Another year has dawned, and it’s time for another list purporting to be the sum of all Most Anticipated Titles in our beloved genre. I have been asked to keep the number of titles on the list to 50, for my own sanity. But who needs sanity when you have books?!? And what a year of books it is already shaping up to be, featuring tons of high-concept thrillers, deeply insightful psychologicals, Golden-Age influenced mysteries, and plenty of take-no-prisoners noir.
Keep an eye on the site over the next few weeks as we draw out various subgenres for additional previews. As always, this list is long not because we expect everyone to read everything—quite the contrary! We want to give you enough recommendations so you can find the right title to bring you joy.
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JANUARY
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Nicolás Ferraro, My Favorite Scar
(Soho)
In this neo-noir, a father and daughter go on a bloody road trip across Argentina, fleeing from trouble and in pursuit of more. Ámbar is the story’s protagonist, and it’s her complex journey through her father’s past sins that gives the story its heart. The rest is a dark, compelling vision of violence and retribution. –DM
Nishita Parekh, The Night of the Storm
(Dutton)
Houston during a hurricane is the setting for this thriller featuring a South Asian family trapped in a fancy suburban home with a dead body and a lot of petty resentments. Along with various other storm-set novels coming out lately, The Night of the Storm reminds us that locked-room thrillers are the only true beneficiaries of climate change. –MO
Christopher Golden, The House of Last Resort
(St Martins)
This is the first of two haunted house in Italy novels on this list! In the latest high-concept horror from the reliably terrifying Christopher Golden, a couple working remotely move to Italy and buy a cool house with a dark backstory. They probably deserve what’s coming to them in terms of expats and housing shortages, honestly…Although the town they move to is suffering severe population decline (attributed to the lure of the city, rather than the body count of the local ghosts). –MO
Cate Quinn, The Clinic
(Sourcebooks)
I’ve been getting a little tired of crime novels in which people drink, and drink, and NEVER EAT, so I was pleased to read this twisty tale set inside a rehab facility with innumerable secrets (and very balanced cuisine). When a casino detective with her own addiction issues finds out her famous sister has been found dead in an exclusive rehab facility, she decides to check herself in and discover what really happened. She’s shocked to find herself embracing the treatment plan and her damaged cohorts. Also there’s a lot of conspiracies and a really nice spa. I want to go to the spa now. –MO
Elizabeth Flock, The Furies: Women, Vengeance, and Justice
(Harper)
Journalist Elizabeth Flock looks at justice with a Taddeo-esque approach, telling the stories of three women who killed after a wrong. There is a Southern U.S. woman who killed her rapist; the leader of a northern Indian gang that avenges victims of domestic violence; and a fighter in an all-female militia in Syria, where ISIS is working to dismantle the lives and rights of women. –JM
Shubnum Khan, The Djinn Waits 100 Years
(Viking)
Shubnum Khan has written a lush, romantic gothic novel set in a crumbling seaside estate in South Africa. A century before, the house bloomed with an doomed romance; now, a young girl wanders its halls, finding ways to bring new joy to the strange residents, and getting closer to discovering the secrets that first shattered the home’s happiness and led to its present day haunting by a mournful djinn. –MO
Katia Lief, Invisible Woman
(Atlantic Monthly)
A once-promising filmmaker who left it behind for her family is forced to reckon with her studio executive husband’s past sins, just as their family embarks on a new start in New York, in Katia Lief’s taut and impeccably suspenseful new novel. Lief offers up a compelling portrait of artistic ambition and compromise, balanced against the unwinding of a timely mystery. –DM
Vanessa Chan, The Storm We Made
(S&S/Marysue Ricci Books)
In one of the best espionage novels I’ve ever come across, a bored Malaya housewife lets a Japanese spy charm her into giving up the secrets necessary for her nation to be invaded; later, as the war continues, her guilt grows monstrous as her children suffer. –MO
Tara Isabella Burton, Here in Avalon
(Simon and Schuster)
Tara Isabella Burton is a fascinating thinker and writer—she has a doctorate in theology from Oxford, and in addition to novels she writes nonfiction on things like contemporary American post-religious spirituality and our obsession with self-branding. I particularly loved her 2018 novel Social Creature (think Tom Ripley gets Instagram), so would I like to read her new book about a possibly magical theater cult? I would, I would. –Emily Temple, Lit Hub managing editor
Kate Brody, Rabbit Hole
(Soho Crime)
