Author: Jamie Canaves

For fans of reunited friend groups, mysterious past deaths, secrets coming out, and remote mysteries set in New Zealand!

Nine years ago, Bea died by suicide. Now, her sister and Bea’s friend group have reunited in a crumbling estate in the New Zealand Alps. Luna, however, has partially accepted the invitation in order to demand Bea’s sister tell her what really happened and why she chose to cremate Bea’s body instead of allowing her friend a proper goodbye. Luna is already going into this reunion dealing with personal issues, including losing her sight and trying to follow her doctor’s advice of accepting what is happening in order to live a full life. Upon arriving at the reunion, her animosity toward Bea’s sister and her paranoia start to crank up when accidents start occurring and people start dying…

If you do audio and can keep track of a full cast of characters, I really enjoyed Saskia Maarleveld’s voice and narration.

(TW main mystery assumed suicide, mentions method/ brief mention past self-harm, suicide attempt/ brief mention rumor of pedophile, no details/ drugging without permission/ ableism)

For fans of history and true crime, not focused on serial killers!

Nothing exists in a vacuum, so while the crime of this book is alligator poaching, that’s not the only thing this book is about. You also are immersed in the Florida Everglades and its history, power, and politics; get bits of Renner’s life; meet the recruited Florida Fish and Wildlife officer tasked with investigating alligator poaching; and take a dive into learning the man vs the myth of Peg Brown — known as an alligator poaching legend.

For fans of PI series, community, and thriller action!

August Snow thinks something very strange is going on with the Catholic church in his hometown in Detroit, Mexicantown. Not only has the priest he’s always known, Father Michael Grabowski, suddenly retired because a group sent by the Vatican basically forced him to, but another priest died by apparent suicide. Soon, Snow finds himself in a full conspiracy and fighting to save Father Grabowski…

If you want to start at the beginning of this great action-packed series, pick up August Snow.

For fans of fictional true crime “investigators,” past and present chapters, and transcripts and diary entries!

This feels like reading a fictional version of a true crime memoir where the author investigates a crime they are loosely connected to while also trying to work through things in their own personal life. I went with the audiobook format, narrated by Anna Caputo, and got sucked in like I would a podcast.

Sam has been into true crime for a long time, so when she sees that a girl she once knew is now at the center of a true crime case, she inserts herself by trying to befriend the woman. Kiri was with her survivalist boyfriend, a man with a large following on social media, when he disappeared. There are a lot of questions and little answers to what happened in the desert, with many people labeling Kiri as a murderer. Will she open up to Sam and tell her the truth?

(TWs that may be incomplete because I couldn’t always write something down while listening: mentions of past child abuse, past domestic abuse/ disordered eating/ past statutory)

For fans of family dramas, following two women’s lives, and Celeste Ng!

In a rural village in China, Jasmine has been married since she was 14, having been told by her husband that her first child died after birth. She now learns that was a lie, and the baby girl was given up for adoption to a couple in New York because her husband wanted a boy. Jasmine flees her husband for NY to try to find her child, who is being raised by Rebecca and Brandon, and take her back. The adoptive parent’s lives aren’t perfect: Rebecca works in publishing but is threatened by a scandal, her husband is hiding something, and Rebecca appears to begrudge the nanny…

For fans of true crime that doesn’t involve serial killers!

Could people’s love and over-collecting, mixed with climate change, be leading to a plant being threatened with extinction? That’s what professor at the University of Alabama Jared D. Margulies dives into in this book. From theories of psychoanalysts to interviewers with collectors, you’ll learn what drives collectors to need more succulents and how poachers have created an illegal cactus trade.

For fans of Japanese crime novels and assassins!

Kabuto sees his physician, known as The Doctor, and during visits, is also given his assignments…because he’s an assassin. The problem is Kabuto no longer wants this line of work, and The Doctor doesn’t want to give him up, so a deal is struck: Kabuto will complete a few jobs and be released. Naturally, his final assignments are a challenge: take out fellow assassins. What could go wrong?!

