From LA noir to cozy crime stories, you’ll want to add these summer books to your TBR pile.
What do Catalina Island, the coast of Western Australia, the mountains of Scotland, and the peak of Kilimanjaro have in common? We’ve picked a selection of books arriving in the early days of summer, from cozy mysteries to tense thrillers.
Amateur detectives abound: an interior decorator, a physicist, and an elderly grandmother, among others. And for those who need a fix from a local favorite: author Michael Connelly is set to deliver his latest, too. The reader becomes the detective in this thriller that’s on everyone’s “read this” list. Bannister presents five random strangers on a train, one of whom is fated to die in the next five minutes.
In learning about their past lives, good deeds and sins, and how the strangers arrived at this moment of convergence, the reader may waver on who they expect — or want — it to be. A comedic and cozy addition to the “small-town girl returns home, stumbles on murder” genre, this debut mystery from Jess Cannon received praise from romance author Ali Hazelwood, among others. Leo is a former academic now working for her godmother, a local real estate mogul.
When the body of a social media influencer/rival realtor is discovered on a property owned by her godmother — who is then arrested — Leo must team up with a hunky detective to find the real killer. One of Los Angeles’s most popular police mystery writers returns with the latest entry in the “Catalina” series. A drug sting goes wrong for Detective Sergeant Stillwell, and he’s benched from his duties policing Catalina Island.
That doesn’t stop him from beginning his own investigation into the botched drug deal with the help of another Connelly regular, LAPD Detective Renée Ballard. Debut novelist Hanssen’s title character, a hitman laundering money by way of a country radio station, is murdered — but he still has something to say.
Written from the perspectives of the deceased Sass, his revenge-seeking daughter, and a priest reckoning with his faith, this thriller harkens back to ‘80s mafia movies and hardboiled Tarantino-esque comedies.author and screenwriter Jordan Harper centers around three denizens from the seedier side of L.A. — a live streamer, a lawyer, and a concierge for the rich — who find themselves investigating a massive conspiracy that could unleash havoc on the city.
Interior decorator Hannah Cooke has a strange side gig: she assists the police by making miniature reproductions of crime scenes. Her latest commission is a locked-door murder mystery that directly involves her when her client — with whom she’s been having a secret affair — is killed at his housewarming party. Elizabeth Zhang can’t understand why her competition made it into her dream school while she was rejected. Is this a modern homage to the classic “Single White Female”?
Perhaps, but with a very different motivation. Xu’s thriller is propelled by today’s cultural and societal expectations of success — and the pressure it inflicts on so many young people. A TV writer and producer on series that include “Monk,” “Spenser for Hire” and “Diagnosis: Murder” as well as a prolific novelist,introduces readers to Edison Bixby, a brilliant, rude insurance investigator.
Bixby has a unique gift for solving crimes — even if the crime scene is a staircase in a shopping mall. Out June 1. Here’s one to bring to the beach. In a Northern Australia coastal suburb, a serial killer dubbed “The Shark” hunts young, female swimmers and leaves their bodies on the shoreline.
Two women form an uneasy alliance to stop the killer — but their own motives end up playing a role in what happens next. Out June 2. Looking to turn the tables, 80-year-old Poppy Montgomery launches a mission to defraud the fraudsters conning the elderly online. When her latest target becomes mixed up in the murder of two women in a retirement community, Poppy and her gang must save themselves by pulling off one last scam.
Out June 9. Set in the world of the wealthy, this murder mystery takes readers from Park Avenue to Mount Kilimanjaro and back. Gretchen Falk, wife to the wealthy Richard Falk, knows he would never betray her. When a woman who accompanied him on a mountaineering expedition is found dead, and he is accused of the crime, Gretchen starts to dig into what really happened.
But as secrets emerge, her charmed life is at even greater risk of crumbling around her feet. Out June 16. That’s right, the comedy writer who gave us “Sh*t My Dad Says” is back with a darkly humorous thriller. Lila Dixon’s mother has gone missing again, but this may not be business as usual — suspicious sums of money are found in her bank account.
To track down her mother, Lila teams up with her deadbeat father for a journey that includes grudge-settling, Russian criminals, and corrupt politicians. Out July 7. Physicist Hannah Lyon is determined to search for her missing husband, even without the help of the police. There’s more to his disappearance than meets the eye — something Hannah finds out when a red SUV begins stalking her.
“No Prisoners” is a tense thriller from Ellis Blake, the pseudonym of award-winning New Zealand crime writer Ben Sanders. Out July 21.
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