Searching for something to read? Check out some of the new titles releasing the week of August 9 – 15, 2026 with oone debut series. I hope a few of these books take you on a reading adventure!

AUGUST 10
The Widows’ Guide to Foul Play by Amanda Ashby (Cozy Mystery)
It’s pantomime season in Little Shaw, and librarian Ginny Cole has been roped in to help. The local theatre has persuaded national treasure and famously difficult diva, Monica Larkwell, to star in their production of Mother Goose, and while the celebrity’s return to the village after thirty years hasn’t exactly gone smoothly, at least nobody’s dead. Until, that is, Ginny discovers Monica’s body in her dressing room, crushed beneath a fallen chandelier. Format: Digital, Print, Audio

AUGUST 11
Murder in Blackfriars by Jennifer Ashley (Historical Mystery) *first book in a new series*
Kat Holloway’s beau, Daniel McAdam, has always had a past shrouded in mystery. He knows nothing about his origins, only that he was rescued from the streets many years ago. So when someone claiming to know where Daniel came from turns up dead moments before meeting with him, Daniel goes on the hunt for the killer. It soon becomes clear that to see justice served, Daniel will have to figure out who he truly is. When he asks Kat for her assistance, she readily complies, knowing she’ll do whatever she must to protect the man she’s come to love. Format: Digital, Print, Audio

Mia by Leslie Bazzett (Psychological Thriller)
When Sally, an American living in San Miguel de Allende, meets Louise outside her children’s school, she’s eager to immerse herself more deeply in the life of the city. In Mexico for just a year with her husband, an architect, Sally is entranced by Louise—her elegance, her harshness, her stories about Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac—and the two quickly become inseparable. Soon enough, Louise has begun calling her Miaand, at first playfully, then in earnest, introducing Sally as her daughter to a growing circle of friends. Format: Digital, Print, Audio

Awl Shook Up by Paula Charles (Cozy Mystery)
Pine Bluff, Oregon’s annual Winter Carnival is the perfect remedy for the cabin fever that has hit the town hard. Dawna pulls on her bobby socks for this year’s 50s-themed event, ready to relax and mingle after a long winter. But with the angry high school French teacher spitting nails at half the town, the social event of the winter is anything but relaxing. What should have been a fun evening ends in disaster when Dawna’s daughter, April, finds the teacher sitting behind his desk, dead as a doornail. Format: Digital, Print

Dark Harbor by Robert Bruce Coffin (Police Procedural)
Detective Brock Justice never imagined the glittering coastal town of Bar Harbor would be his next battleground. When multimillionaire Granville Warren and an unidentifiable burglar turn up dead in a mansion break-in gone awry, the evidence points straight to Granville’s much younger wife, Lily. Her self-defense claim raises more suspicion than sympathy, and Brock must untangle a crime scene awash in contradictions. Format: Digital, Print, Audio

Death at a Scottish Halloween by Lucy Connelly (Traditional Mystery)
It’s the week of Halloween—or as they say in Scotland, All Hallows’ Eve—and the town of Sea Isle is full of spooky celebrations. Dr. Emilia McRoy loves being part of her new community and is eager to help out in any way she can. But the festivities are interrupted when she and her assistant, Abigail, find a dead body in a haunted house. A real one. They’re too late to save the victim, but they’ll do whatever it takes to find his killer. Format: Digital, Print, Audio

Casting Call 4 Murder by J.C. Eaton (Cozy Mystery)
The book club ladies of Sun City West love nothing more than poking their noses into murder investigations, so it’s the treat of a lifetime when they get to attend a murder mystery weekend at a sprawling Victorian mansion. They’ll be matching wits with other mystery aficionados trying to figure out whodunnit, and Sophie “Phee” Kimball is thrilled that for once her mother’s friends won’t be meddling in a real homicide. As the plot unfolds it’s mysterious fun for the actors and audience alike, until the dead body they discover is all too real. Format: Digital, Print

Murder at the Agency by Kylie Forsythe (Cozy Mystery)
Just when it seems like everything in twenty-eight year old Cassidy Blayne’s life is falling apart, a thrilling coffee shop encounter leads to the opportunity of a lifetime. Landing her dream job as Creative Director with an elite advertising firm in a nearby lakeside town fills her with renewed purpose. She’s no longer going to allow herself to settle, and resolves to rebuild her life on her own terms. Format: Digital, Print

The Enigma Challenge by S.C. Godfrey (Heist Thriller)
Zoe Wilder has the unflashy, solitary life of an academic, studying ciphers in literature at a California university. When her research takes her to a cryptology conference in Madrid, she’s not expecting to trigger the Enigma Challenge, a clandestine puzzle competition few dare to enter. Format: Digital, Print, Audio

Don’t Cross Mo Ellery by Birdie Horne (Cozy Mystery)
Mo Ellery’s 29th birthday is a disaster. After one small accident—the exposure of her boyfriend’s genitals (well, maybe not that small) on a work video call—she manages to get fired, dumped, and kicked out of their overpriced Chicago apartment. Luckily, a sign appears to guide Mo to her new life: “Looking for flexible part-time work? Become a school crossing guard!” It’s everything Mo has been looking for: health insurance. How hard can it be? Format: Digital, Print, Audio

A Fair Death by Gin Jones (Cozy Mystery)
It’s August, and the West Slocum farmers’ market is in a battle for its survival as part of a competition among three local markets, taking place at an agricultural fair. When the manager of one of the other markets is killed and the West Slocum market’s manager is implicated in the murder, Mabel reluctantly agrees to take over the market temporarily while her archnemesis, Detective Frank O’Connor, is doing his best to arrest the wrong person. Format: Digital, Print