If you want to start at the beginning, pick up Three Assassins, and if you like streaming adaptations, read Bullet Train and then watch the film on Netflix.

For fans of YA, prep schools, revenge games, nonlinear chapters, and articles, social media posts, interviews, and transcripts throughout!

Alyson Benowitz is hoping her prep school integrating from all girls to allowing boys will afford her a clean slate since she’s a hopeless romantic who is terrible at flirting. And all seems to be going great when she does get a boyfriend, except—it’s a mystery/revenge, so OF COURSE there is an ‘of course’—the girls learn that the boys have a secret contest that rewards points for sexual encounters. So, the girls create their own game to take back power…

For fans of procedurals, partnered detectives, and cases that feel ripped from the headlines!

The series follows two great characters in Colorado: Detective Inaya Rahman, who is sent to places with high complaints against officers and has a tight-knit family; and her boss, Lieutenant Waqas Seif, who is raising his two younger brothers and, unlike Rahman, keeps his culture/ethnicity to himself. This time around, two separate incidents that involved officer shootings led to protests across the Blackwater Falls community, leading Rahman and Seif to have to dig deep to get to the heart of these cases.

If you want to start at the beginning (you do! It’s a great series!), pick up Blackwater Falls. And if you’re a lover of “completed” backlist series, absolutely read Ausma Zehanat Khan’s previous procedural series that starts with The Unquiet Dead.

For fans of reluctant amateur sleuths, humor, and space settings!

Mallory Viridian literally went to live on a space station to get away from the fact that on Earth, people kept dying around her, and she kept having to solve the murders. Surely (don’t call me Shirley!) you can see where this is going. The murders follow her to space, too! This time around, her past has followed her from Earth, including the agent who was always after her…

If you want to start at the beginning of this very fun series, pick up Station Eternity!

For fans of cozy food mysteries and travel, looking for tropical weather!

Miriam Quiñone already has her to-do list full — as a mother with another child on the way and a food anthropologist with a popular cooking show — when she finds herself in multiple mysteries! When visiting her parents’ rental properties in Punta Cana, she discovers someone is damaging their property. In Puerto Rico, filming a special episode of her show, she travels around the island until the host of her rental is attacked! There are lots of mysteries to solve between cooking and eating delicious food!

If you want to start at the beginning, pick up Mango, Mambo, and Murder!

For readers of true crime memoirs.

In the ’90s, Daphne Caruana Galizia became Malta’s first woman newspaper columnist, and her focus became the massive corruption of the government. Nothing ever made her back down, even challenging the Maltese government, “Do your worst, you bastards, until the only option left to you is to take out a contract on my life.” After years of threats to her and her family and attempts on their lives, Daphne Caruana Galizia was assassinated by explosives in her car.

Paul Caruana Galizia, one of her three sons, recounts his childhood, his mother’s life, her career, legacy, assassination, and the family’s continued fight for justice in this true crime memoir. He also narrates the audiobook.

For fans of procedurals, archeologist leads, and MCs returning home to solve a mystery!

Syd Walker studied forensic anthropology but works instead for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Rhode Island branch, trying to preserve Indigenous history. She doesn’t return home often, having left behind her parents, a sister with addiction issues, and her childhood, where she witnessed her childhood friend and parents’ murders. But she has to leave her pregnant wife and head back to Oklahoma when an old badge of hers is found in a skull, and her sister is now missing.

This is a great procedural––with a strong character voice right from the start––about being haunted by the past, struggling with the present, and the history of real atrocities towards Indigenous people, especially Indigenous women and Two-Spirit.

I really enjoyed the audiobook, narrated by Carolina Hoyos and Erin Tripp, and will absolutely read any future books if this becomes a series.

(TW addiction, past survived overdose/ mentions past child abuse/ graphic child harm)

For fans of satire, a-hole women on a killing spree of men, and readers who maybe want a gender-swapped American Psycho!

