The Most Anticipated Books of 2021: Fall and Winter Edition

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The hot vaxx summer has ended, and the long, cold winter approaches, but in that sweet spot between unbearable heat and brutal cold comes the season of Fall Previews. Yes, the leaves are starting to turn, the horror novels are coming out in force, and the boarding school thrillers and luxe psychologicals continue to expand at roughly the same rate as the economy is shrinking. (Coincidence?!?! I think not!). New laws in Texas have shifted female experience from body horror to straight-up-thriller. High-concept thrillers and scifi noirs speak to our increasing instability in the Future that is Now, while charming whodunnits remind us that no matter the times, people will always appreciate a clever turn of phrase and careful set-up. You’ll also spot quite a few historical and international picks in the list below, as well as prominent new releases from literary and genre figures alike.

(Find here Part I and Part II of our look at the most anticipated books of 2021.) 

(Publication dates are subject to change. Please check bookshop.org for more info.) 

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SEPTEMBER

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Stephen Graham Jones, My Heart Is a Chainsaw
(Saga)

Stephen Graham Jones has written the ultimate summer horror thriller in My Heart Is a Chainsaw, a deliciously self-aware melange of horror criticism, slasher fiction, and social thriller, all tied together with a strong message of female empowerment. A teenage delinquent who’s equally pissed off at her white mother, her Indian father, and her whole darn town, would love it if the bloody legends surrounding the lake nearby were true. She’s sure that the beautiful new girl at school would make a perfect Final Girl. But even the best-laid tropes can’t always go to plan…–Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Senior Editor

Rachel Howzell Hall, These Toxic Things
(Thomas and Mercer)

I’ve been a fan of Rachel Howzell Hall for years, and she just gets better and better with each book. Hall first tried her hand in traditional mystery with 2019’s All Fall Down, a fiery response and urgent retelling of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, and These Toxic Things should be just as satisfying to fans of the Golden Age Revival. In her latest, a professional curator of digital scrapbooks is sad to hear of the suicide of a new client, and decides to finish her commission as a way to honor the elderly woman. The problem is, someone else wants to keep her client’s memories in the past, and will do anything to keep the scrapbook from coming together. –MO

Ashley Winstead, In My Dreams I Hold a Knife
(Sourcebooks Landmark)

Winstead’s debut is intense and deeply disturbing, a chronicle unfolding on two timelines, charting a murder at an elite Southern university and, ten years later, a reunion in which a trap is laid to expose a murderer. The story focuses on a group of once tight-knit friends, whose lives have been shaped in profound ways by the death they thought left behind on campus. –DM

Lincoln Michel, The Body Scout
(Orbit)

Lincoln Michel’s new semi-insane, eerily-prescient novel will also have you in stitches (possibly literally, if you follow the plot TOO closely). In a futuristic New York, ravaged by climate change and several pandemics (um, this doesn’t feel so far off), our hero Kobo is barely getting by, when his brother, the star baseball player of the Monsanto Mets, is murdered. Naturally Kobo sets off to find him, but this isn’t your traditional whodunnit. This is a world where Big Pharma owns everything and everyone has a price (less figuratively than you might think). –OR

 Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle
(Doubleday)

After the soaring success of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Underground Railroad, Whitehead is back this year with a crime novel of profound depth and complexity, set in 1960’s Harlem and focused on the life and ambitions of one Ray Carney, a furniture salesman who also moonlights in some casual fencing of stolen goods. The two activities serve two parts of Ray’s identity, the one respected, law-abiding, and on the rise, socially speaking; the other is his crook side, drawn in by a family of hustlers and himself vulnerable to that special thrill. He eventually falls in with a crew looking to pull a heist in Harlem’s most glamorous hotel, a job that gives Whitehead room to detail the Harlem era in meticulous, meaningful detail, bringing a kind of secret city into spectacular life. –DM

Lee Mandelo, Summer Sons
(tordotcom)

In what is perfectly described a “sweltering, queer Southern Gothic,” Andrew heads to Nashville to search for answers after Eddie, his adopted brother and wealthy benefactor, is found dead of a suspected suicide. Eddie had been deeply immersed in studying the supernatural, and now Andrew must confront his own fraught relationship with ghostly specters or risk leaving his companion’s spirit restless. –MO

