Crime Reads - Suspense, Thrillers, Crime, Gun!
CrimeReads is a culture website for people who believe suspense is the essence of storytelling, questions are as important as answers, and nothing beats the thrill of a good book. It's a single, trusted source where readers can find the best from the world of crime, mystery, and thrillers. No joke,
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This year brings far too many good horror novels to list them all by name, but here are a few that I’m looking forward to, and that capture a wide variety of takes on the genre at a time when horror fiction is undergoing somewhat of a renaissance. Strongly represented in the following offerings are haunted buildings of various kinds, from houses to hotels to luxury apartment buildings, along with plenty of authors blending historical and horror. Other than that, it’s hard to spot trends, other than compelling narratives and innovative use of genre conventions. Enjoy! Juan Martinez, Extended Stay (University of Arizona Press, January 17) El Norte meets Barton Fink in …
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Maybe it’s just because I reread all of the Wheel of Time books last year in preparation for the series, but I’ve had an itch for fantasy ever since. Not just any fantasy, mind you—dark fantasy is where a crime fan goes looking when crossing over into the realm of magic. Some of the books below are nihilistic, some are hopeful, and some are profound statements about contemporary existence. What unites the items on this list, other than their 2022 release dates, is a shared emphasis on the abuses and misuses of magic, the consequences of power, not any awe-inspiring achievements. In dark fantasy, the use of magic often comes with a terrible cost to the spell-caster, which …
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Over the past few decades, we’ve seen exponential growth in both creative writing programs and the true crime storytelling industry, so perhaps it should come as no surprise to find so much beautiful writing about terrible events. Just so, as true crime has matured, those who tell such stories have learned essential lessons in how to avoid exploitation and bring in appropriate context and empathy (the anthropologists in the list below are especially notable in their sensitivities). The works on this list are about complicated situations, torn individuals, delayed or denied justice, and a world in which those who bear the most responsibility for harm are not the ones who …
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The sun is shining, the flowers are blooming, and the historical fiction is proliferating! Here are a whole bunch of very good historical crime novels coming out over the summer months (with a few titles from spring and fall thrown in there), each one a richly detailed historical imagining that channels history for a modern audience while remaining true to the ideas and mores of its time period. While every day is a good day to read crime fiction set in the past, I personally feel this summer of setbacks to be a perfect time to remember the ways that ordinary people fought against powerful repressive forces in the past, and even managed to find some joy while doing so. Th…
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In honor of Asian-American and Pacific Islander heritage month, we’re highlighting the incredible array of crime books and thrillers by Asian-American authors publishing in 2021, so you can keep reading these stories all year long. JANUARY-APRIL Malinda Lo, Last Night at the Telegraph Club (Dutton) “Malinda Lo turns her masterful talent toward an under-covered period of San Francisco history. Last Night at the Telegraph Club is by turns gut-wrenching, utterly compelling, and deeply tender. I loved Lily fiercely, and you will too.” —Rebecca Kim Wells, author of Shatter the Sky Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Committed (Grove Press) “With smoke-and-mirrors panache, The Com…
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Here is a month-by-month breakdown of upcoming mysteries and thrillers by Black authors, because Black History Month comes once a year but we should be reading Black authors all year long. The following list features a wide variety of subgenres and crossovers, including cozies, psychological thrillers, detective novels, historical fiction, romans noirs, dark fantasy, and young adult. This list is intended as both a resource and a reminder: there’s tons of good stuff out there. So let’s all get to reading it. Abby Collette, A Killer Sunday (Berkley, January 4) “A deliciously satisfying new cozy mystery series. It’s got humor, a quirky cast a of characters and ice crea…
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Glen S. Miranker has what he believes to be the best Sherlock Holmes collection in private hands. No matter that he narrowly lost the most recent manuscript leaf from The Hound of the Baskervilles when it sold for $423,000 at auction this past November—he already owns three. Plus four complete manuscripts of Arthur Conan Doyle’s short stories, all of the British and American first editions, relevant magazine serials, numerous original illustrations, letters, theater and film ephemera, and even a set of souvenir spoons. All told, the collection contains about 7,000 items. “It’s not a competition,” he says. “It’s a passion.” Miranker, a retired Apple executive, exudes aff…
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Earlier this year, I rounded up 16 horror novels coming out this year, and now I’m back, this time with more intestines, more fungi, and most importantly, more books. Here are 23 new and upcoming nightmarish reads that will keep you awake long into the night, even as they dissect and reinvent the very elements of fear itself. Whether you’re looking for eerie folk horror, atmospheric gothics, gruesome thrillers, twisted noirs, or mind-blowing metafiction, there’s sure to be a title below to please. Or terrify. Andrew Joseph White, Hell Followed With Us (Peachtree Teen, June 7) Body horror meets apocalypse noir meets queer love story in Andrew Joseph White’s viscera-fi…
