Plan Your Fall 2025 Reading With These Upcoming Mystery, Thrillers, & True Crime

For fans of YA thrillers set in a mansion, remote murder mysteries, and multiple POV!

I am the biggest sucker for the snowed-in with a murderer trope! Three very different girls who are strangers to each other—Devi, Lizzie and Jayne—find themselves needing shelter from a snowstorm and spend the night at the Bramble Estate. Except rather than getting shelter from the storm, they’re trapped with a murderer.

For readers of true crime with a focus on the criminal justice system!

This is a look at Dr. Ann Burgess as a forensic and psychiatric pioneer, and expert witness in high-profile cases. Through attorney, offender, and victim interviews, readers get a behind-the-scenes perspective, and in the courtroom, look at the criminal justice system with a focus on expert witnesses.

For fans of interactive murder mysteries and epistolary novels!

Any year that has a new Maureen Johnson mystery is a good year! This time she’s teamed up with illustrator Jay Cooper again (Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village ) for the start of a new series with a big nod to the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. You get to solve the case with documents from Scotland Yard along with drawings of the town and rooms. Your case, if you choose to accept it: how did American novelist Roy Peterson get stabbed to death in a room with six people and not a single person witnessed the crime?

While you wait, if you’ve yet to read Maureen Johnson’s Stevie Bell series, absolutely pick up Truly, Devious!

For fans of murder mysteries with a library setting!

I adore—adore—Thomas’ Lady Sherlock series and I am excited to read her first contemporary mystery about four librarians working at a small branch library in Austin, Texas. When two patrons die after the library’s Halloween murder mystery–themed game night, Hazel, Jonathan, Astrid, and Sophie band together to solve what happened. But each one is carrying a huge secret…

For fans of college campus settings, psychological suspense, revenge, and scammers!

We were already blessed with one Tiffany D. Jackson mystery this year (Blood in the Water —one of my fave mysteries of the year so far) and in September we get a second crime novel from her! Jordyn starts college mourning her brother and with her parents upset at her choice of school. She really needs a found family, so when her roommate’s brother stays with them for a few days fresh out of prison, she’s totally cool with it. But his stay keeps getting longer, and soon he’s telling the girls how to dress and act, and holding lectures in their dorm room for fellow students to open their eyes to what is really going on in the world. Jordyn is both falling for his charm and “lessons” and increasingly pushing back until she’s in too deep…

For fans of YA murder mysteries set in small towns, and sibling stories!

Mikky and Kyla’s family run the funeral home in Prophets Lake. When Kyla’s best friend Erin is murdered, Mikky returns to his hometown. There he finds a sister he barely recognizes and knows he has to save her by solving Erin’s murder. Between an estranged relationship with his mom and a town full of secrets and rot, it won’t be easy…

While you wait, you can pick up Wellington’s dark academia novel, Their Vicious Games.

For fans of delightful, historical mystery duologies!

I love a retelling/reimagining that is equally for fans of the original text and readers who don’t particularly know, nor have an affinity for, the original source. In this duology, you follow Lizzie Bennet and Mr. Darcy as they solve mysteries through their legal professions! This time around, Lizzie’s sister Jane has just married Darcy’s best friend Bingley and the families are celebrating at the Bingley’s home. But things turn from celebration to murder mystery when a body is found in the chimney!

While you wait, you can pick up In Want of a Suspect and completionists should also check out the start to Price’s other series, Pride and Premeditation (Jane Austen Murder Mystery #1).