How About Some Villainy and Vice to Go Along with This Season’s Sand and Sunshine?

It’s happening already: print magazines, blogs, and other Web sites are announcing their choices of “the best books of 2019 (so far).” The Guardian, Real Simple, Esquire, New York magazine’s Vulture site—they have all done it, racing ahead of the usual November/December ritual of choosing the foremost works released during the preceding 12 months, as if their editors can’t possibly wait another half-year to broadcast their considered, if perhaps premature, opinions.

This isn’t an exercise in which I customarily take part. However, I have been impressed by a number of the crime, mystery, and thriller novels I’ve tackled over the last six months. Impressed enough that I have decided to applaud 10 of them early:

— Blood & Sugar, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Mantle)
— The Darwin Affair, by Tim Mason (Algonquin)
— The Devil Aspect, by Craig Russell (Doubleday)
— The King’s Evil, by Andrew Taylor (HarperCollins)
— Metropolis, by Philip Kerr (Putnam)
— The Moroccan Girl, by Charles Cumming (St. Martin’s Press)
— The Paragon Hotel, by Lyndsay Faye (Putnam)
— Smoke and Ashes, by Abir Mukherjee (Pegasus)
— The Summer of Ellen, by Agnete Friis (Soho Crime)
— The Wolf and the Watchman, by Niklas Natt och Dag (Atria)

In addition, I should mention British author-historian Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), a sedulously researched work that currently ranks as my favorite true-crime tale of 2019.

Of course, none of the aforementioned titles is guaranteed a spot on my year-end register of reading preferences; there are far too many books in this genre, due out between now and New Year’s Day, that still await my attention and may prove to be even more to my liking. For instance, Martin Walker has a new Bruno Courrèges yarn, The Body in the Castle Well (Knopf), just out, and we can look forward later in June to fresh fiction from Kate Atkinson (Big Sky), Mick Herron (Joe Country), Denise Mina (Conviction), and Andrew Martin (The Winker). As we move deeper into summer, we’ll also be offered new stories by Adrian McKinty (The Chain), Laura Lippman (Lady in the Lake), Richard Russo (Chances Are …), Helen Phillips (The Need), Peter Lovesey (Killing with Confetti), S.J. Rozan (Paper Son), James Oswald (Nothing to Hide), Christobel Kent (A Secret Life), Robert Crais (A Dangerous Man), Louise Penny (A Better Man), Alex Segura (Miami Midnight), Lisa Lutz (The Swallows), and Max Byrd (The Sixth Conspirator). Keep a watch, too, for Swedish author David Lagercrantz’s final Lisbeth Salander adventure, The Girl Who Lived Twice; a collection of unpublished works by Gil Brewer, Death Is a Private Eye; Jo Nesbø’s Knife, his 12th case for Norwegian detective Harry Hole; what I hope will be a wonderful anthology of vintage crime-fiction short stories, The Best of Manhunt; the third entry in John A. Connell’s World War II-era series about U.S. Army investigator Mason Collins, Blood of the Innocent; and Sticking It to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950 to 1980, edited by Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre, a non-fiction release to which I contributed an essay.

Below, you will find a curated selection of more than 400 books—all due to appear in stores (on both sides of the Atlantic) during the next three, warmer months—that should be of particular interest to devotees of crime and thriller fiction. Those marked with asterisks (*) belong on the non-fiction shelves; the rest are novels or short-story collections. To learn which of them I find most engrossing, you’ll have to be patient until I post my “best of 2019” list in December.

