7 Mystery & Thriller Books That Blend Fashion, Style, and Suspense
By Erin Roll
To an onlooker, the world of fashion can seem to be a real-life fairy tale: a glamorous world of beautiful clothes, elegant models, and glittering parties.
But couture can be cutthroat–often in the most literal sense. And designs for clothing and designs for devious crimes can go hand-in-hand–or hand-in-custom-fitted-glove.
Take a seat along the runway and check out this lineup of murder, mystery, and mayhem.
It is more than just the threads of high fashion and the ties of family that bind three generations of women in the Bricard family; a well-kept secret and a troubling mystery also hang over Mizza, Astrid, and Blythe. Mizza, an orphan in 1917 Paris, vows to make a name for herself in the world of fashion, whatever it takes, and to be remembered in her own right. Astrid, estranged from her mother, arrives in 1970s New York and prepares to make a splash at a high-stakes fashion show. But she mysteriously vanishes, leaving behind only one item: a distinctive silk dress. In the present, Blythe doesn’t want anything to do with the fashion world that defined her mother and grandmother yet, but finds herself being drawn back in. And in doing so, she will discover far more about her family than anyone ever knew.
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Samara has hit the jackpot, or so she thinks. She’s scored a dream job at the House of Mota, an exclusive fashion house in California, and she has a promising new boyfriend. But the fairy tale turns into a horror story before too long. With an important fashion show coming up, the stress and anxiety are almost unbearable. And Samara starts hearing and seeing strange, terrible things that she can’t understand. She starts to dig deeper, and discovers that many monsters are lurking behind the facade of glamor and fashion at the House of Mota.
Format
Hardcover
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Anya St. Clair, fashion editor and social media influencer par excellence, is determined to be at the top of the food chain in the world of fashion–never mind how many people she’s trampled to get where she is. Only one person stands between Anya and her goal, and that’s the glamorous and even more influential Sarah Taft. Anya’s determined to befriend Sarah, whatever it takes. But when Anya and Sarah find themselves competing for the same sought-after promotion, the workplace rivalry threatens to become deadly serious.
Format
Hardcover
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around September 11, 2018. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
Brandi Maxwell has landed a job that many would envy, working at the fashion house of Simon Van Doren. But the job is not all that it’s cracked up to be; Brandi gets landed with the most unpleasant jobs, like cleaning vomit off of runway outfits. Even worse, as a young Black woman, she finds herself on the receiving end of microaggressions like comments about her hair. Meanwhile, Taylor Van Doren, the girl who seems to have everything, is about to lose everything. If she fails one more drug test, her father will take her massive trust fund away and give it to charity. And to add insult to injury, Van Doren’s about to get married again, to a girl Taylor’s age. Taylor starts scheming and plotting to keep her lifestyle, and Brandi will end up caught in a deadly, treacherous web.
Format
Trade Paperback
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Samantha Kidd’s new job as a trend specialist in her Pennsylvania hometown is not getting off to a good start. For one thing, she has just found her new boss’s dead body in the elevator. Two, said body is removed from the scene before the police arrive. And three, the police have her on their list of prime suspects for a variety of reasons, including the fact that HR doesn’t have her listed as an employee yet. So what’s a fashion expert to do in order to clear her name? Samantha starts digging through her boss’s circle of colleagues and rivals to see who may have had it in for him, and to see who wants to frame her in the process.
Format
Trade Paperback
(New Edition)
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Lacey Smithsonian wants more out of life than being a reporter covering the fashion beat in Washington, D.C.: a city that is definitely NOT Paris or Milan. In spite of some truly heroic scoops, her journalism career hasn’t gone anywhere, so she decides to do some training as a private eye, in the hopes that it will help her land a “hard” news beat. She gets WAY more than she bargained for. Her new classmates are absolutely wild, the class courses have her in over her head, and, oh yes, she discovers a corpse in a fancy sports car and gets shot at herself. It’s up to Lacey to unravel this crazy mystery, and to do it in style.
Format
Trade Paperback
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around September 13, 2019. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
Paris in 1925 is the place to be for reporter Abigail Dixon, who’s just traded her old beat in Chicago for the whirl of the French capital’s fashion scene. It’s a glamorous life, rubbing shoulders with the elite and visiting the highest of the haute couture fashion houses. But the party comes to an abrupt end when Abigail stumbles across the body of her estranged stepmother, and the police have her down as the prime suspect. Abigail sets to work trying to clear her name and find the true killer, with help from a veritable Who’s Who of new friends like Coco Chanel and Ernest Hemingway, and staying ahead of someone who probably wants her dead as well.
Format
Trade Paperback
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around May 8, 2024. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
