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Ash Dark as Night

Gary Phillips (Soho Crime)

Set amid rising racial tensions in 1960s L.A., this top-shelf noir follows Black photographer Harry Ingram as he finds unexpected fame for an image he captures during a tragic police shooting. When he’s subsequently pulled into a missing persons case, he learns he has an aptitude for sleuthing. Folding real historical figures into the action, Phillips perfectly evokes the urgency and volatility of the period.

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Bright Objects

Ruby Todd (Simon & Schuster)

Cults, comets, and crippling grief collide in this wonderfully offbeat debut, which follows young widow Sylvia Knight as she falls for a charismatic American astronomer while searching for the hit-and-run driver who killed her husband. Todd stirs up a heady mix of mystery and mysticism that culminates in a shocking, emotionally devastating climax.

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City in Ruins

Don Winslow (Morrow)

Winslow’s Homer-inspired Danny Ryan trilogy concludes with a rough-and-tumble finale that pits Ryan against his longtime rival, Vernon Winegard, on a trash-strewn Las Vegas Strip. With careful attention to several series-long arcs and heaps of elegantly written action, it’s a superbly satisfying end to a landmark series.

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Lost Man’s Lane

Scott Carson (Atria/Bestler)

A young man investigating the disappearance of a teenage girl confronts a sinister, otherworldly force haunting his hometown in this exceptional supernatural thriller. Carson channels the best of Stephen King, interweaving a hair-raising mystery and a poignant coming-of-age story populated with three-dimensional characters.

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May the Wolf Die

Elizabeth Heider (Penguin Books)

Former Navy analyst Heider parlays her experience in the service into an expert thriller that follows U.S. military police investigator Nikki Serafino as she probes the murders of two American sailors in Italy. Though the whodunit is tense and complicated in all the right ways, it’s Heider’s portrait of Nikki—in particular, her home life and her ambivalent feelings about U.S. imperialism—that sets this apart.

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Once More from the Top

Emily Layden (Mariner)

Layden’s smart and layered sophomore novel tracks Taylor Swift stand-in Dylan Read as she grapples with the discovery of her long-missing best friend’s body. By focusing on parasocial fandom and the anxieties of artistic collaboration, Layden finds a fresh angle on the price of fame and spins a stay-up-all-night mystery to boot.

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The Puzzle Box

Danielle Trussoni (Random House)

Puzzlist Mike Brink returns after the events of The Puzzle Master to open a booby-trapped box for the descendants of a Japanese emperor in this rip-roaring adventure, the rare sequel that bests its predecessor. From familiar parts—a criminal savant, a Robert Langdon–esque trek in search of precious artifacts—Trussoni constructs a wholly original page-turner.

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Rough Trade

Katrina Carrasco (MCD)

Carrasco revisits the gritty world of 19th-century opium smuggling in this unabashedly queer swashbuckler centered on Alma Rosales, who largely lives as her male alter ego, Jack Camp. Espionage and murder among Alma/Jack’s operation animate the plot, which Carrasco buttresses with a brilliantly vivid depiction of men’s cruising bars and the period’s sexual paranoia.

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The Sequel

Jean Hanff Korelitz (Celadon)

In Korelitz’s follow-up to The Plot, scheming widow Anna Williams-Bonner fights to protect her novelist husband’s legacy by publishing a metafictional novel of her own. Saying much more about this Tom Ripley–riffing thriller, which is at once a satire of the literary world and a spellbinding work of crime fiction, would spoil the wicked fun. Suffice it to say that Patricia Highsmith herself would have savored Korelitz’s nastiness.

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The Silver Bone

Andrey Kurkov, trans. from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk (HarperVia)

A devastated Kyiv provides the backdrop for this idiosyncratic WWI-era mystery about a teenager who comes to the attention of an investigator after filing an eloquent police report. Patient, funny, and remarkably attuned to the casual tragedy of life during wartime, it’s a late-career treat from a Ukrainian luminary.

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Smoke Kings

Jahmal Mayfield (Melville House)

In this jolting debut, Mayfield follows a group of Black vigilantes seeking revenge for the murder of their young leader’s cousin. Their plan—to kidnap the descendants of past perpetrators of hate crimes and force them to pay reparations—goes awry in ways even seasoned thriller readers won’t see coming. Intense, unsparing, and searingly topical, it’s an unforgettable achievement.

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We Solve Murders

Richard Osman (Viking)

Osman pivots from his beloved Thursday Murder Club series to launch a new, equally smooth blend of comedy and mystery about a father- and daughter-in-law who team up to take down a killer stalking a bestselling author. Their globe-trotting search is equal parts zany and heartwarming, with Osman flexing his gift for characterization as often as his talent for crafting a good red herring.

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