Hi, mystery fans! I will watch anything that Michelle Yeoh is in, so my weekend plans absolutely include watching her new movie on Netflix, which looks like a dark comedy crime family film: The Brothers Sun.
2024 is the tenth year of the Read Harder Challenge! Join us as we make our way through 24 tasks meant to expand our reading horizons and diversify our TBRs. To get book recommendations for each task, sign up for the Read Harder newsletter. We’ll also keep you informed about other cool reading challenges, readathons, and more across the bookish internet. If you become a paid subscriber, you get even more recommendations plus community features, where you can connect with a community of passionate, like-minded readers in a cozy and supportive corner of the internet. Sign up today!
Bookish Goods
Read Your Heart Out tee by ChickenTee
This one comes in a ton of options, plus it has about 28 colors to choose from. ($15)
New Releases
Silent Judgment by Zaire Crown
For fans of urban thrillers, assassins, and plots that feel like they’re ripped from the headlines!
Amelia Chess is a Black conservative TV personality who has made herself known for attacking marginalized communities, including her own. Now, after her most recent opinion on a police shooting, she is faced with death threats, and a bodyguard is brought in. Silence, known as a street executioner, has zero desire to be Amelia’s bodyguard, but he has no option when a kingpin calls in an owed favor…
Not Dead Enough by Tyffany D. Neiheiser
For fans of YA thrillers and the how-is-the-dead-guy-messaging-me?! trope.
Charlotte is a high school junior with PTSD: her boyfriend Jerry, who was physically abusive, died in a car accident she survived on prom night. She’s doing her best to put her life back together while keeping the past abuse secret…until she suddenly starts receiving messages from Jerry’s phone and is forced to face the past and question: if the ghost of Jerry isn’t after her, then who is…?
For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.
Riot Recommendations
Danika Ellis, who is steering Book Riot’s Read Harder challenge, has also been offering helpful selections for other book challenges, including PopSugar’s 2024 reading challenge. Being that the first reading challenge I ever did (years back) was PopSugar’s, I thought it would be fun to offer some mystery book options for some of the first prompts.
Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay
#2: a Bildungsroman / coming-of-age story
For the challenge: you have a teen boy navigating identity, culture, and finding his way and place when his roots can feel as if they conflict with his current daily life.
Adding a mystery: Jay Reguero is a senior in high school when he learns that his cousin Jun has died in the Philippines. Unable to comprehend how Jun died in relation to the Government’s current war on drugs, he plans on spending his spring break in the Philippines with family as a cover to investigate Jun’s death.
Bonus: the audiobook is narrated by Ramón de Ocampo (Red, White, and Royal Blue)!
(TW addiction/ discussions of sex trafficking/ past rape, not detailed)
Gorgeous Gruesome Faces by Linda Cheng
#5: a book about K-pop
For the challenge: An all-girl pop group disbanded after a member died by suicide. Now, one of the past members signs up for a K-pop workshop with the chance to train in Korea.
Adding a mystery (thriller/ psychological horror): While one past group member is in the workshop to become a K-pop star, another past group member has arrived to infiltrate and find out what really happened to the past member that died…
Mrs. Mohr Goes Missing by Maryla Szymiczkowa
#13: A book originally published under a pen name
For the challenge: Maryla Szymiczkowa is the pen name for Jacek Dehnel and his partner Piotr Tarczyński, who currently live in Warsaw.
Adding a mystery: Zofia Turbotynska is bored with her life in 1893 Cracow, Poland. She’s 38 and married to a professor who doesn’t value all the help she’s given to his career. So when a woman disappears from a nursing home, Zofia naturally decides to investigate herself — she is smart and loves mystery novels, so why not!
(TW mentions infertility/ discussions of addiction/ past domestic abuse mentioned)
News and Roundups
Alex Segura returns to the scene of the comic book crime with the new novel Alter Ego (Secret Identity follow-up!)
Congrats to the mystery books that won at the ALA Youth Media Awards winners (and also all the other genre books): The Mona Lisa Vanishes: A Legendary Painter, a Shocking Heist (The Robert F. Sibert Award for the most distinguished informational book for children) and Promise Boys (The Odyssey Award for best audiobook production).
Monsieur Spade Makes Clive Owen a Classic Noir Hero in the Best Kind of Fanfiction: TV Review
Hey YA Extra Credit: Madcap Mysteries
Winter/Spring 2024 Adaptation Preview
(At least 5 adaptations!) Oscar Nominations 2024: Oppenheimer Dominates With 13 Nods, Poor Things Follows With 11
This British Miniseries Pairs Jane Austen With a Murder Mystery
Defunding liberal arts is dangerous for health care: “Through literature, poetry, theater, and visual arts, students acquire important professional capacities, such as tolerance of ambiguity, skillful clinical communication, and sensitivity in listening to and learning from patient stories.”
Browse the books recommended in Unusual Suspects’ previous newsletters on this shelf. See upcoming 2024 releases and mysteries from 2023. Check out this Unusual Suspects Pinterest board and get Tailored Book Recommendations!
Until next time, keep investigating! In the meantime, come talk books with me on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads, and Litsy — you can find me under Jamie Canavés.
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