Your weekly new crime novels update has arrived – get ready to find your next read. We’ll get going with a cryptic thriller with roots in medieval Italy in The Burning Library by Gilly Macmillan. Carry on and you’ll discover novels set in the US, Norway, England and France…
The Burning Library by Gilly Macmillan
Prepare to be transported from the hallowed halls of Oxford, Cambridge and St Andrews to the medieval Italian city of Verona in a thriller that blends history, academia and danger. Paleographer Dr Anya Brown is excited to be headhunted by the exclusive Institute of Manuscript Studies at St Andrews – but the job has its challenges. Her employers are the secretive Fellowship of the Larks, who are opposed to the Order of St Katherine with regard to a precious scrap of fraying embroidery from a lost medieval manuscript. Dr Brown finds herself at the centre of the battle, her life depending on deciphering a series of cryptic messages that have lain hidden for centuries.The Burning Library by Gilly Macmillan is out on Kindle on 18 November, with the hardcover arriving on 29 January 2026.
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Midnight in Memphis by Thomas Dann
Thomas Dann serves up a slice of Southern Noir in Midnight in Memphis, arriving on 18 November. It’s 1955, and an unknown killer is reaping retribution for decades of lynching by targeting the daughters of rich white families in Memphis. It’s up to Homicide detective Burdett Vance and new trainee, Officer Eustace Johnson – one of the few black men on the force – to catch the rampaging killer in a city awash with racial injustice and crumbling local politics. Vance is desperately trying to leave the past behind him, but when his old flame might be the killer’s next victim, the reluctant partners must put their differences aside and work together before time runs out.
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If the Owl Calls by Sharon White
Identity, loss and a battle to hold onto the past are at the heart of Sharon White’s If the Owl Calls, out on 18 November. It is set in Norway in 1979, and based in fact, as a Sami community is fights to protect its ancestral lands from the controversial development of the Alta hydroelectric dam. After a series of acts of saboutage, Oslo detective Hans Sorensen is sent to the far north to investigate. But the discovery of a body in a remote ravine brings things much closer to home for Sorensen, who is still mourning the recent death of his wife. He is Sami, and as he follows the trail of two suspected saboteurs Sorensen finds himself entangled in a web of secrets, betrayals and shifting alliances.
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The Lie She Wears by Elle Marr
A letter left by her dead mother sends museum curator Pearl Davis’s world reeling in psychological thriller The Lie She Wears by Elle Marr, published on 18 November. The pair were never close, but when the missive reveals that Pearl’s mother Sally committed a murder, Pearl quickly dismisses the confession as the ravings of a mind diminished by dementia. Until human remains are found in the garden. Pearl must try to piece together the truth, aided by more cryptic notes. It becomes clear that Sally was terrified of something and, as more remains are uncovered, Pearl fears that her mother’s past could be the death of her…
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Murder in Paris by Christina Koning
Murder in Paris by Christina Koning – out for Kindle on 20 November – is the 10th in her series featuring blind detective Frederick Rowlands. It’s 1945 and Rowlands arrives in a city still in turmoil after its liberation from German occupation. His task is to confirm the identiry of a young woman calling herself Clara Metzner, who has just been released from Ravensbrück concentration camp. The pair last met in 1933, and Rowland’s blindness and Clara’s experiences over the past 12 years make the task difficult, but her evidence could be vital in tracking down suspected collaborators in the upper echelons of French society. Then Clara is found dead, and Rowlands finds himself on the hunt for a killer.
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