Kate Brody’s much-awaited debut Rabbit Hole is a fascinating romp through the internet’s true crime boards as an aimless and depressed young woman seeks answers in her sister’s long-sensationalized death after their father’s suicide makes clear that he never stopped looking for a culprit. She teams with a quirky reddit-fanatic named Mickey in her investigation and the banter between them is a highlight in the book. Brody’s novel continues the ongoing trend of psychological thrillers that become smart critiques of true crime culture. –MO
Thomas Perry, Hero
(Mysterious Press)
An attempted robbery at a Hollywood house leads to a local kingpin putting a hit out on the security guard who stopped the plot, a woman who now finds herself a local celebrity—and the target of a relentless assassin. Perry is a gifted storyteller with a perfect sense of pacing and a knack for conjuring up fascinating characters. –DM
Kiley Reid, Come and Get It
(Putnam)
Um, Kiley Reid + campus novel + crimey undertones? WHEN can I get my hands on this book???? Reid’s Booker-longlisted debut Such a Fun Age was a trenchant and effervescent delight, and I’ve been waiting for her next novel. The novel takes place in 2017 at the University of Arkansas, where an ambitious RA takes an unusual opportunity with a visiting writing professor and things begin to spin into unexpected territory. I’m foaming at the mouth for this book. I would like to come and get it, indeed! –Olivia Rutigliano, Lit Hub and CrimeReads Editor
Elizabeth Gonzalez James, The Bullet Swallower
(Simon & Schuster)
This new novel about family secrets and living landscapes takes on epic proportions, jumping between mid-century Mexico and the final days of the old West, turn of the century, unlocking a cache of sins passed down through one family and reverberating across the generations. Gonzalez writes with great skill and imagination. –DM
Lea Carpenter, Ilium
(Knopf)
At last Lea Carpenter is back (after 2018’s Red, White, Blue) with another sideways approach to the international spy novel—in this one, a young woman is swept off her feet by a much older suitor, but after they’re married, he asks her for a “favor”…never a good thing. –ET
Abbott Kahler, Where You End
(Henry Holt)
Abbott Kahler wowed me with the nonfiction book Ghosts of Eden Park, so I’m really psyched for this pivot to thrillers. Where You End explores the twisted relationship between two mirror twins, each a perfect replica of the other in reverse. When one twin has amnesia, the other decides to fill in the details of their childhood with an imagined happiness that doesn’t mesh with the ongoing dangers both sisters are facing. –MO
Duane Swierczynski, California Bear
(Mulholland)
A serial killer called the California Bear is coming out of hibernation to kill again, setting the wicked pace for Swierczynski’s latest thriller. We follow a wide cast of characters, each working through their own bouts of guilt and determination, as the story converges on the killer’s upcoming bloody deeds. This is a page turner in the extreme. –DM
Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone on this Train is a Suspect
(Mariner)
Oh man. A new Benjamin Stevenson. God bless us, every one. If you haven’t read his previous novel, the charming and self-aware Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone, you’re missing out. It’s a funny, chatty, thoroughly twisty ride that you won’t forget. And now there’s a sequel! Our mystery expert protagonist Ern Cunningham is back. And this time, he’s on a train full of book industry types who all turn into amateur sleuths when someone among them is murdered. I’m losing my mind, people. –OR
Janice Hallett, The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels
(Atria)
Having swallowed The Appeal, the Twyford Code, and The Christmas Appeal in basically one gulp, I cannot wait for The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels, in which whodunnit puzzlemaster Janice Hallett goes true crime. Get this: in the novel, two authors looking to write a book about the famous Alperton Angels cult (which insisted to a young mother that her baby was the AntiChrist, committing a mass suicide when the woman and her child fled and disappeared), team up to find out what really happened. But, as is often the case with true crime, they find that the truth is way stranger than fiction. I’m very intrigued. –OR
Sarah-Jane Collins, Radiant Heat
(Berkley)
In this Australian eco-thriller, Alison emerges from her burnt-out home after a wildfire only to find a dead woman in her driveway. Who is the woman? How did she die? And why did she have Alison’s name and address on a slip of paper inside of her well-stocked billfold? I’m excited to read further into this one and see where Sarah-Jane Collins goes with this intriguing and timely set-up. –MO
James Lee Burke, Harbor Lights
(Atlantic Monthly)
A new short story collection from American master James Lee Burke would be cause enough for celebration, but readers will be especially rewarded by the rich, evocative settings of the stories in Harbor Lights. Each story deftly conjures up a world (and its darker forces) and fills it with characters at unexpected crossroads of history. Burke is the great poet of contemporary crime fiction, and his immense talents fill these stories to the brim. –DM
