Searching for something to read? Check out some of the new titles releasing the week of March 16 – 22, 2025 with three debut series. I hope a few of these books take you on a reading adventure!

MARCH 16
The Route 66 Misfits by CeeCee James (Cozy Mystery) *first book in a new series*
The famed Clara Fitzwater, best friend with Janice Thornberry from the Secret Library Cozy Mysteries, is trading in her stage lights for detective work. Late one night, she gets an urgent call from her niece, Jane, who’s not just been mugged but is also upstaging the local drama scene with her unexpected starring role as the prime suspect. Format: Digital

MARCH 18
Murder, She Wrote Snowy with a Chance of Murder by Jessica Fletcher and Barbara Early (Cozy Mystery)
Jessica Fletcher has taken a nasty spill on the ice, leaving her in a wheelchair for several weeks. She tries to work on her latest manuscript but finds herself distracted by a new neighbor moving in across the street. There’s good reason for her to be distracted, because soon after unpacking his sparse belongings, Mr. Rymer is out in the front yard, building somewhat risqué (read: naked) snow sculptures. Format: Print, Digital

The Summer Guests by Tess Gerritsen (Thriller)
When former spy Maggie Bird retired to the seaside hamlet of Purity, Maine, she settled in for a quiet life with breathtaking views. But enemies from her past soon threatened to destroy everything. Maggie survived, thanks to her wits and the collective intelligence of the Martini Club, the circle of ex-CIA friends in her cocktail-sipping book club. Their handiwork, however, caught the attention of young police chief Jo Thibodeau. Now Jo and her neighborhood ex-spies have an uneasy alliance. Format: Print, Digital, Audio

Cat Got Your Tongs by Victoria Hamilton (Cozy Mystery)
Despite the brutally cold winter, vintage cookware collector Jaymie Müller is happy to help out a friend by looking after a colony of cats while its caretakers are away. The location on a high bluff overlooking the St. Clair River makes for bone-chilling work, and her task takes on an air of menace when an elderly neighbor reports suspicious goings-on at the river. Jaymie’s inclined to dismiss the woman’s fears as the product of an overactive imagination, but it’s not long before she discovers a dead body there. Format: Print, Digital

The Man Who Swore He’d Never Go Home Again by David Handler (Traditional Mystery)
Stewart “Hoagy” Hoag always swore that he would never return to Oakmont, Connecticut, the small mill town where his family lived for generations. He certainly has no desire to interrupt his high life as the newest great American novelist to revisit the town that hates his family and will only bring back memories of his unhappy childhood. But when his childhood sweetheart phones to say that her mother, Mary McKenna, the librarian who inspired Hoagy’s dream to be a writer, has died, Hoagy knows he has to return for her funeral. Especially when Maggie adds that her mother didn’t die of natural causes. Format: Print, Digital, Audio

Barrel Proof by Ryan Hoffman (Cozy Mystery)
Autistic PI Casey Schmitt, his partner Myles Wilson, and Beagle Scout are on the case. Felix Garcia O’Neil fears his brewery, Big River Brews, is in trouble. His partner, Hunter Weber, has shady dealings, and when he vanishes, a shocking discovery is made—his body is found stuffed in a whiskey barrel.With the murder weapon a beer stein, a Weber family heirloom, discovered in Felix’s trash, the suspicion turns to him. As Casey, Myles, and cousin Jen work to clear Felix’s name, they must also face a local blogger poisoned during a dinner rush. Can they solve the mystery before more lives are at stake? Format: Digital

Buzz Kill by J. Robert Lennon (Thriller)
The Pool sisters have gone into business together: a down-home if unequal P.I. enterprise. That is, until Lila is tipped off to an explosive piece of news. An old friend of their Aunt Ruth’s—a lawyer and academic who’d committed suicide years ago—believes that Ruth was murdered. Prior to her death, Ruth had represented a chemist who’d been struggling to patent a dangerous synthetic opioid. But once the client, Travis Nutt, was poised to lose, he went rogue and unleashed the adulterant as a street drug with the power of cartel funding behind him. Can the twins now bring this cult-like billionaire to justice? Format: Print, Digital, Audio

Dangerous Relations by Marilyn Levinson (Domestic Thriller)
After Ardin Wesley’s cousin, Suziette, is murdered, her widower, Brett, asks Ardin to help him adopt Suziette’s little girl. Trouble is, no one knows the identity of the child’s natural father, and Ardin wants to adopt Leonie herself. Although she’s drawn to Brett and attraction blooms as they grow close, an abusive ex-husband turned Ardin against love. Not to mention, Brett feels betrayed once he learns of her plans to adopt the toddler. Format: Print, Digital

A Geek Girl’s Guide to Arsenic by Julie Anne Lindsey (Cozy Mystery)
The fall Renaissance Faire is in full swing, and Mia Connors is back in action, helping her family with their holistic beauty booth for the season. She’s thrilled for the distraction, because life is so good she’s practically forgotten about Jake Archer, the undercover US Marshal who accused her of murder then stole her heart three months ago. Too bad he vanished without warning the second the case was closed. Format: Digital, Audio

