Mystery Books To Read if You Love Only Murders in the Building

When Dorothy’s obnoxious date is found dead in a hotel freezer, it not only ruins a gorgeous cheesecake but threatens the elaborate St. Olaf-themed wedding Rose is hosting. With every guest a suspect (especially Dorothy) and a marriage on the line, the four besties must ID the real killer, get the should-be-happy couple down the aisle, and make sure nobody from St. Olaf gets lost in the wilds of Miami. It’s up to the Golden Girls to sleuth out a way for friendship and love to win the day!

No visitors. No nights spent away from the apartment. No disturbing the other residents, all of whom are rich or famous or both. These are the only rules for Jules Larsen’s new job as an apartment sitter at the Bartholomew, one of Manhattan’s most high-profile and mysterious buildings. But the Bartholomew is not what it seems … Searching for the truth, Jules digs into the Bartholomew’s sordid past and into the secrets kept within its walls. What she discovers pits Jules against the clock as she races to unmask a killer, expose the building’s hidden past, and escape the Bartholomew before her temporary status becomes permanent.

When widowed 60-year-old Vera Wong begins another mundane morning by opening up her failing tea shop, she finds her first new customer in years — dead. After calling the police, she takes it upon herself to draw an outline of the body and slip the USB drive that the late Marshall Chen was holding into evidence for herself. Vera starts sleuthing, and after narrowing down her list of suspects — which includes Marshall’s emotionally abused wife and scorned twin brother. Vera calls upon all four suspects to get to the truth. But as Vera pries into their lives, they become much like the family she had been missing all along. How could she ever send one of them to prison now?

Retired nurse, avid gardener, and renowned cake maker Miss Hortense has lived in Bigglesweigh, a quiet suburb of Birmingham, England, since she emigrated from Jamaica in 1960. She was once a member of the Pardner network — a local group of Black investors that she helped found. Until, that is, she was unceremoniously ousted from its ranks. But when an unidentified man is found dead in the home of one of the Pardner members, Miss Hortense finds her long-buried past rushing back. The first novel from a bold, brilliant new voice, A Murder for Miss Hortense introduces a fearless sleuth whom readers will never forget.

“A heartwarming mystery with a lovable oddball at its center” (Real Simple), this cozy whodunit introduces a one-of-a-kind heroine who will steal your heart. A Clue-like, locked-room mystery and a journey of the spirit, The Maid explores what it means to be the same as everyone else and yet entirely different — and reveals that all mysteries can be solved through connection to the human heart.

From the critically acclaimed author of In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd comes a new novel about the search for freedom and the power of community that spans decades of residents in one Florida apartment.

Everyone in Fairview knows the story. Pretty and popular high school senior Andie Bell was murdered by her boyfriend, Sal Singh, who then killed himself. And five years later, Pip sees how the tragedy still haunts her town. But she can’t shake the feeling that there was more to what happened that day. Now a senior herself, Pip decides to reexamine the closed case for her final project and soon discovers a trail of dark secrets that might actually prove Sal innocent … and the line between past and present begins to blur. Someone in Fairview doesn’t want Pip digging around for answers, and now her own life might be in danger.

Like Oliver and Charles, this group of retirees pairs up with their own version of Mabel — the young Police Chief Donna De Freitas — to solve mysteries. Every Thursday, Elizabeth, Ron, Ibrahim, and Joyce meet in the Jigsaw Room of their retirement home to work on unsolved crimes. When a property developer dies at the retirement village, the Thursday Murder Club is on the case — but they need some help. Recovering from a gunshot wound, PC De Freitas gets a little more excitement back in her life once she starts feeding the group insider information. With her help, the club might be able to solve the case before the rest of the police department — but not before another person dies.

It is the summer of 1950 — and at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw, young Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events: A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Then, hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”

Older women often feel invisible, but sometimes that’s their secret weapon. They’ve spent their lives as the deadliest assassins in a clandestine international organization, but now that they’re sixty years old, four women friends can’t just retire — it’s kill or be killed in this action-packed thriller by New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award-nominated author Deanna Raybourn.

In the “pitch perfect” (Entertainment Weekly) follow up to Tana French’s bestseller In the Woods, Cassie Maddox has transferred out of the Dublin Murder Squad — until an urgent telephone call brings her back to an eerie crime scene. The victim looks exactly like Cassie and carries ID identifying herself as Alexandra Madison, an alias Cassie once used as an undercover cop. Suddenly, Cassie is back undercover, to find out not only who killed this young woman, but, more importantly, who she was.

When crime novel enthusiasts from K University travel to Tsunojima island for a murder-mystery-themed trip, they didn’t anticipate the stories they’ve read would come to life. While the mainland has become infamous for an unsolved murder case, the seven students never thought that the murderer would follow them to the isolated island. Without any phone or internet connection, there’s no way for them to call for help once the students start getting picked off one by one. Shifting between timelines that follow the students’ deadly trip and the mainland massacre from the year before, the murders in the Decagon House give the ones in the Arconia a run for its money.

The setting is Alexandria, Mississippi, where one Mother’s Day a little boy named Robin Cleve Dufresnes was found hanging from a tree in his parents’ yard. Twelve years later Robin’s murder is still unsolved and his family remains devastated. So it is that Robin’s sister Harriet — unnervingly bright, insufferably determined, and unduly influenced by the fiction of Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson — sets out to unmask his killer … Filled with hairpin turns of plot and “a bustling, ridiculous humanity worthy of Dickens” (The New York Times Book Review), The Little Friend is a work of myriad enchantments by a writer of prodigious talent.

It’s 1964 in the tiny town of Eastport, Maine, and Billie McCadie is bored to death. That is until she receives a love letter and an engagement ring for a perfect stranger, only to see that same woman murdered the very next day. What follows is an intoxicating cocktail of stalking, blackmail, Jell-O salads, and champagne secrets. Everyone is a suspect. Everyone has a secret. And (strangely) everyone has a boat. But who is willing to kiss and tell? A love letter to uncivilized behavior, Etiquette for Lovers and Killers blends mystery and romance into a witty, twisty, murderous delight that aches for better manners.

Librarian Alice Pepper always had a natural talent for figuring out people and puzzles in the small Oregon town of West Hazel. But as a mystery permeates the quiet Pacific Northwestern community, murder is a challenge she’s not prepared to solve …

An exclusive thriller writer’s retreat hosted on a private island turns lethal when one of the authors is found murdered. With a storm isolating the island, and the body count rising, can they outwit a killer who knows literally every trick in the book?