The List 2025
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The List 2025 *
January
We Solve Murders
by Richard Osman
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A brand new mystery. An iconic new detective duo. And a thrilling new murder to solve . . .
Steve Wheeler is enjoying retired life. He still does the odd bit of investigation work, but he prefers his familiar routines: the pub quiz, his favorite bench, his cat waiting for him at home. His days of adventure are over. Adrenaline is daughter-in-law Amy’s job now.
Amy Wheeler thinks adrenaline is good for the soul. Working in private security, every day is dangerous. She’s currently on a remote island protecting mega-bestselling author Rosie D’Antonio, until a dead body and a bag of money mean trouble in paradise. So she sends an SOS to the only person she trusts . . .
As a thrilling race around the world begins, can Amy and Steve outrun and outsmart a killer?
February
The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches
by Alan Bradley
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On a spring morning in 1951, eleven-year-old chemist and aspiring detective Flavia de Luce gathers with her family at the railway station, awaiting the return of her long-lost mother, Harriet. Yet upon the train’s arrival in the English village of Bishop’s Lacey, Flavia is approached by a tall stranger who whispers a cryptic message into her ear. Moments later, he is dead, mysteriously pushed under the train by someone in the crowd. Who was this man, what did his words mean, and why were they intended for Flavia? Back home at Buckshaw, the de Luces’ crumbling estate, Flavia puts her sleuthing skills to the test. Following a trail of clues sparked by the discovery of a reel of film stashed away in the attic, she unravels the deepest secrets of the de Luce clan, involving none other than Winston Churchill himself. Surrounded by family, friends, and a famous pathologist from the Home Office—and making spectacular use of Harriet’s beloved Gipsy Moth plane, Blithe Spirit—Flavia will do anything, even take to the skies, to land a killer.
March
Author Visit: Heather Wiedner
by Heather Weidner
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Heather Weidner writes the Pearly Girls Mysteries, the Delanie Fitzgerald Mysteries, The Jules Keene Glamping Mysteries, and The Mermaid Bay Christmas Shoppe Mysteries.
Her short stories appear in the Virginia is for Mysteries series, 50 Shades of Cabernet, Deadly Southern Charm, and Murder by the Glass, and she has non-fiction pieces in Promophobia and The Secret Ingredient: A Mystery Writers’ Cookbook.
She is a member of Sisters in Crime – Central Virginia, Sisters in Crime – Chessie, Sisters in Crime - Grand Canyon Writers, Guppies, International Thriller Writers, and James River Writers, and she blogs regularly with the Writers Who Kill.
Originally from Virginia Beach, Heather has been a mystery fan since Scooby-Doo and Nancy Drew. She lives in Central Virginia with her husband and a pair of Jack Russell terriers.
She earned her BA in English from Virginia Wesleyan University and her MA in American literature from the University of Richmond. Through the years, she has been a cop’s kid, technical writer, editor, college professor, software tester, and IT manager.
April
Poison in Paddington
by Samantha Silver
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When Cassie Coburn moved to London, she never thought she'd be involved in a quadruple homicide.
After a car accident ended her medical career before it even started, Cassie moved to London on a whim, expecting to see the sights and live the typical tourist backpacker lifestyle.
Instead she finds herself accompanying a French private detective, Violet Despuis, as they attempt to find out who poisoned four people in the middle of London. Cassie's life soon includes this crazy detective, an ancient landlady with a curious past, a mischevious orange cat who likes going for walks on a leash, and a super hot pathologist that Cassie is sure is out of her league.
And they haven't even found the murderer yet...
May
A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder
by Shamini Flint
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Meet Inspector Singh: a fat, slightly bumbling, but truly lovable detective sure to charm readers of The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency
Inspector Singh is in a bad mood. He's been sent from his home in Singapore to Kuala Lumpur to solve a murder that has him stumped. Chelsea Liew—the famous Singaporean model—is on death row for the murder of her ex-husband. She swears she didn't do it, he thinks she didn't do it, but no matter how hard he tries to get to the bottom of things, he still arrives back at the same place—that Chelsea's husband was shot at point blank range, and that Chelsea had the best motivation to pull the trigger: he was taking her kids away from her. Now Inspector Singh must pull out all the stops to crack a crime that could potentially free a beautiful and innocent woman and reunite a mother with her children. There's just one problem—the Malaysian police refuse to play ball.
June
Murder by the Sea
by Danielle Collins
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Skye Williams left Kenya to go to school and start a new life in America. When she decides to return to her childhood home, she dreams of finding the peaceful, relaxing life that alluded her in the New York. Unfortunately, when her neighbor is killed and she becomes the prime suspect, Skye must use all of the street smarts and problem solving skills she learned in America to keep herself out of jail. Can she catch a killer and save herself and her dreams of a peaceful life in her old childhood home?
