Author: Jamie Canaves

Jesse Q. Sutanto had a super productive year with, that I know of, four novels publishing!

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers is a fun, thoughtful murder mystery with a funny older sleuth who owns a tea shop. When a dead body is found in her shop, she steals some evidence—for personal sleuthing of course—and pisses off the cops by outlining the body with a marker!

I’m Not Done with You Yet is a twisty psychological suspense about obsession, and the ways we may think we know ourselves but don’t…

Didn’t See That Coming is a YA romance with tropes of best friends to love and secret identity!

Theo Tan and the Iron Fan is the sequel to Theo Tan and the Fox Spirit, a fantasy middle grade series following Theo Tan, a Chinese American boy, and his snarky fox spirit companion.

S.A Cosby put out two crime stories this year, one an Audible original crime spree and the other a small town crime mystery.

All the Sinners Bleed is a dark crime novel with a serial killer on the loose in Charon County, Virginia, where Titus Crown just became the first Black sheriff. It’s been a quiet town on the major crime front until Titus takes over and his new position starts with a school shooting that targets a teacher. The incident puts Titus on an investigation with horrific past crimes and an unidentified third party…

Brokedown Prophets is a full-cast audible original that follows Preach, Digit, and Maria after they accidentally kill someone and end up on the run together…

For fans of foodie cozy mysteries!

Lyndsay Murray is really excited that her Spice Isle Bakery is a vendor in this year’s Caribbean American Heritage Festival. It should be great for business and full of delicious food, fun, and dancing! And it is until the lead singer of a reggae band dies and the police determine it to be an accident. Case closed? Not so fast: Lyndsay’s cousin knew the singer and is not convinced the police got it right, so Lyndsay is brought in for proper sleuthing!

If you want to start at the delicious beginning, pick up Against the Currant.

For fans of historical and gothic mysteries!

Ruby Vaughn — an American heiress expat in Devon, England, working as a bookseller at the end of WWI — is sent to a Cornish village with rare books for a folk healer. There, she connects with an old, now estranged friend: Tamsyn is happy to see Ruby again, miserable in her marriage, but things take a deadly turn — it’s a mystery! — when Edward, Tamsyn’s husband, is found murdered. The town believes it’s based on a curse, and Ruby decides to start poking around, because she’s going to prove the murder was committed by a human!

For fans of cozy mysteries and doggos!

Priscilla Cummings is a former teacher now finding success as an author. So life should be great, except she uncovers the mean girl from her childhood — who grew up to marry her high school crush — dead. And because it’s a cozy, Pris is the prime suspect! Pris and her pooch Bailey are going to have to get to cracking this case!

For fans of historical mysteries!

Following real-life history, Eliza Hamilton is widowed after Aaron Burr kills Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804 (Anyone else singing songs from Hamilton?!). In this fictional book, John Van Der Gloss was a friend of Hamilton’s, and following his death, Eliza watched his body, throat slit, pulled from the North River. Eliza and Hamilton’s son, having fought with Gloss, becomes a suspect, leading Eliza to get to sleuthing!

For fans of procedurals set in Chicago!

Detective Harriet Foster and her partner, Detective Vera Li, have their hands full and a ticking clock with their current case. Corrupt city council members are being murdered, and 30 dimes are left with the bodies. Clearly revenge is the easiest explanation, and since Marin Shaw was just released from prison and refused to point fingers at the rest of her corrupt coworkers, she seems the best suspect. But Shaw swears this crime she’s innocent of, leaving Foster and Li to either prove Shaw is lying or find out who has the motive and ability to frame Shaw…

I love Clark’s procedurals and characters — if you’re not already reading her work, definitely pick up her books. If you want to start at the beginning of this series, pick up Hide. And if you want a backlist series with four books, pick up Broken Places (A Cass Raines Mystery #1).

For fans of partnered PIs and historical mysteries!

This is a really fun mystery series that neither veers too dark nor light, with great character voice and humor.

Our narrator, Will Parker, has lived an interesting life, which she’s recounting by telling the big cases she’s worked on in her career. She works for a famous PI, Lillian Pentecost, who recruited her from the circus when Lillian needed an assistant because she has multiple sclerosis. Their current case, in 1940s New York, involves a missing woman who never left her apartment but had once been recruited to track Nazis by the FBI. Except that’s not the only thing in her past that would make her a victim of foul play, so Will and Lillian have their work cut out for them — especially since we start with Will being attacked and getting a concussion!

I love the narrator, and really need the next book in the series now, please.

If you want to start at the beginning (you do!), pick up Fortune Favors The Dead!

For fans of Japanese mysteries and completed detective series!

This is a great series that follows Tokyo police detective Kyoichiro Kaga. As the reader, you get to watch each clue found and mulled over as he slowly solves the cases. This time around, the mystery is a head-scratcher of a case that connects to Kaga’s personal life. His cousin, Shuhei Matsumiya, also works for the police, and although there is no evidence, he starts to suspect two unrelated cases that have to have some connection: the murder of an unhoused person and a strangled cleaning contractor found in a closet. And that’s before one of the murder victims has an item that is tied to Kaga’s mother’s death a decade prior…

If you want to start at the beginning, pick up Malice.

For fans of fun mystery series with an amateur sleuth!

