As Daylight Savings approaches, and we all prepare to spring forward, why not lean into your disrupted sleep schedule with…a crime novel? They will keep you up late and disorient you enough that you’ll forget all about that lost hour of sleep. Plus, you’ll have a better excuse for oversleeping than almost everyone around you, because you didn’t forget to set your alarm clock, you just stayed up all night reading a crime novel. One of the following novels, perhaps. Enjoy!
Gin Phillips, Ruby Falls
(Atlantic Crime)
With her syncopated pacing, unusual settings, and deep psychological insights, Gin Phillips has quickly become one of my favorite crime writers, and Ruby Falls looks to be an excellent addition to her growing oeuvre. In Ruby Falls, a mining town finds itself transfixed by an enormous underground waterfall with strange mystical powers, as a murder sows discord in the caverns and the world around them succumbs to the nadirs of the 1930s.
Tamika Thompson, The Curse of Hester Gardens
(Erewhon)
Every building, long enough occupied, becomes home to a host of unquiet spirits, but Thompson’s setting of a violence-ridden public housing estate has more hauntings than most. In The Curse of Hester Gardens, the ghosts of the past make their mark on the uncertainties of the present, creeping dread purveys every interaction, and one family faces unimaginable obstacles, and even harder to imagine defenders. Bleak, beautiful, and not to be missed.
Tana French, The Keeper
(Viking)
Tana French is back!! And so is Retired Chicago detective-turned-Irish-transplant Cal Hooper, who is investigating the death of a young woman engaged to the son of a county bigwig. But in doing so, he finds himself unearthing feuds, old grudges, and more local politics than he could have ever imagined. As usual, French has conjured a pulsing, thoroughly atmospheric thriller with endless heart. –Olivia Rutigliano
Luke Dumas, Nothing Tastes as Good
(Atria)
Finally, a horror novel for the Ozempic era! Luke Dumas has been quietly building a devoted following, but Nothing Tastes as Good should make for a big breakout novel given its satirical brilliance and timely themes. Dumas’ hero has struggled with fatphobia his entire life, and after spotting an ad for an experimental weight-loss treatment, he decides to jump into the chemical dieting industry feet-first. The effects are immediate, noticeable, life-changing, and horrifying—weight loss is guaranteed by the drug, but so, too, is an unholy thirst for human flesh. And big pharma is ready to cover up any and all adverse consequences in the quest for FDA approval.
Jeff Boyd, Hard Times
(Flatiron)
A public school teacher on the south side of Chicago finds himself at the center of a maelstrom in Boyd’s powerful new book, a gripping social novel with a deep sense of humanity. –Dwyer Murphy
Avery Curran, Spoiled Milk
(Doubleday)
Boarding school mysteries will never stop sending me, and Spoiled Milk nails the genre with its Picnic at Hanging Rock vibes and cool girl sensibility. After a student’s shocking plunge from a high bannister, the upper class cohort bands together for a seance, only to awaken the repressed desires of a century of schoolgirls. Eerie, atmospheric, and lyrically driven, Spoiled Milk may be the most intriguing gothic of the year.
T. Kingfisher, Wolf Worm
(Tor)
T. Kingfisher’s upcoming historical horror novel is truly disgusting, and not for the faint of heart. Wolf Worm features a botanical illustrator hired to document the life cycles of flesh-eating insects in meticulously detailed drawings. Her employer is a man hiding such sinister deeds, they can’t possibly be imagined before reading the final pages of the book.
Mieko Kawakami, Sisters in Yellow
Translated by Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio
(Knopf)
Mieko Kawakami wowed the literary world with her critically acclaimed Breasts and Eggs, and now with Sisters in Yellow she proves the same skill and versatility within the crime genre. In what I already predict as one of the best crime novels of the decade, a group of young women fall under the charismatic influence of a flighty scammer and fall deeper and deeper into the trap of criminalized poverty. Epic, brutal, and stunning, Sisters in Yellow scratches the same itch as Lady Joker, Out, and the film Shoplifters.
T. Kira Madden, Whidbey
(Mariner)
T. Kira Madden’s heroine is headed to a remote location to work on her novel and hide from the world when a chance encounter changes everything. On a boat, she meets a stranger, one who makes her an offer she can’t refuse: he will find the man who once hurt her as a child, and kill him. As the narrator of Whidbey reads, writes, and rages, another victim of the same pedophile publishes a memoir, one full of blatant exploitation of the narrator’s experience. When the man who harmed both women is found murdered, suspicion does not fall evenly, and the case threatens to send the central characters into a spiral with no return.
Saïd Khatibi, The End of the Sahara
Translated by Alexander E. Elinson
(Bitter Lemon Press)
The End of the Sahara is the second novel on this list to take place in Algeria during the tumultuous late 1980s. At the Khatibi’s moody masterpiece, a nightclub singer has been found murdered, perplexing a wide range of lovers, friends, enemies, and others drawn into her magnetic orbit, and in possession of her deadly secrets. Evocative, brooding, and perfectly hard-boiled!