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In honor of Asian-American and Pacific Islander heritage month, we’re highlighting the incredible array of crime books and thrillers by Asian-American authors publishing in 2022, so you can keep reading these stories all year long. JANUARY-APRIL Mia P. Manansala, Homicide and Halo-Halo (Berkley) “While the follow-up to Arsenic and Adobo is a cozy mystery, it’s darker, dealing with PTSD, predatory behavior, dismissive attitudes toward mental health, and other issues. Filipino American food and culture, as well as family and community, remain essential elements in the story.”—Library Journal, starred review Peng Shepherd, The Cartographers (William Morrow) “The Ca…
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Hey, crime friends! Happy Pride Month! It’s been a long year, and we all deserve to enjoy ourselves this summer—happiness can itself be an act of resistance—so why not stretch out in your hammock, drink a nice cold glass of lemonade, and enjoy one of these many, many queer mysteries? This list features something for everyone, whether that be thrillers, chillers, mysteries, or historicals. There’s also plenty of cross-overs that prove genre is as much of a spectrum as gender or sexuality, and just as shaped by the battle between conventional mores and the playful subversion thereof. There isn’t enough space in this article (or, indeed, a rather long history book) to expl…
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Last year’s historical fiction was all about the 60s, baby, while this year’s features more from the 1950s, the long 19th century, and the 1970s. I have bad news for Gen-Xers and Xennials: the 1990s are now historical fiction, and there’s plenty coming out about the tail end of the 20th century and the havoc wrought there-in. As continues to be predictable during the pandemic, books set in the post-WWI era are proliferating. And historical fiction continues to meld the history of forgotten voices with highly entertaining storytelling to do the important work of educating us about the past without feeling like a textbook (I assume most of the following titles will not be w…
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Black History Month only lasts for a paltry few weeks, but you can (and should) read Black mystery authors all year long! Here is a month-by-month breakdown of upcoming works, so no one has an excuse to ever plead ignorance again when it comes to diversifying their reading lists. The following list includes a wide variety of subgenres, including cozies, crime fiction, legal thrillers, international thrillers, psychological thrillers, detective novels, historical fiction, romans noirs, urban fiction, and even some YA, because (unsurprisingly) there’s as much variety in crime fiction by Black authors as there is in the genre at large. This list is intended as both a resourc…
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The horror renaissance continues! And the second half of the year brings plenty of new standout titles to add to your TBR. The works below twist, shatter, and reinvent gothic and horror tropes, bringing old forms together with new issues, and do not attempt to separate the social from the personal when it comes to understanding fear and and its bringers. There are gruesome body horrors, cackling dark comedies, surreal metaphorical structures, and (like earlier in the year) so many haunted houses. From old favorites, to new voices, teen slasher heroines to Eldritch-fighting grannies, here are Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi, The Centre (Gillian Flynn Books, July 11) What would…
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I’ve long wanted to write a story where I take something that is considered a universal positive—the love of a parent for their child—and super-charge it and challenge it to the point where that love becomes dangerous. In my experience, we will do things to protect the ones we would love that we would never do, that we could never justify doing, on our own behalf, and that makes for a powerful starting point for a story. In my new book, What Happened to Nina?, a lovely young couple go away for the weekend, and only one of them comes home. For me the story was never so much about what happened to the missing Nina, or even so much about whether or not her accused boyfriend…
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Setting is a character. This nugget of literary wisdom was written in a text by a writer whose name I no longer remember, but whose words resonated long after they were delivered. Travel, particularly as it pertains to research, all but confirmed this maxim. Atmosphere encompasses a few elements: mood, tone, a personality of sorts. I’ve discovered that whether here at home or abroad, each city, moreover each neighborhood, has its own atmospheric pulse. Each exudes an aura that takes considerable practice to be able to successfully translate onto the page. When done well, the effect is palatable. And it’s not just the obvious things. It’s whether the locals are outgoing …
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I’m not a risk-taker. I’m careful and safety-conscious to a fault. But as a writer, I have the freedom to take infinite risks on the page. In my stories, I can explore things I never would in real life. Often, I write about the things that scare me most. I want to understand them, to experience them in a safe and controlled way. In A MOTHER WOULD KNOW I asked myself the question: what I would I do if I suspected one of my children had done the unthinkable? How would I react? As a mom, I’m fiercely protective of my children. But what if I was faced with something I shouldn’t protect them from? Here are five other books with that same theme in mind. The Good Son by Ja…
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Looking for a gift for the mystery lover who adores a smart heroine whose adventures will viscerally transport the reader somewhere else? Someone who loves the Miss Marple mysteries as much for their doilies as detection, Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski books as much for their tough protagonist as their evocation of the gritty underside of Chicago? Look no further; I’ve got recommendations that will take a reader from the gas giant Jupiter to the bike lanes of Brooklyn, all driven by ladies who could give Sam Spade a run for his money. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde Charles Yu wrote “Every book of Fforde’s seems to be a cause for celebration,” and The Eyre Affair i…
