Bahr (Stag) delivers a bold, propulsive tale of violence and vengeance in the early-20th-century American West. The action opens with outlaw Ben Kilt emerging from a shallow grave in the Montana wilderness, only to narrowly survive a mountain lion attack. He’s saved by Bonnie Grace, a 13-year-old Native American girl, and brought to the remote cabin where she lives with her enslaver, whom Ben kills. He then takes Bonnie along to help find the man who buried him alive: his half brother and bank-robbing partner, Sidney Bosco. Bahr mostly sticks with Ben’s viewpoint as his quest for retribution ramps up, but occasional interludes from Bonnie’s perspective inject the otherwise sinewy narrative with philosophical flourishes (“One must embrace the changes and in turn change with them,” the teenager muses of her entanglement with Ben). As the body count increases, Ben’s thoughts take on a bleakly cerebral valence of their own: “Dying’s all the same, kiddo. There’s no beating that,” he tells Bonnie after killing three men who’ve accosted her. Eventually, the mash-up of bloody violence and high-minded prose threatens to grow wearisome, but Bahr’s outré vision and well-developed characters save the day. Thriller fans seeking something off the beaten path should check this out. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Steinberg probes the painful legacy of America’s treatment of its Japanese citizens during WWII in her solid third historical mystery featuring the now married investigative team of Evelyn Bishop and Nick Gallagher (after An Unquiet Peace). In 1949, Evelyn is helming her father’s company, Bishop Aeronautics, following his exposure as a traitor during the war. After she delivers a speech at the groundbreaking ceremony for the firm’s new California factory, Evelyn is accosted by an angry soldier in uniform. Capt. Billy Takemura declares that the land Evelyn is building on was stolen from his family: the Takemuras ran a restaurant there before they were forcibly interned in 1942. Billy’s allegations—and the implication that the land might have been purchased on fraudulent terms—disconcert Evelyn, and the situation takes a sinister turn when a construction worker preparing the factory’s foundation unearths a corpse with its head bashed in. Evelyn and Nick decide to investigate, challenging the official conclusion that the victim died in a robbery gone wrong. Steinberg smoothly integrates real history into a fair-play whodunit that’s tense and sad in equal measure. Series fans will get just what they came for. Agent: Kathryn Green, Kathryn Green Literary. (May)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

MacKenzie (Feast Days) delivers an ambitious blend of espionage thriller and metaphysical fiction that spans a decade of geopolitical upheaval and takes readers from the Horn of Africa to Myanmar. After the 9/11 attacks, American spy Anna Hendrix worked for years in counterterrorism before burning out and transferring to the “energy directorate.” As the novel opens in 2011, she’s back on the job after giving birth to her daughter, Thea. Anna is sent to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with a new mission: to investigate China’s interest in a mysterious, otherworldly metal of unknown origin known simply as “The Resource.” Soon, Anna finds herself on a global chase for a variety of bad actors, employing several identities to stay safe. MacKenzie sets Anna’s mission, which ends up lasting a decade, against a backdrop of real-world historical events from the assassination of Osama bin Laden to the shifting global alliances that follow the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Anna is the consummate spy, and MacKenzie effectively narrates the story from her first-person perspective, combining her sober investigative voice with moving philosophical meditations on motherhood. The result is a gripping, complex slow burn featuring plenty of old-school tradecraft that will appeal to fans of John le Carré, Graham Greene, and Dan Fesperman. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Andrews’s gripping sophomore thriller (after Who Is Maud Dixon?) centers on Clare Bast, an art historian from the Hudson Valley who lands a job at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she meets and marries attorney Jed, and is whisked away to his affluent world on Park Avenue. Clare puts her dreams of finishing her PhD on pause when she gives birth to the couple’s daughter, and grows frustrated with Jed for failing to stand up to his overbearing family. One night, while admiring the art collection of Jed’s boss and his wife at a party they’re hosting, Clare meets and starts an affair with charming art dealer Gabriel Prévost. During one of their trysts at Gabriel’s brownstone, a stranger breaks in, steals a masterpiece by mid-century painter Blake Webley, and fatally shoots Gabriel. Though Clare flees and tries to erase any trace of her presence, she soon becomes a suspect in both crimes. Convinced that if she finds the stolen painting she can clear her name, she draws on her art expertise and elite connections to find the culprit. Andrews turns her gimlet eye on the lives and lies of New York’s ultrawealthy to riotously entertaining effect. Readers won’t be able to put this down. (May)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

A newly minted police chief uncovers dark truths about her New Jersey Pine Barrens birthplace in this melodramatic mystery from Edgar winner Mullen (Please See Us). When Callie Hauser’s best friend, Jane, gets hurt in a hit-and-run, Callie leaves her job as a North Jersey narcotics detective to head up the police force in her hometown of Pine Lakes. Callie aims to bust a local drug ring while helping Jane recover, but her focus shifts upon overhearing gossip regarding her estranged mother, Jenna, after Callie arrests her for drunk driving. Unbeknownst to Callie, when Jenna was 16, she found a dead infant who was never identified. Jenna vanishes before Callie can follow up on the story, further stoking her interest in Baby Doe and the child’s rumored ties to Annabelle and Sabrina Riley, twin teens who subsequently disappeared. Mullen intercuts third-person chapters following Callie in 2023 with second-person chapters set in 1990 that place readers in Annabelle’s shoes before her disappearance. The tale features some sly red herrings and packs an undeniable punch, but obtuse protagonists, diabolical villains, and overheated plot twists all strain credulity. It’s a mixed bag. Agent: Sarah Bedingfield, Levine Greenberg Rostan. (June)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

