Rose Trevelyan is a forty-something widow, photographer, and artist living in the Cornish fishing village of Newlyn — which is, as settings go, about as picturesque as it gets. She’s been photographing the new home of Gabrielle Milton, a London transplant throwing a party to introduce herself to the locals. Rose arrives at the party. Gabrielle doesn’t. Rose finds her body in the garden below a balcony. 📷
Accident or murder? The question draws Rose into something considerably more sinister than anything the sleepy village exterior would suggest. Fortunately she has allies: the handsome Detective Jack Pearce, who is professionally interested in the case, and her friend and gallerist Barry Rowe, who is just interested in general. Together they make an unlikely but effective investigative trio. 🌊
Janie Bolitho writes Cornish cozy mysteries with a strong sense of atmosphere and a protagonist who is genuinely observant rather than just conveniently nosy. Rose’s artistic eye gives her an investigative angle that feels natural to her character — she notices things others miss because she’s trained herself to look carefully at the world. 🎨
What makes this irresistible: A beautifully atmospheric British cozy with a protagonist who feels real and a setting that practically demands you brew a pot of tea before starting. Perfect for fans of MC Beaton and Ann Cleeves who want a fresh voice in a gorgeous corner of England.
Forensic handwriting expert Claudia Rose is called in to authenticate what appears to be a celebrity talent agent’s suicide note. The handwriting says suicide. Claudia’s instincts say something else entirely. She’s seen enough fabricated documents to know when something doesn’t sit right — and this one doesn’t sit right at all. 🖊️
The deeper she digs into Lindsey Alexander’s life, the more complicated the picture becomes. Alexander was powerful, manipulative, and apparently dangerous even in death — her secrets have a way of threatening everyone who gets too close to them. Friends become suspects. Powerful enemies start paying attention to Claudia in ways that aren’t friendly. 🔍
Sheila Lowe brings genuine professional expertise to the forensic handwriting angle — it’s a specialty most readers will know nothing about, which gives the series a fresh procedural hook that actually holds up. Claudia’s partnership with LAPD detective Joel Jovanic adds romantic tension without overwhelming the mystery, and the Los Angeles setting gives the novel a distinctive atmosphere. 📄
Why this deserves your attention: A smart, distinctive mystery series built around one of the most unusual forensic specialties in fiction. Perfect for readers who love procedural detail, a protagonist with genuine professional credibility, and the particular satisfaction of a closed case that refuses to stay closed.
Adam Cash survived two combat tours in Afghanistan and came home to Pinyon, Texas, wanting two things: peace and a job as deputy sheriff. What he got instead was his high school nemesis, Sheriff Griff Turner, making it very clear he wasn’t welcome. Cash ran against him anyway. Lost. And the next morning, Turner turned up dead — with all the evidence pointing straight at Cash. 🤠
Now he’s a fugitive in the town he grew up in, running from a law enforcement system he tried to join, trying to clear his name before it gets him killed. And somewhere underneath the frame-up is a conspiracy that goes deeper than one dead sheriff — something that could destroy far more than Cash’s reputation if it doesn’t get stopped. 🏜️
Jeff Kerr writes Western crime fiction with genuine grit and economy — this is lean, propulsive storytelling that trusts its premise and doesn’t waste pages. Cash is the kind of protagonist the genre does best: a man of principle operating in a world that has temporarily run out of them, driven as much by the ghost of his high school sweetheart Edie as by the desire to survive. 🔫
What makes this essential: A fast, satisfying Western crime thriller with a wrongly accused veteran protagonist and small-town corruption at its core. Perfect for fans of C.J. Box and Craig Johnson who want their heroes hard-pressed and their villains well-entrenched.
