Author: Jamie Canaves

For fans of YA murder mysteries, family drama, siblings (brothers), and amateur sleuths!

At the heart of this murder mystery are two half-brothers: Amir and Marcel Trudeau. They aren’t on speaking terms, rooted in their mothers’ dislike of each other and their father raising one son while essentially having left the other. Amir ultimately goes to Marcel’s 16th birthday party, though, because of a girl, which turns out terribly for everyone: the girl is murdered, Amir is the suspect, and now Marcel and Amir are forced to hash out their family issues and solve a murder.

I really enjoyed the balance of the family drama, Amir and Marcel fighting their way to a better relationship, Marcel investigating, the New Orleans setting, and the dive into the prejudice in our justice system and our current media.

I love that the audiobook gave each brother his own narrator: Kevin R. Free and Nile Bullock.

I also really enjoyed Emill’s previous YA murder mystery, The Black Queen, and look forward to future books.

(TW past animal cruelty)

For fans of author main characters, bookish books, remote mysteries, and murder mysteries where a handful of people are all suspects with motives!

Author Ernest Cunningham is invited to attend the 50th Australian Mystery Writers’ Festival to be on writing panels, along with bestselling authors, while on a luxury train traveling the Australian desert. Surely (don’t call me Shirley!), you can see all the delicious mystery tropes ahead: an author is murdered, and the fellow authors become both prime suspects and essentially “detectives” to find out what actually happened!

You don’t need to read the first in the series — they can each be read as standalones — but it’s a fun, creative, remote mystery if you’re interested: Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone.

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…

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 fans of celebrities writing mysteries, amateur sleuths, food, and murder mysteries set in network TV!

Before having to become an amateur sleuth, Billy Blessing is already busy running a NY restaurant, regularly being on the morning show Wake Up, America!, and working on a new food competition show. That is, until he becomes the suspect of murdering the executive producer in his new show. What’s a suspect to do but become a sleuth and clear his name!

For fans of stories about cults, past mysteries, and fictional true crime reporters!

Years ago, three members of a cult died by suicide, and the baby they believed to be the Antichrist and its mother disappeared. The baby, now reaching its 18th birthday, gives a literary agent the idea to assign the case to a true crime reporter for a book deal. The problem is, no one knows anything about who the baby is, so Amanda Bailey has a massive investigation ahead of her, which we get to watch be pieced together with messages, interviews, recordings, screenplays, a diary, a novel…It’s all just one twist after another, starting with the fact that Amanda isn’t the only person on this assignment: Oliver Menzies, whom Amanda blames for ruining her career once, is also on the same case and writing his own book!

If you like inventive format and watching a case from beginning to end, I inhaled this one in a day.

This has a great multicast audiobook — which clearly states before each entry who is speaking and through what format — narrated by Annie Aldington, Nneka Okoye, Gareth Armstrong, Sid Sagar, and Kristin Atherton.

(TW past child endangerment, attempted harm/ past assumption of postpartum depression / past mass suicide, detail/ house fire/ past child abuse)

For fans of domestic thrillers and “did he or didn’t he” mysteries!

Paige and Aaron Nichols hit a big rough patch in their marriage when Paige correctly accuses Aaron of having an affair with a coworker. He promises he’ll end it and work on their marriage, except what happens next is that the coworker comes forward with information that could get Aaron fired, and then she disappears, leaving Aaron as the prime suspect…

For fans of alternating POV (including letters!), returning home to an estate, family fortunes, murder, and secrets!

Ruby McTavish, who is famous for surviving a childhood kidnapping, died a decade ago. Her fortune, including a family estate, was all left to her son Camden. He hasn’t wanted anything to do with it, now living with his wife in California and making a living as a teacher. But the past comes for everybody, and Camden finally relents and returns home to North Carolina to finally deal with his mother’s will. What could go wrong?!

For fans of intergenerational family drama, being in the MC’s head, remote mysteries, and slowly getting past and present reveals!

Jia Shah is struggling as a single mom when her son gets into a fight in school, and she thinks her ex is ready to take him away. When a hurricane evacuation happens, she ends up going to her sister’s house, only to arrive and find out that the whole neighborhood — minus one neighbor — has left. Between the stress of the storm, her stress with her ex, being a mom, and her issues with her brother-in-law, the last thing she needs is a dead body…

The narrator, Soneela Nankani, does a fantastic job on the audiobook.

(TW fertility issues/ assumes domestic abuse, nothing on page/ past statutory involving 17-year-old)

For fans of remote mysteries, past friends coming together, secrets bubbling over, multiple POVs from adults and kids, and not knowing who the victim is at the beginning!

A married couple of architects left their city life for a quiet, remote life in hopes of helping their adopted son, who has PTSD because of his early childhood. They’re opening up a camping site and have invited their college friends for a weekend retreat reunion. Sounds fun, right? Except this is a remote mystery, and humans are gonna human. There’s a fight between the kids, in which the parents take sides, a teen who was forced to come along and is miserable, a loan amongst friends that is going sour, an arguing couple, and secrets amongst the friend group that start to accidentally be revealed. We begin with a scene that appears like someone is being forced to jump to their death, then you start getting DCI interviews and go back and forth between the arrival and reunion weekend and the investigation, which includes a missing person and a murder…

The audiobook has dual narrators, Beth Eyre and Jamie Parker, who kept me fully invested in this mystery!

