Gripping New Mystery and Thriller Books Coming This December

There’s nothing more scandalous in 1898 than a female detective. Even in Chicago the title raises eyebrows. But Harriet Morrow doesn’t care. She has a younger brother to support and no intentions of finding a husband.

Hours into the job, she’s sent to the grand estate of Pearl Bartlett. A young maid is missing, or so Pearl says. But Pearl has a reputation of sending detectives on wild goose chases.

Is this an assignment designed for failure? Harriet refuses to give up, following the clues that lead her to the truth and put her in terrible danger.

Madeline Brimley is ready to embrace her second career as owner of a bookshop in Enigma, Georgia. The inheritance happened just in time, given how her acting career is hardly paying the bills.

When she decides to plant some azaleas in front of the shop, she accidentally digs up a body instead. That’s shocking enough, but then her close friend Gloria is arrested for the murder.

Determined to prove Gloria is innocent, Madeline starts digging for clues. The deeper she goes, the more danger she’s in until she decides to set a trap and find the real killer before it’s too late.

After the Spanish flu and other tragedies rip apart the world of Harriet Stone and a twelve-year-old orphan, the pair head to Harlem where Harriet’s cousin, Junetta Plum, owns a boarding house for independent women. Junetta has a sharpness to her that sets Harriet on edge.

And after she hears a late-night argument her worst suspicions are confirmed when she finds Junetta dead the next morning.

Not knowing if her life is danger, Harriet embarks on an investigation to learn who her cousin actually was and why someone wanted to kill her.

1985 became known as the Year of the Spy. It’s the height of the Cold War, after all, and Russian spies are everywhere. Including Atlanta. Fourteen-year-old Peter Bennett is convinced his mom’s new boyfriend works for the KGB and is using her to get intel on her Scientific Atlanta work.

No one believes him until a woman working at the lab is killed. Soon, the city is brimming with FBI agents and operatives. As President Reagan prepares to meet Mikhael Gorbechav in a historic summit, Peter, a muckraker, a drag queen, and an FBI agent all find themselves against a nest of Russian spies.

And what happens in Atlanta might change everything.

Lucy lives with her three best friends. The house might be glamorous and in the heart of Georgetown, but it’s all a façade. Inside, the house is decaying. Still, the group of girls are living the post-grad life of their dreams complete with exciting jobs, love lives, and each other.

Until Josh, an investigative journalist from a powerful political family and the queen-bee Addie’s ex-boyfriend, goes missing. Lucy becomes obsessed with knowing what happened.

But the more the girls pry, the more police suspect they know more than they’re telling.

And the pressure starts to reveal cracks in Lucy’s own carefully constructed past. Secrets that can destroy them all.

Every year, Marlowe returns to her family’s Hudson Valley farm for the holidays. It’s a place that haunts her, given her teenage best friend disappeared from their home twenty years earlier.

When Marlowe and her brothers discover another dead body on the property and the man is connected to the disappearance, Marlowe is convinced he knows that happened to her friend.

But the more she looks into both the dead man and her missing friend, the more she realizes her memories might not be as clear as she once thought. 

And when she finally stumbles on the truth, she’ll be forced to make a choice that will change her life forever.

Kirby Cornell isn’t exactly living her best life. She lives in a terrible apartment with awful roommates in a town only on the map thanks to a serial killer. Her job is a disaster, her landlord is a sleaze, and then there’s the awful thing that happened in the past.

But when a new message from an ex-roommate pops into the group chat telling them that they’re all going to die, things go from bad to worse.

Because the threat isn’t even the most alarming part of the text. It’s that the person who sent it is dead.

When billionaire couple Francis and Lila Cameron take their luxurious private sailboat out to celebrate their two children’s high school graduation, no one blinks an eye.

Not until no one has heard for them for three weeks and the captain isn’t responding to radio calls. But when the sailboat is found empty and drifting off the coast of Florida, everyone is left with more questions than answers.

Where are the Camerons? And what exactly happened on that boat?

Soraya Matas has landed the perfect job. She’s going to be the personal maid to the eccentric Mrs. Hattingh in a beautiful, if not mildly decrepit, home close to Soraya’s family home.

The two fall into a steady rhythm. Mrs. Hattingh waits for her son to arrive from London, and in the meantime, she offers to write letters to Soraya’s fiancé on her behalf. Every week, the pair sit.

Mrs. Hattingh writing while Soraya dictates. It’s a ritual that binds the women together. It’s also the thing that might irrevocably tear them apart.

Juliette Winters’ publishing career is on the line. Her company is on the brink of financial ruin and she has put everything into a single book deal. Business magnate Warren Ellington has promised her exclusive rights to his explosive tell-all memoir about the ultra-private country club, Pacific Pines. 

When Warren is killed and the memoir stolen, Juliette goes undercover and infiltrates the club herself.

But when more people die, it looks like Juliette herself is the one with the biggest motive. If she can’t find the killer soon, the book that was supposed to save her just might do the opposite instead.