JUNE (U.S.):

• The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective: Secrets and Lies in the Golden Age of Crime, by Susannah Stapleton (Picador)*

• All the Lost Things, by Michelle Sacks (Little, Brown)

• Assassin of Shadows, by Lawrence Goldstone (Pegasus)

• Aunt Dimity and the Heart of Gold, by Nancy Atherton (Viking)

• Backlash, by Brad Thor (Atria/Emily Bestler)

• Beautiful Liars, by Isabel Ashdown (Kensington)

• Before I Wake, by David Morrell (Subterranean)

• Beyond All Reasonable Doubt, by Malin Persson Giolito (Other Press)

• Big Sky, by Kate Atkinson ( Little, Brown)

• The Body in Question, by Jill Ciment (Pantheon)

• The Body in the Castle Well, by Martin Walker (Knopf)

• The Body Lies, by Jo Baker (Knopf)

• Bone Deep, by Sandra Ireland (Gallery)

• Breaking the Dance, by Clare O’Donohue (Midnight Ink)

• The Buy Back Blues, by Ralph Dennis (Brash)

• Chai Another Day, by Leslie Budewitz (Seventh Street)

• Charlie-316, by Colin Conway and Frank Zafiro (Down & Out)

• City of Fear, by Larry Enmon (Crooked Lane)

• Conviction, by Denise Mina (Mulholland)

• The Cutting Room, by Ashley Dyer (Morrow)

• The Darwin Affair, by Tim Mason (Algonquin)

• Dead Big Dawg, by Victoria Houston (Gallery)

• Dead Wrong: The Continuing Story of City of Lies, Corruption and Cover-Up in the Notorious BIG Murder Investigation, by Randall Sullivan (Atlantic Monthly Press)*

• Death in Kew Gardens, by Jennifer Ashley (Berkley)

• Death in Summer, by Michael Theurillat (Manilla)

• Deep Waters: Mysteries on the Waves, edited by Martin Edwards (British Library)

• Die Behind the Wheel: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Steely Dan, edited by Brian Thornton (Down & Out)

• The Disappearance of Alistair Ainsworth, by Leonard
Goldberg (Minotaur)

• The Ditch, by Herman Koch (Hogarth)

• Drink to Every Beast, by Joel Burcat (Headline)

• Fake Like Me, by Barbara Bourland (Grand Central)

• A Family of Strangers, by Emilie Richards (Mira)

• The First Mistake, by Sandie Jones (Minotaur)

• The Friend, by Joakim Zander (Harper)

• Girl Gone Missing, by Marcie Rendon (Cinco Puntos Press)

• Girl in the Rearview Mirror, by Kelsey Rae Dimberg (Morrow)

• The Gone Dead, by Chanelle Benz (Ecco)

• Gone Too Long, by Lori Roy (Dutton)

• Grab a Snake by the Tail, by Leonardo Padura (Bitter Lemon Press)

• Her Daughter’s Mother, by Daniela Petrova (Putnam)

• Hitchcock and the Censors, by John Billheimer (University
Press of Kentucky)*

• I Know You, by Annabel Kantaria (Crooked Lane)

• I’ll Never Tell, by Catherine McKenzie (Lake Union)

• Joe Country, by Mick Herron (Soho Crime)

• Just One Bite, by Jack Heath (Hanover Square Press)

• Killing State, by Judith O'Reilly (Head of Zeus)

• A King Alone, by Jean Giono (NYRB Classics)

• The Last House Guest, by Megan Miranda (Simon & Schuster)

• The L.A. Quartet: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, White Jazz, by James Ellroy (Everyman’s Library)

• The Last of the Armageddon Wars, by Ralph Dennis (Brash)

• The Last Pirate of New York: A Ghost Ship, a Killer, and the Birth of a Gangster Nation, by Rich Cohen (Spiegel & Grau)*

• The Last Widow, by Karin Slaughter (HarperCollins)

• Like This Afternoon Forever, by Jaime Manrique (Kaylie Jones/Akashic)

• A Long Way Down, by Randall Silvis (Poisoned Pen Press)

• Man of the Year, by Caroline Louise Walker (Gallery)

• A Matter of Will, by Adam Mitzner (Thomas & Mercer)

• The Mausoleum, by David Mark (Severn House)

• A Merciful Promise, by Kendra Elliot (Montlake Romance)

• Miss Pinkerton, by Mary Roberts Rinehart (American Mystery Classics)