Richard Osman, The Man Who Died Twice
(Pamela Dorman/Viking Books)

Everybody loves The Thursday Murder Club. What is there NOT to love, I ask you? And now, thank HEAVENS, there’s a sequel! This is absolutely just the thing we all need right now. In this delightful new installment, our favorite quartet of clever seniors is back, and this time, they’re investigating a man from Elizabeth’s past. And smuggled diamonds, dangerous gangsters, and murder, of course. –Olivia Rutigliano, CrimeReads Assistant Editor

Vera Kurian, Never Saw Me Coming
(Park Row) 

Vera Kurian’s extraordinarily entertaining Never Saw Me Coming is one of a few books in a new trend I’m calling “yoga pants noir,” in which hot girls in athleisure wear are no longer the victims—and they might be the killers. College freshman Chloe has carefully cultivated her nonchalant Cool Girl personality, but she has a secret: she’s a psychopath, hell-bent on getting revenge against a boy from her past who’s also attending the same school. The problem is, she’s not the only psychopath on campus—there are at least six others, all part of a long-term study that comes with a scholarship—and some of them have been turning up dead. Will Chloe get her prey, before she goes from hunter to hunted? –MO

Stuart Neville, The House of Ashes
(Soho Crime)

Stuart Neville seamlessly blends gothic fiction, psychological thriller, and Northern Irish noir in his powerful new novel. Sara Keane, still fragile after a nervous breakdown, isn’t a huge fan of her husband’s decision to move far from her support system to a remote village in Northern Ireland. The house goes from prison to nightmare when Sara begins to discover its bloody secrets, aided by the interwoven memories of a young farm girl from six decades earlier. –MO

Catriona Ward, The Last House on Needless Street
(Tor Nightfire)

In this harrowing and unexpectedly human tale, a lonely man named Ted lives near a lake with his cat and his daughter, the same lake where 6-year-old Lulu disappeared years before. When Lulu’s grown-up sister moves next door, looking for answers, Ted’s life is thrown into disarray, as everything he thinks he knows about his world begins to crumble. –MO

Liane Moriarty, Apples Never Fall (Henry Holt)

Once again, Liane Moriarty applies her devastating wit and knowing gaze to the secrets of marriage. In the latest suspenseful standalone from the reigning queen of psychological thrillers, a long-married couple—famed tennis instructors who’ve recently sold their academy—find their quiet life disrupted when a stranger comes knocking on their door, bearing secrets of her own. When the stranger and her hostess disappear, the host is left to answer the questions, and unlock long-buried secrets of his own. And of course there is the Greek chorus of failed tennis pros born to the couple and ready to bear witness to shocking revelations. –MO

Lisa Jewell, The Night She Disappeared
(Atria)

This charming-English-village-set novel features the most enjoyable of all premises. Yes! A crime in a charming English village! But also, a year after it happens, a writer moves into a cottage near that location. And she stumbles on a sign in the woods that says “DIG HERE.” YES. YES. –OR

Hank Phillippi Ryan, Her Perfect Life
(Forge)

Hank Phillippi Ryan draws from her own experiences as a television reporter for her latest standalone. Lily Atwood is a TV reporter at the top of her game, with a devoted family and even more devoted fans. But much of her fame comes from the many tips she gets from an anonymous source, and now, her source is telling Lily secrets from Lily’s own past. What does the voice on the other end of the line want, and what will Lily do to keep that voice silenced? –MO

Kendare Blake, All These Bodies
(Quill Tree Press)

Kendare Blake turns to the teenage murderers of Badlands for inspiration in this 1950s-set supernatural noir. 16 bloodless corpses scattered about the Midwest are confounding investigators, and a teenage girl found covered in blood refuses to talk to anyone but rookie reporter Michael Jenson, the only person in town credulous enough to believe her bizarre story. This is also one of the many books that makes me think, “yeah, vampires would totally make sense in history”. –MO

Amy Stewart, Miss Kopp Investigates
(Mariner)

