Books

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She’s the editor/author of (DON’T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen. View

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She’s the editor/author of (DON’T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen. View

The press releases and preview copies have been arriving thick and fast here at Crime Fiction Lover. It looks like 2024 has plenty of excitement in store for readers who enjoy mysteries and thrillers, and this week we bring you the first crop of books scheduled for release in the New Year. There are lots

David Wroblewski spent 10 years writing his first book, the remarkable instant classic The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. Now, 16 years later, he’s delivering a follow-up: Familiaris, which will go on sale June 4th, and is available for preorder now. We’re thrilled to reveal the beautiful cover, as well as an exclusive excerpt, below, but

Step into a world where tinsel and crime intertwine as the festive season takes a mysterious and sometimes murderous turn in Who Killed Father Christmas? and Other Seasonal Mysteries. The fifth Christmassy collection from Martin Edwards and the British Library, it includes 15 short crime stories set during the holidays and written by some of

Glasgow author Callum McSorley’s award-winning debut novel brings us Scottish crime fiction with a new flavour. The book might be titled Squeaky Clean, but this is a story that’s rancid and filthy, in which every bodily fluid you can imagine is amply spilled, and if there’s squeaking it’s coming from the bedsprings of a woman

Haunted by the death of her sister, Finola Shanahan has resolved that she’s not worthy of a family of her own and commits to spending her days caring for immigrants in the slums. Unwilling to consider marriage, Finola has perfected the ability to sabotage the relationships her parents arrange for her. At wit’s end, her

We’ve gotten Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2023 as well as Oxford’s, and now we have Dictionary.com’s pick! Perhaps unsurprisingly for a dictionary at home on the internet, it has more of a focus on technology than the other dictionaries’ picks. Dictionary.com’s 2023 Word of the Year is “hallucinate.” While “hallucinate” has multiple meanings,

Translated by David Warriner — An infamous manor house on a small Swedish island. A wealthy family with secrets. A string of unexplained deaths. In the first of a new series, French crime author Johana Gustawsson, who has Nordic roots, combines elements of the traditional gothic thriller with dark Scandinavian crime fiction. The result is

Every year, the New York Times highlights what it considers the the best book covers of the year. The Book Review’s art director, Matt Dorfman, has selected 12 book covers out in 2023 as the “edgiest, catchiest, most creative book jackets of the year.” These covers include designs based in photography, typography, and illustration. Here

‘Tis the season to cosy up with a thrilling mystery, and what better way to celebrate the holidays than by delving into the macabre and magical world of Christmas-themed crime fiction? As the year draws to a close and the festive spirit fills the air, we’re here to unwrap the perfect gift for mystery enthusiasts:

Time to finish the year of 2023 (good riddance!) with one final round of book clubs this December. Every month, I try to find the most interesting, popular, and unique book clubs out there and round up for you what they’re reading. The beauty of this is you can join as much or as little

A drum roll please. Or maybe some moody midnight saxophone would be more fitting, given our genre. Whatever the tune, whatever the syncopation, the moment has come to unveil the winners of the 2023 Crime Fiction Lover Awards. Go ahead and scroll down to feast your eyes on the winners, or hang with us at

Two years ago, David McCloskey hit it big with his debut espionage novel, Damascus Station. Hordes of readers, intelligence professionals, and critics alike praised its realism and lively, timely plot. Now, he has a new book out, and it’s even better. “The new John Le Carré,” is what he’s being called by more than one

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She’s the editor/author of (DON’T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen. View

The publishing world is a fickle one, so you don’t usually see many big name authors releasing books in December. Those aiming for the Christmas market hyped their books in October and November. But, you know what, with or without them the show must go on and a slow week for them is a fast

The results are in for this year’s Goodreads Choice Award winners. This year’s categories included the dropping of several long-time staples, including comics, poetry, and middle grade/children’s books, and the adding of a new category, romantasy. This year’s winners include a majority of books penned by women, including one title which earned top spot in

Travel back in time to the Golden Age of Murder this Christmas with Joan Coggin’s fiendishly humorous Who Killed the Curate? Originally published in 1944 and set in 1937, it introduces the scatterbrained and remarkably good-natured Lady Lupin Lorimer Hastings, an unlikely amateur sleuth who goes on to solve a series of four complex conundrums,

Tom Straw—the writer behind the bestselling real-life versions of TV character Richard Castle’s mystery novels—is kicking off a thrilling new espionage series with The Accidental Joe. Rockstar chef Sebastian Pike’s cooking travel show is the perfect cover for a covert CIA mission, even if Sebastian himself is less than thrilled with the idea. At least

In one of the most interesting takes on the “best of” lists for 2023 is the just-released list of books Goodreads staff members called their top of the year. The people asked include not only Goodreads’s Managing Editor and Senior Editor, but also their Visual Editor, Risk Manager, CEO, and more. Another aspect that makes

Lee Goldberg’s latest novel is something of a head-scratcher. Just what category does it fit into? It’s a modern-day police procedural, it’s a Western, it’s historical crime fiction, it’s… like nothing you’ve ever read before! Welcome to Calico – your reading experience is never likely to be the same again. Former LAPD detective Beth McDade

Danger, intrigue and a hell of a lot of blood are splashed across the pages of Carissa Broadbent’s gripping fantasy romance, The Serpent & the Wings of the Night. The first entry in Broadbent’s Crowns of Nyaxia duology, The Serpent & the Wings of the Night grants more nuance than usual to vampires, casting them

The end of the year is a time to reflect back, and what better thing to reflect on than our reading lives? Almost every major publication puts out their own annual Best Books of the Year list, from The New York Times to Barnes and Noble to NPR and so much more. The latest addition

Last January, the crime show Hidden Assets was a surprise hit when it aired on BBC Four in the UK. Jointly made by Irish and Belgian production companies, it linked a criminal assets recovery investigator in Shannon with missing diamonds and a bombing in Antwerp, making for perfect viewing in BBC Four’s foreign crime slot

Lucas Maxwell has been working with youth in libraries for over fifteen years. Originally from Nova Scotia, Canada, he’s been a high school librarian in London, UK for over a decade. In 2017 he won the UK’s School Librarian of the Year award and in 2022 he was named the UK Literacy Association’s Reading For

If you’re looking for a complete change of pace in a crime thriller then The Psychologist’s Shadow by Laury A Egan may be it. It has action scenes but, fittingly, most of the story unwinds in the head of psychologist Ellen Haskell. Ellen has closed her Manhattan clinical practice and opened a new office in

It’s always been a bit of a mystery to me why nobody has tried to create a crime fiction version of the Choose Your Own Adventure format of the 1980s. Perhaps publishers thought the idea was a bit childish, or maybe it’s an expensive format if you involve big name authors? The innovative Aussie librarian

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She’s the editor/author of (DON’T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen. View

As crime fiction lovers, we all have different tastes. Cosy crime fiction has been resurgent in 2023 – no surprise given the chaos going on around the world, with the cost of living crisis, climate change and too many wars happening. We can escape from all that into good books where, hopefully, the do-badders receive

A couple of weeks ago, we covered the bestselling audiobooks of 2023. Now, the 30-plus-year-old bimonthly magazine AudioFile has released its annual list for the best audiobooks of 2023. This year’s list includes 53 titles spread out over nine categories: Fiction, Nonfiction & History, Biography & Memoir, Mystery & Suspense, Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Horror, Children