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Did your winter winter too hard this year? Maybe you just always look forward to summer? Even if you’re an “I hate summer, bring me the cold!” person, these mysteries publishing June through August 2025 will make you at least wish for their pub dates to arrive sooner, regardless of the weather.
Quick note before I dive into the list: Blood in the Water (July 2025) is already on my best of 2025 list but not on this list solely because I already talked about it in the post 2025 Mysteries To Get Excited About.
King of Ashes by S. A. Cosby (June 2025)
I love S. A. Cosby’s crime novels (All the Sinners Bleed and Blacktop Wasteland) because they deeply sink you into the worlds and the characters’ lives that he creates. When I saw that he had a 2025 release, I automatically added it to my TBR with zero need to know anything about it. When I saw the promotional bit say that it’s a “Godfather-inspired Southern crime epic,” I bumped it to the top of my galley reading list!
Too Old For This by Samantha Downing (August 2025)
I find Samantha Downing’s books (For Your Own Good; My Lovely Wife) to have the highest level of fun when I know nothing about them prior to reading them. That’s why I selfishly almost left this off the list so I could continue being a blank slate before I get to it, but I couldn’t do that to you. Plus, my terrible memory will probably forget after I write this. Retired serial killer Lottie Jones finds her past coming for her in the form of a journalist at her doorstep who has questions about unsolved murders…
This Places Kills Me by Mariko Tamaki, Nicole Goux (illustrator) (August 2025)
Mariko Tamaki’s graphic novels are an automatic buy for me, her and her cousin Jillian Tamaki have written some of my all time favorites including Roaming and This One Summer. So imagine my absolute delight when I was scrolling through catalogs for upcoming 2025 books and saw that she has an upcoming mystery with an elite theater club! And it’s an epistolary graphic novel “Told in comics, letters, diary entries, and news articles…” I have already preordered it. The delivery person will be getting tackled.
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The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths (July 2025)
Elly Griffiths already has three great mystery series: Ruth Galloway; Harbinder Kaur, and The Brighton Mysteries. Now she’s back with a new series, and it has time travel! “Cold cases are a lot easier to solve when you can travel back in time to find new evidence. Unless that is, you get stuck in the nineteenth century…” I mean, yes, please, give me now!
Salt Bones by Jennifer Givhan
Since reading River Woman, River Demon, I’ve kept an eye out for Jennifer Givhan’s next book, and everything about Salt Bones sounds amazing, especially it being a genre blend of mystery (missing person cases), horror, family drama, and a retelling of Persephone and Demeter! Why, yes, I am doing gimme gimme hands at my own computer as I’m writing this.
A Queer Case (The Selby Bigge Mysteries #1) by Robert Holtom
Solving a murder in a mansion is always my jam, add in historical (1920s London) with an amateur sleuth who is “a denizen of the capital’s queer underworld by night,” and I am beyond sold!
The Woman in Suite 11 by Ruth Ware (July 2025)
Since her breakout debut (In a Dark, Dark Wood), Ruth Ware has put out a new standalone mystery/thriller a year. Now, her most popular mystery, The Woman in Cabin 10, is getting a sequel! Journalist Lo Blacklock is back, this time with an invitation to a luxury Swiss hotel that ends up with a cat-and-mouse game across Europe…
Browse the books recommended in Unusual Suspects’ previous newsletters on this shelf. See upcoming 2025 releases and mysteries from 2024 and 2023. Check out this Unusual Suspects Pinterest board and get Tailored Book Recommendations! Until next time, keep investigating! In the meantime, come talk books with me on Bluesky, Goodreads, Litsy, and Substack.
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