Rejoice, for the Kopp sisters have returned! Their seventh tale takes place in 1919, when the three sisters—Norma, Constance, and Fleurette—must figure out how to take care of their newly widowed sister-in-law and her children. But when Fleurette gets a job working as a legal correspondent (meaning she pretends to be “the other woman” in divorce cases so that women can leave their husbands), she winds up discovering something much more dangerous. And she knows it’s up to her to investigate. It’s so much fun. –OR

Catherine Dang, Nice Girls
(William Morrow)

“Ivy League Mary,” the sullen protagonist of Dang’s Nice Girls, is recently expelled from her elite university and stuck working for minimum wage in her podunk hometown when her ex-friend-turned-it-girl disappears and a city-wide search commences. Another girl from the wrong side of town is also missing, and authorities seem unwilling to explore any connections between the two cases, so it’s up to Mary and her new friends to find out the real story behind the disappearances (that is, if Mary can check her privilege long enough to identify the culprit). –MO

Amanda Jayatissa, My Sweet Girl
(Berkley)

Hot damn this book is good. In Jayatissa’s nailbiter of a thriller, Paloma, adopted from a Sri Lankan orphanage, has been given everything to succeed by her wealthy American parents, and yet at 30, she’s floundering, both in her job and her personal life. When her roommate finds out her darkest secret, then shows up dead, things are bad enough. When the body mysteriously disappears, along with all evidence of his existence, Paloma must face her fears and dive deep into her past to understand her present-day dangers. –MO

Alice Feeney, Rock Paper Scissors
(Flatiron)

This one’s already been optioned, but I’d encourage everyone to read it before it heads to the screen. A couple heads to a remote retreat in the Scottish highlands, desperate to reconnect but wary of the lies they’ve told each other. Interspersed with their increasingly nightmarish weekend trip are letters written by a wife to her husband over ten years of marriage. The two dovetail towards an explosive conclusion that leaves us with just enough ambiguity to linger in the reader’s mind long after finishing. –MO

Julia Dahl, The Missing Hours
(Minotaur)

Julia Dahl has crafted a satisfying and thought-provoking revenge thriller in The Missing Hours. Claudia Castro is rich, beautiful, and envied. But when a heinous act is committed against her, her privilege is more of a weapon than a benefit. Who’s going to believe the trust fund party girl? And so, she seeks her brutal vengeance without the aid of police, accompanied by a neighbor with his own agenda. –MO

Craig Johnson, Daughter of the Morning Star (Viking)

The Longmire series never disappoints. In Daughter of the Morning Star, Walt gets the call from Tribal Police to help in the search for a missing girl, a local basketball phenom whose sister disappeared under similar circumstances the year before. Sinister forces are at play, and Walt has to navigate complex jurisdictions and spiritual planes to get closer to the unsettling truth. –DM

Denise Mina, Rizzio 
(Pegasus)

Mina’s latest is a taut, provocative novella dramatizing the events around the brutal 16th century assassination of David Rizzio, private secretary to Mary, Queen of Scots. Rizzo was stabbed fifty-six times by what was believed to be a group of assassins. Mina reimagines the poisonous atmosphere that led to the killing and offers readers a darkly poetic vision of life at that bloody court. –DM

Aden Polydoros, The City Beautiful
(Inkyard)

In 1893 Chicago, the gleaming wonder of the World’s Fair stands in stark contrast to the hard-scrabble lives of impoverished immigrants and the blood-soaked stench of the stockyards. Jewish boys are disappearing from Maxwell Street, and the police aren’t interested in looking for them. For Alter Rosen, a young typesetter trying to earn his family’s passage from Romania, the crimes seem like a chance to finally start reporting for the paper. But when his beloved roommate is found murdered, and he finds himself possessed by the dead boy’s dybbuk, he must hunt down the killer or see his own soul destroyed. –MO

Andy Marino, The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess
(Redhook)

Sydney Burgess is attacked in her home, and goes to report a dangerous person on the loose. Instead, the police tell her that not only is her attacker dead in her guest bedroom, but she’s a suspect in what appears to be a deeply personal murder. Sydney is sure she’s incapable of killing, but the whispers in her head and the dark memories resurfacing from her past would beg to differ. Perfect for those who, like me, have found psychological thrillers to be a gateway drug into appreciating the world of horror. –MO