Tiffany isn’t winning any kind of decent human award: she grew up being awful to her younger sister, is awful to her sorority sisters, and is basically spoiled and behaving as such. And now she’s found something to actually make her feel something and open her appetite: killing men! Quickly realizing––and even checking with a lawyer for advice––that she’ll quickly be suspected if she continues killing frat guys, she expands her killing spree to random prey. But satisfying her murderous desires isn’t enough when copycat killers begin. The boyfriend she’s trying to make “the one” won’t stop grieving, and the relationship starts to show cracks…

(TW fatphobia, diet culture, eating disorders, disordered eating/ mentions past parent cancer death/ date raper, drink drugging/ hidden camera to record sex/ domestic abuse)

For fans of thrillers, series, fictional serial killers, and procedurals that equally focus on the detective’s personal life!

Senior Inspector Arnav Singh Rajput disappoints his family by missing his teen daughter’s dance performance when he’s called to a brutal crime scene: a dismembered man found on the steps of a Mumbai temple. It’s an intense case that forces Arnav to try and stop a serial killer, all while trying to also care for his pregnant wife and daughter.

If you want to start at the beginning of the series, pick up The Blue Bar.

For fans of fun holiday murder mysteries, lawyer MCs, epistolary novels, and a theater setting!

In Janice Hallett’s The Appeal, we met two law school students who were given case files to go through for an appeal and ended up sifting through tons of emails and texts to help with the case. Now, the same lawyers are back and once again looking at The Fairway Players––and sifting through emails and police transcripts––in order to solve a murder during the production of Jack and the Beanstalk.

For fans of historical mysteries and theater-set mysteries!

Armchair travel to England in the early 1800s, where an abolition bill is pending, and Lady Abigail Worthing is married to an older lord who is mostly away. To distract her from her marital issues and a recent break-in, Lady Worthing is at the Drury Lane theater watching A Bold Stroke for a Wife. Except her recent trip to the theater is not all acting, at least not when the playwright is murdered. Now Lady Worthing will find herself once again putting on her amateur sleuth hat!

For fans of “returning home to face the past” mysteries and PIs!

Olivia Welles left her small town in Kansas for a life in Venice, California, where she’s now a PI. Bonnie Ray-Murphy, who survived the car accident that killed Olivia’s mother, calls her out of the blue asking for help––she’s incarcerated on charges of killing her child. Olivia returns home ready to look into whether Bonnie is the monster the town accuses her of being or if there is a bigger mystery to solve…

For fans of translated crime, psychological, and lawyer MCs!

This is my current audiobook listen, and it definitely feels like fans of literary crime and dives into questioning memory would enjoy this.

Marie NDiaye (Maître Susane), a 42-year-old lawyer in Bordeaux, doesn’t seem that happy in her life. In her personal life, she’s hired a housekeeper, Sharon, after a man at a dinner party spoke with disregard about her. Marie becomes intent on helping Sharon become a legal citizen of France, along with her husband and children. But Sharon continues to fail to provide the marriage certificate Marie asks her for, and Marie continues to clean her own home, uncomfortable by making Sharon do it.

In her professional life, she’s asked to take on the case of a woman, Marlyne, who murdered her young children. Marlyne’s husband, Gilles Principaux, has brought the case to Marie. She recognizes him from her childhood or thinks she does, thinking he may be the teen who encouraged her intelligence. But when she brings up the memory to her parents, her father is upset that the teen must have taken advantage of Marie, leading Marie to break off from her parents for assuming the worst.

Between her personal life and her professional one, Marie slowly starts to unravel, grasping at what is happening and what did happen…

For fans of short story collections!

Short story collections are a great way to find new-to-you authors and also really help with getting in some reading time when you’re schedule doesn’t allow you to sit down for long stretches of time with a long book.

You’ll get stories from loved and widely known authors like Silvia Moreno-­Garcia, S.A. Cosby, Walter Mosley…and also maybe new-to-you authors (whose work I’ve loved) like William Boyle and Faye Snowden.