Araminta Hall, One of the Good Guys
(Gillian Flynn)
Araminta Hall’s novel Our Kind of Cruelty showcased her ability to depict toxic masculinity with both deep understanding and righteous judgement. One of the Good Guys continues to explore these same contradictions between how people excuse their own actions and what those actions really mean, channeled brilliantly through her selfish and clueless narrator; a contrast that is additionally highlighted through Hall’s careful examination of media depictions and bias. Highly recommended! –MO
(American Mystery Classics)
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FEBRUARY
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Rachel Kapelke-Dale, The Fortune Seller
(St Martin’s)
This book combines so many things I enjoy….Really, just horse girls and tarot readers, but who doesn’t want to read about horse girls and fortune tellers? In Kapelke-Dale’s delightful forthcoming novel, the elite members of Yale’s equestrian team welcome a new girl into their midst, one who comes with impeccable riding skills and a surprising talent for tarot. Not everyone is as happy with her presence, or her fortunes, as the narrator, and soon enough, murder and sabotage mar the collegiate halcyon days of the privileged characters (such a pity…). This book also fulfills my theory that people at Ivies are way too burned out from trying to get in to enjoy their time there. So glad I went to a state school (Hook ‘Em.) –MO
Kobby Ben Ben, No One Dies Yet
(Europa)
In 2019, Ghana declared a “Year of Return” and welcomed tourists from across the diaspora to visit the country. That is the backdrop for Kobby Ben Ben’s psychological thriller featuring four American tourists and their competing guides—one religious and humorless, hired to take the Americans around the official sites, and the other queer and cynical, brought in through a dating app to give the tourists a taste of Ghana’s gay underground. This may be one of my favorite novels ever. It’s so funny. It’s like Patricia Highsmith traded her self-loathing for a decent sense of humor. –MO
Mike Lawson, Kingpin
(Atlantic Monthly)
In the new installment to the Joe DeMarco series, Lawson’s fixer is put on the trail of a mysterious death linked to a Boston real estate kingpin with some secrets in his closet. Lawson immerses readers in a world of rough operators and political maneuvering, all of it highly satisfying and suspenseful. –DM
Katherine Arden, The Warm Hands of Ghosts
(Del Rey)
Two soldiers are lost in no man’s land when they find a mysterious group of revelers waiting to take them in, but not quite ready to let them leave. Meanwhile, the sister of one, a combat nurse, returns from Canada to seek her brother in the mud and muck of the front lines. Katherine Arden’s haunting gothic delves deeply into the emotional and physical landscape of WWI for an enthralling and heartbreaking read. –MO
Amina Akhtar, Almost Surely Dead
(Mindy’s Book Studio)
A new book from Amina Akhtar is always a treat (if by treat, I mean, bitter, humorous explorations of modern ills…so I guess, like, Sour Straws as the treat specifically). In Almost Surely Dead, we go back and forth between two time frames: the days leading up to the disappearance of a seemingly ordinary woman, Dunia Ahmed, and the ongoing investigations in the months after, as Dunia becomes the subject of a true crime podcast with a bizarre hook: before she vanished, Dunia was subjected to not one murder attempt, but many. –MO
Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching
(Pamela Dorman Books/Viking)
Tracy Sierra has done the impossible: changed my mind about the home invasion thriller. In Nightwatching, a young widow is shocked one night to find an intruder in her home, and spends several desperate hours using all her wit and wiles to protect her children and find a way to seek help. While much of the story is about the night itself, just as gripping is what happens afterwards. –MO
Robert Jackson Bennett, The Tainted Cup
(Del Rey)
Holmes and Watson get a new twist in this fantastical noir set in a mysterious empire in which nothing is as it seems. The high, thick sea walls of the outer rings of the empire were built to withstand the colossal titans that swim in from the ocean depths to exact a ruinous chaos, and now, the walls have been breached. It’s up to a misanthropic genius and her new sword-wielding assistant to find the culprits who wish to destroy the empire, and in so doing, stop the empire’s own steady decline. Perfect for those who loved China Mieville’s Perdito Street Station and Kraken, but wished there was more camaraderie and crime-solving. –MO
Jahmal Mayfield, Smoke Kings
(Melville House)
