Viola Davis & James Patterson To Cowrite Novel

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Hi, mystery fans! Welcome to another edition of the Unusual Suspects newsletter.

Instead of catching you up on my viewing/reading life in the intro this time I’ve got a USPS PSA: you have until the 14th to stock up on stamps (including Forever and postcard) before the price goes up again.

Wondering what you may need postcard stamps for? Postcards To Swing States!

Bookish Goods

Mystery book sticker by TurtlesSoup

Here’s a cute sticker for mystery readers—great as a little gift for members of a mystery book club. $4.

New Releases

It’s Elementary by Elise Bryant

For fans of adult mysteries set in schools and red herrings!

Mavis Miller isn’t looking for any more work. She’s already parenting her seven-year-old daughter Pearl and working full time, so she didn’t so much as volunteer to run the DEI committee at her kid’s elementary school as she got pushed into it by the PTA president Trisha. The first meeting does not go great. After fighting with Trisha because of a cancelled program, the principal disappears. Mavis, who happened to see Trisha with the kind of items one has when disposing of a body, teams up with the school’s psychologist to find out what happened to the principal.

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Ladykiller by Katherine Wood

For fans of missing person mysteries, books inside a book, cryptic messages, and Greece settings!

Gia and Abby are lifetime friends. After a tragedy when they were teens, Gia wrote a memoir about it, and Abby focused on her studies.

Now, Gia doesn’t show up to meet Abby in Sweden for a birthday celebration, and threatening emails and cryptic messages have Abby and Gia’s brother worried. They travel to Greece to find out what’s happening, but instead of finding Gia, they find the manuscript she was working on, which recounts Gia’s summer with her husband and guests at her beach estate—the summer leading up to the moment she disappeared…

For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.

Riot Recommendations

This week, I’ve got two genre blend novels for you. I read across genres, so I love when they’re mixed, but before I was such a wide reader, I found blended genre books an especially great bridge from one genre to the next.

The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard

Science-fiction (space opera) + murder mystery!

Long Chau is a scholar looking for a corpse for a scientific study, which she finds with the help of a mindship called The Shadow’s Child. The problem? The body turns out to have not died by natural causes. Now Chau decides it’s time to solve this murder mystery, and The Shadow’s Child is roped in as her Watson!

Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey

Detective murder mystery + a sprinkling of magic (fantasy)!

This story is set in our current world, but one where magic and magic schools existed. Two estranged sisters are forced back together after a divided childhood because Ivy Gamble is not magic and her twin Tabitha is. Tabitha works at a magic school and now Ivy is brought back into her life because she’s a PI and there’s been a murder at the magic school.

Trigger warning on this one for cancer.

News and Roundups

Browse the books recommended in Unusual Suspects’ previous newsletters on this shelf. See upcoming 2024 releases and mysteries from 2023. Check out this Unusual Suspects Pinterest board and get Tailored Book Recommendations!

Until next time, keep investigating! In the meantime, come talk books with me on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads, and Litsy — you can find me under Jamie Canavés.

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