraculous second-chance opportunity in the form of an invitation from Jacques de Bizet—an old friend and celebrity chef in Paris—who invites her to fly to France to interview with him. Everything finally seems to be turning around for Olivia…until the esteemed gourmand takes his first sip and immediately drops dead.

Augusta Dupin is a former detective. Eccentric and intimidating in her intellect, she’d solved some of the hardest cases to come through the Sûreté de Paris. That is, until Covid arrived, and with it, a severe flare-up of her childhood agoraphobia. Unable to leave the borders of her tiny neighborhood, she was forced to quit her job, but she just can’t seem to give up her passion for mysteries. And now, one has landed right at her doorstep: Who killed the neighborhood’s dear friend and favorite chef Jacques? And who is the mysterious American woman who fled the scene of the crime?

In this captivating mystery full of sensual delights and adventures, Olivia and Augusta must join forces with a group of neighborhood amateur sleuths—a pâtissier, a café owner, a perfumer, and a florist—to solve the crime, and along the way find fresh purpose for their lives. Set against the backdrop of the enchanting Seventh Arrondissement, readers will be immediately transported to the cozy, charming Parisian neighborhood where friendship, food and creature comforts have the power to soothe the soul in dark times.

Danielle Postel-Vinay is the French alter-ego of The New York Times and internationally bestselling author Danielle Trussoni, whose books have won The Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Le Prix Bête Noire des Libraires and been translated into more than thirty languages. She spends part of the year in Paris with her French husband and their family.