mysteries

Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife

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by Martin Edwards
First sentence: “The snow lay deep and deadly,”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: October 7, 2025
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There is some mild swearing, a couple of f-bombs, and murder (of course). It will be in the Mystery section of the bookstore.

Welcome to Midwinter: a remote resort in northern England that is only open to a few people by invitation only. And this Christmas, it’s open to six people – all who are somehow connected to the publishing industry; all who have fallen on hard times – who have been tasked with solving a pretend murder. The winner gets a grand prize and a new lease on life. Except once they get there, people start dying. At first, it seems they are “accidental”, but as the bodies keep piling up, it becomes more and more obvious that the death that happened at Midwinter five years ago has had repercussions.

I picked this up because of the title, because it sounds like a game of Clue. And there is an interactive element to this; we are given the same information the players in the story are, and it’s possible (if you are not me) to figure out who committed the “pretend” murder. The actual murders in the story have a very Agatha Christie-like quality to them, as does the whole story. Our narrator for most of the book is Harry Crystal, a washed-up mystery writer, whose whole schtick was copying classic mysteries. I feel like, in some respects, that Edwards didn’t get me quite enough information as we went along (I’m not the closest of readers), because the solution came out of left field a little bit. Even so, I didn’t have super high expectations for this, only wanting a bit of fun, and it absolutely fit that bill.

Sisters in the Wind

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by Angeline Boulley
First sentence: “My heart races when the handsome Native guy enters the diner.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: September 2, 2025
Review copy sent by the author
Content: There is violence against women; off-page teen sex and teenage pregnancy; and swearing, including a few f-bombs. It will be in the YA Contemporary (or maybe 2009 is history?) section of the bookstore.

Lucy’s dad died years ago, and she’s bounced through foster care. She’s finally on her own, and is making ends meet when two things happen: a Native man finds her and tells her that he’s a friend of her dead half-sister, that she didn’t know she had. And then a bomb blows up the diner where she worked and she’s injured. She’s thrown into a new world, one where Daunis and Jamie are supporting her and fighting for her, and introducing her to her mother’s family – a part of Lucy’s world that she didn’t want anything to do with, having been told her whole childhood that her mother “gave up her maternal rights”. As the mystery of who bombed the diner (and why), Lucy comes to terms with her Native heritage and with the trauma of being a part of the foster care system.

I adore Boulley’s storytelling, how she tackles tough subjects (foster care can be good, but is often terrible, especially for non-white kids) with grace and with heart and with characters that are complex and fully real. This one is told through a dual timeline – you see Lucy go through her father’s death and the subsequent foster care when her stepmother refuses to take care of her, and then the contemporary timeline after the blast and figuring out who is after Lucy. Boulley doesn’t shy away from dealing with the harm that white people have done to Native people, and doesn’t shy away from illustrating the results of that harm.

In short, this, like Boulley’s other books, is a powerful look at one girl’s story and the impact that knowing her heritage and family has on her.

Excellent.

The World’s Greatest Detective and Her Just Okay Assistant

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by Liza Tully
First sentence: “Aubrey Merrit opened the door.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Release date: July 8, 2025
Content: There are dead bodies, of course, talk of an affair, and some swearing, including a few f-bombs. It will be in the Mystery section of the bookstore.

Olivia Blunt is a fact-checker but wants something more out of life. So she decides to answer the call and apply to be the assistant of the “world’s greatest detective”, Aubrey Merritt. Merritt is older, cranky, and hard to impress. After weeks of being frustrated, Olivia fields a call that intriuges her: the matriarch of the preeminent Summersworth family has fallen to her death on the eve of her 65th birthday party, and her daughter thinks it’s foul play.

As Merritt and Olivia investigate the case, Olivia is determined to prove herself to her boss, and as the case gets ever more complicated, she’s not entirely sure she can.

On the one hand, this was a fun gender-swapped Sherlock Holmes – a brilliant, cranky, master detective and her not-quite-there-yet assistant. They have a report, but Merritt is always “did you catch this Watson”-ing Olivia. (Including in the end, when Merritt throws Olivia under the bus more than once.) It was cleverly written, and I enjoyed trying to figure out who did it, along with Merritt and Olivia.

My problem was with the ending. Without being spoiler-y, it was trite and leaned into some not-great (and possibly harmful) stereotypes. I’m not entirely sure that ruined the book for me, but it did lower my estimation of it. If this ends up being a series (and I can see it going that direction), I might give the next one a try.

The Bletchley Riddle

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by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin
First sentence: “First things first: a riddle.”
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Review copy pilfered from the ARC shelves at work.
Content: There are some intense moments, and talk of a small crush. It’s also a bit on the longer side for middle grade books. It’s in the Middle Grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore, but is probably for the older end of the age range.

Lizzie Novis is supposed to get on a boat to America to be with her grandmother because London is evacuating in preparation for Hitler’s invasion. Except she believes her mother is not dead and wants to look for her, so she evades getting on the boat and heads to Bletchely Park (or rather, the address she has for her brother which turns out to be Bletchley Park) to be with her brother Jakob, who has been working at the top-secret code-breaking facility.

Once there, Lizzie has the unwelcome job of trying to convince Jakob of her belief that their mother is still alive, and part of that is finding proof. All the while, Jakob is part of the team that is trying to figure out the codes for the Enigma machine so they can break the coded transmissions they’re getting from Germany. And Hitler’s army is on the march, coming closer to Great Britain. It’s all a lot to handle.

I have been selling this book for months solely on the basis of the authors’ names. Seriously: any book written by Sepetys and Sheinkin HAS to be good, right? And, dear reader, it was. Of course it was. They just have a way of writing historical fiction and history that makes it seem exciting, that brings it to life. And this book – with spitfire Lizzie and anxious, concerned Jakob, plus the rest of the cast of kids and code breakers – did exactly that. It was fun, intense, often funny, and a page-turner. It didn’t exceed my expectations, which were admittedly high, but it did absolutely meet them.

And you can’t ask for more than that.

Audiobook: We Solve Murders

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by Richard Osman
Read by Nicola Walker
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There are some murders (obviously: it’s in the title), but nothing gory, as well as mild swearing (and maybe one or two f-bombs that I’m not recalling right now). It’s in the Mystery section of the bookstore.

Amy Wheeler is a bodyguard-for-hire, and very good at her job. She’s a professional, and is determined to protect her latest client, the bestselling mystery author Rosie D’Antonio. Except someone is out to kill Amy instead. The one person she can trust is her father-in-law, Steve. A retired cop-turned-low-stakes PI, Steve just wants to be at home. But he cares about his daughter-in-law, and when she asks, he comes. Even if it means flying across the world. (Though he does get spoiled by all the private jets he flies on.) The question is: can they figure out who is trying to kill Amy (and set her up for several other murders) before they actually manage to succeed?

Oh, this one was a lot of fun! I listened to The Thursday Murder Club and thoroughly enjoyed it, so I’m not surprised. This one had a lot of twists and turns and action plus quite a bit of humor and kept me thoroughly entertained. It ended up being one of those books that wanted to keep listening to. Part of that was Walker’s narration; she was absolutely fabulous with the characters and driving the narration forward. But the other part is Osman’s gift for not only writing fully fleshed-out older people (him and Clare Pooley, honestly) but for writing a solid mystery that kept me entertained while also guessing at whodunit.

Highly recommend this one.

Audiobook: The Sherlock Society

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by James Ponti
Read by Marc Sanderlin
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Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There are some intense moments. It’s in the Middle Grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

Alex Sherlock has taken inspiration from his last name and started The Sherlock Society at his middle school. It’s mostly just him and his friends Yadi and Lina, until the last day of school when Alex’s sister, Zoe, joins. She’s the one who comes up with the plan to take this society out into the larger world. With the help of their former-reporter grandfather, they set out to find a mystery to solve.

What starts out as trying to find Al Capone’s buried treasure in the Miami area turns into a discovery of corporate corruption and environmental disaster. Can they prove their case, or will the end up taking the fall?

Oh, this one was a lot of fun. I really liked Sanderlin’s narration; it was a good combination of earnest and deadpan to reflect the middle-grade book. Some moments were intense (I can see a younger kid being on the edge of their seat!) and it was often hilarious. I liked that the kids all had good parents (it was the grandpa out there helping them get into trouble, of sorts) and that their lawyer mom kept things mostly above board. It was a solid mystery, too; I guessed the ending but not too long before the characters got there.

I’ve had a coworker who has been trying to get me to read James Ponti’s spy series, and after this one, I think I really need to give it a try. He’s a fun writer, and I’m impressed with this book.

Audiobook The Unwedding

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by Ally Condie
Read by Christine Lakin
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is some mild swearing and mention of murders. It’s in the mystery section of the bookstore.

The life Ellory thought she had has completely fallen apart. Her husband filed for divorce after almost 20 years of marriage, and nothing has been right since. They had planned on going to a resort in Big Sur for their anniversary, but it’s non-refundable, so Ellory finds herself there alone. There’s a wedding scheduled for the weekend, and when Ellory finds the groom dead in the resort pool, things turn dark. Add to that, a rainstorm and a mudslide trapping all the guests there, and then another guest is murdered, things become desperate. The question is whether they can figure out who the murderer is before they strike again.

I wanted to like this one so much more than I actually did. My biggest problem? Ellory was so sad. So much sad. All the sad. Every chance she got she was “I miss my husband” and “I miss my kids” and “oh noes, my life is worthless now”. All of which I get: her divorce came out of the blue and she is mourning it, but in what has been billed as a thriller, it’s very distracting. Which, also: this really isn’t a thriller. I never felt like anyone’s life was truly in jeopardy, and while Ellory was trying to figure the mystery out, she didn’t actually solve it (but she also kind of did?). I was also hoping for a grand sense of place – we didn’t get to Big Sur on our recent California vaction, but I wanted to feel like I was there. But, no. I finished this one because I kept hoping it would get better (it didn’t) and the narrator kept me engaged (she was quite excellent).

I’m sure Condie still has some good stories left in her, but this one wasn’t it. Disappointing.

A Couple of Graphic Novels

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The Great British Bump Off
by John Allison, and illustrated by Max Sarin
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There are panels showing poisoning. It’s in the graphic novel section of the bookstore.

The basic plot is that there is a Great British Bake Off-style competition and one of the competitors ends up in the hospital in critical condition from being poisoned. Was he poisoned on purpose? If so, who did it? Enter Shauna, medicore baker and armchair detective to solve this closed-room mystery.

This was ridiculous. There’s no way around it. It was silly, it was ridiculous, and it was dumb. But it circled around from being really stupid to being fun, especially if you (like I am) are a fan of the GBBO. I liked the parodies of the hosts, the challenges, and even the types of bakers that appear on the show. The ending was a bit forced and rushed, but I really didn’t expect anything else. For what it was, it wasn’t bad at all.

Superman for All Seasons
by Jeph Loeb, illustrated by Tim Sale
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There is some superhero-type violence. It’s in the Graphic Novel section of the bookstore.

In this series of four short stories, we follow Superman through each of the four seasons. From Kansas to Metropolis, each story is narrated by a different individual in Clark Kent’s life, as he learns to use his powers in the most effective way possible. That makes it sound trite, but this is really an excellent portrayal of Superman. I liked the retro-feeling art, and the way the stories were connected, building off each other. I think the authors really got the character of Superman, but also made him complex and not one-dimensional. I liked both Lois and Lana and how they influenced and were influenced by Clark. It’s a stellar graphic novel.

When Sea Becomes Sky

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by Gillian McDunn
First sentence: “Some summers are the funnest and some summers are the longest but last summer was perfectly ordinary until the day we found the hand.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: It’s got short chapters and some illustrations. It’s in the Middle Grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore. I read this book for the Cybils, and this reflects my opinion and not that of the whole panel.

Bex and Davey have always been a duo, biking together or rowing around the marshes of their island. And this summer starts like every other one, except it hasn’t rained in 313 days and the water levels are lowering. And with the lower water levels, a hand appears in the marshes. Not a dead hand (ew), but a metal one. And with developers wanting to build a bridge to the island from the mainland, Bex and Davey are afraid that would mean the end of the statue they found before they even had a chance to figure out who made it.

Thus begins an adventure as Bex and Davey try to figure out what the statue is, and who the artist was that created it. And the answers they find will surprise everyone.

I like McDunn’s books. They’re quiet and sweet and portray everyday challenges in a very accessible light. This one is no exception, though it packs a bit more punch than I’ve come to expect from her. I do think the developer plotline was a bit underused, but I liked how the artist’s plot was resolved, and how it all came full circle in the end. I also like the environmental angle with the drought. It was well done and quite enjoyable.

Race for the Ruby Turtle

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by Stephen Bramucci
First sentence: “If there was one thing Jake Rizzi didn’t want to do on the last Saturday morning of the summer, it was pack a bag for the rainiest town in the whole state of Oregon.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the author.
Release date: October 3, 2023
Content: There are some intense moments because adults are being terrible. It will be in the Middle Grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

Jake has recently been diagnosed with ADHD, and after an incident at the craft fair (let’s just say there was damage done), he’s being carted off to his Great-Aunt Hettle’s place. Once he gets there, he discovers a mystery involving a possibly mythic Ruby red-backed turtle, which coincides with a local festival. Hettle’s being cagey about everything, but Jake suspects there’s more to this story. So, can he and his new friend Mia figure it out before the adults do?

This was a lot of fun! Bramucci mixed a kid learning to deal with ADHD (but less of the “he’s a problem, let’s fix it” angle!) and a good mystery/environmental story. I liked that Jake was an animal lover and that his great-aunt Hettle got out of the way and let Jake be Jake. Sure, he makes mistakes – and has an epic fight with his new friend Mia – but he learns and grows, and yes, the two kids were able to outsmart the grown-ups.

It’s a fun book, one that embraces the importance of being kind and protecting the environment. You can’t ask for anything better than that.