mystery

Hurricane Heist

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by James Ponti
First sentence: “My life was filled with countless embarrassing athletic failures.”
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Review copy pilfered from the ARC shelves at work.
Others in the series: The Sherlock Society
Content: There is talk of murder, some intense situations, and friendship drama. It’s in the Middle Grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

It’s time to go back to school, and Alex, Lina, and Yadi don’t want to give up on solving mysteries. Thankfully, a hurricane hits their town just as school starts, which unearths a body buried in a pool. A body that was connected to an unsolved jewelry heist that happened when Alex’s grandfather was 12. The body of one of the grandfather’s friends. So, of course, they need to tackle solving the case: who stole the jewels, who killed Ignacio, and who framed him for the theft of the jewels.

Much like the first one in this excellent series, this one is a super-tight mystery, with humor and a bit of an undercurrent of drama (between Lina and Alex’s sister, Zoe), but mostly a focus on the hurricane that hits, its aftermath, and solving the mystery. (I do love that Grandpa comes along as adult supervision. That’s really fun.) It’s fun, it’s exciting, and I think it’s perfect for kids who want a mystery.

Alchemy of Secrets

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by Stephanie Garber
First sentence: “Holland St. James had been counting down the minutes until tonight.”
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Release date: October 7, 2025
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There are some murders, and talk of deaths and killing, and some mild swearing. It will be in the Science-Fiction/Fantasy section (probably; it’s not really a romance) of the bookstore.

Holland St. James is a PhD student studying folklore and has become interested in these urban tales about the devil making deals with Hollywood actors. Then, one night, she stumbles on one of the tales – the Watch Man – who tells her she has 24 hours left to live, unless she finds the Alchemical Heart and delivers it to the devil. Thus begins a mystery and a “treasure hunt” that takes Holland through old Hollywood and into the past, uncovering truths about her parents’ deaths.

My initial reaction to this was that it’s pretty much exactly like every other one of Garber’s books. It felt like Caraval, just aged up a bit and set in the real world instead of in a fantasy world. There’s a conflicted heroine, trying to do her best; a couple of questionable love interests (though the spice level on this is basically at just kissing); a sister who has questionable motives but also the heroine’s “best interests” in mind; and several twists and turns, some of which were surprising.

It’s not a bad book, it just didn’t floor me the way I was hoping it would.

The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year

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by Ally Carter
First sentence: “Ms. Chase: Well, of course I have his blood on my hands.”
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Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There is some swearing (I don’t remember f-bombs, but if there were any, there weren’t a lot), kissing, and off-screen sex. It will be in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Maggie Chase and Ethan Wyatt are rival mystery writers. They don’t like each other. And even though Maggie’s successful, Ethan is a different level of success, which is just annoying, since he has only a few books to his name. So, when she ends up in a private plane headed to England for Christmas and Ethan is there, she’s sure it will be a lousy holiday. Except: they end up at Eleanor Ashley’s house with a number of her relatives, and then she goes missing. It’s up to Maggie and Ethan to figure out where Elenaor has gone, and – more importantly – why.

This was a fun, light romance. It leans more heavily into the mystery – or at the very least I was more interested by the mystery – than the romance, though it’s there. More importantly, it’s about Maggie’s journey to trusting herself. She’s been told her whole life that she doesn’t matter and that her opinions don’t count, and she doesn’t really trust herself. Over the course of the book – and with Ethan’s help – she learns how to trust her instincts and her decisions again.

I don’t know if I was expecting something spicier (it’s not spicy at all), but I wasn’t expecting so much of a mystery. And I was pleasantly surprised how enjoyable and fun it was.