Morgan Carter lives in Wisconsin, where she owns a bookstore and is a cryptozoologist, believing in plausible existability. Basically, she isn’t certain that creatures like the Loch Ness Monster exist; she just doesn’t think it can fully be ruled out. So naturally, when a man is found dead from a vicious attack in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest — following sightings of Big Foot — Morgan is asked to help investigate…

If you want to start at the beginning of the series, pick up A Death In Door County!

For fans of thrillers, psychological horror, and gorgeous covers!

Sweet Cadence was an all-girl pop group until one member, Mina, died by suicide. Years later, one of the past members, Candie, joins a K-pop workshop with the chance to train in Korea. Except another past member, Sunny, has different plans: infiltrate the workshop to find out what really happened to Mina…

For fans of thrillers, dual timelines, and past secrets!

Maggie is a therapist whose sister has been missing for years. Erin is married to Will, and they’ve recently started marriage counseling with Maggie. When Erin mentions something related to Maggie’s missing sister, Maggie becomes obsessed with how Erin could possibly know that. Rather than recommending the couple to another therapist — per code of ethics — Maggie instead decides to find out what Erin knows and why…

For fans of narratives told in the past and present with diary entries and fictional true crime!

Simone’s father is in prison, having been convicted of murdering her mother when she was 13. Now an adult, she’s trying to prove what she’s always believed: her father is innocent, and her neighbor, the father of her best friend, committed the murder…

For fans of translated procedurals with older protagonists and fictional serial killers summoning the detective to prison!

This is a great series where the lead, Superintendent Teresa Battaglia, is in her sixties and has diabetes and dementia — the latter something she has kept hidden from everyone. So, while on sick leave, she’s just going to move into retirement — except a serial killer from her past summons her to the prison he’s held in. It turns out that during his recent escape, he was hired to commit a murder, but he won’t say anything about the crime, including who hired him. So, we watch Battaglia and her partner try to solve what is currently happening while also watching almost 30 years prior the cat and mouse game between the serial killer and Battaglia.

If you want to start at the beginning of this great series, pick up Flowers over the Inferno!

For fans of noir, anxiety-inducing genre blends, atmospheric and slow-burn reads, and translated crime!

Bak Insu is a forester living nearby with his family and a recovering alcoholic. The forester prior to him mysteriously disappeared, but Bak Insu—and those living in the small village dependent on the forest—claim no knowledge of the previous forester. Then an accident, death, attempted break-in, and mysterious note occur, and Bak Insu must question what exactly may be happening in this forest…

For readers of true crime and history!

Over the course of two years, in the late 1950s, Charles Starkweather (19) and his girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate (14) traveled across Nebraska and Wyoming. Starkweather killed 11 people, including Fugate’s family. It’s the case behind Natural Born Killers and Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. Many questions have remained, including Fugate’s involvement, which MacLean sought out to answer not only with existing research but also by interviewing Fugate.

For fans of cozy mysteries starring a bookstore owner!

Samantha Washington runs a bookstore in Michigan and has just published a historical mystery, which she is on a book tour promoting. That’s where she witnesses Judith Hunter, a bestselling author, get accused of plagiarism and fighting with other authors. So when a publicist is poisoned, Sam thinks maybe the intended victim was Judith. She’ll need to prove her theory correct and get help from some friends at the Shady Acres Retirement Village.

Want to start at the beginning? Pick up The Plot is Murder!

For fans of murder mysteries, past and present storylines, and a main character that can’t remember the night in question!

Max has been having a bit of a rough time recently since transitioning: one parent is supportive and loving, and the other is not; his recent ex has become his bully. So when Gloss, a new girl in town who’s instantly the cool girl, takes him under her wing, he’s delighted. But they’re complete opposites on the surface: Gloss is rich, outgoing, and rule-breaking; Max is not wealthy, a musician lost in his lyrics, and trying to get by.

Then a party ends in murder, and Max is the main suspect until someone else confesses, throwing everything Max knows into turmoil, especially since his memory of that night isn’t coming back… (You find out very early on who was murdered and who confesses, but since the summary didn’t list it, I thought I’d not “spoil” it.)

Told in the past (Max meeting Gloss through the night of the party) and present (Max being questioned by police through the point of him remembering the night of the party), both narratives careen towards each other, giving you plenty of chance to try to figure out what did actually happen that night.

(TW alcoholic parent, child abuse/ misgendering, transphobia / mentions past suicidal ideation)

For fans of murder mysteries, investigative psychologists, and armchair travel sleuthing!

Philip Taiwo is an investigative psychologist who has been living in the U.S. with his family. Recently, they returned to Nigeria, where his younger sister has asked him to look into a case. It involves the megachurch she attends, where the pastor has been charged with his wife’s murder after she disappeared. It’s a sensational case that will challenge Taiwo and put his family in danger…

If you want to start at the beginning of the series, pick up Lightseekers.

For fans of history and reading about intelligence agencies!

Dive into seven decades of CIA history, from the CIA being created to Osama bin Laden’s assassination. Mundy, a journalist, uses hundreds of former CIA operatives’ interviews to bring to light women in the organization and their accomplishments in the face of discrimination.

You might also be interested in Mundy’s backlist title, Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers Who Helped Win World War II.