• Mrs. Mohr Goes Missing, by
Maryla Szymiczkowa (Oneworld)

• Murder in Bel-Air,
by Cara Black (Soho Crime)

• Murder in the Crooked House,
by Soji Shimada (Pushkin Vertigo)

• My Life as a Rat,
by Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco)

• A Nearly Normal Family, by M.T. Edvardsson (Celadon)

• Norco ’80: The True Story of the Most Spectacular Bank Robbery in American History, by Peter Houlahan (Counterpoint)*

• One Night at the Lake, by Bethany Chase (Ballantine)

• The Perfect Fraud, by Ellen LaCorte (Harper)

• The Perfect Plan, by Bryan Reardon (Dutton)

• A Philosophy of Ruin, by Nicholas Mancusi (Hanover Square Press)

• A Plain Vanilla Murder, by Susan Wittig Albert (Persevero Press)

• The Playground Murders, by Lesley Thomson (Head of Zeus)

• Rag and Bone, by Joe Clifford (Oceanview)

• Random Act, by Gerry Boyle (Islandport Press)

• Recursion, by Blake Crouch (Crown)

• The Right Sort of Man, by Allison Montclair (Minotaur)

• The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes: The Greatest Detective Stories, 1837-1914, edited by Graeme Davis (Pegasus)

• Rogue Strike, by David Ricciardi (Berkley)

• Rouge, by Richard Kirshenbaum (St. Martin’s Press)

• The Safe House, by Kiki Swinson (Dafina)

• Searching for Sylvie Lee, by Jean Kwok (Morrow)

• The Secret Mother, by Shalini Boland (Grand Central)

• Seven Ways to Get Rid of Harry, by Jen Conley (Down & Out)

• The Shallows, by Matt Goldman (Forge)

• Shoot the Bastards, by Michael Stanley (Poisoned Pen Press)

• A Shot of Murder, by J.A. Kazimer (Midnight Ink)

• Sleepless Summer, by Bram Dehouck (World Editions)

• Smallbone Deceased, by Michael Gilbert (Poisoned Pen Press)

• The Snakes, by Sadie Jones (Harper)

• The Spies of Shilling Lane, by Jennifer Ryan (Crown)

• The Starter Wife, by Nina Laurin (Grand Central)

• Ten Swedes Must Die, by Martin Österdahl (Amazon Crossing)

• Their Little Secret, by Mark Billingham (Atlantic Monthly Press)

• Thin Air, by Lisa Gray (Thomas & Mercer)

• This Storm, by James Ellroy (Knopf)

• Those People, by Louise Candlish (Berkley)

• Traitor’s Codex, by Jeri Westerson (Severn House)

• The Truffle Underground: A Tale of Mystery, Mayhem, and Manipulation in the Shadowy Market of the World’s Most Expensive Fungus, by Ryan Jacobs (Clarkson Potter)*

• The Ugly Truth, by Jill Orr (Prospect Park)

• Ungentlemanly Warfare, by Howard Linskey (No Exit Press)

• Unraveling, by Karen Lord (DAW)

• The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone, by Felicity McLean (Algonquin)

• Wherever She Goes, by Kelley Armstrong (Minotaur)

• The Woman in Our House, by Andrew Hart (Lake Union)

• The Woman Who Spoke to Spirits, by Alys Clare (Severn House)

• Your Life Is Mine, by Nathan Ripley (Atria)

JUNE (UK):

• The Art of Deception, by Louise Mangos (HQ)

• The Beijing Conspiracy, by Shamini Flint (Severn House)

• Black Summer, by M.W. Craven (Constable)

• The Boy Who Fell, by Jo Spain (Quercus)

• The Colours of Murder, by Ali Carter (Point Blank)

• Date with Poison, by Julia Chapman (Pan)

• Death at Burwell Farm, by Betty Rowlands (Bookouture)

• Death in Avignon, by Serena Kent (Orion)

• The End of the Line, by Gillian Galbraith (Polygon)