The Cookie Crumbles

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by Tracy Badua and Alechia Dow
First sentence: “Generally speaking, cookies don’t kill people.”
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Content: There is talk of almost-murder, and there are some intense situations. It’s in the Middle Grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

Laila loves to bake. Lucy is a budding reporter. They both want to get into the prestigious Sunderland boarding school, and the cookie competition hosted by the school, with the grand prize of a scholarship, is the only way they can make it work. The plan was for Laila to bake and be brilliant and for Lucy to write and be brilliant. What they didn’t anticipate was one of the judges – Chef Remy – almost dying after eating one of Laila’s cookies. Now, they need to figure out who tried to kill Chef Remy (it wasn’t Laila!) – especially since there was a storm that wiped out all the ways to get into and out of Sunderland.

This was a fun little mystery. The stakes were high – a lot of the other kids had motives to hurt Chef Remy – but it wasn’t so high that it would scare younger kids. The clues were there to figure it out if you were paying attention (I did), but it was clever enough to keep me entertained. I liked that the authors conceived of a clever way to get parents out of the picture – it was kind of like a sleep-away camp for the competition – so that it wasn’t weird that the kids were running around the school by themselves. I liked the alternating chapters between Laila and Lucy, and I thought it was all done very well.

A really solid Middle Grade mystery.

Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret

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by Benjamin Stevenson
First sentence: “There are quite a few differences between an Australian Christmas and the stereotypical Northern Hemisphere fare seen in most books and movies.”
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Others in the series: Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone, Everyone On This Train is Suspect
Release date: October 22, 2024
Content: There are murders, of course. It will be in the Christmas book section of the bookstore.

Ern Cunningham is back, and this time he needs to exonerate his ex-wife from the murder of her boyfriend. The problem is that she woke up covered in his blood, with no memory of how that happened. So, Ern heads to Australia’s Blue Hills and the Christmas magic show in order to figure out the murder.

Of course, there are twists and turns, and Stevenson’s trademark humor (Ern even learns the true meaning of Christmas… but it’s not what you think). The book is laid out like an advent calendar (read one chapter a day!), with references to Christmas specials and fair play mysteries. All the clues are there, if you can figure out how to put them together (no surprise: I didn’t). It was fun and entertaining, and a delightful addition to this series.

Audiobook: The Misfits

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by Lisa Yee
Read by Cindy Kay
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Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: It’s a fast-paced novel, and there are illustrations in the print version. Some intense moments may be scary to sensitive readers. It’s in the Middle Grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

Olvie Coben Zang has been an outcast her entire life. Her parents are too busy to pay her much attention, she doesn’t really fit in at school, she has no friends… the works. The only person who really saw her was her grandmother, Mimi, but she has passed on. And then, out of the blue, her parents tell her that she’s being transferred to a boarding school, RASCH, a unique school for unique kids. Once there, she’s lumped in with four other outcasts – James, who’s young but has an encyclopedic knowledge of words and history; Philomena (“just call me Phil”) who is a tech genius; Iggy, who has a bit of temper but a heart of gold; and Theo (TBH, I just thought of him as the White kid). Together, they form the Misfits, as part of an experiment to train kids as spies. Their goal, in the end: Catch the Bling King and get back the infamous, super expensive necklace of the school’s founder.

This was a lot of fun. I liked the mystery (I miscalled the ending!), I liked the characters – they were fun and interesting and sometimes silly. It was well-paced; I could see a kid falling into the book and plowing through it because it’s hard to put down. And Kay, as a narrator, is excellent. She definitely keeps the pace up as well as helping with voices to keep all the numerous characters (including the adults) straight.

I thoroughly enjoyed this and am looking forward to more in the series.

Warrior Girl Unearthed

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by Angeline Boulley
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: May 2, 2023
Content: It addresses r*pe, sexual assault, predatory behaviors, and missing Indigenous women. There is some swearing and talk of drug use. It’s in the Teen section (grades 9+) of the bookstore.

What Perry Firekeeper-Birch wanted for the summer: to be lazy, to go fishing, to enjoy the sunshine. What she got: a job with the Ojibwe summer intern program, working at the Tribal museum. What she expected: the summer to be Boring. What she got: a fascinating education in her Tribal history, and in the repatriation (or not) of the items stolen by museums and colleges, including the local Mackinac State University.

