7 Exciting New Murder Mysteries

Louisiana-born Odessa Dean gets the chance to housesit for her aunt in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She finds work as a waitress at a bookstore/cafe and enjoys life in the city. But when one of her colleagues is killed, the death captured by accident in a flash mob proposal, Odessa feels that there is more to the death than an accident. It’s a hilarious read as Odessa navigates Brooklyn as she tweets, meets YouTube influencers, and explores the glory of food trucks. The sequel, No Memes of Escape, is already scheduled for October 5. It’s about time we had a murder mystery involving an escape room.

I loved loved loved Arsenic and Adobo. After a bad end to her romance, Lila Macapagal ends up back in Shady Palms helping out at her family’s Filipino restaurant. But when her ex-boyfriend and food writer falls dead in his food at the restaurant, Lila has to figure out how to get the police to stop suspecting her and her family. Filled with delicious food and some prospective love interests, readers will go along for the ride with this delightful book. The sequel, Homicide and Halo-Halo, is slated for early 2022. The book was just published at the beginning of May.

Opening a new pet grooming business, named Hollywoof, is hard enough without a nagging mother and a murder to solve. When Mimi Lee ends up meeting Marshmallow, a sassy talking cat, she’s tipped off that a local breeder was mistreating his dogs. Unfortunately, when he is found dead, Mimi is the prime suspect after witnesses recalled their big fight. Armed with her cat, Mimi’s got to clear her name. The second book in the Sassy Cat series, Mimi Lee Reads Between the Lines, also came out in 2020. 

Sierra Ravenswood hadn’t expected to work at a flower shop, known as the Flower House. While she had dreams of staying in Nashville, she is trying to enjoy her time amongst the flowers. When her boss runs off and she ends up running the shop herself, things get complicated fast when a participant keels over and dies at the workshop Sierra is running. When the police suspect murder and a series of mishaps happen at the flower shop, Sierra and a new friend have to get to the bottom of it all. 

Louise Lloyd lives for dancing. She and her girlfriend Rosa Maria Moreno spend as much time as possible at local speakeasy the Zodiac, dancing the night away. But when Louise discovers a dead girl in front of the cafe she works at, she ends up being forced to help the police figure out why young Black women are being murdered. Unfortunately, Louise has more experience in this than she should, surviving a kidnapping when she was young herself. Facing distrust from her own community and the racism of the police, Louise will try to find the murderer before they continue their killing spree.

Riley Rhodes goes back to her hometown of Penniman for a funeral, a bit of a respite from her work as a librarian at the CIA and food writer. She meets up with her friend Caroline, who is butting heads with her brother Mike over their family’s ice cream shop Udderly Delicious Ice Cream Shop. When Mike dies, Riley feels she has to figure out who killed him and why.

Moving to Miami hasn’t exactly been great for Miriam Quiñones-Smith. She’s put her academic career on hold as a food anthropologist while also dealing with her overbearing mother-in-law. Things start to look up when she becomes a cooking expert for a local Spanish language morning show. But things get dicey again when Miriam decides to investigate why women seem to be dying around a Cuban herbalist, Dr. Fuentes.