• The Exiled, by David Barbaree (Zaffre)

• A Fatal Game, by Nicholas Searle (Viking)

• The Friend Who Lied, by Rachel Amphlett (Saxon)

• Girl at Midnight, by Katarzyna Bonda (Hodder & Stoughton)

• I Looked Away, by Jane Corry (Penguin)

• The Killing Gene, by E.M. Davey (Duckworth)

• The Lies We Tell, by Niki Mackay (Orion)

• A Line of Forgotten Blood, by Malcolm Mackay (Head of Zeus)

• Mr. Campion’s Visit,
by Mike Ripley (Severn House)

• Mosaic, by Caro Ramsey (Severn House)

• The Most Difficult Thing,
by Charlotte Philby (Borough Press)

• The Mother-in-Law,
by Sally Hepworth (Hodder)

• Murder at Whitby Abbey, by Cassandra Clark (Severn House)

• Naked Flames,
by Graham Ison (Severn House)

• The Nanny, by Gilly Macmillan (Century)

• Now You See Me, by Chris McGeorge (Orion)

• The October Man, by Ben Aaronovitch (Gollancz)

• One Way Out, by A.A. Dhand (Bantam Press)

• Our Little Secrets, by Peter Ritchie (Black and White)

• The Perfect Betrayal, by Lauren North (Corgi)

• The Serpent’s Mark, by S.W. Perry (Corvus)

• Shadowplay, by Joseph O’Connor (Harvill Secker)

• The Sleepwalker, by Joseph Knox (Doubleday)

• Somewhere Close to Happy, by Lia Louis (Trapeze)

• Spring Cleaning, by Antonio Manzini (Harper)

• Tell Me Your Secret, by Dorothy Koomson (Headline Review)

• Trap Lane, by Stella Cameron (Creme de la Crime)

• The Unseen Hand, by Edward Marston (Allison and Busby)

• White Hot Silence, by Henry Porter (Quercus)

• Who Killed Ruby? by Camilla Way (HarperCollins)

• Who’s Sorry Now? by Maggie Robinson (Poisoned Pen Press)

• The Winker, by Andrew Martin (Corsair)

• Wolves at the Door, by Gunnar Staalesen (Orenda)

• Your Truth or Mine? by Trisha Sakhlecha (Macmillan)

JULY (U.S.):

• Almost Midnight, by Paul Doiron (Minotaur)

• American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century, by Maureen Callahan (Viking)*

• The Arrangement, by Robyn Harding (Gallery/Scout Press)

• Bad Axe County, by John Galligan (Atria)

• Bark of Night, by David Rosenfelt (Minotaur)

• Beijing Payback, by Daniel Nieh (Ecco)

• The Best of Manhunt, edited by Jeff Vorzimmer (Stark House Press)

• Betrayal in Time, by Julie McElwain (Pegasus)

• The Bird Boys, by Lisa Sandlin (Cinco Puntos Press)

• Black Sun, by Owen Matthews (Doubleday)

• Blindsided, by Kate Watterson (Crooked Lane)

• Blood in Eden, by Peter Tremayne (Severn House)

• Bodies from the Library 2: Forgotten Stories of Mystery and Suspense by the Queens of Crime and other Masters of Golden Age Detection, edited by Tony Medawar (Collins Crime Club)

• The Body in Griffith Park, by Jennifer Kincheloe (Seventh Street)

• Bones of the Innocent, by John A. Connell (Nailhead)

• A Capitol Death, by Lindsey Davis (Minotaur)

• The Chain, by Adrian McKinty (Mulholland)

• Chances Are …, by Richard Russo (Knopf)

• The Churchgoer, by Patrick Coleman (Harper Perennial)

• The Content Assignment, by Holly Roth (Dover)

• The Dead Girl in 2A, by Carter Wilson (Poisoned Pen Press)

• Dead Silence, by Wendy Corsi Staub (Morrow)

• Death in a Desert Land, by Andrew Wilson (Washington Square Press)