That’s just where the summer starts, though. It’s 2014, and there is unrest in the country, with the shooting of Michael Brown, and that hits close to home because Perry’s dad is half Black. Additionally, Indigenous women in the community have gone missing, and her sister, who is working with the Tribal police, is helping look for them. But it all comes to a head when Perry discovers unearthed graves in the yard of a local “businessman” who was going to donate artifacts back to the tribe, but instead gives them to Mackinac State.

It sounds like a lot – and this is just scratching the surface – but Boulley is a talented enough storyteller to weave these seemingly disparate story threads together into a very satisfying whole. The story is less about missing Indigenous women and repatriating lost/stolen artifacts than it is about Perry learning how to take responsibility and be a leader in her community. It’s her growth arc – though the characters of her friends and twin sister (and yes, Daunis from Firekeeper’s Daughter shows up) are fully fleshed out and not simple caricatures. I love how Boulley is able to weave in the Ojibwe language and traditions in a way that feels respectful but is also informative for those of us who are not Ojibwe. It’s a feat to be able to put so much into a book and have it flow seamlessly.

In short: I loved it.

Network Effect

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by Martha Wells
First sentence: “I’ve had clients who thought they needed an absurd level of security.”
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Content: There is a lot of swearing, including multiple f0bobs. It’s in the science fiction section of the bookstore.
Others in the series:  All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol, Exit Strategy

Spoilers for the first four, obviously. Although you don’t have to read those to read this, it really does help.

Murderbot has come to Preservation a non-Corporation planet, to live, to figure out what it wants to do and to be Dr. Mensah’s bodyguard. It’s sent on a mission with several people from Preservation, including Mensah’s daughter and brother-in-law, and that’s when things go sideways. They are attacked by a ship as soon as they leave Preservation space, and Murederbot and another team member are kidnapped. The others manage to come along (unfortunately, it means more humans to protect), and the greater plan is revealed: ART’s (the asshole research transport from book 2) crew has been taken by some people who are on a planet that has been compromised by alien remnants, and he wants it back. So, he sent the kidnappers to get Murderbot, because ART knew Murderbot would be able to find and retrieve them for it. Murderbot is not happy about being taken forcibly, but it cares (that’s a strong word) enough for ART that it’s willing to do what ART wants.

That’s basically what happens – sort of – but the real pleasure was having the ART-Murderbot relationship back. It was hilarious and sweet and delightful, and Murderbot would hate all of those words if it knew. There was one point where one of the other characters decided ART and Muderbot were in a relationship, and Murderbot got incredibly angry about that, mostly because it’s true. but, it’s also still a well-plotted book: a mystery to solve, corporation/non-corporation dynamics to explore, a weird planet (gotta love those), and a lot of fun, cranky inner dialogue on Murderbot’s part. U was a little wary that the longer form would dilute some of the charms of these books, but thankfully, II was wrong. It was still just as fun as a full-length novel.

These are such a delight to read.

Ninth House

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by Leigh Bardugo
First sentence: “By the time Alex managed to get the blood out of her coat, it was too warm to wear it.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: October 8, 2019
Review copy provided by the publisher
Content: There’s a lot of swearing including multiple f-bombs, some drug use, a couple of rape scenes (not graphic) and it will be in the science fiction and fantasy section of the bookstore.

Alex has had a rough life. She’s seen ghosts ever since she can remember, and that’s gotten her in a LOT of trouble over the years. So much so, that she ran away from home at age 15 and ended up living with (and having sex with) a drug dealer. Then one night, she woke up in a hospital, with no memory of how her friends died, and a recruiter from Yale (yes, the one in New Haven, Connecticut) in her room. He — Dean Sandow — offers Alex a way out: full-ride scholarship to Yale, erasing her past, if she’ll come work for Lethe.

Lethe, in this world, is the “house” that keeps all the other magic houses — ones full of people with Connections and Power, both of the magical and non-magical kind — in check. They study the dead — hence their interest in Alex — and they keep the other eight houses from getting too out of hand, like, say, murdering people on accident. Or letting ghosts — which they call Grays — connect with the living world.

