Crime Fiction Books In Stores This March
March Madness isn’t only for basketball. Get pumped for these upcoming March book releases. We’re taking a trip off the court to solve some mysteries. In Reno, a woman deals with a serial killer who has an unusual fixation on her life. A woman has to find the killer among her customers in her tea shop in San Francisco. A man escapes prison to find the truth about his supposedly murdered son and clear his name. Characters are forced to go head to head with their past and must learn to confront their inner demons to make it out alive. Here are some of our favorite mysteries & thrillers coming to stores this March.
David Burroughs and his wife Cheryl lived a dream life with their three-year-old son Matthew in the suburbs. Until one day, David woke to discover Matthew’s murder while David was asleep just down the hall. Half a decade later, David is wrongly accused and convicted of the murder. He’s serving out his time in a maximum security prison and the world seems to have moved on. Until Cheryl’s younger sister, Rachel, makes a surprise visit to show David a strange photograph of a boy in the background who bears an eerie resemblance to Matthew. David plans an escape and is set on finding the answers to save his son and clear his name.
Meg, Charlie Garner’s ex-wife, has been missing for over a week and has all her possession packed up in boxes. Charlie has a bad feeling and suspects something sinister is afoot. Meg was last see working at the local donut shop. It’s a shop run by a shadow group people refer to as “The Saucer People”: a space-age, evangelist cult who believe their compound to be the site of an extraterrestrial Second Coming. Charlie pairs up with his brother, Felix, and a beautiful journalist, Amelia “Scrappy” Moon, to uncover the truth. It’s a dangerous quest, but Charlie knows he must stay on course if he wants to rescue Meg.
December, 1959: The Korean War rages on.
Protesting the bloody conflict, a Korean-American man by the name of William Yang suddenly blows himself up in the middle of a Los Angeles department store just before Christmas, which leads the U.S. government to reopen the internment camps used during World War II. President Joseph McCarthy's America has never been more on edge, paranoid, and above all, dangerous.
Several weeks later, a woman hires Morris Baker, now working as a private investigator, to track down her missing husband — Henry Kissinger—who may have a shadowy connection to Yang's purported terrorist attack. The ensuing investigation for the missing State Department consultant working for Vice President Richard Nixon sends Baker on another thrilling adventure of deceit, intrigue, sex, murder, and conspiracy where the safety of the entire world may hang in the balance.
Despite chilling memories of his previous life when he was at the center of a tragedy, private investigator Henry Kimball decides to take Joan’s case of proving her husband is cheating. What should have been a simple case becomes complicated when Kimball finds two bodies in a suburban home with a “FOR SALE” sign out front. Suddenly, it feels like the past coming back to haunt him and Kimball’s forced to revisit on of the worst days of his life to uncover the truth. Could Joan be hiding something? Kimball teams up with Lily Kintner, his old nemesis, and as they get closer to the truth, the murderer gets closer to him.
In this highly anticipated mystery thriller, we follow Jenna, Donnie, and Nico. Once best friends bonded by abuse and neglect during their time in Savior House, a group home for parentless teens. The disappearance of several kids led to the home shutting down, forcing the group to split. They went on to live accomplished lives and are reunited when they find out someone is trying to kill them. The group will have to revisit and confront their shared past if they want to survive.
In this Dickensian fantasy of illusion and charm, we begin in an unnamed city nicknamed “the Fairest”. Dora, a former domestic servant at the university, secretly desires to find where her brother went after he died and believes the answer is within The Museum of Psykical Research, where he worked. Set in a city amidst a revolutionary upheaval, Dora ends up finding the museum burnt to the ground. Robert Barnes, her lover and a student radical, finds himself in a position of authority and offers her The National Museum of the Worker. Dora realizes the museum isn’t what it first appears to be and as she searches for the truth, she’ll unravel a monstrous conspiracy that will bring her to the edge of worlds.
From the bestselling author of Dial A for Aunties, Jesse Q. Sutanto introduces us to Vera Wong, a lonely lady of a certain age who owns a forgotten tea shop in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Her life is turned upside down when she stumbles on a dead man in the middle of her tea shop one morning. In his hand, a flash drive. Despite calling the police like any good citizen would, she swipes the flash drive because she’s certain she’d do a better job at finding the killer. She knows the killer will be back to get the flash drive, so she stays watchful of customers coming in. What she doesn’t expect is forming friendships with them and starting to care for every one of them. Will she end up having to give away a newfound friend to the police?