A pair of high school classmates are bonded by their brush with a serial killer in this intriguing if predictable standalone from Finlay (Parents Weekend). On May 1, 1992, popular teenager Jules Delaney leaves a concert and is assaulted in her car by a man who she assumes is the May Day Killer, an elusive rapist and murderer who’s been striking annually across the Midwest since the late ’80s. On the same day, Jules’s classmate, Quinn Riley, whom she’s attracted to despite his lower social status, manages to scrape up enough money to attend the same concert for his birthday. Afterward, Quinn intervenes in a fight and almost kills the aggressor, landing him in prison. While Quinn is serving his sentence, his mom is bludgeoned to death at home. A year later, Quinn is released, and he dedicates himself to finding his mother’s killer—an effort that puts him in contact with Jules, who’s still distraught over her attack. Each of the novel’s sections take place on consecutive May Days, with dark secrets slowly dripping out as the bond between the leads develops. Though Finlay’s concept is strong, Jules and Quinn feel more like ciphers than fully developed characters, and the plot offers few surprises. This fails to stand out from the pack. (May)

Reviewed on 03/20/2026 | Details & Permalink

Nolan’s twisty if overlong debut opens with a 13-year-old girl vanishing in the woods outside a small Irish town in 1995. Saoirse Kellough, the middle child of a family riven by tragedy, disappears while playing in the woods with her nine-year-old brother, Jack, who emerges too shaken to reveal that his sister is missing. The next morning, Saoirse’s absence sets off a manhunt that puts the village on edge; it’s the fourth disappearance of a girl in the same forest since 1975. Freya Hemmings, a Dublin psychotherapist with a background in childhood trauma, is brought in to consult on the case, working with Jack to uncover what happened. Nolan alternates narration duties among her large cast, but the most effective chapters are told by Freya and focus on how her demons mirror those of the Kellough siblings, who have been under the care of their aunt since their mother’s apparent suicide. Though the narrative picks up some steam the deeper Freya gets into her investigation, her slow march to the truth is likely to test readers’ patience. Still, fans of Irish crime fiction will admire Nolan’s regional detail and gift for atmosphere. Agent: Stacy Testa, Writers House. (June)

Reviewed on 03/20/2026 | Details & Permalink

The difficulty of solving crimes in a war-ravaged city is at the core of Ukrainian novelist Kurkov’s excellent third mystery featuring novice police investigator Samson Kolechko (after The Stolen Heart). It’s 1919, and Bolsheviks have a precarious hold on power across Ukraine. Samson is ordered to investigate the inexplicable disappearance of 100 Red Army soldiers who vanished from a bathhouse without their clothes or their rifles. Not only is it a bizarre and baffling case, but Samson receives little cooperation from bathhouse workers and endures intense pressure from his superiors to solve it quickly. The pace of the investigation picks up as Samson seeks sources from the streets of Kyiv, including a poet who writes about the corrupt and violent city. Kurkov excels at capturing the profound political instability of war-torn Kyiv, where citizens walk around with three forms of currency in their pockets: czarist kopecks, Kerensky rubles, and Soviet rubles. These details, and lingering questions about whether daily life under such circumstances might snuff out Samson’s tenderness, deepen the tension of the impossible crime at the novel’s core. This series continues to impress. (May)

Reviewed on 03/20/2026 | Details & Permalink

London drag queen Misty Divine (aka Joe Brown) tries to track down a missing man in Stars’s breezy sequel to Murder in the Dressing Room. An out-of-place customer at Soho’s Lady Bar turns out to be a private eye with an urgent message for Misty. The PI gets stabbed on his way to deliver it, but he manages to croak out “find Jeremy” before dying. Though Misty’s boyfriend Miles and Lady Bar owner Mandy don’t want her to get in harm’s way, and though Misty is worried that the dead man’s message might be connected to drag queen Auntie Susan’s shady scheme to keep Lady Bar out of the hands of a corporate buyer, Misty feels obliged to investigate. She soon learns that Jeremy is an American photographer, and finding him puts her in the crosshairs of a frightening London megachurch. Stars’s drag queen characters are brash and bold, but they skirt caricature because the author never loses sight of the ways they wield their drag personas to boost their own self-confidence. Readers seeking a well-executed, queer-centered mystery will have fun with this one. Agent: Hayley Steed, Janklow & Nesbit U.K. (June)

Reviewed on 03/20/2026 | Details & Permalink

Swiss novelist Incardona’s audacious but underwhelming English-language debut centers on Stella Thibodeaux, a 19-year-old American prostitute gifted with a supernatural ability to heal her clients. After Georgia family man Robert Smith explains to his priest, Father Brown, how his carnal relations with Stella cured his psoriasis, the Vatican decides that Stella is better off being a martyr than a living, breathing miracle worker, and sends a pair of assassins to kill her. A farcical cross-country chase ensues, with Stella fleeing both certain death and hordes of desperately ill Americans who flock to her after word of her powers spreads. Meanwhile, Savannah reporter Luis Molina tries to find and interview Stella himself. Incardona’s premise is as attention-grabbing as they come, but all the wacky action wears thin, with the chase plot losing steam and the quirky cast devolving into little more than a series of irritating tics. What begins as a promising picaresque about America’s absurdities turns into a wild goose chase. (May)

Reviewed on 03/20/2026 | Details & Permalink