(TW past child abuse/ past suicide)

This is a new-in-paperback release this week to read if you missed it in 2023! For fans of procedurals, fictional serial killers, Indigenous mysteries, multiple POVs including the killers, and armchair traveling to New Zealand!

Detective Hana Westerman works for the Auckland police and is a mother to a teen activist daughter and ex-wife to a superior officer when a new case develops: a killer announces revenge on six British soldiers’ descendants tied to the brutal murder of a Māori chief in the 1800s. Not only will Hana have to stop the killer, but she’ll also have to deal with the past, including her own…

The audiobook is narrated by New Zealand actors Miriama McDowell and Richard Te Are.

For fans of murder mysteries with multiple POV procedurals!

This is a solid mystery that will satisfy many tropes: struggling detective (PTSD, alcoholism), small town, multiple POVs including from the sheriff, murder mystery + missing person mystery. It’s a great mix of following the clues of the mysteries mixed in with town life and the struggling characters’ personal lives.

Eli North has PTSD from war and is self-managing it with alcohol, which is obviously going terribly. Drunk, he stumbles across the body of a teen boy who appears to have drowned. He ends up being put on the case by his mother, who is the town sheriff and is trying her best to help Eli. She feels guilt over the death of the boy, whose mom is an addict, because she feels that as sheriff, she didn’t do enough. Added into the murder mystery is a missing teenage girl, a “miracle” drug from a pharmaceutical company, and Eli trying to do right by his son and ex-wife. If there is a sequel, I am definitely reading it.

(TW teen death/ PTSD, alcoholism/ drug addiction, drug overdose/ panic attacks/ suicidal ideation, attempted suicide/ past domestic, child abuse)

This is a new-in-paperback release this week!

Here’s a series for fans of PIs at an agency, mysteries set outside of the US, and missing person cases that unfold into even more crimes.

Emma Djan is a PI working for an agency in Accra, Ghana. The case currently assigned involves a diplomat’s daughter, Ngozi Ojukwu, who, rather than starting college, disappeared in Lagos, Nigeria. It’s believed she ran off with her boyfriend, Femi, except he’s found murdered and has been involved in human trafficking. So Emma goes undercover in the hopes of finding out what happened to Ngozi.

If you want to start at the beginning of this series, pick up The Missing American, and if you like completed series, pick up Quartey’s Wife of the Gods, which starts the Darko Dawson procedural series.

For fans of secret identity, con women, and cat and mouse games!

Evie Porter isn’t really Evie Porter. She’s been assigned this identity, after screwing up her past assignment, by whoever her mysterious boss is. She’s determined to make up for her last job, except a few things happen: she likes the man she’s dating, Ryan Sumner, who is supposed to be her target, and a woman shows up in Evie’s life with Evie’s actual identity. Clearly, someone is after her, but who and why? And how is she going to outsmart them…?

This was an audiobook (narrated by Saskia Maarleveld) that I knew absolutely nothing about and hit play just to see if the beginning interested me, and OOP, suddenly all my chores were done, and I was at the end having read a very satisfying mystery.

(TW parent death by cancer)

For fans of middle grade and crime-fighting teams!

Olive Cobin Zang is 12 and swears her busy parents don’t care about her. Her grandma recently passed away, and now she’s starting a new boarding school…which Olive quickly learns is a cover for a crime-fighting organization that uses kids. Adults didn’t work, and teenagers really didn’t work, so why not try kids?! They aren’t spies, and they aren’t police, and no one knows who is really in charge of the youth operatives, but they’re trained and taught to “prevent chaos, catch lawbreakers”. So that’s what Olive and her fellow team do in this fun, fast-paced, high-stakes (dangerous missions!) mystery!

The audiobook has a great narrator, Cindy Kay.

For fans of self-destructive main characters and the theater!

Former actress Vivian Parry is now a theater critic for a NY magazine. She ends up making a trade with a graduate student: he’ll put her on a panel (to help her career), and she’ll give him the interview he wants for his thesis. The problem? The graduate student’s fiancée claims Vivian is the last to see him before he disappeared. What’s Vivian to do other than self-destruct and try to find him…?

For fans of remote mysteries on a ship!

Olivia Campbell is an actuary who recently had a nervous breakdown because of work. Her boyfriend, Aaron, is an art curator who is planning a recently deceased artist’s exhibition on a luxury cruise. Hoping to reset herself, Liv decides to go on the cruise to Antarctica. Problem? Many! Liv is terrified of being out on the water since her father’s death; Aaron doesn’t make it onto the ship, Liv has to run the exhibition, and it’s a remote mystery, so there’s gonna be a lot of accidents, anxiety, and deaths…

Author’s backlist: Breathless.

The audiobook is narrated by Cathleen McCarron, who you may know from Conviction and Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine.

(TW suspected suicide death/ recounts past desire for self-harm that could be triggering for suicidal ideation)

For readers of true crime, mafia, and history!

This is a deep dive that traces Italian organized crime throughout history, including the control of labor in Sicily, the American Mafia in lawless New Orleans, and the relationship with Jewish gangsters before prohibition.

This is historical fiction (late 1800s England) based on the real Tichborne case, which questioned whether the heir to a very wealthy family was, in fact, the person he claimed to be.

This historical novel takes you to Pennsylvania to a Jewish and African American immigrant neighborhood, Chicken Hill, during the ’20s and ’30s. But the novel opens in the ’70s when a skeleton is unearthed at the bottom of a well…