In this second installment of the Secret Staircase Mysteries, the Secret Staircase Construction just finished their first project—a classic mystery novel-themed home interior—with Tempest Raj officially part of the team. Now, their client is ready to celebrate her new life and wants to hold a mock séance to remove any trace of her cheating ex-husband who is also a famous mystery author, Corbin Colt. Tempest and Grandpa Ash are invited and it’s all lighthearted fun until Corbin’s dead body crashes the party. The only suspects are around the séance table and suspicion quickly falls on Grandpa Ash. Tempest must figure out what really happened to clear his name.
Sam Montgomery can’t get her brother’s words out of her mind as she drives to see her mother. For this rare extended visit, it’ll just be the two of them drinking boxed wine and watching murder mystery shows. But once she goes home, it’s not what she remembered it to be. The walls are painted a sterile white and her mother jumps at the smallest noises. When Sam steps out for a breather, she finds a jar of teeth hidden beneath bushes and cultures circling the garden. Sam will need to go digging for the truth to find out what’s frightening her mom in her own home.
After getting nearly fired from the NYPD, Sienna Walker doesn’t really have a choice when she’s given a second chance at the one place the vowed never to return to. Reno, Nevada is home sweet home, even though it reminds her of a painful familial past and a broken engagement. What makes it even more haunting is Sienna’s first cast—a serial killer with a curious obsession with her. As the killer’s clues get more and more person, Sienna’s only sure of one thing. It’s someone close to home.
Antonia Scott—the daughter of a British diplomat and a Spanish mother—has a gifted forensic mind, whose ability to reconstruct crimes and solve baffling murders is legendary. But after a personal trauma, she's refused to continue her work or even leave her apartment.
Jon Gutierrez, a police officer in Bilbao—disgraced, suspended, and about to face criminal charges—is offered a chance to salvage his career by a secretive organization that works in the shadows to direct criminal investigations of a highly sensitive nature. All he has to do is succeed where many others have failed: Convince a recalcitrant Antonia to come out of her self-imposed retirement, protecting her and helping her investigate a new, terrifying case.
The case is a macabre, ritualistic murder—a teen-aged boy from a wealthy family whose body was found without a drop of blood left in it. But the murder is just the start. A high-ranking executive and daughter of one of the richest men in Spain is kidnapped, a crime which is tied to the previous murder. Behind them both is a hidden mastermind with even more sinister plans. And the only person with a chance to see the connections, solve the crimes and successfully match wits with the killer before tragedy strikes again...is Antonia Scott.
Psychology student Olivia Eriksen’s family is notorious among true-crime buffs. Faced with a legacy of psychopathy that spans generations, Olivia has spent much of her academic life trying to answer one chilling question: Nature or nurture?
Although she’s kept a safe distance from her blood relatives for years, Olivia agrees to attend a weekend reunion. After all, her fiancé is eager to meet his future in-laws, and the gathering may give her a chance to interview her elusive grandfather about the family traits.
But nothing is ever peaceful among the Eriksens for long. Olivia’s favorite cousin is found dead in a nearby lake. Then another family member disappears. As a violent storm isolates the group further, Olivia’s fears rise faster than the river.
And an uninvited guest is about to join the party. True-crime podcaster Birdie Tan has uncovered a disturbing mystery in her latest investigation—and she’s following it right to the Eriksens’ mountain resort. There’s a deadly twist in the family plot that even Olivia doesn’t see coming.
Every summer for the past ten years, six awe-struck bakers have descended on the grounds of Grafton, the leafy and imposing Vermont estate that is not only the filming site for “Bake Week” but also the childhood home of the show’s famous host, celebrated baker Betsy Martin.
The author of numerous bestselling cookbooks and hailed as “America’s Grandmother,” Betsy Martin isn’t as warm off-screen as on, though no one needs to know that but her. She has always demanded perfection, and gotten it with a smile, but this year something is off. As the baking competition commences, things begin to go awry. At first, it’s merely sabotage—sugar replaced with salt, a burner turned to high—but when a body is discovered, everyone is a suspect.
