9 August Releases for Mystery, Suspense and True Crime Fans

Rye Mallett takes on more than he bargained for when his plane is ambushed upon delivering a mysterious black box in a town in Georgia. He was only meant to deliver the cargo, but he’s intrigued by Dr. Brynn O'Neal, and soon they’re running from the law and those willing to kill for the cargo—but can they trust each other?! Mystery, romance, and suspense—what more could you ask for?

Related: Sandra Brown's All-Time Favorite Novels Might Surprise You

If you’re a Karin Slaughter fan, you’re already jumping up and down, and we're jumping with you. If you’ve yet to discover Slaughter, whew! You’re in for a dark, heavy, fantastic treat of a deep catalog.

Her last novel, The Good Daughter, destroyed us but we are here open-armed and ready to be wrecked again. In Pieces of Her we have small town, secrets, family, and tragedy—all things Slaughter is an expert at dissecting—so looks like we'll be inhaling yet another of her novels.

We have another Texas Ranger, except this one is a suspect in his ex-wife’s murder. Ooh, ever since The Fugitive we've have been big fans of main characters suspected of the crime having to go and solve the crime in order to clear their names. We have no doubt that Yates has his work cut out for him, and being a James Patterson novel, this will surely be a page-turning thriller.

Bluebird, Bluebird is now in paperback, so if you’ve yet to read this fantastic mystery, go forth and read! Attica Locke is one of the best crime writers. That’s it, that’s why you should read this novel.

Ha, okay, but we’ll give you more. Darren Mathews is a black Texas Ranger, technically on suspension, who can’t walk away from the mystery of a white woman and black man who were murdered in a small Texas town. No one wants Mathews there trying to solve the case, but he’s not leaving until he does. Bluebird, Bluebird is a great mystery, rooted in setting that takes a deep look at race and the justice system in the U.S.

When we saw The Toronto Star call Camaro Espinoza the “female Jack Reacher,” we were immediately all-in. Camaro, an ex-army medic, lives an uncomplicated life spent fighting at the gym and drinking at the bar.

When a terrified woman begs for her help to stop a violent stalker, Camaro uncovers a web of federal agents, money-launderers, crooked security contractors, and paramilitary killers who all have a reason to take her down. But Camaro doesn’t flinch when violence comes her way, and she has a singular talent for making her enemies sorry they ever heard her name. 

We're big fans of A Hollywood Homicide and its introduction of amateur sleuth Dayna “Day” Anderson. While we'd like to believe we’d be Veronica Mars right out the gate of solving a mystery, we know we’d be more like Day and driving the police hotline operator bananas with a constant barrage of “he/she did it!”

In the sequel, Hollywood Ending, Day has moved even further away from her acting career and trades up from amateur to apprentice private investigator. We are 100% here for more Day and her quick mind, jokes, and awesome—and stylish!—friends.

Doting wife, devoted husband, cherished child. Merry, Sam, and Conor are the perfect family in the perfect place. But when an old friend visits their Swedish paradise, she sees the things that others might miss—treacherous things almost impossible to believe when looking at this perfect family. The truth is that some families have very dark secrets, and the truth is rarely what they want the world to see.

For fans of true crime that isn't about serial killers or violence, here's a tale about a decades-long con that scammed more than $200 million, in the United States and Canada alone, from the elderly and emotionally vulnerable. CNN originally did a five-part series about the mysterious French psychic who scammed so many people, and this book continues where it left off and attempts to close in on Maria Duval.