This supernatural-tinged mystery from bestseller Unger (Close Your Eyes and Count to 10) gets off to a strong start but fails to deliver on its promise. After Ana Blacksmith breaks up with her noxious boyfriend, Paul, her friends gather for an “ex-orcism” party, during which the group gleefully removes any trace of Paul from Ana’s digital footprint. A few days later, Paul’s dead body is found by a hiker, and his current girlfriend names Ana as a suspect before going missing herself. Under intense police suspicion, Ana teams up with her sister, Vera, to clear her name. As the investigation unfolds, it becomes clear that Paul had more enemies than Ana realized. The narration alternates awkwardly between six perspectives—primarily those of Ana, Vera, and police detective Timothy Bandeau—and takes a halfhearted turn toward the occult with a subplot about Ana and Vera’s herbalist aunt. The lack of focus ends up snuffing out the momentum built in the early chapters. Unger has done better. Agent: Amy Berkower, Writers House. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

Blackwell combines a love story, time travel, and a touch of mystery in her charming if lightweight Jane Austen–inspired debut. In 1799, 21-year-old Georgiana Darcy—younger sister of Pride and Prejudice’s Fitzwilliam Darcy—is having an unhappy day at Pemberley. To escape an unwanted suitor who’s wandering the property with plans to propose, Georgiana sets off for the nearby woods, where she picks up a small rectangular object, only to be whisked to 1995. She arrives in the same spot, beneath a now-massive tree on the former grounds of Pemberly, and notices the body of a man hanging from its boughs. Startled, she stumbles out of the woods and meets Quinn, a handsome member of the security team for a Regency-era period drama being filmed on the premises who mistakes her for a cast member. What follows is a fish-out-of-water tale that wrings plenty of amusement out of Georgiana’s struggles to adjust to 20th-century slang, fashion, and social mores, but mystery readers will find the whodunit plot, which often takes a backseat to the tender romance between the leads, flimsy. Still, there’s enough here to satisfy Austenites. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

Time-traveling archaeologist Robert “Rabbit” Ward embarks on a dangerous mission to ancient Israel to aid a mysterious ally in Ludington’s thrilling sequel to Splinter Effect. Helen, an enigmatic fellow treasure hunter whom Rabbit first encountered in ancient Constantinople, has been tasked by her shadowy employers with finding Einar Eshek, a thief who plans to steal a treasure that Helen’s colleagues want for themselves. The action begins in 64 CE Rome, where Rabbit stumbles upon a carefully eviscerated corpse and the murderer, who addresses him in modern English. Back in the present, Helen contacts Rabbit to ask for his help finding Einar, and he concocts a legitimate-sounding reason for his benefactors to send him to 68 BCE Qumran. But when he and Helen come upon a corpse tortured in exactly the same way as the one in Rome more than 100 years later, Rabbit realizes they may have a time-traveling serial killer on their hands. Rabbit doesn’t wear a fedora or carry a whip, but the Indiana Jones parallels are undeniable. Luckily, the material lives up to its inspiration, and Ludington supplements the book’s breathless action by deepening Rabbit’s characterization and fleshing out his budding romance with Helen. This series has legs. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

Perry (1947–2025) delivers a welcome follow-up to The Left-handed Twin with this frenetic thriller that finds Native American witness protector Jane Whitfield grappling with motherhood. The premature birth of her daughter, May, has drawn Jane into a quieter, more domestic life. Her fragile peace is shattered, however, when Clare Markham, an Indigenous teenager from Oklahoma, seeks her help after fighting off a sexual assault. When Clare’s attacker dies from the injuries she inflicted on him, she becomes the target of a relentless manhunt led by the dead man’s brother, a police officer. Jane tries to set Clare up with a new living situation and identity, even as she herself is being hunted. Magda Kaprovna, a Russian enforcer, has been broken out of jail by Boston mob boss Pavel Oblonsky and tasked with capturing Jane, torturing her into revealing the identities and locations of people she’s helped relocate, and selling the information to the highest bidder. Perry crafts a taut, morally charged narrative where loyalty and survival collide. Fans of high-stakes suspense will savor this white-knuckle ride. Agent: Mel Berger, WME. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

Stevenson’s hot streak continues with the fabulous fourth case for Ernest Cunningham (after Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret), an amateur sleuth and former writer of instructional texts about how to write whodunits. When Ernest and his fiancée Juliette visit a bank in the small Australian town of Huxley in search of a loan to finance Ernest’s PI business, they’re taken hostage by “a bank robber who doesn’t seem to care about money.” Puzzlingly, the robber locks the doors to the building but allows his captives to roam free as he attempts to fish out a single dollar from a locked vault. Unable to resist investigating, Ernest soon finds that many of his fellow hostages—including a film producer, a priest, numerous healthcare workers, and a security guard—also planned to rob the bank. Then someone in the party dies, piling a locked-room murder mystery on top of the already-curious case of overlapping heists. As always, Stevenson plays scrupulously fair with readers, offering all the evidence needed to solve his devilishly intricate puzzle from the jump. Still, even the most seasoned mystery fans will struggle to beat him to the final reveal. This series continues to impress. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