William McIlvanney, Ian Rankin, The Dark Remains : A Laidlaw Investigation
(Europa World Noir) 

An unfinished novel from a late legend of crime fiction, completed by one of today’s masters of the form—what’s not to be excited about? Europa brings you this Laidlaw prequel, sure to be one of the year’s biggest treats for mystery aficionados. –DM

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OCTOBER

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Eloisa Diaz, Repentance
(Agora)

Repentance is split between two timelines—twenty years ago, and twenty years before that—and explores the long shadows of history and the lingering effects of trauma in Argentina. In 1981, a policeman’s brother is disappeared by the country’s brutal military dictatorship, and he’ll do anything to find him. In 2001, the country reels from economic calamity, and once again, the policeman is forced to confront the horror of the present, while still buried in the shadows of his own past. Evocative and haunting, as only Argentinian crime fiction can be. –MO

Kwon Yeo-sun, Lemon
(Other Press)

Lemon stands among the best in the growing body of translated Korean thrillers. When a high-school girl is found murdered, the lives of her classmates and sister are torn apart in the aftermath by a botched investigation and their own suspicions. The novel carefully positions the central crime within a larger context of class and competition. The complexity of the story betrays its small size, but the driving narrative makes it difficult not to read in one sitting. –MO

Val McDermid, 1979
(Atlantic Monthly Press)

1979 marks the first installment of a new series from Val McDermid, so from jump street this is a big event on the crime reader’s calendar. The year, appropriately enough, is 1979, and a Glaswegian journalist looking to get away from the “women’s stories” she keeps getting assigned and joins forces with an investigative reporter on the make, only her new partner soon turns up dead. McDermid brings that turbulent year in Glasgow to vivid life and offers up a heady mix of sleuthing and social strife. –DM

Helene Tursten, An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed
Translated by Marlaine Delargy
(Soho)

I’ve been waiting for this one! After eighty-eight year-old Maud finds a dead body in her apartment, her life becomes a circus, especially because countless detectives with penetrating questions swarm about her, wondering if she has played any part in the mysterious death. After dodging their inquiries, Maud begins to recall her strange life—a life which has been oddly marked by death. In six interlocking stories that illuminate her past, as well as shed light on her present circumstances, we learn that no one should mess with Maud. Love it. Also, how cool is this… the entire cover is hand-embroidered by textile artist Sienna Clark?! –OR

Alex Schulman, The Survivors
(Doubleday)

The Survivors, a bleak and beautiful tale of a shattered family and one terrible summer, brings new meaning to Scandinavian noir. When three brothers unite to scatter their mother’s ashes at their childhood summer cottage, terrible memories break free, and the three must choose whether to destroy each other with the splinters of the past or form a new path towards family and healing. –MO

Lisa Unger, Last Girl Ghosted
(Park Row)

A woman meets what she expects to be a casual fling through a dating app, but the spark is intense and she thinks it might turn into more; that’s when he goes missing; and then that’s when she finds out there are women missing, too. That’s the intriguing setup of Lisa Unger’s latest heart-pounding thriller, a dark allegory built out of modern dating culture. –DM

James Han Mattson, Reprieve
(William Morrow and Custom House)

It’s hard to do justice to how awesome this book is without giving much away, so I’ll just tell you the set-up: in the mid-90s, in a small university town in the middle of nowhere, there is a haunted house. Not just any haunted house, but a full-contact mansion of horrors, where the well-heeled cliental can go in smiling and emerge screaming, and a few daring souls each year attempt to win a cash prize by completing an exceptionally disturbing challenge. Reprieve is a self-aware and furious deconstruction of the horror novel, contrasting those who seek out fear with those who face the ever-present dangers of prejudice. –MO

Cassandra Khaw, Nothing But Blackened Teeth
(Tor Nightfire)

Is it just me, or is there an incredible revival of the haunted house narrative happening? Cassandra Khaw’s debut novella, Hammers on Bone, established them as a name to watch in fantastical horror. In their suitably-terrifyingly titled Nothing But Blackened Teeth, coming out this October, a Japanese mansion built on the bones of the sacrificed is the venue for a wedding celebration with a rising body count. –MO

John Copenhaver, The Savage Kind
(Pegasus)