The Redux of Sam Murdoch by Mary Kendall (Traditional Mystery)
While stuck in a midlife meltdown with a broken marriage, angry offspring and a crumbling career, Sam stumbles upon a long-buried family secret: the grandfather he idolized once shot a man. Desperate for an escape (and some answers), he hits the open road in a beat-up Volvo station wagon with his eccentric college buddy, Godfrey, on a quest for truth. Format: Digital, Print

Freight by Ryan Lowell (Thriller)
Curtis, a newly hired dispatcher with a newly pregnant wife at home, holds a scrap of paper that identifies a semi-truck trailer that shouldn’t exist. Billy Trask is a weathered and charismatic sociopath, who thinks nothing of quietly killing whomever may come in his way, and carefully guards the coordinates for a truck loaded with $10 million dollars-worth of Canadian pharmaceuticals. Format: Digital, Print, Audio

Killing in the Countryside by Maria Malone (Traditional Mystery)
It’s just another day in the small town of Heft when Ali follows up on reports of an escaped pride of peacocks stirring up trouble in a once quiet cul-de-sac. A routine call, a case of fuss and feathers, Ali suspects. But what she discovers inside the house the birds have invaded is far from routine. The couple who live there have been receiving anonymous hate letters. Format: Digital, Print, Audio

Death in Luxor by M. A. Monnin (Traditional Mystery)
Undercover artifact theft investigator Stefanie Adams and her Artifact Retrieval Team (ART) lead and partner, Thomas Burkhardt must head off trouble before it starts at the opening ceremonies of Egypt’s Grand Egyptian Museum. Anonymous notes have threatened the Gold of the Pharaohs, a special exhibit featuring glittering gold pectorals, collars, bracelets and rings that once belonged to Egypt’s powerful pharaohs. Format: Digital, Print

A Killer Plot by E.C. Nevin (Cozy Mystery)
Jane Hepburn has almost made it. After solving the murder of her literary agent at last season’s crime-book festival, Jane receives a burst of internet fame that lands her an invite to a splashy book launch in London. Visiting beloved bookstores along the winding alleyway of Cecil Court, and brushing shoulders with famous writers and the editors and agents who made them stars, Jane is looking forward to a fun, murder-free weekend and a distraction from her own writer’s block. The party might not be for her novel, but still, Jane’s happy to celebrate her far more successful friend with free wine and plenty of books. Format: Digital, Print, Audio

The Secrets We Hide by Karin Slaughter (Thriller)
1601 Iris Drive looks like any other house on the quiet, residential street. But rumors are rampant about the Vickery family, and what goes on behind closed doors. When gunshots ring out, Sheriff Emmy Clifton and her sister, ex-federal agent Jude Archer, discover a devastating crime scene. Allison Vickery has been murdered in her own kitchen, and her teenage daughter is bleeding upstairs, left for dead. Format: Digital, Print, Audio

A Cold November Murder by Patricia Smiley (Traditional Mystery)
It’s been two months since Emmaline McCoy moved from L.A. to the remote Northern California coastal town of Justice Bay to settle her aunt’s estate. One cold November morning, as she runs along a rural road, she notices a flurry of one-hundred-dollar bills floating in the air and follows the source to a meadow where she finds a man shot in the head execution-style. Format: Digital, Print

Brimstone Hollow by Archer Sullivan (Private Investigator Mystery)
There isn’t much that happens in the Appalachian Mountains that Private Investigator Annie Gore hasn’t seen. Before she was an Air Force Special Investigator, she was born and raised in those rolling hills, and lately Annie’s cases have called her away from her Louisville office and closer to the small towns of her youth than she ever anticipated. But when her newest client asks if she’s ever been to a snake-handling church, Annie knows she’s about to enter unknown territory. Format: Digital, Print, Audio

AUGUST 13
Murder at Clover Farm by Jane Bettany (Cozy Mystery)
Former rockstar Tarquin Gold thought he had left his wild days behind when he traded in his glamorous lifestyle to become a farmer, but his dreams of a peaceful life come crashing down when murder rocks his newly opened glamping site. As fate would have it, amateur sleuth Violet Brewster is also a guest at the Clover Farm glampsite – and, finding herself once again at the centre of a crime scene, she can’t resist getting involved in the investigation. Format: Digital, Print, Audio

His Final Patient by J.S. Monroe (Psychological Thriller)
THE PSYCHIATRIST claims he can predict when people will die and has been using his skills with chilling accuracy. THE PATIENTS trust their shrink. They believe him when he tells them their date and the predictions have always come true. THE DETECTIVE is shaken when a man shoots himself after announcing it’s his ‘death day’. On his body, DI Silas Hart finds an hourglass, catapulting him back to two suspicious deaths that have haunted him for years. Format: Digital, Print, Audio

AUGUST 14
The Art Critic’s Last Forgery by Elaine Orr (Cozy Mystery)
After Gypsy Lee Miller learned who killed the local handyman, she thought things in Bay View Harbor on the Chesapeake Bay would calm down. Not so much. Marcus Pinter has visited the Bay View Harbor Bakery many times since Gypsy Lee and her cousin Linda opened it last year. He talked them, as well as Maggie at the Inn she may or may not own, into hanging pictures drawn by local artists. If they sell one, he and the artist have a payday. That’s why he often badgers Gypsy Lee and Linda to display more pictures – for a small commission. Format: Digital, Print

AUGUST 15
Something Rich and Strange by Matty Dalrymple (Suspense)
Ann Kinnear has talked to plenty of dead people. She’s never had to impersonate a living one to do it. When her newest client asks her to board a cruise ship as his fiancée—disguise, fake ring, and all—Ann takes the job. But the closer she gets to the spirit she came aboard to find, the less certain she is that she won’t be joining him. Format: Digital, Print

Note: in some cases, print releases for digital titles will be forthcoming.
Publication date subject to change