Blind Trust (Jane Cannon Book 1)
FBI Special Agent Jane Cannon has built her entire identity around discipline, loyalty, and trust in the institution. Then an undercover operation against Seattle’s most powerful crime family implodes without warning, her partner turns up dead, and Jane finds herself the subject of an internal investigation. Suspended. Isolated. Painted as the scapegoat for a disaster someone else engineered. 🔒
L.T. Ryan is the bestselling author of the Jack Noble series, and he brings his signature propulsive plotting to this new collaboration with K.T. Crowe. The Jane Cannon series launches with exactly the kind of high-stakes setup Ryan’s fans will recognize — a protagonist stripped of everything except her conviction that she’s right, and her determination to prove it. 🏙️
As Jane digs into what actually happened that night, the picture that emerges is worse than a simple betrayal. The corruption runs deep — dirty agents, vanishing evidence, a syndicate that isn’t hiding from the FBI so much as operating inside it. The Mazzuca crime family didn’t just survive the operation; they were protected by it. 🕵️
Crowe’s contribution gives the novel a sharp psychological edge, keeping Jane’s emotional state — her rage, her grief, her refusal to stand down — as vivid and present as the external investigation. This isn’t just a conspiracy thriller; it’s a story about what it costs to keep believing in justice when the system betrays you. ⚖️
Why this grips from page one: A powerhouse series opener combining the best of procedural thriller and conspiracy fiction. Fans of the Jack Noble series and readers new to Ryan will find Jane Cannon an immediately compelling heroine worth following for many books to come.
In 2010, an elderly woman recovering from a stroke begins speaking perfect French — a language her family never knew she possessed. As her granddaughter begins to ask questions, seventy years of silence slowly unravel, and a hidden wartime story emerges that no one in the family was prepared to hear. 🧶
Paris, 1941. Eighteen-year-old Lenny Gallienne has vanished into Churchill’s secret army after her brother is declared missing at Dunkirk. She poses as a simple bookshop girl on Rue de la Pompe — but inside the shop, she’s encoding intelligence gathered from Nazi headquarters into knitting patterns. Each sweater smuggled to prisoners contains flight paths. Each scarf holds radio frequencies. Each mistake means execution. ✂️
Jenny O’Brien draws on the true story of a real wartime operative to create a novel that honors the extraordinary ingenuity and courage of women in the resistance. The knitting-as-code conceit is both historically grounded and narratively brilliant — the most domestic of crafts repurposed as an instrument of survival and defiance. 🪡
The dual timeline structure works beautifully, with the granddaughter’s present-day investigation providing emotional distance that makes the wartime revelations land with even greater force. Fellow agent Harry Dennison is the one person who knows Lenny’s real name — and the choice she faces in the Metro tunnels beneath Paris will echo across generations. 🗼
What makes this essential: A gripping, deeply researched wartime novel that celebrates the women whose bravery history nearly forgot. Fans of Kate Quinn, Pam Jenoff, and Kristin Hannah will want this one immediately.
On paper, Viv Abbot’s life looks like a familiar millennial struggle — overpriced city apartment, exhausting job, a boyfriend she’s dating mainly to appease her difficult mother. Nothing about her screams extraordinary. Except for the part where she hunts demons. 🗡️
Ever since her father was murdered, Viv has been operating alone — no network, no backup, no community of people who understand what she does or why. To her family, she’s an outsider. To herself, she’s just someone doing what needs to be done. Then a dangerously alluring reformed demon named Reid Graveheart crosses her path and tells her about Harker Academy for Deviant Defense, a school for people exactly like her. 😈
Kate Golden made a major splash with her debut fantasy series, and Half City shows her expanding her range into urban fantasy with considerable confidence. The voice is sharp and funny — Viv’s narration has a dry, self-aware quality that keeps the darker material from ever feeling heavy-handed, and the world-building is layered in gradually rather than dumped in expository blocks. 🌆
But Viv is carrying a secret that even her new allies at Harker can’t know about — one that’s connected to her father’s death and to questions she’s been trying to answer alone for years. The academy setting gives the series a satisfying structural backbone while Golden uses it to build toward something larger and more personal. ⚔️
What makes this irresistible: Urban fantasy with genuine wit, a heroine worth rooting for, and a mystery with real emotional stakes at its core. Perfect for readers who loved the early Ilona Andrews Kate Daniels books and are looking for their next urban fantasy obsession.