The Savage Kind brings a new meaning to “Be gay. Do crime.” Two lonely teenage girls in 1940s D.C. meet in a lecture class, forge an intense connection over a shared love of detective fiction, and soon turn to committing crimes themselves to get their kicks. When dead bodies start piling up around them, they decide to investigate—and perhaps, take their own revenge. –MO

Caitlin Starling, The Death of Jane Lawrence
(St Martin’s)

This one reads like a David Cronenberg-directed vision of Victorian London. Magician doctors perform dangerous experiments, rebellious undercurrents threaten an uneasy peace, and the scars of war still cover the land, decades after the country’s fall to invaders. Hard-headed heroine Jane, orphaned and in need of a good marriage, proposes a practical solution to handsome but haunted surgeon Augustine Lawrence: they shall wed, and she will work as his bookkeeper; a business arrangement, eschewing all intimacy, that shall allow Jane to keep her independence and the doctor to keep his secrets. He accepts, on one condition: she can never spend the night in his ancestral home, Lindridge Hall. As love grows between the newly wedded couple, so, too, does curiosity in Jane. –MO

Gus Moreno, This Thing Between Us (MCD/FSG)

Gus Moreno’s grief-stricken protagonist is experiencing a Very Modern Haunting. Thiago and Vera’s starter home condo was always strange—inexplicable cold spots would appear and disappear, mysterious packages would arrive, and their new smart home speaker, Itza, doesn’t listen to their instructions. When Vera dies, Thiago packs up for a cabin in Colorado, where he must do battle with the supernatural forces possessing his smart speaker as he rages over the death of his beloved. Fascinating, bizarre, and incredibly creative, Gus Moreno’s debut is as hard to pin down as that voice in the speaker, but far more rewarding. –MO

John le Carre, Silverview
(Viking)

Likely to be the final novel from the master spy novelist, Silverview is one of the year’s most hotly anticipated reads. Relatively little is known about the story, except that it follows a Londoner to a coastal English town, where his life soon intersects with a spy chief undertaking an investigation into a leak. The story is the last of the unpublished manuscript length works le Carre left behind, and his literary legacy is being overseen by his children. –DM

Tara Laskowski, The Mother Next Door
(Graydon House)

Tara Laskowski burst onto the mystery scene with her eerie and stunning debut, One Night Gone, and now she’s back with a scintillating suburban thriller about a neighborhood block party that…hasn’t always gone so well for its planners. When a new family moves to quiet Ivy Woods Drive, the mother is invited to join a select group of neighborhood moms to help in planning the annual blowout, even as she begins to suspect them of hiding a deadly secret. Suburban suspense can, on occasion, take itself too seriously, but The Mother Next Door promises to mix its feminist sensibilities with plenty of entertaining camp. –MO

Alison Stine, Trashlands
(MIRA)

Trashlands is part apocalyptic clifi, part hard-scrabble rural noir, and all heart. Coral, her partner Trillium, and her adoptive father Dr. Fall, all live in the junkyard known as “Trashlands,” named for the strip club whose glowing neon sign brings men from miles away to spend their hard-earned plastic. Coral makes art out of history’s remnants, Trillium tattoos memories onto his customers’ skin, and Dr. Fall uses a decades-old set of Encyclopedia Britannica volumes to teach the junkyard’s children of the world before. Plastic is currency in Scrappalachia, where the survivors of climate change barely scrape by, dredging scraps from the rivers to recycle into building materials. Their lives are bleak and brutal, and age is marked by what technological wonders can be remembered from childhood that no longer exist. And yet, the people of Scrappalachia make art, they make families, they make homes, and they make deals. They care for each other, and they refuse to give up the will to survive. Trashlands feels like a fairly accurate depiction of our future, and of the love that we’ll need to make it through the horrors to come. –MO

Patricia Raybon, All That Is Secret
(Tynedale)

I’m always a sucker for stories where daughters step in to save their fathers or avenge their deaths (can Liam Neeson please make a movie where his daughter saves him) so this one was right up my alley. In All That Is Secret, a Chicago bible instructor heads back to Colorado to find out who killed her father, and since it’s the 1920s, she soon discovers that her own father wasn’t the only Black man being targeted in town. Was his death related to the rise of the Klan, or is there more to learn about his mysterious last days on a ranch and the secrets he might have uncovered? And will the handsome young preacher making eyes at her help or hinder the investigation? –MO

