Edgar winner Scottoline (The Truth About the Devlins) delivers a pulpy paranormal gothic set in the Tuscan countryside. After Julia Pritzker’s husband is murdered in their Philadelphia neighborhood, she receives a letter informing her she’s inherited a €3 million estate in Chianti. Her benefactor is a stranger named Emilia Rossi, and Julia—who was adopted as an infant, and has no idea who her birth parents are—suspects the inheritance might point toward answers about her origins. As Julia settles into her Italian villa, she learns from her neighbors and new housekeeper that Emilia was a recluse (some say madwoman) who believed she was a descendent of the strong-willed 16th century duchess Caterina Sforza. Though Julia’s not opposed to the occult, she’s mostly embarrassed by Emilia’s musings, until she starts sensing the duchess’s presence wafting through the villa’s corridors. As Julia scrambles to figure out what’s going on with the help of handsome librarian Gianluca Moretti, she learns she may possess long-dormant supernatural abilities. Scottoline serves up plenty of Tuscan atmosphere for the armchair traveler, but her plotting is unfocused, with Julia’s journey of self-discovery too tangled up in convoluted subplots to land. This is a mixed bag. Agent: Robert Gottlieb, Trident Media Group. (July)

Reviewed on 08/08/2025 | Details & Permalink

Hadfield (The Defector) delivers a pulse-pounding adventure about a 1975 U.S.-Soviet space mission that devolves into a battle hundreds of miles above Earth. All goes well until the Apollo and the Soyuz try to dock to each other, when a critical error kills two astronauts, one cosmonaut, and destroys the Russian ship. At NASA’s direction, the remaining crew diverts course to the U.S.-controlled Skylab orbiting nearby, where the bodies can be stored temporarily. When the crew, led by pilot Deke Slayton, reaches Skylab, they discover a Chinese craft already there and in the process of stealing a secret laser weapon the U.S. left behind on a previous mission. Suddenly, what began as a peaceful endeavor meant to embody cooperation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union turns into a violent confrontation with Chinese forces involving gun- and machete-wielding space explorers. A former astronaut himself, Hadfield crowds the narrative with an abundance of technical jargon, and a few of the earthbound subplots are undernourished, including the kidnapping of NASA flight controller Kaz Zemeckis in Houston and a presidential assassination attempt by the Weather Underground. Still, Hadfield maintains steady momentum from the book’s opening pages, and the crackling finale is well worth the wait. This should satisfy the author’s fans. Agent: Rick Broadhead, Rick Broadhead & Assoc. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/08/2025 | Details & Permalink

Cambridge’s fifth whodunit featuring Agatha Christie’s housekeeper, Phyllida Bright (after Murder Takes the Stage), is another clever homage to the golden age of mystery fiction. Vera Rollingbroke asks for Phyllida’s help determining whether her husband, Sir Paulson, is being unfaithful. The basis for Vera’s suspicion is scant, rooted mostly in Paulson’s strange behavior when Vera mentioned that sisters Generva and Ethel Blastwick would be attending one of their dinner parties. Phyllida agrees to attend the party herself so she can observe the dynamic between the sisters and Paulson. At the dinner, Generva insists the guests play Two Truths and a Lie, and, during her turn, claims she once witnessed a murder without knowing it. The next day, Ethel dies in a hit and run, and Phyllida speculates that someone may have been trying to kill Generva to keep her quiet about the murder. With the stakes of her inquiry raised, Phyllida starts casing the previous night’s party guests, now searching for a murderer instead of an adulterer. Phyllida’s deductive skills are on par with Marple and Poirot, and Cambridge is careful to play fair without going too easy on the reader. This is a treat. Agent: Maura Kye-Casella, Don Congdon Assoc. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/08/2025 | Details & Permalink

The fourth installment in Rosen’s series featuring gay ex-cop turned private investigator Evander Mills (after Rough Pages) marries the rousing action of a well-built procedural with fascinating tidbits of queer history. In 1950s San Francisco, an anxious member of the local chapter of the Mattachine Society, one of the first gay rights organizations, comes to Mills’s office above a gay bar and asks him to track down three members who’ve stopped attending meetings following a rift within the national organization. Evander heads to his hometown of L.A. to check out the group’s new headquarters and look into a secret gay biker club’s possible involvement with the case. Once there, he’s unable to avoid his estranged mother, whose new nursing job seems to be tied up in the investigation. Rosen has a blast toying with the conventions of L.A. noir, but this is more than pale Raymond Chandler pastiche—it’s a smart, gimmick-free puzzle that stands on its own. The real magic, though, is in Rosen’s depiction of the struggles and triumphs of midcentury queer life: he highlights pockets of LGBTQ+ resilience, including Evander’s San Francisco community and emergent gay subcultures in L.A., without painting the past in too rosy a light. This series deserves a long life. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/08/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this spunky nod to Rear Window, Roberts (The Best Life Book Club) infuses a charming domestic comedy with a soupçon of suspicion. Love has not been lucky for twice divorced, 44-year-old Zona Hartman, whose last husband was a secret gambler who pilfered her daughter’s college fund. Broke and working two jobs, Zona is forced to move in with her spirited mother, Louise. When Louise becomes housebound after breaking her leg during a dance floor mishap, Zona hires Gilda, a part-time nurse, to keep her mother company while she works. Gilda and Louise immediately bond over their shared love of true crime, and their interest spills into real life when handsome Alec James buys the house next door. At first, Alec seems like a potential new love interest for Zona. Then Louise and Gilda start watching his house at all hours and taking note of suspicious occurrences, like the appearance and then sudden disappearance of a woman with whom he starts arguing. The danger never rises above a gentle simmer, but Roberts poignantly renders the romantic disappointments of both Zona and Louise while making their dynamic with each other and Gilda feel thoroughly lived-in. It’s a heartwarming diversion. Agent: Paige Wheeler, Creative Media. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/01/2025 | Details & Permalink

