A five-year-old boy found face-down in a neighborhood pond. Authorities calling it a tragic accident. A grandmother who knows better, and a mother drowning in grief that no one will validate. When everyone else has moved on, one investigator refuses to look away. 💔

P.D. Workman introduces Zachary Goldman with a case that showcases exactly what makes him different from the standard PI protagonist — he’s world-weary but deeply compassionate, someone who understands that the darkest secrets hide in the quietest corners. With medical-examiner apprentice Kenzie Kirsch, he goes through the reports, re-examines witness statements, and follows a trail of minor inconsistencies toward something considerably darker than an accident. 🔍

This is a mystery built on painstaking attention and genuine care for a life lost — the kind of procedural work that honors the victim rather than just solving the puzzle. Workman writes with empathy and precision in equal measure, and Zachary Goldman is a protagonist worth following into the difficult cases no one else will touch. 🕯️

Why this grips from page one: A grandmother refuses to accept that her grandson’s death was an accident, and hires the one investigator willing to look past the official story — private eye mystery with a compassionate, world-weary protagonist and the kind of quiet suburban secrets that turn out to be anything but. Strong series opener, free.

A man shot to death under a freeway overpass. A suspect who vanishes into the night. And a witness no one can identify or locate. Homicide prosecutor David Brunelle has three people and no idea how they connect — which is a problem when you’re trying to hold a murderer accountable. ⚖️

Stephen Penner writes legal thrillers with genuine procedural credibility, and Missing Witness gives Brunelle one of his most frustrating challenges yet: how do you prove a case when the single most important piece — the witness who can tie everything together — is nowhere to be found and might not even exist under the name anyone knows? 🔍

To win against a theatrical defense attorney and satisfy a dubious judge, Brunelle pulls in his usual allies plus a newbie prosecutor and a mysterious woman who seems to know everyone except the person he actually needs. The puzzle-solving here is satisfying and grounded in real courtroom mechanics. 📚

What makes this special: A prosecutor must figure out how three strangers connect to a murder under a freeway overpass — when the key witness has vanished without a trace. Legal thriller with smart procedural detail, a determined protagonist, and the kind of puzzle that keeps you turning pages to see how it all fits together.

Lottie Lemon sees dead people — well, mostly she sees the furry departed, ghostly pets who return to warn her when their previous owners are in serious danger. It’s a gift. Or a curse. Depends on the day and how many bodies she’s stumbled across recently. 🐾

Her ex has arrived in Honey Hollow all the way from New York, girlfriend in tow, though he’s got no problem setting the girlfriend aside to attempt winning Lottie back. As if that complication weren’t enough, a famous author shows up for a library signing and Lottie has the genuinely unfortunate luck of finding another body. With a couple of New York suspects she’d rather let off the hook than investigate, this case is personal in all the wrong ways. 😰

Addison Moore writes cozy mysteries with a paranormal twist and a light touch — the Murder in the Mix series delivers exactly what fans want from the genre: quirky small-town charm, a likable protagonist with an unusual gift, and just enough chaos to keep things entertaining. 🍰

Why I’m including this: A small-town baker who sees ghostly pets warning of danger must solve a murder when her New York ex arrives with complications — and a famous author ends up dead. Paranormal cozy mystery with warmth, humor, and a protagonist whose gift keeps landing her in the middle of murder investigations.

After her boyfriend cheated, math teacher Jamie O’Callaghan did the only rational thing: she moved three thousand miles to Rotheberg, Oregon — the self-proclaimed “Alpine Jewel” with a deeply weird obsession with The Sound of Music. She can handle the alpine kitsch. What she can’t handle is her principal assigning her a baking class when she teaches calculations, not cooking. 🍰

Rotheberg’s golden boy Dylan Mead should be the perfect solution — culinary genius, handsome, loaded, hometown hero. Helping Jamie teach kids to bake brownies should be easy. Except he wants to demolish her classroom to build his bakery, which creates a certain amount of friction. 😂

Lia Huni writes rom-com with genuine charm and a gift for small-town settings that feel lived-in rather than generic. The enemies-to-lovers setup here is executed with warmth and humor, and the baking class becomes the perfect venue for two people who absolutely should not be falling for each other to do exactly that. 💛

What makes this irresistible: A math teacher fleeing a cheating ex lands in an alpine Oregon town obsessed with The Sound of Music — and must team up with the golden-boy baker who wants to demolish her classroom. Sweet romantic comedy with baking mishaps, small-town charm, and two people who can’t stand each other learning otherwise.

Lizzie Levine is unstoppable — a top executive at a New York City marketing firm, driven by the loss of her parents to let nothing stand in her way. Then Gray Stone, a handsome enigmatic billionaire, enters her life. When she discovers she’s pregnant with his child, she learns he’s hiding considerably more than she bargained for. 💼

Desperate for a fresh start, Lizzie escapes to the serene coastal town of Southport, North Carolina, where she meets Josh — a charming local determined to help her heal and move forward. S.R. Fabrico sets up the romantic suspense with patience, letting Lizzie begin to rebuild before revealing that her past isn’t finished with her yet. 🌊

Someone with a sinister agenda is lurking in the shadows, and Lizzie’s new life in Southport is considerably less safe than it appears. The combination of romance and genuine threat gives the book its propulsive energy, and the coastal Carolina setting provides a deceptively peaceful backdrop for escalating danger. 😰

Why this grips from page one: A pregnant executive flees New York and an enigmatic billionaire for a fresh start in coastal North Carolina — but someone with dark intentions has followed her south. Romantic suspense with a shocking twist, a heroine rebuilding her life, and a small town that isn’t quite as safe as it seems.

