13 November Mystery, Thrillers, and True Crime Releases

Zehanat Khan has a new procedural series! For fans of procedurals with detective pairings that focus on minority cases, this is for you. In a town in Colorado, Detective Inaya Rahman and Lieutenant Waqas Seif are on the case of a murdered teen from a Syrian Muslim refugee family who is found deliberately positioned in the local mosque. Not only will Rahman and Seif have their own personal and professional issues to deal with, but there’s a motorcycle gang and a slew of missing girls the police have had no interest in finding. And if you’re looking for a long series to read, pick up Khan’s Rachel Getty & Esa Khattak series starting with The Unquiet Dead.

Here’s a great short story collection which lets you read favorite authors and find new favorites! Not only are the 22 crime stories written by 22 different crime authors, but you get stories set all around the world including Mexico City, Lagos, New Zealand, Darjeeling and more. Writers include: Oyinkan Braithwaite, Abir Mukherjee, S.A. Cosby, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, J.P. Pomare, Sheena Kamal, Vaseem Khan, Sulari Gentill, Nelson George, Rachel Howzell Hall, John Vercher, Sanjida Kay, Amer Anwar, Henry Chang, Nadine Matheson, Mike Phillips, Ausma Zehanat Khan, Felicia Yap, Thomas King, Imran Mahmood, David Heska Wanbli Weiden, and Walter Mosley.

I wrote about updating the cozy mystery genre with a new section and this series is for all those readers. Arya Winters lives in an English village as a baker of macabre desserts — think cupcakes and cookies you’d buy for Halloween, but all year round! What doesn’t work so well for her are all the small town nosy residents since they kind of don’t help her social anxiety. Enter a two week art retreat to bake her cakes at a large estate. But it’s a cozy so rather than getting to escape anything, there will be a body…If you want to start at the beginning, pick up Arya Winters and the Tiramisu of Death.

Here’s another story collection perfect for finding new-to-you authors! This time the theme is that all the stories center around someone being a witness — how does that affect them? Do they come forward or stay quiet? And proceeds will go to benefiting the Alliance for Safe Traffic Stops. Authors include Pamela Samuels Young, Cara Black, Tod Goldberg, SJ Rozan, Richie Narvaez and more!

This one is for fans of MCs returning home after years to become embroiled in a mystery. Mae left Oklahoma and her Kiowa family behind a decade ago for Silicon Valley. Then her grandfather leaves a strange message and she rushes home. Here she’s known as Mud and what is waiting for her is tribe members being threatened, including her grandfather, by frackers. When her grandfather goes missing, she’s forced to enter the world of murder, betrayal, and theft to find him.

If you read these every month you may have déjà vu right now and that’s because I had listed this in August, but the pub date got moved so here it is again and you can go buy it now!

Anna Xu has added even more stress to starting college and moving into dorms: she’s determined to find out who murdered her childhood babysitter. And life tosses her even more obstacles: her childhood rival, whose family also owns her family’s rival business, is in school with her…

If you’re a fan of murder mysteries where the suspects are A PLENTY because the victim was a total jerk, this one is for you. In a small village on the border between Wales and England, the developer of exclusive lake vacation homes for wealthy outsiders ends up being found dead on New Year’s Day. DC Leo Brady of Cheshire Major Crimes is partnered for this case with Ffion Morgan who is with the North Wales Police. The story is told in present and past leading up to the murder from a slew of characters’ perspectives. This is a page-turning mystery with colorful characters, an outsider vs. residents dynamic, and a great investigator pairing. It reads as a great standalone but I’m thrilled there will be a sequel!