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Vice and Virtue
by Libby Klein
After abruptly leaving behind her past life as a cop, Layla is adjusting to sober life at Lake Pinecrest Trailer Park while pursuing her dream to be a rock musician. But at an eight-year-old's birthday party, she witnesses Chuckles the Clown's final performance and becomes entangled in a mystery surrounding his death. Along with her loyal crew, Layla investigates the intriguing connection between a seemingly unremarkable clown and the wealthy women of the upper class, uncovering secrets in their superficial world.
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The Retirement Plan
by Sue Hincenbergs
After thirty years of friendship, Pam and her friends envision a perfect retirement, but their husbands' disastrous investment ruins their plans. When one husband dies, his widow uses her life insurance payout to start anew, prompting the women to discover their husbands have similar policies. A new scheme involving a hitman emerges, coinciding with the husbands' secret retirement plan. As chaos ensues, both parties scramble to survive, risking deadly consequences. Perfect for fans of Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson.
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Fair Play
by Louise Hegarty
Abigail hosts a jazz-age Murder Mystery party at an Airbnb to celebrate both New Year's Eve and her brother Benjamin's birthday. But as relationships evolve over the course of the evening, chaos ensues—culminating in Benjamin's unexpected death. An eminent detective arrives to investigate, turning everyone into a suspect, leaving an isolated Abigail to confront her loss, navigate the aftermath, and seek the truth.
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The Mystery of the Crooked Man
by Tom Spencer
Grumpy archivist Agatha Dorn faces a rough day after being passed over for a promotion, but her fortune miraculously changes when she finds a lost manuscript by Gladden Green—a celebrated mystery author—leading to her rise as a literary celebrity. However, when anachronisms in the manuscript suggest it's a forgery, Agatha is publicly humiliated, and matters take a tragic turn when her best friend is found dead with a piece of the manuscript. Agatha is the only one to suspect foul play, prompting her to find a connection between the murder and the fake manuscript. In order to do so, she must navigate her ostracization and her own flawed nature.
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The Stolen Heart
by Andrey Kurkov
In post-WWI Kyiv, Samson Kolechko has been assigned a most perplexing case—one that has him wondering why selling the meat of one's own pig constitutes a crime. At the insistence of the Chekist secret police officer assigned to "reinforce" the Lybid police station, Samson does his diligent—if diffident—best. But as soon as he gets started, Samson's fiancée is abducted by striking railway workers who object to the census she's carrying out. Add to that a mysterious thief in the police station, a deadly tram accident that may not have been an accident after all, and the potential reappearance of the culprit from an earlier case, it's no wonder the "meat case" takes a back seat. But somehow, it all comes back to that.
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Easeful Death
by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
DCI Bill Slider and his team investigate the murder of an 18-year-old girl, who was killed one bright afternoon at her middle-class London home. The team soon learns the girl had secrets, several romantic connections, and tension at home. Though this witty, intricately plotted novel is the 25th Inspector Bill Slider mystery, new readers can start here. For fans of: British police procedurals; Louise Penny.
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Marble Hall Murders
by Anthony Horowitz
After breaking up with her Greek boyfriend, Susan Ryeland is back in London, editing a novel by the late Alan Conway that's been completed by Eliot Crace. But troubled Crace has laced the plot with references to his well-known grandmother's suspicious death, and this leads to murder. Fine for newcomers and featuring a book-within-a-book, this 3rd Magpie Murders novel "dazzles" (Publishers Weekly). Read-alikes: Sulari Gentill's The Woman in the Library; Janice Hallett's The Twyford Code.
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Murder at Gulls Nest
by Jess Kidd
In 1954, after letters from former novice Frieda abruptly stop, Sister Agnes leaves the order she's been a part of for decades. Now known as Nora Breen, she goes to Frieda's last address—the Gulls Nest boarding house in Kent—and finds an eccentric group. When a murder strikes, Nora works with an intriguing police inspector to solve the cases. Read-alike: Lev AC Rosen's Lavender House.