She is training to be the new Dante — which is the person on the ground, I think; it was never spelled out — with Darlington, who has come from a long-line of Connecticut blue bloods and is Lethe’s “golden boy”. However this year, this semester, is not going well. Especially since Darlington has disappeared.

One part murder mystery — a town girl turns up dead, and Alex is convinced it has something to do with the houses — and one part exploration of class, money, power, and place with a bit of feminism thrown in there, this book is a LOT. It took me a while to get into it, mostly because it bounces back and forth through time and it took a while to keep things straight, but once I got into it I could NOT put it down. Bardugo has a way with words, and is an excellent storyteller, but I think I enjoy her characters more. I loved the clashes between the upper class kids that usually go to Yale and Alex, the streetwise former drug dealer.

It is a lot more intense than her YA books, but it holds up. (Which makes me wonder if Six of Crows could have been a lot more graphic than it was.) And I’m excited to see what she does next!

Two (Older) Mysteries

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Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective
by Donald J. Sobol
First sentence: Mr. and Mrs. Brown had one child.”
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Content: It’s got short chapters, and simple text. It’s in the beginning chapter book section (grades 1-2) of the bookstore.

The girls reminded me, when I picked this one up, that on a vacation we listened to one of the later books in this series. They enjoyed it, or at least they have memories of enjoying it. I remember this, vaguely, but had never actually read these. There’s not much to them: Encyclopedia Brown is presented a mystery — everything from a tent that the resident bully claims is his to missing roller skates — and then the reader is encouraged to solve it. I’ll be honest: I didn’t get a single one. I came close a few times, but never actually guessed the right answer. I went back and looked, and the clues were there. I’m just not a careful enough reader to catch them. Even so, it was a fun little read.

The Secret of the Old Clock
by Carolyn Keene
First sentence: “Nancy Drew, an attractive girl of eighteen, was driving home along a country road in her new, dark-blue convertible.”
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Content: There’s some scary moments, but nothing too intense. It’s in the Middle Grade Classics section of the bookstore.

I adored Nancy Drew when I was a kid. (Nancy Drew and Little House on the Prairie and Wrinkle in Time: those were the books I read and re-read.) I don’t know what it was about these books that drew me to them, whether it was Nancy as a character or just the mysteries and adventure I liked immersing myself in, but I have fond memories of reading these.

So I was a bit wary as I dipped back into the world of Nancy Drew as an adult (after nearly 40 years!). Would it hold up? Well… yes and no. The no is easier to handle: the writing is not only formulaic (which is to be expected, as it is written by committee, something I didn’t know as a kid) but also quite mundane. The thing that really stood out was how expressive Nancy’s eyes were: they sparkled and flashed and twinkled…. how many adjectives can they use to express her eyes and what purpose does it really serve? It wasn’t a mystery that a reader could get involved in; it wasn’t meant to be a puzzle that the reader could solve, but rather we were along for the ride, watching as Nancy got into scrapes and met people and was determined enough to find the solution. In this case, she accidentally stumbled upon a family dispute: Joseph Crowley died and was supposed to have left money to his relatives and friends, all of whom were less well off than he was, but it turned out that he left the money to this snobbish, well-off family in town instead. Everyone, Nancy found, was convinced that there was a newer will. But no one knew where it was.

The thing I did like about this was Nancy. Sure, she was a proper 1930s young lady: polite, kind to her elders, friendly and helpful. But, she was also smart, determined, and  unafraid to take chances. In this one, at least, she’s out there taking on bad guys and solving cases, and doing it by herself. (I know she picks up a boyfriend and a couple of friends later, but in this one, it’s just all Nancy.) Maybe that’s what I loved about these books as a kid: I wished I could be that determined and risk-taking, and I admired that about Nancy. I still do.

I don’t think I’ll revisit any of the others in the series, but I’m glad I reread this one.