• Deep Dive, by Chris Knopf (Permanent Press)

• Dragonfly, by Leila Meacham (Grand Central)

• The Dreaming Tree, by Matthew Mather (Blackstone)

• The Escape Room, by Megan Goldin (St. Martin’s Press)

• First Tracks, by Catherine O’Connell (Severn House)

• Fragments of Fear, by Carrie Stuart Parks (Thomas Nelson)

• Frozen Secrets, by Michael L. Douglas (MCP)

• Game of Snipers, by Stephen Hunter (Putnam)

• The Ghost Clause, by Howard Norman (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

• Girls Like Us, by Cristina Alger (Putnam)

• Good Girl, Bad Girl, by Michael Robotham (Scribner)

• Goodnight Stranger, by Miciah Bay Gault (Park Row)

• The Gomorrah Gambit, by Tom Chatfield (Mulholland)

• Grave Expectations, by Heather Redmond (Kensington)

• Greasy Bend, by Kris Lackey (Blackstone)

• Gretchen, by Shannon Kirk (Thomas & Mercer)

• Growing Things and Other Stories, by Paul Tremblay (Morrow)

• The Hallows, by Victor Methos (Thomas & Mercer)

• The Hard Stuff, by David Gordon (Mysterious Press)

• The Haunted Martyr, by Kenneth Cameron (Felony & Mayhem)

• The Heart Keeper, by Alex Dahl (Berkley)

• Heart of Barkness, by Spencer Quinn (Forge)

• Heavy on the Dead, by G.M. Ford (Thomas & Mercer)

• Her Deadly Secrets, by Laura Griffin (Gallery)

• The Honorary Jersey Girl, by Albert Tucher (Shotgun Honey)

• Hope Rides Again, by Andrew Shaffer (Quirk)

• The Hound of Justice, by Claire O’Dell (Harper Voyager)

• A House Divided, by Jonathan F. Putnam (Crooked Lane)

• Invisible Blood, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Titan)

• Killer in the Carriage House, by Sheila Connolly (Minotaur)

• Killing with Confetti, by Peter Lovesey (Soho Crime)

• Knife, by Jo Nesbø (Knopf)

• Labyrinth, by Catherine Coulter (Gallery)

• Lady in the Lake,
by Laura Lippman (Morrow)

• The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt, by Andrea Bobotis (Sourcebooks Landmark)

• Layover, by David Bell (Berkley)

• Lock Every Door, by Riley Sager (Dutton)

• The Magic Chair Murder,
by Diane James (Severn House)

• Maigret’s Childhood Friend, by Georges Simenon (Penguin Classics)

• Marah Chase and the Conqueror’s Tomb, by Jay Stringer (Pegasus)

• Marked Men, by Chris Simms (Severn House)

• The Mountain Master of Sha Tin, by Ian Hamilton
(House of Anansi Press)

• Murderabilia, by Carl Vonderau (Midnight Ink)

• Murder at Crossways, by Alyssa Maxwell (Kensington)

• A Necessary Murder, by M.J. Tjia (Legend Press)

• The Need, by Helen Phillips (Simon & Schuster)

• Never Have I Ever, by Joshilyn Jackson (Morrow)

• Never Look Back, by Alison Gaylin (Morrow)

• The New Girl, by Daniel Silva (Harper)

• The Night of Rome, by Carlo Bonini and Giancarlo de
Cataldo (World Noir)

• Off the Grid, by Robert McCaw (Oceanview)

• One Good Deed, by David Baldacci (Grand Central)

• One Little Secret, by Cate Holahan (Crooked Lane)

• The Other Mrs. Miller, by Allison Dickson (Putnam)

• Paper Son, by S.J. Rozan (Pegasus)

• Pretty Revenge, by Emily Liebert (Gallery)

• Purgatory, by Guido Eekhaut (Skyhorse)

• The Reunion, by Guillaume Musso (Little, Brown)

