The Mysteries I Haven’t Gotten To Yet

This is one of those mouth watering cozy series that I just always enjoy. There’s a slow burn romance between Lana Lee (the young woman who moved back home who finds herself constantly solving mysteries while running her family’s Chinese restaurant) and a police detective. Plus, as you can imagine, yummy food.

All I know about this book is that it’s about an English professor who kills the man at her university she deems the worst every year. That’s all I need to know, I’m in!

Here’s a political thriller that basically takes you behind the scenes of dark money politics as it follows a political consultant sent to Carthage, South Carolina for a campaign as punishment (maybe he can redeem himself) for a past mistake. “The goal: to manipulate the locals into voting in favor of the sale of pristine public land to the highest bidder.”

Since the #metoo movement got widespread public attention there have been some excellent books including Know My Name by Chanel Miller. In Bowdler’s memoir she not only discusses her rape and recovery, but also takes a look at why, in our society, rape “is not treated as a crime of brutal violence but as a parlor game of he said / she said.”

This one sounds like the YA mysteries that fall in my wheelhouse: mystery + crime podcast. A young woman arrives at a small Hamptons village to be a summer nanny and ends up not only looking like a missing woman, but also confessing to the crime–eh, what?! Enter a podcaster who decides she’ll uncover the truth of what happened and why Zoe confessed.

Jeong wrote The Good Son, so this naturally is a must-read for me. This time, we have the mystery of a young girl found dead and the three men somehow connected to the incident who start a cat and mouse game with each other to clear their own names without having to reveal what they are hiding. I am always here for a cat and mouse game.

This is a memoir plus true crime mix, but the true crime part isn’t the usual. It’s a look into the people who were behind the orders of crimes against humanity so they essentially get to pretend their hands are clean– the “desk killers”. This is the kind of book that hits hard on the moral questions while shinning a light into the dark corners of our society.