13 October Mystery, Thriller, And True Crime Books To Read

Calling all cozy mystery and foodie fans! Bonus if you like books set during Christmastime. Lila Macapagal should be fully focused on her new adventure of opening The Brew-ha Cafe but this is a cozy mystery so you know things are gonna get complicated. Which they do in the form of Tita Rosie’s son returning after years, which Lila isn’t thrilled about considering the blackmail letter stating he’s in some shady business. And then he lands himself as a murder suspect… If you want to start at the beginning, pick up Arsenic and Adobo.

Here’s an action spy middle grade title from an author with great adult crime novels (Uptown Thief; A Spy in the Struggle). Andréa Hernández-Baldoquín works for an international organization, the Factory, with her family of spies. Now at fourteen she’s given her first solo mission: pose as non-Latina white and befriend the estranged son of a white supremacist. What could go wrong? – I mean for starters she needs to never slip up and give away that she speaks Spanish, and her family is Mexican and Puerto Rican, all why crushing on a Latino friend of the target…

And another call for cozy mystery food lovers! This time we’re set in Miami, with the host of a local food show, mother, and of course amateur sleuth. It’s fall in Miami which means Halloween decorations in shorts-weather. What Miriam Quiñones-Smith was not expecting to find next to her tombstone yard decor was a real life dead body. But that’s only the start of the dead bodies, and Miriam is still having to deal with the mother-in-law from hell while trying to help organize a food festival. Naturally Miriam is going to have to investigate, keep her family together, and try not to get murdered in the process! If you want to start at the beginning, pick up Mango, Mambo, and Murder.

For fans of historical mystery and sisters, this is the new novel from the author of All Her Little Secrets (a great 2021 title). Violet Richards kills the man who brutally attacked her, putting her in danger as a Black woman in Jackson, Mississippi with Jim Crow laws. So she flees to Georgia. Her older sister Marigold is also forced to flee, unmarried and pregnant, when the police show up for Violet. But did the sisters leave danger behind them?

For fans of thrillers, horror, and missing girl plots. Liz Rocher returns to her Pennsylvania hometown for a friend’s wedding when the bride’s daughter goes missing, leaving behind bloody fabric from her clothes. The more Liz looks into the history of the town, the more dangerous the woods seem. This isn’t the first missing Black girl case, and it’s far from the only one…

More cozy for food lovers, this time with twins. Keaton and Koby were separated as children who later united and opened Books & Biscuits (I want to go there!). Koby’s foster mother and a store employee both quarrel with a soon to be murder victim putting them on the suspect list! Looks like Keaton and Koby will have to put their sleuthing caps on to help clear their names. If you want to start at the beginning of the series, pick up Body and Soul Food.

For fans of family sagas, magical realism, and mystery. After Isla Larsen Sanchez’s father passes away her mother starts sending her in the summers to Puerto Rico to her grandmother and great-aunt. At 18, after her grandmother’s passing, she discovers she has now inherited her grandmother’s gift: dead family member’s stories unravel before her. It is all fun and games until she sees a murder play out.

This is the second part to Lady Joker, so start there if you haven’t already. This is a two part Japanese crime novel inspired by an unsolved true-crime. Five men in 1995, Tokyo, come together for revenge. They plan to kidnap the CEO of Japan’s largest beer conglomerate for money. What could go wrong?

If you’re looking for a new cozy series, start here! This one is set in Vermont with an artisanal maple syrup business background for all the cozy fall vibes. Leila Khoury returns to her hometown to take over the family business after her father’s murder. Maybe he wasn’t as beloved as she thought? With family members under suspicion and a business to run, she’d better get to solving this case!

This is a great crime series that follows a young Chippewa woman Renee Blackbear, known as Cash. She was in a car accident with her family as a toddler and ended up in foster care, with Sheriff Wheaton doing his best to look out for her. Now she’s an adult in college, urged on by Wheaton, and helping him out on cases: an unidentified Indigenous woman’s body is found after a flood leading Cash and Wheaton’s other charge to White Earth Reservation. If you want to start at the beginning, pick up Murder on the Red River.

A delightful middle grade series (super enjoyable for adults too) for fans of precocious tweens, amateur sleuths, and the Victorian era. Myrtle Hardcastle’s father is hired to prove/disprove a girl’s identity since she’s claiming the Snowcroft family fortune. Problem? She was supposedly lost at sea. So could this be her or a con artist? Myrtle will have plenty to solve, especially when her father witnesses a murder while in the hospital… If you’d like to start at the beginning, grab Premeditated Myrtle. Bonus: the audiobooks have a great narrator (Bethan Rose Young).

For true crime, history, and sensational case readers. Architect Francis Mawson Rattenbury’s 1935 murder put his younger second wife and their chauffeur on trial together. You learn about Francis Mawson Rattenbury, his wife Alma, and how they came together and then later how George joined the picture. And then you’re taken into the trial, which at the time people lined up to get to sit in.

For fans of holiday books and murder games (fictional of course). In order to inherit a manor house, Lily and her cousins must partake in the annual treasure hunt while staying at the home over the Christmas week. But they aren’t playing a game to get the house but rather to solve a past mystery: what happened to Lily’s mom? It would make things much worse if, you know, they lost power and people started to die.