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CrimeReads editors select the month’s best new nonfiction crime books. * Douglas London, The Recruiter: Spying and the Lost Art of American Intelligence (Hachette) Douglas London spent a decades-long career with the CIA, serving overseas, in conflict zones, and developing something of a specialty in recruiting foreign assets to spy on their countries. In his memoir, London brings out the expected spy stories, with a fine eye for detail and an ability to explain the craft in a compelling way, but even more he offers sharp insights into the psychology of espionage, rendering a vivid portrait of individuals operating (and double operating) under the most tense circum…
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When I was a kid in the early 1970s, my late father was a hippie turned political idealist working, quite effectively for several years, to change the system from within. As you might imagine from that thumbnail biography, pop was also a pot smoker. Being exposed to rolling papers and bongs from my earliest days, marijuana held no allure or mystique for me. I took a toke or two with friends in high school and college, once earning a quarter’s worth of ribbing for the epic coughing fit triggered by a single dorm-room inhalation, and that was the end of that. My mood-altering substance of choice is bourbon, and I still fondly recall giving my dad a requested taste of Pap…
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Marriage has always been a theme in literature, but there’s been a rise, in the last few years, of thrillers centered on disturbing and toxic relationships between husbands and wives, domesticity infused with lies, betrayal and murder. In my new novel, Spider, the main character, Sophie, an aspiring actress, has been married three times, and now Tariq, her most recent husband, has gone missing, having vanished on his way to work one morning. As heartbroken Sophie tries to uncover the mystery of what’s happened to him, the narrative switches between past and present, and is told from the perspectives of Sophie and each of her three husbands. There’s her childhood sweethe…
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Everyone can agree that honesty is the best policy—especially when it comes to romantic partnerships—but what happens when that honesty completely breaks down, especially when it comes to affairs, long-buried secrets—even murder? My upcoming novel, You Should Have Told Me, follows Janie, a new mother struggling to get by—her new baby won’t sleep, she seems to be insatiably hungry, and a secret from Janie’s past threatens to tear everything apart. When her partner, Max, offers to do their baby’s feedings one night, of course she jumps at the chance. Only she wakes up hours later to her daughter screaming in her bassinet and her partner gone. When a woman is murdered and M…
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Once again, October brings more terrifying thrills to stamp its authority as the undisputable king-month of horror! Halloween rolls in with its creepy wagon of chills and treats. And in the spirit of the season, I invite you to dive into this fully stacked terror-wagon and see which diabolical merchandise takes your fancy. But just in case you’re confused from the plethora of deliciously horrible stuff piled inside our terror-wagon, allow me to guide you to my top 5 Halloween reads, written by five female horror-demagogues, whose works will trick, treat, terrify, traumatise, and most definitely thrill you. None of the old brigade here—Shirley Jackson, Mary Shelley, Susan…
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My love for stories featuring the theme of human vs. the elements started at a very young age, when I would squirrel away in my toy box (a story for another day) with a blanket, a pillow, a flashlight, and my books. Over the years, I escaped into the wintry worlds created by the likes of Ezra Jack Keats in The Snowy Day, Mr. Popper’s Penguins by Florence and Richard Atwater, and The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Eventually, I found my way to The Shining by Stephen King (though I was long out of the toy box by that time). My love for books set in snowbound settings hasn’t waned. Here is a list of thrillers and mysteries where an untimely winter storm takes center st…
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Our goal with all of our books is always to write something fun and fast-paced, but it also must touch on certain themes like privilege, racism and the inequality of our justice system because that’s the reality of the world we live in. That’s our experience and there’s no way to avoid it. We want our books to be part escapism, part very genuine critiques of the corrosive effects of social inequalities—but never with a heavy hand. Our stories are aggressive in their messaging but subtle in their execution, and our murder mystery, Perfect Little Lives is a quintessential example of that. This way there’s a backdrop of social commentary that isn’t on the nose or in your fac…
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If I were a comic book heroine-or villain-the following would be my origin story: When I was seven years old, my teachers called my mother in for a conference, informing her they didn’t think I was going to cut it at their fine academic institution. It was a small, Hebrew day school, with only twelve kids in my graduating class. Half the day we focused on our secular studies and the other half praying, studying Talmud, and learning how to read and write Hebrew. Think of it as the Jewish equivalent to Catholic school-equal amounts of guilt, but no penguins with corporal punish kinks. I would sit in class and stare off into seeming nothingness: eyes glazed with my mouth ha…
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