“Marceau Miller” is both the pseudonym of the author of this brain-bending metafictional thriller and the name of its central figure. At the outset, Marceau, a bestselling mystery writer, falls to his death from a cliff near Lake Geneva after celebrating the publication of his 20th novel with his closest friends. After his wife, Sarah, finds the body, she’s plagued by suspicions that Marceau’s death was not an accident. She becomes obsessed with locating his final manuscript, convinced it contains clues to whether her husband was, in fact, murdered. As she outlines her theory to skeptical Swiss policemen, the narrative weaves in revealing dispatches from her business partner and snippets from the missing manuscript, which provide even more clues about the fatal fall. As secrets come to light and long-standing relationships disintegrate, Miller asks tantalizing questions about the dark impulses that can drive human creativity. Readers will be wowed. Agent: Marleen Seegers, 2 Seas. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

Edgar winner Burke’s excellent latest adventure for Dave Robicheaux (after Clete) sees the Louisiana detective tangling with the proprietor of a lawless bayou enclave. The action begins in 1999, with a cloaked figure leaving a garbage bag containing the corpse of a young woman on Robicheaux’s property. As Robicheaux investigates, he worries that his poking around could endanger his adopted daughter, Alafair, who’s just returned home from college in Portland, Ore. The inquiry leads Robicheaux to the notorious Jerry Carlucci, a childhood acquaintance and fellow Vietnam vet. Carlucci owns a saloon and brothel, and has recently joined forces with a New Jersey mobster to build a casino nearby. The land the men have chosen, however, is believed to contain buried artifacts, including a rumored cache of Confederate gold that has drawn the attention of treasure seekers. Returning series characters include Valerie Benoit, a young, Black plainclothes detective staunchly devoted to social justice, and Boone Hendrix, an eccentric handyman. As always, Burke is a master of atmosphere and memorable characterization. This is a sure bet for series fans and newcomers alike. Agent: Anne-Lise Spitzer, Philip Spitzer Literary. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

Harrison (A Special Interest in Murder) delivers a twisted thriller about a trio of women who join forces to take out the man who wronged them. Meg and Jenny, both burned by their shared ex-husband, Mark, hatch a plan to kill him. They recruit his current wife, Amelia, to their cause and carry out the crime without a hitch. Exhilarated, the women decide to turn their success into a full-time gig, launching an underground contract service that offers comeuppance to despicable spouses. But when Meg and Jenny unexpectedly fall for each other, their budding romance creates a rift between them and Amelia. As the job offers keep coming, the fault line between the women deepens, resulting in a pile-up of bodies that lends the darkly comic proceedings a tragic air. Despite the title and top-line summary, what emerges is less of a cozy than it is a surprisingly bleak and blood-spattered meditation on the cycle of violence. Tonal whiplash aside, Harrison keeps readers on tenterhooks. Strong-nerved suspense fans will walk away satisfied. Agent: JL Stermer, Next Level Lit. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

Kennedy debuts with a transporting historical thriller set in 1890 Azerbaijan and centered on the struggle to control oil fields on the shores of the Caspian Sea. At the outset, Anton Sabroski, scion of the Sabroski family, owners of a significant number of Caspian oil fields, is near the end of a hazardous journey home from Shanghai, where a merchant instructed him to deliver a packet of documents detailing a secretive project to his father, Nikolai. When Anton arrives in Azerbaijan, he finds Nikolai on his deathbed, unable to help decipher the papers. The mystery deepens when Anton learns that the family business has gone bust, and that his inheritance consists merely of a Fabergé egg and instructions to employ an enigmatic woman named Klara at the family firm. As Anton scrambles to make sense of this turn of events while hiding secrets of his own, Standard Oil boss John Rockefeller dispatches a spy known as the Pallid Harrier to Azerbaijan for a mysterious mission. Eventually, Anton and the Pallid Harrier cross paths. Kennedy’s meticulous historical detail and unique premise set this apart. Fans of Joseph Finder out to take a look. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

A suburban homemaker who moonlights as a vigilante falls for one of her targets in this pulse-pounding thriller from DeStefano (How I’ll Kill You). Margaux Blue leads a glittering life in Connecticut as an interior decorator, wife to book editor Waylen, and mother to preteen Collette. For years, however, Margaux has been secretly working for a shadowy boss named Mr. X to bring certain crimes to light. Her latest assignment is to reveal how billionaire tech mogul Bertram Casimir stole code from his sister for his flagship app. Margaux teams up with Elodie, another suburban mom, and the pair pretend to be journalists to gain access to Bertram and his penthouse apartment. Believing Mr. X has a righteous reason for targeting Bertram, Margaux and Elodie focus on connecting him to the disappearance of his girlfriend, Annie. But as Margaux falls under Bertram’s spell, she starts to believe in his innocence. Before long, the police come after Margaux for crimes she didn’t commit, leading her to question whom she can trust—including her husband. Pitch-perfect pacing makes the pages fly, ratcheting up suspense as DeStefano doles out key details about Margaux’s past. It’s a jaw-dropping, cinematic ride. Agent: Barbara Poelle, Word One Literary. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink