Heavy hitters Liv Constantine, A.J. Finn, Tana French, and Joseph Kanon step up to the plate this season, and a slew of promising debuts utilize genre tropes to explore historical injustices.
Top 10
Blood in the Cut
Alejandro Nodarse. Flatiron, June 4 ($28.99, ISBN 978-1-250-32651-5)
In this debut, a man returns home to his recently gentrified Miami neighborhood after a stint in prison and strikes a devil’s bargain with poachers to save his family’s butcher shop.
End of Story
A.J. Finn. Morrow, Feb. 20 ($30, ISBN 978-0-06-267845-4)
Finn follows up The Woman in the Window with the story of a bestselling crime novelist who recounts his life to an admiring journalist—including the truth behind a decades-old rumor that he killed his wife and son.
The Hunter
Tana French. Viking, Mar. 5 ($32, ISBN 978-0-593-49343-4)
French’s latest standalone centers on an American expat in Ireland who squares off against his new stepdaughter’s biological father, a deadbeat scouring the countryside for gold—and trouble.
The Next Mrs. Parrish
Liv Constantine. Bantam, June 4 ($30, ISBN 978-0-593-59992-1)
In the sequel to The Last Mrs. Parrish, the twisted trio of Amber, Daphne, and Jackson Parrish reunite to fend off a ghost from Amber’s past.
The Night of Baba Yaga
Akira Otani, trans. from the Japanese by Sam Bett. Soho Crime, July 2 ($27.95, ISBN 978-1-64129-491-1)
In 1979 Tokyo, a woman kidnapped by a yakuza gang is assigned to protect the crime boss’s daughter, and falls in love with her.
One of Our Kind
Nicola Yoon. Knopf, June 11 ($28, ISBN 978-0-593-47067-1)
YA author Yoon’s adult debut tracks a woman’s dawning realization that the planned Black community in California where she’s moved her family is not the utopia it purports to be.
The Rumor Game
Thomas Mullen. Minotaur, Feb. 27 ($29, ISBN 978-1-250-84277-0)
A gossip columnist collides with a womanizing FBI agent when they both start investigating the death of a factory worker with Nazi ties in WWII-era Boston.
Shanghai
Joseph Kanon. Scribner, July 16 ($28, ISBN 978-1-66800-642-9)
Daniel Lohr, a European Jew who fled the Nazis to live with his uncle in Shanghai after Kristallnacht, is sucked into the Chinese city’s vice and violence.
Smoke Kings
Jahmal Mayfield. Melville House, Feb. 6 ($19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-68589-111-4)
A Black activist and his friends hatch a plan to kidnap the descendants of hate crime perpetrators and force them to pay reparations, only to wind up on the run from a violent white supremacist.
You Know What You Did
K.T. Nguyen. Dutton, Apr. 16 ($28, ISBN 978-0-593-47385-6)
Journalist Nguyen debuts with a thriller about a Vietnamese artist whose OCD comes roaring back in the wake of her mother’s death. This time, however, her distorted fears come true when she’s blamed for the disappearance of a prominent art patron.
Mysteries & Thrillers longlist
Akashic
False Idols: A Reluctant King Novel by K’wan (July 2, $16.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-63614-177-0). In the sequel to The Reluctant King, Maureen, former matriarch of Manhattan’s King crime family, hatches a plan to claw her way back to power after being banished to Brooklyn with her son.
Arcade
Suspicious Activity: A Legal Thriller by Mike Papantonio and Christopher Paulos (Feb. 20, $28.99, ISBN 978-1-956763-89-8). After lawyers Deke and Michael team up with investigators Carol and Jake to take down a global bank with ties to a terrorist group, one of their key witnesses goes missing, and IEDs start wreaking havoc on American highways.
Atlantic Monthly
Clete: A Dave Robicheaux Novel by James Lee Burke (June 11, $28, ISBN 978-0-8021-6307-3) sees the Louisiana detective taking on the manufacturers of a powerful designer drug.
Atria
A Better World by Sarah Langan (Apr. 9, $27, ISBN 978-1-982191-06-1). A family’s escape to an ultrawealthy enclave designed to shelter its residents from contemporary social ills goes wrong when they come to suspect the “charity” running the community is more sinister than it seems.
Ballantine
Look in the Mirror by Catherine Steadman (July 30, $30, ISBN 978-0-593-72574-0). When a young woman discovers her late father left her a luxury home in the British Virgin Islands, she’s ecstatic. Her excitement dwindles when she starts receiving threatening notes that urge her to vacate the property, or else.
Bantam
The Lantern’s Dance by Laurie R. King (Feb. 13, $28.99, ISBN 978-0-593-49659-6). For the 18th installment in the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series, King takes the married sleuths to France, where they try to determine who broke into the home of Holmes’s estranged son.
