Hi, mystery fans! Carla Hall has a new food show on Max, Chasing Flavor, and it is as delightful and adventurous as she is! My only complaint is no one has designed TVs where I can grab and eat the food on the screen.
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
Mobile Bookshop Sticker Bundle by TerraVCo
I love bookmobiles, and I found these illustrations lovely. ($19 — they’re also sold individually if you prefer.)
New Releases
A Matrimonial Murder (Temple Hill Mystery #2) by Meeti Shroff-Shah
For fans of armchair traveling while solving a murder mystery and novelist-turned-amateur sleuth MCs!
Novelist Radhi Zaveri is once again finding herself solving a murder mystery: the killing of a matchmaker’s assistant in Mumbai. With a long list of clients (any who could have motive), first, Radhi will have to figure out if the assistant was even the target or the actual matchmaker.
If you want to start at the beginning, pick up A Mumbai Murder Mystery.
The Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder by C.L. Miller
For fans of stories where wills leave someone a business and a mystery, British murder mysteries, and antiques (C.L. Miller is the daughter of the late Judith Miller of the BBC Antiques Roadshow)!
Divorced and with a kid in college, Freya Lockwood learns that the man she tracked down valuable antiques with 20 years ago has died and left her and her aunt his business in a small English village. But that’s not all he left: there’s also a cryptic letter for Freya that she’s about to realize puts her on the hunt for his murderer…
Looking for more new releases? Check out our New Books newsletter!
Riot Recommendations
Based on two new releases of things to watch, I thought I’d give “buddy” book recs.
Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson
Film: Lisa Frankenstein, written by Diablo Cody (Juno, Jennifer’s Body) and directed by Zelda Williams (Robin Williams’s daughter), is inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and is now playing in theaters. It’s a horror comedy following a teen girl struggling with her new family dynamic and hanging out in the cemetery when she accidentally brings a dead guy to life.
Book: While the film and this book have different plots, I immediately thought of this book when I heard about the film: misunderstood teen lead, bringing back a dead person, living teen + the “dead” teaming up, the Lisa Frank aesthetic, and the fun, smart, humor mix! Plus, in the book, you get the bonus of a mystery: the mean girls accidentally brought back to life were murdered, but by who?
Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep
Series: Feud: Capote vs. The Swans (an 8-episode limited series on FX that you can stream on Hulu) is based on the book Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era by Laurence Leamer. It’s about Truman Capote, known for his true crime book In Cold Blood, and his final novel, which he spent years talking about but never published, as he befriended a group of wealthy women he called his Swans, and the betrayal that led to them never speaking to him again. The series has a hell of a cast if you grew up when I did: Naomi Watts as Babe Paley, Diane Lane as Slim Keith, Chloë Sevigny as C. Z. Guest, Calista Flockhart as Lee Radziwill, Demi Moore as Ann Woodward, Molly Ringwald as Joanne Carson.
Book: This is a super interesting true crime + history + biography that delves into the story of a serial killer preacher, the lawyer who defended the preacher and then defended the man who killed the preacher (!), Harper Lee’s (To Kill a Mockingbird) research for Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, and how Lee wrote about the preacher’s case because she wanted to write her own true crime book. Did you wonder how I was going to pull this all together? Always have faith in my twisty, turny brain!
News and Roundups
Missouri Secretary of State Candidate Promises to Burn Books
Anna Diop Joins Corey Hawkins, Willem Dafoe in The Man in My Basement (an adaptation of Walter Mosley’s The Man in My Basement)
Idaho Murders Docuseries Reveals How Dangerous Internet Sleuths Can Be: They Are Not Qualified
Downton Abbey and Line of Duty stars team up for new Netflix crime series – and it sounds gripping (based on The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen)
Legal Worlds Collide When the Suits Cast Meets Judge Judy in e.l.f. Cosmetics’ Super Bowl Spot
Black-Owned Bookish Etsy Shops for You to Support
First Look at Sugar, Colin Farrell’s Slick Detective Series Inspired by ’40s Noir
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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