Bestseller Constantine (Don’t Open Your Eyes) delivers a lopsided pair of domestic suspense novellas. In the superior “My Sister’s Daughter,” the sudden death of Ashley Bowers’s troubled sister, Courtney, forces Ashley to adopt her 13-year-old niece, Serena. Tensions naturally arise between Serena and Ashley’s 12-year-old daughter, Luna, but they soon escalate into a frightening series of near deadly accidents. Ashley must then try to determine whether Serena suffers from the same dangerous tendencies that drove Ashley and Courtney apart. The wobblier “Silent Echo” focuses on busy executive Charlotte Fleming, who dismisses her four-year-old son Sebastian’s stomachache and sends him to school, only to be plunged into a yearlong depression when he dies in a school bus accident. Then Charlotte discovers evidence online that Sebastian may have miraculously survived the crash only to be abducted. She engages in a game of cat and mouse with his possible kidnapper, a development that asks for more suspension of disbelief than the story’s 100 pages can handle. Thankfully, any disappointments readers might feel about “Silent Echo” are more than made up for by the crisp plotting and clever twists of “My Sister’s Daughter.” Even though this diptych isn’t Constantine’s best work, it’s still worth a look. Agent: Jenny Bent, Bent Agency. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/19/2025 | Details & Permalink

Bell (the Annalise series) delivers a memorable small-town whodunit about a former pastry chef accused of murder. Laura Harris gave up her life as a culinary star in Los Angeles to care for her cancer-stricken mother in Sternburg, Tex. After her mother dies, Laura has second thoughts about her decision, and visits her lifelong friend, nonagenarian vineyard owner Hattie Stenburg, for advice. When Laura arrives, however, she finds Hattie’s battered corpse in her caretaker’s bedroom. Detective Adams, the local sheriff’s investigator, immediately suspects Laura of killing Hattie, since she discovered the body. His suspicions intensify when a reading of Hattie’s will reveals she named Laura the sole heir to her vast fortune. Laura has little choice but to find the real killer and clear her name—a task complicated by the hostility of Sternburg locals, who see her as little more than a coastal interloper, and Laura’s distrust of Hattie’s caretaker, who guards key information about the woman’s final days. Bell brings the eerie, tight-knit community of Sternburg to vibrant life, and makes Laura’s desperation palpable. This satisfies. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 09/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

A father-daughter LAPD duo juggle cases old and new in this promising series launch from Greene (Hayley Hope Is Gone). Bill and Cassidy Clarke are at opposite ends of their careers: Bill, a homicide detective, is leaving the force after four decades just as Cassidy has begun working as a patrol officer. In his final weeks, Bill has tried to solve a handful of cold cases by pestering incarcerated murderer Tyler Derby, whom Bill believes killed more women than he was convicted for. Then, on the morning of Bill’s last day, a pair of serial killers the press has dubbed “the Hollywood Hit Men” strangle a woman to death in her home and leave a lipstick heart on her cheek. Cassidy, eager to prove herself, joins her fellow officers in their hunt for the Hit Men, with occasional input from Bill, who continues to pursue Tyler even after he hangs up his badge. Greene nicely balances the two core mysteries and offers up just enough about Bill and Cassidy’s personal lives to keep readers on the hook for a sequel. Fans of Marcy McCreary’s Ford Family mysteries should check this out. Agent: Jill Marsal, Marsal Lyon Literary. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

Croydon, CEO of the Australian bookstore chain QBD Books, reimagines WWII codebreaker Alan Turing as an architect of time travel in his ambitious debut. In the present, British MP Annabelle McIntosh learns that she’s Turing’s granddaughter. Flash back to 1944, when Turing successfully uses a time machine he’s invented called Nautilus to save lives on D-Day, though he remains wary of tampering too much with fate. As the war grinds on, Turing’s wife, Joan Clarke, gives up their son David for adoption, and she and Turing establish a set of ethical rules for Nautilus’s deployment. After WWII ends and gives way to the Cold War, Turing returns to intelligence work, only to be betrayed by real-life double agent Kim Philby. After Turing’s death, Joan guards Nautilus, employing it only to avert catastrophe, while David becomes involved in espionage at great personal sacrifice. Though the shifting timelines lead to some repetition, and the wartime arc receives an outsize share of the page count, Croydon proves himself a clever reinterpreter of history. Flaws aside, this pays tribute to Turing’s genius and serves as a thoughtful meditation on power, secrecy, and sacrifice in times of conflict. Agent: Shane Salerno, Story Factory. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 09/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

Veteran cop Russ Van Alstyne searches for a missing former colleague in his splendid latest adventure from Spencer-Fleming (after Hid from Our Eyes). Christmas is around the corner in the small town of Millers Kill, N.Y., and Russ has just resigned from his position as chief of police to focus on his new child with his wife, Episcopal priest Clare Fergusson. Before Russ can get his bearings as a civilian, however, he learns that Kevin Flynn, who was under Russ’s command before he left Millers Kill to join the Syracuse PD, has disappeared. His sometime girlfriend—another Millers Kill cop—hasn’t heard from him in two months. Russ jumps into investigative mode, both helped and hindered by his new position outside the system. His sleuthing reveals that, before Kevin disappeared, he’d been working undercover to infiltrate a militia group operating in Adirondack Park. Meanwhile, a forest ranger and a young lawyer embark on their own individual investigations that tie back to the same militia. Spencer-Fleming nimbly balances plot and characterization, fully developing each member of her large cast while ensuring things never get too busy. This long-running series continues to impress. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

