Mystic Murders: 6 Spellbinding Mystery Books with Tarot, Astrology, and Seances

This is the first book in the Nero Award-winning Pentecost and Parker series. It also happens to be the best homage I’ve seen to Rex Stout’s great Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.

Willowjean “Will” Parker is a former knife-throwing circus performer taken under Lillian Pentecost's wing, a brilliant investigator. They’ve been hired to solve the murder of Abigail Collins, a wealthy widow who threw a Halloween party to connect with her husband after his suicide exactly one year ago.

Instead of spirits, the partygoers found Abigail dead with a bloody crystal ball nearby. Rumors abound that her late husband was taking his revenge, but Parker and Pentecost think there is a very real, flesh-and-blood human behind the heiress’ untimely death.

The fifth book, Death in the Frame, comes out in February of 2025, and it’s quite the corker, like every book in the series.

The writer of the Award-Winning Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery series, Mia P. Manansala, is releasing her first young adult novel, Death in the Cards.

Danika Dizon is a high school student with a talent for tarot cards. However, when she reads for a fellow student and draws the Death card, the client disappears the next day with no explanation.

The younger sister of her client asks Dizon to figure out what happened to her sister, which allows Dizon to show her private investigator mother and mystery writer father that she can solve crimes. But reading tarot and finding a missing girl are very different skills.

One of the really cool things about this book is that, aside from the initial reading, Manansala read the cards for all the subsequent readings in the book. Now that’s bringing tarot into the mystery world!

This book is set to be published in May 2025.

While some detectives use tarot cards, private investigator David Lowell uses astrology. He’s been brought onto the case of a murdered state judge by his daughter, defense attorney Melinda.

Melinda's client, Joanna “Johnny” Colbert, has been accused of the crime after she was overheard threatening the judge before their death. After looking at her star chart, Lowell believes Johnny is innocent.

With astrology on his side, he sets off to find out who really killed the judge.

This is the first of the three-book Starlight Detective Agency series.

Written only a few years after the Stonewall Riots, this book features Ronald Cornell, a gay man whose partner has been murdered. Unfortunately, the cop assigned to the case is homophobic.

Determined to solve his lover’s murder, Ronald comes up with a list of six murder suspects. After drawing up the list, he believes that he can divine the murderer if he has their star charts.

Ronald meets disgraced ex-cop Martin Tobin, who wants nothing to do with the case, much less an astrological detective. But Tobin finds himself drawn into the investigation, partially to keep Ronald out of danger, but also due to his sense of justice.

This is the fourth in the five-book Mitch Tobin series, all published between 1966 and 1972.

Last but not least, we’ve got the second book in the Secret Staircase Mystery series.

Tempest Raj, the former magician, has been using her talents to help her family’s Secret Staircase Construction company. They’ve just finished a design project that brings a love of mystery books into a series of rooms for their client, Lavinia.

Secret compartments and doorways abound in the space. To celebrate her new abode and her new life without her cheating husband, Corbin Colt, Lavinia wants to hold a seance.

Unfortunately, the seance is interrupted when Colt’s body falls onto the table, an impossible crime.

When Raj’s grandfather is accused of the crime, Raj has to combine her magician and detective skills to find out how Colt ended up miles away from his home, dead.

The third Secret Staircase Mystery, A Midnight Puzzle, came out earlier this year. Book four, The Library Game, is due in March of 2025.

Katie True is not living the dream. She’s working at a Russian souvenir store at the mall, another dead-end job in a string of dead-end jobs.

She didn’t finish college and has no real plan. The only thing she really enjoys is reading tarot cards, soaking in the thrill of delivering answers to her querents.

When a man comes into the shop, bleeding and disoriented, she offers him a tarot card reading. It seems like an easy $20.

But it turns out that he has evidence of a murder. The murder of True’s best and only friend, Marley.

True decides to try to figure out who killed her friend, even if it means further ripping apart her tattered life.

It’s a brilliant book I highly recommend.