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In the Club

The Best Recent Mysteries for Your Book Club

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Erica Ezeifedi

Associate Editor

Erica Ezeifedi, Associate Editor, is a transplant from Nashville, TN that has settled in the North East. In addition to being a writer, she has worked as a victim advocate and in public libraries, where she has focused on creating safe spaces for queer teens, mentorship, and providing test prep instruction free to students. Outside of work, much of her free time is spent looking for her next great read and planning her next snack. Find her on Twitter at @Erica_Eze_.

Erica is out this week for some well-deserved R&R, so for today’s In the Club we have a rerun of one of the most popular posts of the year, in case you missed it. Enjoy!

Today, I’ve got some recent mystery/thrillers for you to discuss with your book club.

These mysteries will take you everywhere, from Nigeria to Japan and Ireland, and are written by established faves and newcomers alike.

Book Club Nibbles and Sips

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These french toast bites are made with Hawaiian rolls and sound dangerous! For the ingredients and instructions, check out GrilledCheeseSocial on Instagram.

cover of The Final Curtain by Keigo Higashino, translated by Giles Murray

The Final Curtain by Keigo Higashino, translated by Giles Murray

This is the final book in a popular Japanese detective series, the nature of which means you don’t really need to have read the other books. Here, a Tokyo detective reaches out to detective Kyoichiro Kaga about two cases — one involving a woman mysteriously far from home using a fake name and the other a houseless man. Turns out there is a connection to the death of Kaga’s mother, who ran away from her family and died over a decade ago.

cover of There Should Have Been Eight Kindle Edition by Nalini Singh

There Should Have Been Eight by Nalini Singh

In this gothic locked room mystery, a group of friends who first met when they were teens meet up again as adults under a cloud of grief. Their friend Bea died nine years ago, and now that the group has gathered at Bea’s family’s estate to remember the good times, the story surrounding her death is questioned. And the truth will come out after they get snowed in, no matter what.

cover image for Gaslight

Gaslight by Femi Kayode

Here’s a murder mystery set in a place I don’t usually see with murder mysteries: Nigeria. Philip Taiwo starts working on a case based around a megachurch in Ogun State, where a bishop’s wife was murdered, and a young woman went missing. As Taiwo will soon learn, there are secrets that, if uncovered, will threaten the entire church.

cover of The Hunter by Tana French; image of a white farmhouse under an orange sky

The Hunter by Tana French

The Queen of Irish detective fiction is back with another Cal Hooper entry, but as with a lot of other detective fiction, I don’t think you necessarily have to have read the first in the series to enjoy this one. Here, Cal retires from the Chicago PD early and moves to the Irish countryside to find quiet. He gets the peace he’s looking for and more — he, local woman Lena, and Lena’s troubled teen daughter Trey start to form what feels like a supportive family. But then Trey’s trifling biological father, Johnny, shows up with a scheme to get rich, and everything goes south. The delicate, newly formed connections of Cal’s family are threatened by a search for gold that turns into a search for a killer.

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Which mystery novels have you read with your book club? Let’s chat in the comments!

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