Two women lay claim to the same child in this whiplash-inducing domestic suspense novel from Mancini (The Woman on the Ledge). Lauren Hopwood is living in Mantilla de Mar, Spain, with her toddler, Sam, when police come knocking on her door. According to Hope Dunsmore and her husband, Andrew Faris, Sam is actually their son, whom Lauren kidnapped from the couple’s home in the English village of Chorley Common. Lauren maintains that Sam is in fact her child, producing a birth certificate and passport as evidence, but as soon as the police leave, she flees with Sam, deeming Mantilla de Mar “no longer safe.” As cracks emerge in Hope and Andrew’s story of a soured surrogacy agreement, investigators start to suspect that “something more worrying” happened between the parties. Meanwhile, neither side can risk the truth coming out, lest they all lose contact with Sam forever. Mancini’s twisty and twisted tale unspools in a pinwheeling narrative that explores each character’s fraught backstory before abruptly catapulting to a far-fetched yet undeniably gratifying finale. For all its jerky pacing and overheated reveals, readers will race through this. Agent: Grainne Fox, UTA. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 09/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

Murder rattles an elite circle of book influencers in this tired thriller from Butler (The Fourth Daughter). Kate Spencer, Jessie Tang, Helena Davis, Leigh Strom, and Sidney Aquino are known as “the Bookers,” members of a monthly virtual book club that’s the envy of smaller-time influencers and the gold standard for publicists. During their latest meeting, each woman raises a cocktail before their screens freeze and screams ring out. Without revealing who’s been killed, or by whom, Butler flashes back one month to catalog each woman’s secrets and potential motives for murder. Kate is managing blowback after tanking an author’s career; Jessie is hiding her foray into high-class sex work from her friends and family; Helena is trying to keep her husband from learning that she’s bankrupted the family; Leigh is cheating on her husband with a high-powered publishing executive; and Sidney is navigating her own marriage troubles. Butler toggles rapidly between each woman’s perspective, but their two-dimensional characterizations make it difficult to care what happens to most of them. Some soapy twists manage to add some fun, but for the most part, this is a slog. Agent: Rachel Brooks, BookEnds Literary. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 09/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

Former attorney Dann debuts with a captivating historical thriller that finds 1950s Memphis at a potential turning point after the death of Edward Crump, a corrupt politician who puppet-mastered municipal elections and shaped organized crime for decades. Though hopes for the upcoming mayoral election are high, white homicide detective Burdett Vance, who made it his mission to challenge the “Crump Machine,” is skeptical things will change. Meanwhile, Vance is assigned to work an ominous murder case with Black officer Eustace Johnson. The decaying corpse of a white woman was found floating in the Mississippi River; stuffed inside a pair of stockings tied around her neck was a bottle containing a note: “No more lynchings. Time for payback.” Fearing that more white women might be targeted, Vance’s bosses throw their weight behind the investigation, and the stakes increase when Vance’s ex-lover becomes the killer’s next target. Dann smartly uses Vance and Johnson’s fraught partnership to highlight the racial tensions of the early civil rights era, and his prose is a cut above similar fare (Tennessee’s “railroads and rural byways strea[m] toward Memphis in an unbroken flow of riches”). This is an accomplished first effort. Agent: John Talbot, Talbot Fortune. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

A Midwestern hotel employee reinvents herself as an amateur sleuth in Sharp’s endearing debut cozy. Maiden Harlow works at the Harlow House Inn in Golden Glen, Mich., alongside her parents and her sister, Vonny. Most days consist of little more than lugging bags up and down stairs and managing the occasional hotheaded guest. Then a man named Mr. Creevey, who arrived at the inn with no ID and few possessions, is found in his room with his head bashed in. After police captain David McAlister learns that Maiden had a heated argument with the dead man when she caught him trying to hack the inn’s computer system, he pins her as his lead suspect. To clear her name, Maiden sets out to solve the murder herself, following a trail of clues that leads to an unprecedented bank robbery in a neighboring town. Sharp doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but her plotting is brisk and she makes Maiden’s wobbly first attempts at detecting feel plausible. This a diverting whodunit for fans of Murder, She Wrote. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 09/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

Lehane (Murder at the College Library) delivers a gratifying old-school PI novel set in the thick of the McCarthy era. WWII veteran Mick Mulligan had it all—a successful career as a Hollywood cartoonist, a comfortable salary, a lovely family—until he was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee. After losing his job and his wife, Mick fled to New York City and reinvented himself as a private investigator. His latest case lands him in a simmering cauldron of social unrest that could boil over at any moment. A year ago, Black cabbie and Communist Party member Harold Williams was convicted of murdering wealthy white taxi company owner Irwin Johnson. Harold is scheduled to be executed in just two weeks, but labor leader Duke Rogowski hires Mick to look into the case with hopes that he might exonerate Williams. A skeptical Mick digs in, soon discovering that the list of Harold’s enemies is long, and coming around to the idea that the cabbie may, in fact, be a patsy. Lehane’s pacing and hardboiled dialogue are hard to beat, and he makes the jittery paranoia of the period jump off the page. Fans of James Ellroy will get a kick out of this. Agent: Alice Martell, Martell Agency. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/12/2025 | Details & Permalink