Lee Child, Andrew Child, Better Off Dead
(Delacorte Press)

Lee Child and Andrew Child return for another jointly written Reacher adventure. In Better Off Dead, Jack’s headed west when stumbles upon a car wreck and a barely breathing woman in the driver’s seat. She’s looking for her twin brother, and Reacher might as well pitch in to help. Andrew Child smoothly slips into the signature minimalist prose of the iconic series, picking up just where his brother leaves off, for a book that should please old stalwarts and new fans alike. –MO

Tamron Hall, As The Wicked Watch
(William Morrow)

Tamron Hall’s new novel introduces a detective sure to become an icon: crime reporter Jordan Manning, a brilliant Black journalist (with a master’s degree in forensic science), newly promoted to a job at a Chicago TV station. Jordan has her eyes on a national anchor spot, but that doesn’t minimize her commitment to social and racial justice. This weighs on her, secretly; throughout her career, engagingly and depressingly, she has had to report on the murder and assault of countless Black women. And when a fifteen-year-old Black girl is found dead, Jordan’s anger and disgust galvanize her to solve the horrible crime herself. It is a powerful, clear-eyed novel that demands accountability, from its fictional world, yes, but also the real one.–OR

Anthony Horowitz, A Line to Kill
(Harper)

Look, I’d have such a soft spot for Anthony Horowitz even WITHOUT the Daniel Hawthorne books, simply because I grew up reading the Alex Rider series. But the Daniel Hawthorne books, in which “Horowitz himself” tags along as the sidekick and narrator (I’m dead), are so much fun. This new, third, installment takes place at a literary festival on a small island off the south coast of England. Where. There. Is. A. Murder. I need to sit down. –OR

Michael Connelly, The Dark Hours
(Little Brown)

It’s New Year’s Eve in Los Angeles and Renee Ballard is back on the midnight shift. A new murder scene also draws her back into the orbit of Harry Bosch, and the two of them team up to connect and solve a pair of homicides spanning the years, with a bit of sideline action taking down a serial rapist. Connelly is sharp as ever and his stories always manage to explore another piece of the city’s soul. –DM

Gregory Galloway, Just Thieves
(Melville House)

When a book begins with a dead horse, you know it’s going to be good, and Just Thieves, a taut, understated, brilliant noir, is not only good but great. Rick and Frankie are housebreakers with a certain amount of pride in their skills when it comes to casually taking from the wealthy what won’t be missed anyway. Unfortunately, their latest score is very much missed indeed, by what appear to be several criminal factions, and they’re all after Rick and Frankie. The thieves must figure out whether the object in their possession is truly valuable, or simply a giant macguffin. –MO

Erin Mayer, Fan Club
(MIRA)

If Catie Disabato and Amina Akhtar had written the screenplay for Josie and the Pussycats, it might read something like Fan Club. In former Bustle editor Erin Mayer’s blistering debut, her millennial narrator is bored out of her mind working at a women’s magazine, obsessing over the beauty editor’s many freebies and taking as many coffee breaks as possible. “One day, she finds new purpose in the hidden meanings of a pop star’s new hit, joining a devoted group of superfans whose dedication to their diva knows no bounds. What’s the true meaning behind the singer’s lyrics? And what could be the purpose of the fandom’s dark rituals? –MO

John Banville, April in Spain
(Hanover Square)

In Banville’s latest piercing noir, the action moves to Spain and the Basque coast, as Dublin pathologist Quirke spots a familiar face among the beachside cafes in San Sebastian. The discovery throws a years-old investigation into gear and gives Banville an opportunity to unspool a compelling mystery against the play of shadow and light in an evocative, underexplored (in crime fiction) locale. –DM

Kat Rosenfeld, No One Will Miss Her
(William Morrow)