Berkley
Village in the Dark by Iris Yamashita (Feb. 13, $28, ISBN 978-0-593-33670-0). An Alaskan detective learns that the accidental deaths of her husband and son may actually have been murders, and her subsequent investigation points toward a strange separatist community.
Bloomsbury
Bright and Tender Dark by Joanna Pearson (June 4, $28.99, ISBN 978-1-63973-289-0). A woman revisits the decades-old case of her murdered college roommate when she discovers a letter that casts doubt on the killer’s identity.
Clash
The Man Who Saw Seconds by Alexander Boldizar (May 21, $19.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-960988-07-2). Preble Jefferson can see five seconds into the future. When he dodges a cop’s bullet on the New York City subway, causing another man to die in his place, the authorities get wind of his gift and try to hunt him down.
Counterpoint
Rabbit Heart: A Mother’s Murder, a Daughter’s Story by Kristine S. Ervin (Mar. 26, $27, ISBN 978-1-64009-637-0) is a true crime memoir about Ervin’s several-decade quest to track down the men who killed her mother.
Crooked Lane
Cirque Du Slay by Rob Osler (Mar. 5, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-63910-647-9). To investigate the murder of an elite circus performer, a Seattle schoolteacher and a romance blogger interrogate a trapeze artist, a gun-slinging cowgirl comedian, and other colorful suspects.
Dafina
Control by Omar Tyree (May 21, $28, ISBN 978-1-4967-4804-1). An Atlanta therapist’s scheme to manipulate her six most challenging clients goes sour when some of them turn up dead.
Doubleday
Camino Ghosts by John Grisham (May 28, $29.95, ISBN 978-0-385-54599-0) takes bookstore owner Bruce Cable back to the beach for a sun-kissed whodunit in the latest entry in bestseller Grisham’s Camino series.
Dutton
Middle of the Night by Riley Sager (June 18, $30, ISBN 978-0-593-47237-8). Haunted by the disappearance of his childhood best friend, a man returns to his hometown and discovers evidence that the long-missing friend may have come back.
Everyman’s Library
The Essential Harlem Detectives: A Rage in Harlem, the Real Cool Killers, the Crazy Kill, Cotton Comes to Harlem by Chester Himes (Feb. 6, $35, ISBN 978-1-101-90839-6) collects four of crime writer Himes’s mid-20th-century novels featuring Black detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones.
Flatiron
Very Bad Company by Emma Rosenblum (May 14, $28.99, ISBN 978-1-250-90655-7). In this satirical mystery, a tech executive disappears during a buzzy start-up’s company retreat, and the other employees must juggle their search for him with their obligation to project confidence for the market.
Forge
Extinction by Douglas Preston (Apr. 23, $29.99, ISBN 978-0-7653-1770-4). When people start dying at a Jurassic Park–like Colorado amusement park, authorities think ecoterrorists are responsible—but the truth is more terrifying.
Gallery
Swiped by L.M. Chilton (May 21, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-66804-570-1). A lonely young woman’s experiment with dating apps gets complicated when every man she meets is murdered, making her the de facto prime suspect.
Grand Central
The Paris Affair by Maureen Marshall (May 28, $19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5387-5780-2) centers on a young, queer engineer helping to build the Eiffel Tower in 1880s Paris who gets romantically involved with a suave socialite and investigates the murder of a friend.
Graydon House
The Vacancy in Room 10 by Seraphina Nova Glass (Apr. 9, $18.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-5258-0980-4). Cass, the superintendent of a rundown apartment complex, makes extra cash blackmailing sleazy men. When she frames Anna’s husband for murder, Anna’s snooping threatens to blow Cass’s whole operation.
Hanover Square
You Can’t Hurt Me by Emma Cook (Feb. 29, $30, ISBN 978-1-335-43048-9). After Eva Reid, a woman famous for her inability to feel physical pain, dies, an obsessive journalist volunteers to help Eva’s husband write a book about her, only to discover his laundry list of dark secrets.
Harper Paperback
Death in a Lonely Place by Stig Abell (July 2, $18.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-06-338111-7). Retired London detective Jake Johnson from 2023’s Death Under a Little Sky faces down members of a powerful crime syndicate he once helped dismantle when they show up in his small English country town.
Kensington
Under the Paper Moon by Shaina Steinberg (Apr. 23, $27, ISBN 978-1-4967-4780-8). Screenwriter Steinberg debuts with a tale of two spies who meet during WWII and then reunite six years later in Los Angeles, where they suppress romantic sparks as they investigate a murder.
Little, Brown
The 24th Hour by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro (May 6, $30, ISBN 978-0-316-40308-5). In the 24th Women’s Murder Club novel, the club members have a celebratory dinner in San Francisco interrupted by an assault conducted by a woman with a rare memory disorder.