Shattered Sight by Liz Milliron (Traditional Mystery) *first book in a new series*
He has the perfect life: married, two children, a home, a promising career. Underneath, however, he battles self-doubt and guilt over the explosion during the pursuit of a suspect that cost his partner her sight and her career. He denies having PTSD or any trauma related to the event, but those around him know better. Format: Print, Digital

The Library Game by Gigi Pandian (Cozy Mystery)
Tempest Raj couldn’t be happier that the family business, Secret Staircase Construction, is finally getting the recognition it deserves. Known for enchanting architectural features like sliding bookshelves and secret passageways, the company is now taking on a dream project: transforming a home into a public library that celebrates history’s greatest fictional detectives. Format: Print, Digital, Audio

Pomona Afton Can So Solve a Murder by Bellamy Rose (Traditional Mystery)
When Pomona Afton, Upper East Side hotel heiress, stumbles out of a gala and upon the scene of her grandmother’s murder, her first thought is that the society queen won’t be missed for her kind, cookie-baking ways. In fact, she was mean, greedy, and paranoid—so paranoid that she secretly slipped a clause into her will mandating that, should she die an unnatural death, all the family assets get frozen. And if the “unnatural death” isn’t explained? Those accounts stay frozen. Format: Print, Digital, Audio

The Coral Conspiracy by Rosalie Spielman (Cozy Mystery)
Recent graduate Nelly O’Hare was looking forward to studying the picturesque coral reefs of Aloha Lagoon, Hawaii, expecting her new job to be full of sun, surf, and satisfying work. What she wasn’t expecting was a pair of arguing professors, an attraction to the resort’s hot golf pro, and a totally dysfunctional academic study…ending in murder! Format: Print, Digital

With Love, Marjorie Ann by Marcia Talley (Short Story Anthology)
Marcia Talley has caught readers’ eyes since the beginning of her career when she won the Malice Domestic Grant (now known as the William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grant.) They chose her wisely. For these last three decades, Marcia Talley has marveled readers with her novels-and her short stories. Each of these works is humorous, thoughtful, and surprising. That is why, over these years, she has won and been nominated for a variety of mystery short story awards. Format: Print

Murder Strikes a Chord by Heather Weidner (Cozy Mystery) *first book in a new series*
When Cassidy Jamison inherited her late grandmother’s event planning business, she also inherited her grandmother’s friends—four sixty-year-old women known around town as the Pearly Girls—as part-time employees. Now Cassidy barely has time to breathe between spending every waking hour trying to keep her business afloat and the Pearly Girls out of trouble and focused on event planning. Format: Print, Digital

MARCH 19
Death at Porthcurno Cove by Sally Rigby (Traditional Mystery)
As the sun rises over a picturesque Cornish beach, Detective Lauren Pengelly makes a grim discovery while walking her border collies. A newly engaged couple lie dead in the sand. At first glance, it appears to be a tragic double suicide. But something doesn’t add up. Format: Print, Digital, Audio

7 Days by Jule Selbo (Private Investigator Mystery)
Harassment comes in all shapes and sizes and Dee Rommel’s protective streak – particularly
when it comes to her mother’s well-being and Dee’s new clients, is triggered. When an avid
environmentalist and scion of Portland is murdered, Dee’s boss, private investigator Gordy
Greer, puts Dee on the case. Format: Print, Digital

MARCH 20
An Extremely Unlikely Death by Hannah Hendy (Cozy Mystery)
During a routine welfare check, the police find local shop owner Mr Fitzgerald at the foot of his stairs, dead. There is broken glass over the floor of his shop, his dog has been locked in the kitchenette cupboard, and on the counter is an envelope addressed to Mrs and Mrs Margery and Clementine Butcher-Baker – The Dinner Lady Detectives. Format: Print, Digital, Audio

The Geezer Factory Murders by Corinne Holt Sawyer (Cozy Mystery)
Irrepressible amateur sleuths Angela Benbow and Caledonia Wingate are in action again. The ladies’ plush retirement home at Camden-sur-Mer is absorbing tenants from a rival establishment, The Golden Years, which the heroines have appropriately dubbed ‘The Geezer Factory’ since it transforms normal senior citizens into disgruntled geezers. Format: Digital

MARCH 21
Death by Driftwood by Angela K. Ryan (Cozy Mystery)
If you love seaside charm, lovable characters, and edge-of-your-seat murder mysteries, you’ll love the Cape Cod Cozy Mysteries! Format: Print, Digital, Audio

MARCH 22
Every Day a Little Death: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Stephen Sondheim edited by Josh Pachter (Crime Fiction Short Story Anthology)
In Every Day a Little Death, twenty authors—some from the world of crime fiction, some from the world of the theater—use Sondheim’s lyrics as the inspiration for twenty tales of malfeasance, misdemeanor…and murder. Stories by Fleur Bradley, John Copenhaver, Brian Cox, Cheryl L. Davis, John M. Floyd, Joseph Goodrich, Cheryl A. Head, J.A. Hennrikus, Alison Louise Hubbard, Rebecca K. Jones, Jeffrey Marks, Lisa Nanni-Messegee, Josh Pachter, Michael Portantiere, David Spencer, Jeffrey Sweet, Marcia Talley, Gabriel Valjan, Joseph S. Walker, Kristopher Zgorski. Format: Print, Digital

Note: in some cases, print releases for digital titles will be forthcoming.