This book has such a great set-up. In Mayfield’s self-assured and righteously furious debut, a group of Black vigilantes is determined to exact vengeance on those who never received punishment by kidnapping their descendants and making them contribute reparations. When one of their targets turns out to be a white supremacist leader, they must martial all their cunning and resources to defeat him, and in the process, find a way to preserve their mission despite growing doubts. Mayfield’s tough, muscular prose infuses the novel with a beautiful darkness as the characters struggle in ways that will hopefully have the reader thinking too. –MO
S.E. Porter, Projections
(Tor)
What a compelling and creative story. In Projections, a boy kills a girl in the mid-19th century in upstate New York. The girl becomes a ghost, the boy becomes a magician, and he takes her along with him to a magical city in which she screams, forever, tethered to his soul and stripped of her energies to fund his despicable enterprises. The magician continues to kill, over and over, telling himself he seeks a perfect love; the ghost, meanwhile, slowly begins to discover her own powers, and may just be able to finally stop him. Emotionally evocative and visually stunning, Projections is the kind of novel that makes you long for a high-budget adaptation. –MO
Kirsten Bakis, King Nyx
(Liveright)
The first novel from Kirsten Bakis in 25 years! In King Nyx, set during the height of the Spanish Influenza, a sensible woman of a certain age and her flighty yet devoted husband head to a remote island. They’re looking forwards to a stay at the manse of an eccentric robber baron; her husband is hoping to finish his magnum opus on meteorological anomalies (rains of fish, frogs, blood, etc), and Bakis’ narrator simply wishes to get some rest. Upon arrival, however, they find out that multiple girls have gone missing from the rehabilitation home/workhouse also located on the island, and they must isolate in quarantine for at least two weeks before they even meet with their mysterious benefactor. There are neighbors in quarantine as well, also on the island for an intellectual retreat, and Bakis’ narrator soon teams up with the kindred spirit next door to understand what’s going on. Bakis’ symbolism is particularly on point, with a creepy garden, a beautiful set of parakeets, and automata aplenty. Future students will highlight the crap out of this book. –MO
Francis Spufford, Cahokia Jazz
(Scribner)
The set-up for this one is an alternative history in which indigenous people were never decimated and the Mississippi city of Cahokia developed as a badass place for smoky jazz in the 1920s. As the detective protagonist goes high and low looking for a culprit in a recent murder, he also illuminates the scope of world-building Francis Spufford has achieved. Sure to be one of the most distinctly imagined texts of the year, in any genre. –MO
Jason Pinter, Past Crimes
(Severn House)
In Pinter’s new thriller, set in the year 2037, true crime has gone into the virtual world with a morbid twist: fans pay to enter simulations and try to solve crimes as they unfold. The novel’s protagonist is a pregnant woman who licenses survivors’ stories for the experience, until she finds herself a target and has to go on the run. –DM
E.A. Aymar, When She Left
(Thomas & Mercer)
The gravitational pull of a powerful crime family is at the center of Aymar’s new thriller, as a young woman takes her chance to run off and a reluctant assassin is set on her trail, although along the way he’s looking for his own way out. Aymar artfully assembles a fascinating mix of motivations and characters and keeps the adrenaline pumping right up to the satisfying conclusion. –DM
J. Robert Lennon, Hard Girls
(Mulholland)
J. Robert Lennon is one of the great genre-hoppers and I can’t wait to see what he gets up to in the crime sphere. We’ve got estranged twins reconnecting to find their mother, globe-hopping adventure, family secrets, and the pace of a great thriller? Plus, things are often quite a bit stranger than what the jacket copy says in a Lennon novel, so I’m excited to see how this goes. And it’s apparently the first in a series! –DB
Megan Nolan, Ordinary Human Failings
(Little, Brown)
A visceral, knowing exploration of human misery and the ways we fail ourselves. Also, I’ve never seen a better description of my own attitude towards dating (which should….probably worry me). In Ordinary Human Failings, set in London in 1990, a toddler is murdered, and the suspect is the 10-year-old daughter of a family that’s been cast as Irish ne’er-do-wells by the salivating tabloids. When an unscrupulous newspaper reporter puts the accused child’s family up in a hotel, he’s hoping to bleed them for lurid details to feed to the eager public, but Nolan uses these interviews as a way instead to explore how people become trapped in patterns that cannot hold, despite the best of intentions. My god, this book is good. –MO
Amanda Jayatissa, Island Witch
(Berkley)
Another gothic tale helping to decolonize the genre! Set in 19th-century Sri Lanka, Amanda Jayatissa’s Island Witch follows the outcast daughter of the local demon-priest as she tries to find answers in a series of a disappearances rocking her small community. Jayatissa’s novel is steeped in folkloric traditions and sumptuous landscapes for a thrilling, feverish read. –MO