A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand’s South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. For years, the group has struggled to break even. To occupy the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last.
But the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine also has an interest in the place: he has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker, or so he tells Birnam’s founder, Mira, when he catches her on the property. He’s intrigued by Mira, and by Birnam Wood; although they’re poles apart politically, it seems Lemoine and the group might have enemies in common. But can Birnam trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust one another?
New in Paperback
The seductive and relentless figure of Raymond Chandler’s detective, Philip Marlowe, is vividly re-imagined in present-day Los Angeles. Here is a city of scheming Malibu actresses, ruthless gang members, virulent inequality, and washed-out police. Acclaimed and award-winning novelist Joe Ide imagines a Marlowe very much of our time: he’s a quiet, lonely, and remarkably capable and confident private detective, though he lives beneath the shadow of his father, a once-decorated LAPD homicide detective, famous throughout the city, who’s given in to drink after the death of Marlowe’s mother.
Marlowe, against his better judgement, accepts two missing person cases, the first a daughter of a faded, tyrannical Hollywood starlet, and the second, a British child stolen from his mother by his father. At the center of The Goodbye Coast is Marlowe’s troubled and confounding relationship with his father, a son who despises yet respects his dad, and a dad who’s unable to hide his bitter disappointment with his grown boy.
It’s the house of their dreams. Former marine Harry and his wife, Sasha, have packed up their life and their golden retriever, Dash, and fled the corporate rat race to live off the land in rural Idaho. Their breathtaking new home sits on more than forty acres of meadow, aspen trees, and pine forest in the Teton Valley. Even if their friends and family think it’s a strange choice for an up-and-coming pair of urban professionals, Harry and Sasha couldn’t be happier about the future they’re building, all by their lonesome.
That is, until their nearest neighbors, Dan and Lucy Steiner, come bearing more than housewarming gifts. Dan and Lucy warn Harry and Sasha of a malevolent spirit that lives in the valley, one that with every season will haunt them in fresh, ever-more-diabolical ways. At first, it seems like an old wives’ tale. But when spring arrives, so does the first evil manifestation, challenging everything Harry and Sasha thought they knew about the world.
When FDLE special agent Amy Larson discovers a small horse figurine amid the bloody aftermath of a gang massacre in the Everglades, she recognizes it immediately. The toy is the calling card of the apocalypse cult that Amy and her partner, FBI special agent Hunter Forrest, have been investigating, and it can only mean one thing: this wasn’t an isolated skirmish—it was the beginning of a war.
As tensions between rival gangs rise, so does the body count, and Amy and Hunter’s investigation leads them to a violent, far-right extremist group who are in no hurry to quell the civil unrest. With a deadly puppet master working to silence their every lead, it’s a race against the clock to figure out who’s been pulling the strings and put a stop to the escalating cartel turf war before the Everglades run red.
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Emily Hoang is a writer and editor, who is obsessed with haunted houses, ghosts, and dreams. More info can be found on her website.
Antonia Scott—the daughter of a British diplomat and a Spanish mother—has a gifted forensic mind, whose ability to reconstruct crimes and solve baffling murders is legendary. But after a personal trauma, she's refused to continue her work or even leave her apartment.
Jon Gutierrez, a police officer in Bilbao—disgraced, suspended, and about to face criminal charges—is offered a chance to salvage his career by a secretive organization that works in the shadows to direct criminal investigations of a highly sensitive nature. All he has to do is succeed where many others have failed: Convince a recalcitrant Antonia to come out of her self-imposed retirement, protecting her and helping her investigate a new, terrifying case.
The case is a macabre, ritualistic murder—a teen-aged boy from a wealthy family whose body was found without a drop of blood left in it. But the murder is just the start. A high-ranking executive and daughter of one of the richest men in Spain is kidnapped, a crime which is tied to the previous murder. Behind them both is a hidden mastermind with even more sinister plans. And the only person with a chance to see the connections, solve the crimes and successfully match wits with the killer before tragedy strikes again...is Antonia Scott.