• Rocket to the Morgue, by Anthony Boucher (American
Mystery Classics)

• The Russian, by Ben Coes (St. Martin’s Press)

• Season of Darkness, by Cora Harrison (Severn House)

• Second Sight, by Aoife Clifford (Pegasus)

• Shamed, by Linda Castillo (Minotaur)

• The Shameless, by Ace Atkins (Putnam)

• Sherlock Holmes: Adventures in the American West,
by John S. Fitzpatrick (Riverbend)

• Sherlock Holmes: The Sign of Seven, edited by Martin
Rosenstock (Titan)

• Sherlock Holmes vs. Cthulhu: The Adventure of the Innsmouth Mutations, by Lois H. Gresh (Titan)

• Shibumi (40th Anniversary Edition), by Trevanian (Rare Bird)

• A Shroud of Leaves, by Rebecca Alexander (Titan)

• A Sinner’s Prayer, by M.P. Wright (Black and White)

• Slugger, by Martin Holmén (Pushkin Vertigo)

• Smokescreen, by Iris Johansen (Grand Central)

• Snowball, by Jimmy Sangster (Brash)

• Someone We Know, by Shari Lapena (Pamela Dorman)

• Speaking of Summer, by Kalisha Buckhanon (Counterpoint)

• A Stranger on the Beach, by Michele Campbell (St. Martin’s Press)

• The Subject of Malice, by Cynthia Kuhn (Henery Press)

• Surfeit of Suspects, by George Bellairs (Poisoned Pen Press)

• Tangled Roots, by Marcia Talley (Severn House)

• Tell Me Everything, by Cambria Brockman (Ballantine)

• Temper, by Layne Fargo (Gallery/Scout Press)

• Theme Music, by T. Marie Vandelly (Dutton)

• This Side of Night, by J. Todd Scott (Putnam)

• Too Close, by Natalie Daniels (Harper)

• True Believer, by Jack Carr (Atria/Emily Bestler)

• Triumph of the Spider Monkey, by Joyce Carol Oates
(Hard Case Crime)

• The Two Lila Bennetts, by Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke (Lake Union)

• Under the Cold Bright Lights, by Garry Disher (Soho Crime)

• An Unsettled Grave, by Bernard Schaffer (Kensington)

• The Venetian Masquerade, by Philip Gwynne Jones (Constable)

• Watchers of the Dead, by Simon Beaufort (Severn House)

• We Went to the Woods, by Caite Dolan-Leach (Random House)

• Whisper Network, by Chandler Baker (Flatiron)

JULY (UK):

• The Bear Pit, by S.G. MacLean (Quercus)

• The Bone Fire, by S.D. Sykes (Hodder & Stoughton)

• A Breath on Dying Embers, by Denzil Meyrick (Polygon)

• Call Him Mine, by Tim MacGabhann (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

• The Closer I Get, by Paul Burston (Orenda)

• Come Back for Me,
by Heidi Perks (Century)

• Darkest Truth, by Catherine Kirwan (Arrow)

• Death’s Dark Valley,
by Paul Doherty (Headline)

• Don’t Tell Teacher, by Suzy K. Quinn (HQ)

• A Grave for Two, by Anne Holt (Corvus)

• The Hidden Wife,
by Amanda Reynolds (Wildfire)

• The Holiday, by T.M. Logan (Zaffre)

• The Home, by Sarah Stovell (Orenda)

• The Housemate, by C. L. Pattison (Headline)

• Hudson’s Kill, by Paddy Hirsch (Corvus)

• The July Girls, by Phoebe Locke (Wildfire)

• The Maltese Herring, by L.C. Tyler (Allison and Busby)

• Nothing to Hide, by James Oswald (Wildfire)

• On My Life, by Angela Clarke (Mulholland)

• The Poison Garden, by Alex Marwood (Sphere)

• The Possession, by Michael Rutger (Zaffre)

• The Room of the Dead, by M.R.C. Kasasian (Head of Zeus)