Vera Kurian, A Step Past Darkness
(Park Row)
Vera Kurian is back with another crackerjack premise; it’s the summer of 1995 and six high school students with nothing similar between them are attending a secret party in a mine when they witness a horrible crime that binds them together for life. Until twenty years later, when one of them winds up dead. I’m gonna pregame this one with I Know What You Did Last Summer.–
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MARCH
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Andrew Boryga, Victim
(Doubleday)
In Boryga’s debut novel, Victim, a young hustler on the rise learns to manipulate the currency of identity as he bends the truth about his past and establishes himself in the world of New York media and letters. The satire in this novel comes in sharp and merciless, but the friendship at the story’s center steals the show, rounding out all the complexities and contradictions of two young men on different sides of the truth. Boryga is a keen observer of culture and a storyteller with style to spare. –DM
Aggie Blum Thompson, Such a Lovely Family
(Forge)
It’s springtime in DC, the cherry trees are in full bloom, and a garden party is about to become a crime scene. I will partially admit to reading this because I have beloved relatives in Bethesda and thus can picture both the cherry trees and the McMansion monstrosities, but beyond the author’s excellent use of setting, this is also a delightfully twisty domestic thriller with nearly as many suspects as there are characters. Such a Lovely Family will keep you turning pages well into the night, and waking up the next day feeling rather appreciative of your family’s disinterest in hydrangeas. If your family does have hydrangeas, well, then I don’t know what to tell you. Avoid garden parties? –MO
Jennifer Thorne, Diavola
(Tor)
I was a big fan of Jennifer Thorne’s folk horror Lute so I devoured her new book, and what a fabulous read it was. Diavola takes place mostly in a Tuscan villa where a family has gathered to dine, drink, and bicker; meanwhile, the villa’s ghosts grow hungry, and ready to punish those who disturb their rest. Diavola is an evocative gothic with a hilarious sense of petty family dynamics, and I enjoyed every word. –MO
Jennifer Croft, The Extinction of Irena Ray
(Bloomsbury)
Jennifer Croft is the renowned translator of Olga Tokarczuk and this debut takes full advantage of her background in the best way possible. In this complex and metaphysical mystery, eight translators arrive at a sprawling home in the Polish forest, only to find their author has gone missing. Where is Irena Ray? What secrets has she been keeping from her devoted fans? And what’s with all the slime mold? –MO
Chris Bohjalian, The Princess of Las Vegas
(Doubleday)
Bohjalian’s newest, The Princess of Las Vegas, offers up the perfect balance of sophisticated characterization and wild, rollicking plot. Crissy Dowling is a Lady Di impersonator at a royals-themed Vegas casino, but her neatly calibrated (if a bit eccentric) life comes unraveled, and soon she’s tied up in an investigation into the murder of the casino’s owner. –DM
Joyce Carol Oates, Butcher
(Knopf)
This well-researched historical tale of medical experiments gone haywire looks to be a perfect match with Joyce Carol Oates’ visceral style and violent explorations of American sins. Set in the 19th century, Butcher follows a disgraced surgeon sent into exile at a “Asylum for Female Lunatics,” where he finds himself surrounded by vulnerable patients and with few potential consequences for wrong-doing. This is sure to be one of her best yet, and I don’t say that lightly. –MO
Joel H. Morris, All Our Yesterdays
(Putnam)
In this rich historical reimagining of the lead-up to Macbeth, Morris asks, what if the Lady MacBeth had a son? And what if her new relationship with the thane MacBeth after the death of her brutal first husband was predicated on equality and respect, as opposed to the beaten-down womanhood of others in 11th century Scotland? Thoughtful, eerie, and full of medieval magic, Morris’ take on the much-maligned lady will perhaps have you rooting for her and her partner, or at least, feeling some sympathy for her quest of vengeance. –MO
Lisa Unger, The New Couple in 5B
(Park Row)
A mystery-thriller set in a grand NYC apartment building that might have a history of dark secrets and murder, where two unsuspecting inheritors have just moved into the kind of unit they’d never dreamed they could have? Lisa Unger, you have my attention. And are you by any chance also a realtor? –OR
Abigail Dean, Day One
(Viking)
From the author of Girl A comes a new and prescient thriller about a school shooting in an idyllic English town and the conspiracy theories that soon proliferate. Dean has picked a tough topic, but one I predict she’ll explore with sensitivity and grace. –MO
Tana French, The Hunter
(Viking)
