Crime

Dirty Myrtle by Kennedy Weible delivers Southern crime fiction with literary teeth. Read our detailed, spoiler-free review of this Myrtle Beach novel.

An honest, spoiler-free review of Caller Unknown by Gillian McAllister: the desert heat, the dread, the mother-daughter bond, and where this thriller stumbles.

Seraphina Nova Glass returns with a three-POV thriller set in a lakefront community where a Labor Day car bomb cracks open every polite secret in the neighborhood. Sharp dialogue, a strong front half, and rich motherhood stakes carry the book. The back third gets crowded, but the voice work and book-club bait are real.

Last One Out by Jane Harper is a quiet, atmospheric mystery set in a half-abandoned mining town where Ro Crowley returns on the fifth anniversary of her son's disappearance. Harper's landscape writing and restrained grief carry the book through a slightly baggy middle, delivering a sad, satisfying read that sits just behind her best work.

In Mad Mabel, Sally Hepworth hands the microphone to Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick: eighty-one, six feet tall, and once the youngest murderer in Australian history. When a nosy seven-year-old and a true-crime podcast drag her secrets into the open, the past she has buried for sixty-six years finally wants its turn to speak.