Recent BIPOC Mystery Books to Read This Summer
Any genre of books reads well in the summer, but I am partial to reading what’s widely regarded as “beach reads” in the summer. What counts as beach-friendly reading can vary by person, of course, but many beach and summer reading lists have some variety of romances and mystery/thrillers. I decided to focus on the mystery/thriller aspect of beach reading with today’s BIPOC roundup, which includes books that will take you from 1970s Pennsylvania to prestigious boarding schools in the UK.
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
This came out last year, but it’s still going strong on all the lists.
In it, it’s 1972 in Chicken Hill, a Black and Jewish working-class neighborhood in Pennsylvania, when a skeleton is found at the bottom of a well. This unearths a past that goes all the way back to 1925 when Moshe and Chona Ludlow owned the Heaven & Earth Grocery store that welcomed Jewish and Black people alike. When a Black employee of the store and friend to the Ludlows asks for help in keeping his disabled nephew from becoming a ward of the state, a community comes together to defend its most vulnerable from racist “Christians.”
Where Sleeping Girls Lie by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé
After the hit that was Ace of Spades, Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé is back with more UK-based dark academia. This time, following Sade Hussein, who is starting her third year of high school at a prestigious boarding school. But then her roommate Elizabeth disappears — and people suspect Sade had something to do with it. Then another student is found dead. As she tries to clear her name, she finds out that there’s something really funky going on at Alfred Nobel Academy.
Hunted by Abir Mukherjee
In London, a man is brought in by the police for questioning. Then, in Florida, a mother fears that her son has been radicalized. The two parents are connected through their missing children and an organization in Oregon that has diabolical plans for the U.S. Both parents are thrown together, on the run, and in a race against time to save the country and their children.
The Return of Ellie Black by Emiko Jean
Twenty years ago, Detective Chelsey Clahoun’s sister disappeared. Her sister was never seen again, so Chelsey dedicated her life to finding other missing girls, which is a pretty depressing vocation, not going to lie. Turns out people are awful, and Chelsey’s cases rarely end nicely, but then a teenager who’d been missing for two years — Ellie Black — turns up alive in the woods. The happy turn of events turns sour, though, when Chelsey realizes that Ellie is not trying to spill on what happened, who took her, or where she’s been all this time, and Chelsey will need to know all those things if she’s to stop another girl from being taken.
5 of the Best BIPOC Books Out This Week
Today’s best new BIPOC books out have romance among heartthrobs, Southern family drama, a queer, women-led Japanese action thriller, and more.
*All Access paid subscribers read on for bonus content*
The Townsend Family Recipe for Disaster by Shauna Robinson
As Mae Townsend’s marriage date approaches, she realizes she wants to remedy her estrangement from her Black Southern family. When her paternal grandmother passes away, she makes the trip down to see the Townsends, but long-held grudges and lost recipes stand in the way of true family harmony.
Just Playing House by Farah Heron
Marley Kamal is a luxury stylist for big-name clients, but she’s also dealing with the reality of having a breast cancer-causing gene. Just before she’s set to have an operation to reduce breast cancer chances, she gets the opportunity to style Hollywood’s latest upcoming heartthrob, Nikhil Shamdsani. Now, Nikhil is dealing with his own stuff — from racist comments on his being cast in things to being pressured to represent the entire Indian community — and seeks comfort in having Marley’s familiar face around. As the two get closer, what started as an old high school friendship turns into true support and something more romantic.
The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali
It’s the 1950s in Tehran, and the death of 7-year-old Ellie’s father thrusts her and her mother out of familiar comfort and into a small, downtown house. Her grief and loneliness are fortunately curbed by Homa, a girl she meets on the first day of school and who she becomes best friends with. Together, the two girls plan on becoming “lion women,” even as they play girlhood games. But then Ellie and her mother are offered some of their old, cushy life back, and Ellie gradually becomes a popular girl at Iran’s most prestigious girls’ school. When Homa reappears in Ellie’s life, it’s just as memories of their childhood together begin to dissipate. Reunited, the girls come of age in a tumultuous Iran and try to make futures for themselves, even after a startling betrayal.
The Night of Baba Yaga by Akira Otani, Sam Bett (Translator)
The blurb for this describes it as Kill Bill meets The Handmaiden meets Thelma and Louise, which just sounds too good to resist. It’s set in 1979 Tokyo, where Yoriko Shindo lives as a woman at the bottom of society. She’s kidnapped and brought to a yakuza lair, where she, surprisingly, beats everyone while trying to escape. She’s then made to become the boss’s daughter’s bodyguard, and the two women begin to think of a better life outside of all the toxic masculinity and violence.
Masquerade by O.O. Sangoyomi
It’s always a treat to see more West African-based fantasy, and Sangoyomi’s Masquerade sounds like a magical blending of 15th-century history and a loose retelling of the myth of Persephone. In it, Òdòdó is already living as an outcast with the other women of her blacksmith guild in Timbuktu when the town gets conquered by the warrior king of Yorùbáland. Then ole girl gets abducted and taken across the Sahara to Ṣàngótẹ̀. It’s in this capital city that she finds out that the stranger who visited her guild a few days ago is her kidnapper, and, what’s more, he’s the warrior king. Turns out he snatched Òdòdó up to make her his wife, and through the forced marriage, she ascends to the very top of society. There, she finds the machinations of battle and court politics too hard to resist.
More BIPOC Releases
Mysterious Setting by Kazushige Abe, Michael Emmerich (Translator)
The Road to the Salt Sea by Samuel Kolawole
Midnight Rooms by Donyae Coles
Not About a Boy by Myah Hollis
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