French returns to the same small town in the west of Ireland where she set The Searcher, picking up the story of Cal and Trey, who find themselves embroiled in yet another murderous mystery to do with the Reddys. You needn’t have read The Searcher to appreciate this novel—which is wonderfully evocative, entertaining and propulsive all the way through, even if I still miss the magic-tinged weirdness of French’s Dublin Murder Squad series—but it helps to understand some of the motivations. Besides, there are worse reasons to revisit a good book. –ET
Seicho Matsumoto, Point Zero
translated by Louise Heal Kawai
(Bitter Lemon)
In this welcome reissue of a lost classic from 1959, a young woman is wed to a businessman via arranged marriage, only to have him disappear soon after. She barely knows the man, much less what could have happened to him, but still finds herself in dogged pursuit of the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it may be. The immediate post-war era in Japan looms large as the backdrop to understanding both how she experiences her losses and how the tragedy came to be. –MO
Gigi Pandian, A Midnight Puzzle
(Minotaur)
Another fabulous locked room mystery from Gigi Pandian, who’s ably channeled the diabolical puzzles of John Dickson Carr mysteries into her own quirky style. In A Midnight Puzzle, Tempest Raj, the magician-turned-secret-staircase-builder, returns, this time facing a dramatic crisis that could destroy her family’s entire business. The key to solving the mystery lies in the clever use of booby traps by Tempest’s tormenter, and Tempest must race against time to keep more from falling prey to these ingeniously engineered killers. –MO
Elle Cosimano, Finlay Donovan Rolls the Dice
(Minotaur)
Finlay Donovan is back, let’s goooooooooo. Our favorite struggling writer/single mom/amateur sleuth/easily-mistaken-for-criminals heroine is back in this rollicking adventure set in Atlantic City, where Finlay’s BFF/nanny Vero’s childhood crush is being held following a kidnapping. And her mom and ex-husband are coming, too. Loan sharks, carjackings, and murder abound. God, we’re soooo back. –OR
Nova Jacobs, The Stars Turned Inside Out
(Atria)
A heady mix of physics and locked-room mystery, Jacobs’ latest follows an investigation into a death at a highly sensitive Swiss lab working at the cutting edge of subatomic particle research. Jacobs weaves a gripping mystery and provides readers with plenty of natural wonders and discoveries to marvel at along the way. –DM
Sophie Wan, Women of Good Fortune
(Gallery)
This book is so damn delightful! In Women of Good Fortune, Lulu, Rina, and Jane have come up with the perfect heist to get out of the marriage trap and fulfill their dreams: they are going to steal the gift money from Lulu’s upcoming wedding to the scion of one of Shanghai’s wealthiest families. The heist requires an elaborate plan, and it’s no wonder that the novel got a shining endorsement from Grace D. Li, author of the last great heist story I enjoyed. I cannot wait for this to become a movie. Also I really appreciate that Sophie Wan’s bio includes her interest in “staying hydrated”—may we all learn from her example. *drinks water quickly* –MO
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APRIL
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Sara Koffi, While We Were Burning
(Putnam)
In this well-plotted cat-and-mouse thriller, a surburban white woman still reeling from the death of her best friend hires a Black personal assistant to help her with day-to-day tasks. Little does she suspect that her new employee only took the gig so she can keep investigating the circumstances surrounding her son’s death, and figure out which “concerned citizen” was the person who called the cops and put her beloved child in their cross-hairs. The looming, inevitable confrontation between the two is forceful and stunning. Koffi has used the thriller genre with great effect for a prescient critique on the petty resentments and deliberate ignorance that underpin our racist power structure. –MO
K.T. Nguyen, You Know What You Did
(Dutton)
In this propulsive psychological thriller, artist Annie “Anh Le” Shaw is sent spiraling when her mother dies suddenly, and long-repressed memories begin to crowd their way to the surface to destabilize her further. When a local art patron disappears, and Annie finds herself waking up in a hotel room next to a dead body with no idea how she got there, things really get unhinged. Although this is Nguyen’s debut, her voice is already self-assured and powerful, and I can’t wait to see what she does next. –MO
(Mysterious Press)
Don Winslow, City in Ruins
(William Morrow)
City of Ruins is the conclusion to the celebrated Danny Ryan trilogy, but even more significantly, it’s Winslow’s final novel. In the new installment, Danny Ryan is living the life of a casino mogul, after quite a few twists and turns along the way from PRovidence, via Hollywood. But now he takes on a new development and earns the ire of some of the country’s biggest power players. It’s an epic conclusion to the series, and a fitting cap to Winslow’s storied career. –DM
Laura McHugh, Safe and Sound
(Random House)