• Sanctuary, by Luca D’Andrea (MacLehose Press)

• A Secret Life, by Christobel Kent (Sphere)

• Short Range, by Stephen Leather (Hodder & Stoughton)

• Stone Cold Heart, by Caz Frear (Harper)

• Tightrope, by Marnie Riches (Trapeze)

AUGUST (U.S.):

• An Artful Assassin in Amsterdam, by Michael Grant (Severn House)

• Below the Line, by Howard Michael Gould (Dutton)

• Below the Radar, by Dana Ridenour (Wise Ink)

• A Better Man, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)

• The Birthday Girl, by Melissa de la Cruz (Dutton)

• The Bitterroots, by C.J. Box (Minotaur)

• The Broken Fixer, by Ralph Dennis (Brash)

• Careful What You Wish For, by Hallie Ephron (Morrow)

• The Catholic School, by Edoardo Albinati (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

• City of Pearl, by Alys Clare (Severn House)

• City of Windows, by Robert Pobi (Minotaur)

• The Cold Way Home, by Julia Keller (Minotaur)

• Cold Woods, by Karen Katchur (Thomas & Mercer)

• A Conspiracy of Wolves, by Candace Robb (Crème de la Crime)

• A Dance of Cranes, by Steve Burrows (Oneworld)

• A Dangerous Man, by Robert Crais (Putnam)

• A Darker State, by David Young (Bonnier Zaffre)

• Dead at First Sight, by Peter James (Pan Macmillan)

• A Deadly Deception, by Tessa Harris (Kensington)

• Death Comes to Dartmoor, by Vivian Conroy (Crooked Lane)

• Death Is a Private Eye, by Gil Brewer (Stark House Press)

• Devotion, by Madeline Stevens (Ecco)

• The Doll Factory, by Elizabeth Macneal (Atria/Emily Bestler)

• The Dragon Lady, by Louisa Treger (Bloomsbury Caravel)

• Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, by Olga
Tokarczuk (Riverhead)

• Empty Hearts, by Juli Zeh (Nan A. Talese)

• Forgotten Bones, by Vivian Barz (Thomas & Mercer)

• The Ghosts of Eden Park: The Bootleg King, the Women Who Pursued Him, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz-Age America,
by Karen Abbott (Crown)*

• The Girl on the Porch, by Richard Chizmar (Subterranean)

• The Girl Who Lived Twice, by David Lagercrantz (Knopf)

• Gumshoe Rock, by Rob Leininger (Oceanview)

• The Hidden Things, by Jamie Mason (Gallery)

• Inheritance Tracks, by Catherine Aird (Severn House)

• Invitation to Die, by Barbara Cleverly (Soho Crime)

• Killer’s Choice, by Louis Begley (Nan A. Talese)

• The Lake of Learning, by Steve Berry and M.J. Rose
(Evil Eye Concepts)

• The Last Good Guy, by T. Jefferson Parker (Putnam)

• The Last Widow, by Kari Slaughter (Morrow)

• Lost You, by Haylen Beck (Crown)

• Love and Death Among the Cheetahs,
by Rhys Bowen (Berkley)

• Maigret and the Killer,
by Georges Simenon (Penguin Classics)

• The Man in the White Linen Suit,
by David Handler (Morrow)

• The Man Who Wouldn’t Die,
by A.B. Jewell (Morrow)

• The Memory Police,
by Yoko Ogawa (Pantheon)

• Miami Midnight, by Alex Segura (Polis)

• The Missing Ones, by Edwin Hill (Kensington)

• Murder in the Mill-Race, by E.C.R. Lorac (Poisoned Pen Press)

• No Good Deed, by James Swain (Thomas & Mercer)

• The Passengers, by John Marrs (Berkley)

• The Peaceful Valley Crime Wave, by Bill Pronzini (Forge)

• The Pearl Dagger, by L.A. Chandler (Kensington)

• The Perfect Son, by Laura North (Berkley)

• The Perfect Wife, by J.P. Delaney (Ballantine)