Mariner
The Last Word by Elly Griffiths (Apr. 23, $27.99, ISBN 978-0-06-337472-0). Octogenarian detective Edwin and math genius Natalka head to an isolated writer’s retreat to dig up details about a pair of murdered journalists. At the retreat, another writer turns up dead.
Minotaur
The Last Note of Warning by Katharine Schellman (June 4, $29, ISBN 978-1-250-32579-2). The latest in Schellman’s Nightingale series finds New York City dress shop assistant Vivian Kelly wanted for the murder of a wealthy client’s husband.
Mira
Only One Survives by Hannah Mary McKinnon (July 16, $18.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-7783-0547-7). This closed-circle mystery focuses on an all-woman rock band whose tour van swerves off the road, stranding the members at an icy cabin where someone begins to pick them off one by one.
MCD
Tell Me Who You Are by Louisa Luna (June 4, $28, ISBN 978-0-374-61279-5). Brooklyn psychiatrist Caroline Strange is shaken by a new client who claims he’s about to commit a murder—and that he knows the truth about Dr. Strange’s past.
Morrow
A Talent for Murder by Peter Swanson (June 11, $30, ISBN 978-0-06-320503-1). In the follow-up to The Kind Worth Saving, a librarian enlists Lily Kintner’s help to determine whether her new husband is a serial killer.
Mysterious Press
Westport: A Crime Novel by James Comey (May 21, $30, ISBN 978-1-61316-524-9). Former FBI director Comey follows up last year’s Central Park West with a sequel about corporate espionage in Connecticut.
Overlook
Bad Men by Julie Mae Cohen (May 7, $27, ISBN 978-1-4197-7233-7). A glamorous socialite who moonlights as a serial killer of unsavory men helps a new flame clear his name when he becomes the prime suspect in a murder case.
Pegasus Crime
An Inconvenient Wife: A Modern Tudor Mystery by Karen E. Olson (Apr. 2, $27, ISBN 978-1-63936-565-4). When a woman is beheaded near the home of billionaire Hank Tudor, his new wife teams up with his five exes to investigate.
PENGUIN PRESS
2054 by Elliot Ackerman and James Stavridis (Mar. 12, $28, ISBN 978-0-593-48986-4). Former U.S. Marine Ackerman and retired Navy admiral Stavridis follow up 2034 with a speculative thriller set in an America that’s descended into a civil war sparked by a breakthrough in AI technology.
Poisoned Pen
The Teacher by Freida McFadden (Feb. 6, $17.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-72829-621-0). A math teacher dreads the arrival of a troublesome student in her class, only to learn that the student’s reputation is much more complicated—and dark—than any of her colleagues realize.
Putnam
Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Shadow by Brian Freeman (July 16, $30, ISBN 978-0-593-71645-8). When Jason Bourne meets a woman from his past, he’s forced to fill in previously unknown gaps in his own history before they catch up with him.
SIMON & SCHUSTER
The Sleepwalkers by Scarlett Thomas (Apr. 9, $26, ISBN 978-1-66803-298-5) follows a pair of newlyweds whose honeymoon on a Greek island is undermined by sketchy staff, stories of the couple who drowned just before they arrived, and a devastating storm.
Soho Crime
The Comfort of Ghosts by Jacqueline Winspear (June 4, $29.95, ISBN 978-1-64129-606-9). The final installment in Winspear’s long-running Maisie Dobbs series finds the investigator trying to find new homes for a mysterious group of WWII orphans. One of their life stories leads Dobbs to reexamine her late husband’s mysterious death.
Sourcebooks Landmark
Young Rich Widows by Vanessa Lillie et al. (Apr. 2, $16.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-72829-401-8). After four partners at a Rhode Island law firm die in a mysterious plane crash in 1985, their widows search for answers, uncovering mafia ties and more.
St. Martin’s
The Bin Laden Plot by Rick Campbell (Apr. 23, $29, ISBN 978-1-250-27710-7). Navy captain Murray Wilson must thwart a shadowy organization that’s been picking off members of the SEAL team that killed Osama bin Laden one by one.
Titan
Ashram Assassin by Andrew Cartmel (June 25, $16.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-80336-792-7). In Cartmel’s second Paperback Sleuth mystery, Cordelia, an unscrupulous bookseller who moonlights as an investigator, is hired to recover rare yoga books for a London ashram—whose members soon start dropping dead.
Union Square
The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age by Michael Wolraich (Feb. 6, $28.99, ISBN 978-1-4549-4802-5) is a true crime account of the 1931 murder of sex worker Vivian Gordon, whose death brought about the downfall of New York City mayor Jimmy Walker.