Laura McHugh has been one of the major forces in bringing women’s stories into the rural noir genre, and Safe and Sound looks to be another well-plotted and furious examination of small-town misogyny. Two sisters decide to look into the disappearance of their cousin, taken from the home in which she was babysitting them and leaving only blood and unanswered questions behind. As determined as the sisters are to find the truth, there’s other voices just as determined to keep them in the dark. –MO
Anthony Horowitz, Close to Death
(Harper)
THE BOYS ARE BACK! Almost. So soon! Man, I have been waiting, waiting, waiting for the fifth installment in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series and it’s finally almost here!! I feel like a kid, counting the days until Christmas. If you don’t know the series, you should. The gambit is charming: the celebrated crime writer Anthony Horowitz is the first-person narrator/Watson-style sidekick to a fictional detective character named Daniel Hawthorne. They’ve had some rocky patches (looking at you, book 4), but they’re back together, and this time, solving a murder in the idyllic countryside. A perfect mystery for spring! –OR
Kellye Garrett, Missing White Woman
(Mulholland)
When Kellye Garrett publishes a new book, you KNOW you’re going to be in for an amazing read. Our heroine is Bree, whose new boyfriend, Ty, has taken her away on a romantic trip to New York City. But on the final night of her stay, she comes downstairs in their rented Jersey City townhouse and finds a dead body. And not just any dead body, the body of a missing white woman whose disappearance has been virally covered. Oh, and Ty is missing. Bree’s aware that, as a Black woman, her situation is really precarious right now. And she has no choice but to figure the truth out, herself. I’m counting the MINUTES. –OR
Karen Jennings, Crooked Seeds
(Hogarth)
If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then perhaps the road to healing is paved with uncomfortable truths. In Crooked Seeds, set in drought-stricken Cape Town in 2028, a middle-aged woman in the throes of alcoholism receives a visit from some police officers who’ve made a gruesome discovery—several bodies have been discovered behind her childhood home, and her white supremacist brother, not seen since the 90s, is most likely at fault. She must lay aside her own seething resentment at life’s bitter gifts in order to understand the part she, too, played in the abuse of power and the injustice of apartheid, and maybe, just maybe, finally find some closure. (This book is especially disturbing to read if you are thirsty. I swear, I drank like 8 glasses of water while constantly wishing for her narrator to do the same.) –MO
Alyssa Cole, One of Us Knows
(William Morrow)
I raved about Alyssa Cole’s 2020 thriller When No One Is Watching, and I’m psyched for her next foray into the genre. In One of Us Knows, a woman recovering from a debilitating mental illness gets a new position as caretaker of a historic estate, only to be trapped with several visitors when a storm descends upon their remote location. When one of the motley crew is found murdered, Cole’s heroine must solve the crime to allay suspicions placed upon her, despite her own difficulty trusting her mind. –MO
Chanel Cleeton, The House on Biscayne Bay
(Berkley)
A grand and troubled house on the edge of glittering Biscayne Bay is at the center of Cleeton’s new historical novel, which follows two timelines and two women, both approaching the house’s story with their own secrets. Cleeton delivers a sophisticated and innovative take on the gothic tradition. –DM
Megan Miranda, Daughter of Mine
(S&S/Marysue Ricci Books)
First, I must begin this blurb by apologizing to the amazing Megan Miranda and her many enthusiastic fans for initially including the book she published last year instead of this year’s title. Both are awesome. But the book coming out this April is in fact Daughter of Mine, in which we see the great Boomer-to-Millennial housing transfer turned into another stunning psychological thriller from one of the most insightful writers around. In Daughter of Mine, a woman inherits her childhood home and heads back to the secretive community she abandoned years before. As she reluctantly reacquaints herself with those she’d rather have left in the rearview mirror, a drought is causing the water in the nearby lake to drop so precipitously that the townspeople’s darkest questions will soon be answered (regardless if anyone actually wants the truth). –MO
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MAY AND BEYOND
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Carmella Lowkis, Spitting Gold
(Atria)
Another Atria title on the list! And another one concerned with mystical frauds—this time, two spiritualist sisters, famed in their teen years for their convincing seances, held in the most prestigious salons and parlors of Paris. The elder sister must be coaxed out of her comfortable retirement married to a baron so the two can pull off one last con, but all is not what it seems in this lush and twist-filled tale. Spitting Gold is carefully plotted, fully characterized, and incredibly satisfying, so I must apologize to all for telling you how great it is so many months before you can actually read it. –MO
