Food lovers, rejoice: In between the clues, every page is filled with delectable food descriptions, topped off with recipes.
The delightful Oregon town of Ashland once again provides the backdrop for a less-than-delightful murder.
Juliet Capshaw may be heavily pregnant with twins, but that doesn’t keep her away from her happy place—Torte, the family bakery—where she’s elbow-deep in dough and eating everything in sight. Her close friend Lance Rousseau, the artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, is planning an extravagant wedding after an extended engagement to partner Arlo, but he’s just fired their wedding planner, Maci Stephens, an enthusiastic young talent who’s stood him up several times. Maci comes to Torte to beg Lance for a second chance and claim that someone sent her messages saying Lance had changed their meeting times. Maci’s replacement, Tippy Bartlet, is so snarky that the enraged Maci says she could kill her. Lance doesn’t like Tippy’s attitude either, but he isn’t sure Maci’s accusations are well-founded. When Tippy’s assistant, Carson, joins them, Lance loves his ideas for a wedding to be held at a local resort. Jules agrees to accompany Lance on his wedding expeditions to keep his wilder ideas in check. Meanwhile, Jules gets a visit from Gareth Stokes, a furious vineyard owner who’s looking for Tippy, and also promises to kill her the minute he sees her. Despite a sudden snowstorm, Jules heads out to deliver some cookies and is almost run into by the owner of Spring Lake Resort, Lance’s chosen wedding venue. Walking back through Lithia Park, she sees Tippy Bartlet’s body floating in the creek. Jules has helped her stepfather, a detective, solve many crimes, and with all she knows about Tippy, she just has to investigate.
Food lovers, rejoice: In between the clues, every page is filled with delectable food descriptions, topped off with recipes.Pub Date: today
ISBN: 9781250461896
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.
Lt. Eve Dallas’ 63rd futuristic case is less a whodunit than a manhunt for an unusually sympathetic killer.
Thirteen years ago, way back in 2048, scientific genius Steve Redman—father of the Banner-Wyst corporation’s Rainmaker Project—narrowly escaped death in a gas explosion that killed his pregnant wife and infant son and 200 other residents of their New York City apartment building the night before he planned to report his suspicions about the company to the FBI. Now the bill is coming due for Banner-Wyst. The first death to be discovered is that of Lawrence Chu, Redman’s colleague and trusted friend, whose tenure as director of bioengineering science ends when he’s beaten to death. For quite a while, Dallas and her partner, Det. Delia Peabody, know less about this mystery than their readers do. But when Ezra Dent, a consultant to Banner-Wyst who worked with Redman and Chu back in the day, is murdered in exactly the same ferocious way, Dallas and Peabody, with help from Roarke, Dallas’ tech-billionaire husband, promptly put the pieces together and determine who they’re looking for. The search for Redman, who went AWOL from his hospital bed without a trace six years ago, has its own challenges. So does Dallas’ attempt to get cooperation from partners Calvin Banner and Jacob Wyst, who are clearly in the crosshairs of a killer who seems a lot less monstrous than they are. If the breaks in the case are suspiciously convenient in arriving, readers can pride themselves on taking sides against a mega-corporation whose self-avowed ecological saintliness is undermined by its leaders’ underhanded dealing.
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414564
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.
It takes a quirky sleuth to solve a baffling closed-door murder.
The author himself or, more accurately, some version of him, walks the reader through a “gruesome murder” that occurred in a rural farming village. At the center of the crime is the wealthy Ichiyanagi family, including the widow Itoko and her five children. The “heinous crime” occurs in the evening after the festive wedding of eldest son Kenzo to schoolteacher Katsuko. Yokomizo, part narrator and part raconteur, liberally shares digressions such as the fact that his favorite British author is A.A. Milne, who wrote The Red House Mystery as well as the books about Winnie-the-Pooh. Written in 1946 but set in 1937 before the devastation of World War II, this is the first novel featuring Kosuke Kindaichi, the legendary detective who appeared in more than 70 stories by Yokomizo. If Yokomizo is the Japanese Agatha Christie, Kindaichi may seem the Japanese Hercule Poirot—although actually, given his unkempt hair and apparently distracted manner, he’s more a cross between Poirot and Columbo. Shrewdly, his entrance is delayed until midway through the novel, after the police have stalled and both the family and the reader are anxious for a solution. The narrator’s garrulous charm, in a mystery long on logistics and forensic clues but short on detailed character portraits or extended interactions, is a key to the novel’s success, leavening the more intricate pieces of the puzzle. Armchair detectives will welcome the helpful character list that precedes the story.
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781805336549
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
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