April New Releases: Mystery/Thriller/True Crime

If you ever thought “I need me a mystery set amongst competitive scrabble competitions with a teen solving a friend’s death” then you’re gonna flip your tiles over this title. Trina Low is dead, leaving the Scrabble Queen title open. But now her should-be-inactive Instagram account is posting cryptic messages questioning Low’s death. Now Low’s best friend, Najwa Bakri, needs to figure out what really happened to Low and who is behind the posts…
Bonus: for learning new words, and all the word game play in the book.

If you’re a fan of heists and books inspired by history then this one is for you. Will Chen is an art history major in his senior year at Harvard who has decided he is going to steal back the spoils of war, conquered through colonialism, that museums proudly exhibit. Why? Because a Chinese corporation has tapped him to help steal back five priceless Chinese sculptures which were previously looted from Beijing. And so he puts together a crew with the dangling carrot of $50 million and righting history. But will they succeed?

For fans of legal thrillers. Court stenographer Victoria Justice finds herself having to investigate a bombing. After the courthouse is evacuated, due to a suspicious package, a government official is killed in a car explosion. It’s quickly tied to an arsonist but Justice doesn’t believe this theory. She thinks she was the real target all along…
If you want to start at the beginning of the series, pick up Poetic Justice.

If you’re looking for a historical mystery not set in the 1800s, here you go. Set in 1963 Los Angeles, we follow freelance photographer and sometimes process server Harry Ingram, who is a Korean War vet. He recognizes his friend’s car over a police scanner call of a fatal accident and shows up, taking photos. It’s deemed an accident but Ingram’s photos point in a different direction, sending him into the path of being a detective to figure out what really happened.

If you ever wanted to watch Jane Austen’s characters solve mysteries you should 100% be reading these books. We follow as 18-year-old Elinor Dashwood finds her father dead in his office. Due to an outdated will, Elinor’s sister Marianne, who worked as her father’s partner and protégé, won’t get the business, but rather their half-brother will. Finding evidence of foul play, Elinor and Marianne team up to find their father’s killer…

This is for fans of missing persons and small-town mysteries. Set in Garnett, Texas, we follow Annie McIntyre, who is home from college and waitressing. When a fellow waitress at the cafe goes missing, Annie teams up with her grandfather Leroy, a retired sheriff turned private investigator, to find out what happened. It’s a small-town mystery, though, so you know Annie is gonna have to deal with her past and the town’s secrets…

If you like cozies, small town mysteries, and witches, this recent series is for you. Also, the family dynamic has all the Practical Magic vibes. Brynn Warren is working at her aunts’ bed and breakfast and using her powers again when the ghost of a chocolatier needs her help in uncovering who murdered him. Except it has not been ruled a murder, so Warren is gonna have a lot of work on her hands — while also dealing with her meddling aunts. If you want to start at the beginning, pick up In The Company of Witches.