When the most unpopular woman in town, junkyard owner Lizzie Oellette, is found murdered, it’s hard to find anyone who wouldn’t want to kill her. Her husband took off, and he looks to be the main suspect—that is, until cops find out that an influencer and her rich husband were renting a cabin on the dead woman’s property. The couple claims they were there to lie low after a scandal, renting a vacation cottage, and know nothing of the murder, but their connections to the Oellettes go much further than a simple business transaction. Duelling narrators should keep readers guessing till the bitter end. –

Lori Rader-Day, Death at Greenway
(William Morrow and Custom House)

I’ve been a fan of Lori Rader-Day since her first novel, and when I found out her new book was a historical novel featuring Agatha Christie’s holiday estate, I squeed. In Rader-Day’s first fictional foray into the past, a group of children shepherded by ill-trained nurses heads to Greenway to shelter from the Blitz. When a body is discovered nearby, and a murderer is deemed on the loose, the nurses begin to fear that their idyllic new refuge is just as dangerous as their city home. –MO

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NOVEMBER

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Robert J. Lloyd, The Bloodless Boy
(Melville House)

London, 1678: the English Civil War is only recently ended, the Great Fire of London’s destruction is still visible all around, and the newly discovered corpse of a child drained of all blood threatens to send the tense nation into a spiral of violence. That is, unless Robert Hooke, the Curator of Experiments at the just-established Royal Society, and his trusty assistant Harry Hunt can find the answer behind the killing. –MO

Hannah Morrissey, Hello, Transcriber
(Minotaur)

I’ve been looking forward to Hello, Transcriber for months, just based on the cover design alone, but the plot is just as compelling. Hazel Greentree works the graveyard shift as a police transcriber in Black Harbor, Wisconsin, a rustbelt city plagued by addiction and hopelessness. Her days are filled with her husband’s hunting exploits, and her nights are taken over by clinically precise descriptions of lurid crime scenes. She tries to keep her emotional distance, but one case in particular—and the mysterious officer working it—takes her from observer to actor, as she begins her own investigation. With echoes of The Conversation and The Lives of Others, Hello, Transcriber is a statement to the eternal human impulse to Get Involved. –MO

Hervé Le Tellier, The Anomaly
Translated by Adriana Hunter
(Other Press)

This book looks so weird!! And according to a Goodreads review which was luckily near the top of the queue, it’s best to go into this one blind. I, of course, immediately stopped reading so as to write a non-spoiler-y blurb. But here’s what I do know about this book, and it’s enough to make me quite sure of its quality:

1. It won the Prix Goncourt
2. It’s about a bunch of strangers whose lives are irrevocably changed after a chance encounter
3. This all happens on a plane, which is everyone’s new favorite setting for thrillers but is still uncharted waters for speculative thrillers (I’m really hoping there are some Twilight Zone allusions cause so far the New Airplane Thriller has featured glancingly few references to either a hairy man on the wing or William Shatner)

I assume that this is all you need to know as well. –MO

Santiago Gamboa, The Night Will Be Long
Translated by Andrea Rosenberg
(Europa)

For my money there may be no more ambitious, accomplished writer than Gamboa at work in international noir today. His newest novel, The Night Will Be Long, focuses on a mysterious flash of violence in Cauca, Colombia, witnessed by one boy only, with all others swearing to have seen nothing, know nothing. The investigation soon points in the direction of a powerful cabal of Christian churches exercising inordinate and disturbing power over their followers. Gamboa brings a searching, penetrating style to the prose and unwinds a genuinely compelling and provocative story that interrogates the very nature of violence and truth. –DM

Seishi Yokomizo, The Village of Eight Graves
Translated by Bryan Karetnyk
(Pushkin)

Smart and scruffy detective Kosuke Kindaichi has returned in a third installment of Seishi Yokomizo’s deft reissued series. This time, a string of poisonings in a small mountain town leads Kindaichi to a murder that took place in the same place, in the 16th century. –OR

Alison Gaylin, The Collective
(William Morrow)

Alison Gaylin has been a crime writer’s crime writer for years, but her new book is poised to make her a household name for readers everywhere. In The Collective, a grieving mother is obsessed with getting back at the boy who caused her daughter’s death, even as he appears to have no chance of facing consequences for his actions. Late one night, she stumbles across a chat group for those who’ve experienced the ultimate loss—and there, she will find a path towards the ultimate revenge. Gaylin has crafted a high-concept thriller that delivers a strong warning against the kind of catharsis to be found online.