L.M. Chilton, Swiped
(Gallery)
Another send-off of modern dating, this time with an extra-fun twist! Chilton’s unlucky-in-love heroine finds herself under suspicion of murder after the shocking demise of multiple men with whom she’s matched. Who is the culprit killing off all these (admittedly mediocre) dating prospects? And why are they so determined to pin the blame on her? –MO
Julie Mae Cohen, Bad Men
(The Overlook Press)
What a delightfully weird book. Bad Men continues the “sympathetic feminist serial killer” trend that I noted last year, and adds the hope for a happily ever after to the mix. When serial-killing socialite Saffy Huntley-Oliver meets her perfect man, she’s ready to engineer whatever machinations are necessary to draw him in as a potential mate, but she’s going to have to figure out the balance between her new lover and her old hobbies. Don’t worry, the dog doesn’t die. Some people do, of course. But no dogs! –MO
Elle Marr, The Alone Time
(Thomas and Mercer)
Elle Marr’s consistently chilling and insightful psychological thrillers have been growing in repute for some time, so I’m glad I finally dived into her latest and found it to be just as good as I’d hoped. Violet and Fiona are two sisters who survived a horrific plane crash in childhood and spent months defying death in the wilderness. They’ve always said their parents died instantly in the crash, and they’ve always been suspected of hiding some details. When a new documentary crew starts digging, the grown-up sisters must confront their own traumas and hope to keep the real story hidden. This book also confirms my plan to NEVER go into the sky in a tiny, tiny plane piloted by a cranky relative. –MO
Monika Kim, The Eyes are the Best Part
(Erewhon Books)
In this darkly funny psychological horror, a college student must protect her mother and her sister from her mother’s creepy new boyfriend. Like all the other men in their lives, he’s trying to reduce their humanness into stereotypes about doll-like, submissive Asian women, and Kim’s protagonist is certainly not going to let him get away with it. She’s also spending a lot of time having intense dreams about eating bright blue eyes, standing over her sleeping enemies and fantasizing their demise, and generally losing touch with reality in a way that pays plenty of dividends by the novel’s end. –MO
Tasha Coryell, Love Letters to a Serial Killer
(Berkley)
Would you strike up a romance with a potential murderer if he took your book recommendations? In this knowing critique of true crime culture and modern love, a woman begins a romance with a suspected serial killer and becomes obsessed with finding out the truth about her new paramour. I sped through this novel and related to many of its uncomfortable truths about the misogyny within ordinary relationships that makes dating a man accused of horrible crimes who treats you well seem…justifiable? Or at least, rather understandable…–MO
Lori Brand, Bodies to Die For
(Blackstone)
I devoured this novel faster than the winner of a body-building contest drinks water after their win (a joke you’ll totally get if you dive into this searing critique of diet culture and the pressures of professional body-building). Lori Brand has had a long career in fitness that has led to her embracing strength, not weight-loss, and I’m pretty sure this book is the most physically—and emotionally—healthy thriller I’ve read in some time. I may even sign up for a boxing class now… –MO
Eli Cranor, Broiler
(Soho)
Cranor’s latest thriller examines intersecting lives at an Arkansas chicken plant, where an unwarranted firing sends violent ripples out into the world, bringing families to their knees. Cranor paints a vivid, devastating portrait of the cruelty surrounding an imbalanced system, all while maintaining a wicked level of tension that drives this powerful story forward. He is a writer at the top of his game. –DM
Wanda Morris, What You Leave Behind
(William Morrow)
Wanda Morris is back with an intricate real-estate thriller informed by real life events. What You Leave Behind follows a lawyer who’s recently returned to her childhood home in Georgia to heal after heartbreak. Instead, she finds herself trying to discover the truth behind a Black landlord’s disappearance and the menacing new buyers of the property he’d long refused to sell. I’m a huge fan of Morris and the novel’s subject—land grabs—is one that’s perfect for her to demystify. –MO
James Comey, Westport
(Mysterious Press)
James Comey follows up his previous legal thriller Central Park West with another geographically-titled crime novel, Westport, which is a murder mystery! With a legal bent, but still. Nora Carleton is back, having quit her previous job as a federal prosecutor to become legal counsel for a large hedge fund, just north of the city. But then a coworker if hers is murdered, and she’ll have to rely on her skills as an investigator yet again. –OR
