Fall Into A Mystery: 10 New Mystery & Thrillers For October 2024
If Halloween is your holiday/love language, welcome to the deliciously witchy month of October! While all months are excellent for reading mysteries and thrillers, fall provides the cozy vibes for armchair sleuthing as you read with a warm drink, buried under blankets and possibly furry friends. This month’s selections also provided a wonderful color story when I lined up all the book covers. I’m sure it was not planned by the publishers but they should take credit for it because all these blues and reds are really working together. But enough about the covers: here’s what’s inside this month’s mystery and thriller selections.
It’s a big month for fans of Inspector Gamache who get to finally read the 19th book in the series, and Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train, has a new slow-burn mystery! Mystery and thriller fans are also treated to a dark mystery starring a forensic photographer; a paw-tastic middle grade graphic novel following a cat detective; a dark academia murder mystery; an anthology with stories by today’s top crime writers, a PI in 1950s San Francisco in a bookstore-centered mystery; a book with 50 logic puzzles to solve; a middle grade mystery with a child honing their detective skills; and two college students on different timelines somehow coming together to solve a mystery.
Exposure (Rita Todacheene #2) by Ramona Emerson
For fans of forensic leads, dark mysteries, dual POV (including the killers), and ghosts!
Rita Todacheene is a forensic photographer who is being forced by the department to see a psychiatrist, while most of her colleagues refuse to work with her. While she could really use some mental health help—she’s away from her grandmother who lives on the Navajo reservation, she’s massively overworked, and recently went through a trauma—the ghosts that follow her are not imagined, and when they’re angry they demand that Rita listen. On top of all her struggles, there is now a killer in Gallup, New Mexico, who thinks he’s performing mercy killings and is leaving murders that are difficult to solve around the city.
You can start here and not feel lost, but if you’d like to start at the beginning of this great series, pick up Shutter.
The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins
For fans of mysteries with remote locations and past-and-present storylines!
Vanessa Chapman is a well-known artist, now deceased, whose estranged husband went missing decades ago. Becker is an art curator with a foundation caring for Chapman’s work. Grace, Chapman’s best friend, is now living in Vanessa’s home and sorting through her work to separate the personal from the professional. When a suspicion arises that one of Chapman’s sculptures has human bones in it rather than animal bones, that discovery throws a wrench in things…
Detective Beans: and the Case of the Missing Hat by Li Chen
For fans of middle grade graphic novels!
Detective Beans and his best friend Biscuit spent the night watching mystery movies (of course!) only to wake up and discover that Beans’ sleuthing hat is missing. He’ll have to search the streets of Cat Town and get to know all its suspects in order to solve this mystery!
The Grey Wolf (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #19) by Louise Penny
For fans of detective mysteries, small communities, and long-running series!
After a call from an enemy and his coat stolen during a break in the head of homicide at the Sûreté, Armand Gamache suspects something sinister is afoot. So much so that he reduces his circle of trust to only two others, Jean-Guy Beauvoir and Inspector Isabelle Lacoste, as once-known friends and enemies are no longer acting their part…
If you want to start at the beginning, pick up Still Life, and if you like watching adaptations you can stream the series Three Pines on Prime.
Remember Me Tomorrow by Farah Heron
For fans of college-set romantic mysteries and two people in different times finding their lives overlapping!
Aleeza Kassam is a freshman in college, not getting along with her roommate. So she moves into a single room dorm only to discover its former resident is a missing student. Then Aleeza starts getting messages from the missing student, Jay, telling her to get out of his room. They may be in two different timelines, but they figure out how to come together to figure out what happened to Jay…
Society of Lies by Lauren Ling Brown
For fans of dark academia, dual POV, past-and-present timelines, secret societies, and a murder mystery being solved by a sibling!
Maya learns that her sister Naomi died in an accident right before graduating college. They both attended Princeton, a decade apart. Maya doesn’t think Naomi’s death was an accident and decides to investigate, which is how she learns her sister hid from her that she’d joined the same secret society Maya once had—the same one Maya had warned Naomi away from.
Rough Pages (Evander Mills #3) by Lev AC Rosen
For fans of recent historical fiction, bookstores, and mysteries featuring PIs!
Ex-cop turned PI Evander Mills is returning to Lavender House (where the first book in the series’ mystery was centered) for his new case. A bookstore has been quietly selling queer books to a secret list of subscribers until the bookseller, and the list of subscribers and their information, disappear. In 1950s San Francisco, this list in the wrong hands could put a vulnerable community in danger…
If you want to start at the beginning of the series, pick up Lavender House!
Find Her by Ginger Reno
For fans of middle grade mysteries!
Wren is a 12-year-old girl with a Cherokee mom, who has been missing for a handful of years, and a white father, who is the police chief. Prompted by her grandmother, Wren decides to hone her detective skills with her finder feelings by locating lost pets to reunite them with their owners. She hopes this will help her finally be able to solve her mom’s case.
The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2024 edited by S.A. Cosby, Steph Cha
For fans of short story collections!
This is a fantastic way to read some of the best writers in the genre right now. Short story collections are also great for when you have limited time for reading but want to feel like you completed an entire story. Some of the great talent included: Megan Abbott, Alyssa Cole, Tananarive Due, and Jordan Harper.
Murdle: The School of Mystery: 50 Seriously Sinister Logic Puzzles by G. T. Karber
For fans of logic puzzles!
If you love to sit down with a pencil and a logic puzzle, this entire series is great. The newest one is 50 puzzles for you to solve which are all murder mysteries that take place at a deduction college! Bonus: these make great holiday gifts for the puzzle solvers in your life.
If you’re all about the mysteries and thrills, we’ve got you covered!