• Play with Fire, by William Shaw (Mulholland)

• Relative Fortunes, by Marlowe Benn (Lake Union)

• The Runaway, by Hollie Overton (Redhook)

• Run, Hide, Fight Back, by April Henry (Henry Holt)

• Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession, by Rachel Monroe (Scribner)*

• The Second Biggest Nothing, by Colin Cotterill (Soho Crime)

• Simply Dead, by Eleanor Kuhns (Severn House)

• Singapore Sapphire, by A.M. Stuart (Berkley)

• The Sixth Conspirator, by Max Byrd (Permuted Press)

• Sticking It to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950 to 1980, edited by Andrew Nette and
Iain McIntyre (PM Press)*

• Stolen Things, by R.H. Herron (Dutton)

• The Swallows, by Lisa Lutz (Ballantine)

• The Third Mrs. Durst, by Ann Aguirre (Midnight Ink)

• Thirteen, by Steve Cavanagh (Flatiron)

• This Poison Will Remain, by Fred Vargas (Penguin)

• Tin Badges, by Lorenzo Carcaterra (Ballantine)

• The Turn of the Key, by Ruth Ware (Gallery/Scout Press)

• Twisted at the Root, by Ellen Hart (Minotaur)

• Vanishing in the Haight, by Max Tomlinson (Oceanview)

• The Warehouse, by Rob Hart (Crown)

• The Warlow Experiment, by Alix Nathan (Doubleday)

• What You Did, by Claire McGowan (Thomas & Mercer)

• The Whisperer, by Karin Fossum (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

• The Whisper Man, by Alex North (Celadon)

• The Wolf Wants In, by Laura McHugh (Spiegel & Grau)

• The Woman in the Park, by Teresa Sorkin and
Tullan Holmqvist (Beaufort)

AUGUST (UK):

• The Art of Dying, by Douglas Lindsay (Mulholland)

• The Art of Dying, by Ambrose Parry (Canongate)

• At Your Door, by J.P. Carter (Avon)

• Bad Day at the Vulture Club, by Vaseem Khan (Mulholland)

• The Bastille Spy, by C.S. Quinn (Corvus)

• Black Ops, by Chris Ryan (Coronet)

• The Burning Land, by George Alagiah (Canongate)

• The Cabin, by Jørn Lier Horst (Michael Joseph)

• Control, by Hugh Montgomery (Zaffre)

• The Darker Arts, by Oscar de Muriel (Orion)

• The Dirty Dozen, by Lynda La Plante (Zaffre)

• Don’t Say a Word, by Rebecca Tinnelly (Hodder)

• Drowned Lives, by Stephen Booth (Sphere)

• The Family Upstairs, by Lisa Jewell (Century)

• Fugitive 13, by Rob Sinclair (Orion)

• How the Dead Speak, by Val McDermid (Little, Brown)

• Ice Cold Heart, by P.J. Tracy (Michael Joseph)

• Impolitic Corpses, by Paul Johnston (Severn House)

• I Spy, by Claire Kendal (HarperCollins)

• Laetitia Rodd and the Case of the Wandering Scholar,
by Kate Saunders (Bloomsbury)

• The Murder Map, by Danny Miller (Bantam Press)

• Night, by Bernard Minier (Mulholland)

• Sanctuary, by V.V. James (Gollancz)

• The Sanctuary Murders, by Susanna Gregory (Sphere)

• Take It Back, by Kia Abdullah (HQ)

• Then She Vanishes, by Claire Douglas (Penguin)

• Time for the Dead, by Lin Anderson (Macmillan)

• The Victim, by G.D. Sanders (Avon)

• The White Feather Killer, by R.N. Morris (Severn House)

When compiling this list, I sought a mix of darker, hard-edged crime and lighter-weight fiction, historical and modern stories, and both plot-driven and character-propelled yarns. If you believe I’ve missed mentioning any works of particular note, please let us all know about them in the Comments section at the end of this post.