Stuart’s fifth Seattle-set whodunit featuring PI Cameron Chandler (after Moonlight Can Be Deadly) succeeds as both a mystery and a poignant exploration of homelessness. Cameron works for the scrappy, budget-conscious Penny-wise Investigations, whose office is in a shopping mall. While walking through the mall one afternoon, Cameron spots a young boy fleeing two violent men. She hides the child in her office, feeds him, and asks why he’s in trouble. He tells her his name is Cole White, and that he was being followed because he witnessed his pursuers kidnapping a woman named Bess who lived in the same homeless camp as him. Cameron decides to take Cole into her home and investigate the matter pro bono. As she digs, she learns that Bess is just the latest in a string of victims who have been snatched from homeless encampments across the city, and that most of the crimes haven’t been reported to the police. Stuart makes Cameron’s empathy and anger palpable as she tries to track the kidnappers down, offering a fresh and quietly hopeful spin on noir conventions along the way. This is a winner. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 08/01/2025 | Details & Permalink

Hannah crafts a devilish puzzle for detective Hercule Poirot in her sixth Agatha Christie pastiche (after Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night). In 1932, Poirot and his friend, Scotland Yard inspector Edward Catchpool, arrive on the small Greek island of Lamperos to celebrate New Year’s Eve. Lamperos is home to the House of Perpetual Welcome, a quasi-religious community dedicated to the belief that everything can, and should, be forgiven. Poirot and Catchpool join its members in a New Year’s game in which participants read a list of resolutions and try to guess who wrote each one. The festivities come to an abrupt end when Catchpool unfolds a piece of paper with a quatrain whose writer threatens to murder a man named Matthew Fair and make his death “at once the last and first... of the year.” Despite Poirot and Catchpool’s precautions, someone dies, and Poirot reveals to Catchpool that he knows of a credible threat on another resident’s life. Once again, Hannah proves both a quick study and an inventive thinker, delivering a whodunit that honors Poirot’s history without feeling like a mere retread. Golden age mystery fans are in for a treat. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/01/2025 | Details & Permalink

This previously unpublished 1970 novella from suspense master Leonard (Djibouti), who died in 2013, offers a diverting window into a key period of his career. Written before Leonard’s breakthrough, when he was a hired-gun author of westerns, the novella developed out of a film treatment inspired by Cesar Chavez’s 1965 Delano grape strike, which eventually became the 1974 film Mr. Majestyk. The book follows a large cast of characters who converge around a strike against Texas melon grower Stanzik Farms. Vincent Mora, a Chavez-inspired ex-priest, is the strike’s patient ringleader, who’s trying to persuade more growers to recognize and work with labor unions while meeting resistance from all sides. Other key players include Francisco “Chino” de la Cruz, an ex-con newly arrived from California, who takes a job at Stanzik and gravitates toward the union mainly as a means of sticking it to whatever man he can, and Connie Chavez, a charismatic 20-year-old devoted to the revolution in all its forms. With resonant themes and taut pacing, the novella paints an intense and immersive portrait of a small-town clash that heats up quickly and stays hot, though its roots as a plot outline are clear. This may not stand with the author’s best work—the ending is especially abrupt—but Leonard diehards will rejoice all the same. Agent: Jeff Posternak, Wylie Agency. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 08/01/2025 | Details & Permalink

Former teen detectives pursue a killer in this sinuous small-town thriller from Ryan (The Treasure Hunters Club). In the year 2000, ambitious 17-year-old twin sleuths Alice and Sam Van Dyne tire of helping their police officer dad with low-stakes cases and contrive to trap the murderer terrorizing Edgar Mills, Mass. Their sting goes sideways despite computer whiz Joey O’Day’s assistance, and the killer—school janitor Bruce Kershaw—slays the girls’ father and Alice’s boyfriend before being arrested. Twenty-five years later, Alice, Sam, and Joey receive calls from the Edgar Mills police chief, who is chasing an apparent Kershaw copycat. Though incarcerated, Kershaw claims to have valuable intel about the new killer that he will communicate only to Joey and the twins. After the trio pay him a visit, they launch their own investigation. The setup is convoluted, but it doesn’t take long for Ryan’s tale to hit its stride. Whiplash-inducing plot twists and convincing red herrings abound, but Ryan leaves plenty of room for character development, using the present-day mystery as a means for his three protagonists to confront their pasts and reassess their futures. This is criminally good fun. Agent: Samantha Haywood, Transatlantic Literary. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/01/2025 | Details & Permalink

Schleyer debuts with a delightful historical whodunit. In 1910, wealthy twins Easton and Weston Asquith have gathered at a manor on England’s Lammore Lake to celebrate their respective engagements. Conniving heir Easton is now with his brother’s former love, Eloise Sutcliffe, while Weston has resigned himself to marrying the plain but wealthy Della Drewitt. During the week’s festivities, someone attempts to poison Weston, kicking off a series of increasingly bold attempts on his life. Though Della isn’t exactly in love with her fiancé, she’s keen enough to infer that taking the Asquith family name might put her in danger, so she starts snooping around the party for suspects. As she and other guests wind their way through the manor house, finding hidden hallways and ferreting out secrets, bodies start to pile up, and a wicked manipulation plot emerges. Schleyer toggles perspectives and tosses out clues with aplomb, making each of her main characters surprisingly three-dimensional and well worth spending time with. Add in a convoluted—but never incomprehensible—whodunit plot that will stump even seasoned genre readers, and this works on every level. Agent: Sophie Cudd, Book Group. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 08/01/2025 | Details & Permalink