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Big Bad Wool
by Leonie Swann
The sheep of Glennkill, Ireland—including clever Miss Maple—are wintering in France with their sheperdess Rebecca and her tarot card-reading mum. But strange deer deaths attributed to a werewolf and the killing of a human find the flock once again using wit and courage to solve crimes in this charming sequel to Three Bags Full.
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Esperance
by Adam Oyebanji
Detective Ethan Krol needs to figure out how a man and his young son drowned in sea water in a Chicago high rise. Things get trickier when he learns of similar deaths in Nigeria and Rhode Island. Meanwhile, a woman with strange powers appears in Bristol, England, asking about a slave ship from 1791. This "excellent" (Booklist) novel will please fans of intricately plotted science fiction mysteries, such as Silvia Park's Luminous.
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What Fire Brings
by Rachel Howzell Hall
Bailey Meadows moves into thriller author Jack Beckham's remote Topanga Canyon home as his writer-in-residence. While attempting to help him return to bestseller status, she searches for Sam Morris, a community leader who has disappeared nearby. The dangerous landscape—known for its fires and mountain lions—has likely been involved in the missing status of other women over the years. But with fire season approaching, Bailey must race to uncover the truth before she becomes another victim.
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Guide Me Home
by Attica Locke
Texas Ranger Darren Mathews grapples with his integrity as a cop while trying to embrace a new life with the woman he loves. His plans are disrupted when his mother arrives with a dubious story about a missing Black college student, Sera, whose sorority sisters deny her disappearance. As Darren investigates, he uncovers strange and possibly sinister details about Sera's family and hometown. With local law enforcement skeptical and the threat of a grand jury indictment looming, Darren must reluctantly seek his mother's assistance to find the truth. This is the third novel of the series, following Heaven, My Home.
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Farewell, Amethystine
by Walter Mosley
In January 1979, Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins—a successful Black detective in LA—faces unexpected challenges when Amethystine Stoller seeks his help finding her missing ex husband. The whole ordeal triggers a stream of memoires of past losses and struggles for Easy. Things only get worse when her ex is found dead and Easy's only friend on the force goes into hiding. Confronted by the new racial and gender-based expectations of the era, Easy must make a difficult choice that threatens to have a profound impact on his life, and his soul.
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The Whitewashed Tombs
by Kwei Quartey
"Marcelo Tetteh, a twenty-seven-year-old LGBTQ activist, is butchered one night after being lured on Grindr to a deserted building site. With rampant homophobia in Ghana, Marcelo’s wealthy father doesn’t trust the Ghana Police Service to find the killer, so he goes to the Sowah Private Investigators Agency for help, partly because he still feels guilty for disowning his son when he came out.
Emma is assigned the case, but quickly learns of a complication that prevents her from teaming up as usual with Jojo, her trusted colleague. Emma is the only one at work who knows Jojo is gay, and now he reveals something else: for some time, Jojo was dating Marcelo, the victim."
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A Deadly Inside Scoop
by Abby Collette
Recent MBA grad Bronwyn Crewse has officially taken over Crewse Creamery—the family's ice cream shop in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. To mark the occasion, Win dives into renovating the shop and reviving some of her grandmother's homemade recipes. But all the excitement dies down when construction causes delays and the shop ultimately misses the busy summer season. And when it finally arrives, not only does an early snowstorm ice out any chance of big business, but Win later discovers a body in the snow. The victim is linked to a family feud and her father becomes a suspect, making it unclear: can Win juggle running the business and clearing his name?
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While We Were Burning
by Sara Koffi
After her best friend's mysterious death, Elizabeth Smith's life unravels, prompting her to hire Brianna—a personal assistant. While Elizabeth's new hire does an amazing job getting her life more organized, they end up sharing an all-consuming obsession with uncovering the truth behind the death. Not only that, but it turns out that Brianna has her own tragic loss: the police killing of her young Black son. As they dig deeper into the past, the lines between employer and friend blur, revealing that neither woman is who she seems.
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