Rift Magus Reborn: Rise of the Arcane Aristocrat

Thane was framed for murder, spent time on death row, proved his innocence — and then let the anger take him somewhere he can’t walk back from. He got the revenge he was after. Now he has to live with the man he became in the process, and figure out what he owes the person he loves most. ⚖️

Michael Cordell builds his legal thrillers around moral complexity rather than simple heroics, and Confession delivers that in abundance. When Thane’s wife takes on a young sex worker accused of killing a beloved university football coach, the case opens a decades-old ring of corruption — and brings back a psychopath named Stick who made his presence felt in the last trial and has no intention of letting this one proceed safely. 🔍

The threat here is personal in the most visceral way — Stick’s willingness to kill extends to Thane’s wife and their unborn daughter, and the pressure from the university, business interests, and an idol-worshipping public presses in from every other direction. Cordell keeps the stakes relentlessly high. 😰

Why this grips from page one: A lawyer haunted by his own capacity for revenge must now defend an unwinnable case while a ruthless psychopath threatens his pregnant wife. Legal thriller with genuine moral weight, mounting pressure from every direction, and a protagonist whose biggest battle may be with himself.

CIA operative Johnna Red has one mission: hunt down a terrorist carrying out deadly attacks across the globe before she strikes again. Getting distracted by her Delta Force Echo partner is not part of the plan. In a different life, maybe. In this one, impossible — or so she keeps telling herself. 🔴

Fiona Quinn writes action-adventure romance with genuine operational credibility, and the dynamic between Red and Leeland “Nomad” Kesling crackles with the specific tension of two professionals who know better and can’t quite manage it. Nomad has made his peace with a military life that leaves no room for love. He’s less prepared for what happens when that peace starts to crack. 💥

The threat they’re chasing turns out to be considerably larger than either of them anticipated, and the question the title poses — where exactly is the red line, and what happens when you cross it — operates on both the mission and the personal level simultaneously. Quinn handles both with a sure hand. ❤️‍🔥

What makes this special: A CIA operative and her Delta Force partner hunt a global terrorist while fighting an attraction neither of them can afford — action-adventure romance with real operational stakes, sizzling chemistry, and a threat that turns out to be bigger than anyone imagined. Fiona Quinn at her most propulsive.

He was the greatest healer in his world — decades of mastery, unmatched skill, a life devoted entirely to the art. Then his own brother, convinced he was after the throne, turned his forces against him. Before the confrontation could resolve itself, a ritual he’d been planning anyway deposited him somewhere entirely unexpected. 🌀

He’s in a new world. In someone else’s body. And healing here — the gift he spent a lifetime perfecting — is considered barely worth mentioning. Oleg Sapphire and Alexey Kovtunov set up the portal fantasy with a wry, confident voice that makes it clear their protagonist isn’t rattled, just recalibrating. These people simply don’t know how to handle power. He intends to show them. ✨

The combination of fish-out-of-water portal fantasy with progression mechanics and a protagonist whose expertise dwarfs everyone around him gives the book a satisfying dynamic — the gap between what he knows and what this world currently understands is enormous, and closing it is half the fun. 💫

What makes this special: The greatest healer in his world lands in a new one where healing is considered a weak and negligible gift — and proceeds to demonstrate exactly how wrong they all are. Portal progression fantasy with a brilliantly confident protagonist, dry wit, and the deeply satisfying premise of an expert operating in a world that doesn’t yet know what it’s looking at.

Jesse Braddock is stuck in a tiny cabin deep in the Everglades with her infant daughter and her ex-boyfriend, a man who turned out to be considerably better-looking on the outside than on the inside. Broke and desperate, she stumbles across a long-lost treasure that could solve everything — if she can keep it away from the very bad men who are also looking for it. 🐊

Meanwhile, Ken Bortle of Bortle Brothers Bait and Beer has launched a scheme to save his failing store by going viral with videos of the “Everglades Melon Monster” — which is, in fact, an unemployed alcoholic newspaper reporter wearing a Dora the Explorer costume head. The plan works, unleashing a swarm of TikTokers into the swamp at exactly the wrong moment. 😂

Dave Barry is one of the funniest writers alive, and Swamp Story gives him a presidential candidate, a buried treasure, a mob of social media users, and Florida itself to work with. Nothing goes as planned. This is, after all, Florida. 🌴

Why this grips from page one: A broke woman finds buried treasure in the Everglades, a viral monster hoax goes catastrophically right, and a presidential campaign arrives at the worst possible moment — Dave Barry’s Florida chaos machine running at full throttle. Funny, fast, and completely unhinged in the best possible way.

The four Robicheaux sisters haven’t all been in the same room for fifteen years. Now they’re back at the Hotel Sorrento — the beautiful venue where they grew up, where their parents are finally getting married — and it takes approximately no time at all for everything buried to start surfacing. 💍

Cathy Kelly is one of Ireland’s most beloved writers of women’s fiction, and The Wedding Party showcases exactly why — she writes about family dynamics with the kind of warmth and precision that makes you feel like you know these sisters before you’ve finished the first chapter. The secrets that emerge are handled with empathy rather than melodrama. 🌸

This is a book about what the women in our lives hold together, and what happens when a day meant to be purely joyful becomes the moment when everything that’s been carefully managed finally isn’t. Kelly handles it all with her signature warmth and wisdom. 💛

What makes this special: Four sisters reunite after fifteen years for their parents’ wedding — and the secrets they’ve been keeping from each other can’t stay buried through the ceremony. Cathy Kelly at her warmest and most perceptive, a novel about family, forgiveness, and the women who hold everyone else together.