Murder by the Sea is the first story in the Skye Williams Kenyan Cozy Mystery series. If you like fast-paced mysteries with interesting characters, exotic settings, and unexpected twists, you’re going to love Skye Williams.
July
A Generation of Vipers
by Sarah Yarwood-Lovett
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A killer is hiding in plain sight, like a snake in the long grass...
When Dr Nell Ward stumbles across a woman's body amongst the purple heather on Furze Heath, she was on the lookout for nests of poisonous adders.
But something is lurking out here far more dangerous than vipers.
A cold-blooded killer is on the loose and this is not his first victim. As DI James Clark begins to investigate, a pattern emerges pointing towards this being the work of a serial killer. Every victim shares the same physical characteristics - all of which are a match to Nell herself.
As Nell is pulled into a tightly coiled mystery, she can't help feeling someone is tracking her every move...
Can she unmask the murderer before they strike again?
August
Murder in an Italian Village
by Michael Falco
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On the surface, Bria’s Mediterranean life radiates beauty—the kind her late husband, Carlo, dreamed about when he concocted the romantic idea to start a bed and breakfast on the breathtaking Amalfi Coast. With the grand opening of Bella Bella approaching six months after Carlo’s tragic death, Bria and her eight-year-old son Marco brace for a bittersweet new beginning by the sea . . .
Before celebratory vino flows on opening day, a stranger appears in an otherwise pristine guest room, lifeless and covered in blood. Bria can’t understand why murder would check into Bella Bella. And police are just as puzzled. As suspicions fall on a B&B employee, what’s certain is that saving her reputation—and surviving—depend on catching the real killer before it’s too late.
Flanked by her feisty best friend, Rosalie, and well-traveled sister, Lorenza, Bria vows to prove to everyone in Positano that no one at Bella Bella was involved with the crime. But as the women expose a scandal that stretches across their dazzling tourist village, it will take everything they’ve got to name the murderer and avoid becoming the next target of someone’s deadly vendetta . . .
September
The Examiner
by Janice Hallett
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Gela Nathaniel, head of Royal Hastings University’s new Multimedia Art course, must find six students from all walks of life across the United Kingdom for her new master’s program before the university cuts her funding. The students are nothing but trouble from day one.
There’s Jem, a talented sculptor recently graduated from her university program and eager to make her mark as an artist at any cost. Jonathan, who has little experience aside from running his family’s gallery. Patrick manages an art supply store, but can barely operate his phone, much less design software. Ludya is a single mother and graphic designer more interested in a paycheck than homework. Cameron is a marketing executive in search of a hobby or a career change. And Alyson, already a successful artist, seems to be overqualified.
When the examiner, the man hired to grade students’ final works sifts through the students’ final essays, texts, and message boards, he becomes convinced that someone is in danger…or already dead.
October
Miss Zukas and the Library Murders
by Jo Dereske
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Meet Miss Zukas . . . the very proper, exceedingly conscientious, and relentlessly curious local librarian of tiny Bellehaven, Washington--and one heck of an amateur sleuth! The Bellehaven police are baffled when a dead body turns up right in the middle of the library's fiction stacks. But Miss Helma Zukas--who never fails to make note of the slightest deviation from the norm of everyday life--is not willing to let this rather nasty disruption stand. Her precious literary sanctuary has been violated, and if the local law cannot get to the bottom of this case, Miss Zukas certainly intends to--with the help of her not-so-proper best friend, Ruth, a six-foot-tall bohemian artist with a nose for gossip and a penchant for getting into trouble. But their research project is bringing them a little too close to a killer . . . who'd like nothing better than to write Helma and Ruth out of the story completely!
November
Enter a Murderer
by Ngaio Marsh
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Inspector Roderick Alleyn has been invited to an opening night, a new play in which two characters quarrel and then struggle for a gun, with predictably sad results. Even sadder, the gun was not, in fact, loaded with blanks. And when it comes to interviewing witnesses, actors can be a deceptive lot . . .
December
The Act of Roger Murgatroyd
by Gilbert Adair
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Boxing Day circa 1935. A snowed-in manor on the very edge of Dartmoor. A Christmas house-party. And overhead, in the attic, the dead body of Raymond Gentry, gossip columnist and blackmailer, shot through the heart. But the attic door is locked from the inside, its sole window is traversed by thick iron bars and, naturally, there is no sign of a murderer or a murder weapon. Fortunately (though, for the murderer, unfortunately), one of the guests is the formidable Evadne Mount, the bestselling author of countless classic whodunits. In fact, were she not its presiding sleuth, The Act of Roger Murgatroyd is exactly the type of whodunit she herself might have written.