Wanda M. Morris, All Her Little Secrets
(William Morrow and Custom House)

This book is so good! Wanda M. Morris takes the traditional legal thriller and gives it a  high-concept twist that you’ll never see coming. As All Her Little Secrets begins, Ellice Littlejohn arrives for her usual liaison with her boss, only to find him deceased in her office. Things quickly get worse from there, as Ellice, one of the few Black attorneys at her firm, finds herself the target of a menacing Old Boys Club. –MO

Toni Halleen, The Surrogate
(Harper)

Ruth and Hal are an older couple, desperate for a child. Cally is the surrogate who agrees to carry the baby to term (and donate her own egg in the process). Everything seems to be going well, up until two days after the birth, when Cally takes the infant with her and Ruth finds the hospital, law enforcement, and her own husband rather uninterested in helping her get the baby back. In addition to a suspenseful cat-and-mouse plot full of reversals, characters engage seriously with the physical, emotional, and legal risks of surrogacy. –MO

Natasha Deón, The Perishing
(Counterpoint)

God, The Perishing. Where do I even begin? It’s riveting, my God. When Lou, a young Black woman, wakes to find herself naked in a Los Angeles alley with no memory, she feels fortunate to be taken in by a loving family. She concentrates on school and goes on to accomplish extraordinary things. But she doesn’t yet know that her astonishing future is connected to her astonishing past; Lou has flashbacks to past moments in time that she doesn’t understand and can’t explain. And so she decides to find out who she is—and what life she is meant to live. Just…. I…. –OR

Yasmine Angoe, Her Name is Knight
(Thomas and Mercer)

This action-packed origin story introduces one of the most kick-ass heroines I’ve ever encountered. As a child, Nena Knight lost her family and most of her village to violence. Taken in by an elite family of movers and shakers, Nena becomes a highly effective assassin, fulfilling her duties to her adoptive clan with nary a stray thought. But when her latest assignment—coupled with the appearance of an old nemesis—causes Nena to question the pattern of her life, no one is safe (especially Nena). –MO

Kieran Scott, Wish You Were Gone
(Gallery)

Emma Walsh and her kids can’t believe their luck when the family patriarch turns up dead—he’ll never terrorize them again. But was the death really an accident, when so many people would benefit from his sudden absence? Emma and her family try to keep up the appearance of mourning, but as more and more secrets come to light, it becomes clear that almost everyone is happier with Emma’s husband dead. –MO

William Boyle, Shoot the Moonlight Out
(Pegasus)

Boyle’s latest novel is a kaleidoscopic vision of life in South Brooklyn, shifting between timelines and perspectives to bring together a swirling, fate-laced story of modern New York. Boyle’s work is keeping a very particular strand of the noir legacy alive, and with each new book he adds another piece to New York City’s rich literary history. Shoot the Moonlight Out is one of his best stories to date, an ambitious take on crime and tragedy in South Brooklyn. –DM

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DECEMBER

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Shea Anderson, A History of Wild Places
(Atria)

A private detective goes looking for a vanished writer, and pauses at her long-abandoned car before vanishing into the woods himself. Years later, a married couple begin to question the boundaries of their tight-knit community. Why can nothing new be brought in from the outside anymore? And why do the trees…move…in that way? What dangers are waiting in the dark, with what other dangers lurking at home? –MO

Lara Thompson, One Night, New York
(Pegasus)

Lara Thompson’s glittering Art-Deco, Depression-era crime novel takes place over the course of a single December night in the 1930s, when two women meet atop the Empire State Building to punish the man who wronged them. If you love New York City like I do, you’re going to want to read it. –OR

Lyndsay Faye, Observations By Gaslight
(Mysterious Press)

I was on tenterhooks waiting for Lyndsay Faye’s new epistolary book, a collection of tales that take place inside the world of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, spotlighting all the (minor) characters who make the original stories so rich. I am also deeply into its title, Observations by Gaslight. Besides that Faye is an expert on all things Sherlockian, she has unparalleled flair. You think you know Lomax the sub-librarian? Well, THINK AGAIN. –OR

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