It is the beginning of a new year, so it is customary for us bloggers to share some of the books we are looking forward to in the coming months. Aidan at Mysteries Ahoy has already done his. I find these posts quite useful as very often contrasting reading preferences throw up different book titles which have not always been on my radar. When putting such a list together one is reliant on information found online and this is patchy (which is understandable given that it is the first week of January). However, one consequence of this is that some publishers might not be represented on the list (due to lack of information) whilst others may be represented more strongly because it was very easy to identify their forthcoming titles. So, another goal of putting up this list is that I hope readers with better information than me, can fill in some of the gaps in the comments below with other titles they are looking forward to.
Non-Fiction
Book No. 1: The Murder Game: Play, Puzzles and Detective Fiction (2025) by John Curran
Release Date: September 2025
This book does not have an online blurb yet, but the title certainly provides strong indicators of the topics John will be dealing with. When a synopsis appears, I will try to pop back here and add it. I know that Cluedo is looked at in some capacity as a while ago I lent John my copy of Jonathan Foster’s The Story of Cluedo: How Anthony Pratt Invented the Game of Murder Mystery (2013). This is a bizarrely in demand out-of-print book as in recent years academics and TV researchers have emailed me about it. Anyways, I have enjoyed all of John’s other books, so I am looking forward to trying this one. I very much like the cover – but is it just me or does it feel a little inspired by the BBC TV series Ludwig?
Book No. 2: V is for Venom: Agatha Christie’s Chemicals of Death (2025) by Kathryn Harkup
Release Date: June 2025
Synopsis
‘Agatha Christie revelled in the use of poison to kill off unfortunate victims in her books; indeed, she employed it more than any other murder method, with the poison itself often being a central part of the novel. Her choice of deadly substances was far from random – the characteristics of each often provide vital clues to the discovery of the murderer. With gunshots or stabbings the cause of death is obvious, but this isn’t the case with poisons. How is it that some compounds prove so deadly, and in such tiny amounts? This book, the follow-up to Kathryn Harkup’s best-selling A is for Arsenic, features fourteen more poisons from the books of Agatha Christie. V is for Venom explores the scientific facts behind the chemicals Christie put to such deadly use in her fiction. How do these compounds affect the body? What is their history of use in real-life murder cases, some of which may have inspired Christie, and how feasible was it to obtain, administer and detect these poisons, both at the time the novel was written and today?’
I enjoyed A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie, so I am interested to see how Harkup revisits the topic.
Book No. 3: Story of a Murder (2025) by Hallie Rubenhold
Release Date: March 2025
Synopsis
‘No murderer should ever be the keeper of their victim’s story …
On 1 February, 1910, vivacious music hall performer, Belle Elmore, suddenly vanished from her north London home, causing alarm among her circle of female friends, the entertainers of the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild who demanded an immediate investigation.
They could not have known what they would provoke: the unearthing of a gruesome secret, followed by a fevered manhunt for the prime suspect: Belle’s husband, medical fraudster, Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen. Hiding in the shadows of this evergreen tale is Crippen’s typist and lover, Ethel Le Neve – was she really just ‘an innocent young girl’ in thrall to a powerful older man as so many people have since reported? In this epic examination of one of the most infamous murders of the twentieth century, prizewinning social historian Hallie Rubenhold gives voice to those who have never properly been heard – the women.’
I was really impressed with Rubenhold’s The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper (2019), which I read last year, so I was pleased to see she had a new book coming out.
Classic Crime Reprints
Book No. 4: Cat’s Claw (1943) by Dolores Hitchens
Release Date: March 2025
Synopsis
‘Unable to stop herself from investigating another murder, Rachel Murdock gets plenty of help from Samantha, the cat who follows her wherever she goes; her much less adventurous sister Jennifer; and Lieutenant Mayhew, who is grateful to have another sharp mind on the case. Miss Rachel, her sister, and her cat are watching with undisguised interest a bandy-legged man who is spying on a house across the street until a speeding black sedan runs him down. The sisters are curious to know why the man was murdered—and just as baffled about what happened to the mysterious tenants of the house, who disappear the next day.’
This is a series I have been enjoying for a while, with my favourite being The Cat Saw Murder(1939). Without American Mystery Classics reprinting these books, I doubt I would be able to read the series, as second-hand copies are rather thin on the ground in the UK. The series has an engaging elderly female sleuth and the role of cats in the plots are interesting, although it must be said that these books are not cozy crime cat mysteries.
Book No. 5: The Black Curtain (1941) by Cornell Woolrich
Release Date: February 2025
Synopsis
‘A man is accused of a murder he cannot remember…
In a nightmare scenario, Frank Townsend has an apparently minor accident on his way home but he arrives to find his wife gone and doesn’t recognise his apartment. He had gone to work on a normal day but didn’t return for more than three years. Suffering from amnesia, he has to rediscover who he is, where he has been and what he has done. A curtain has fallen to cut off all memories of his life. First among the memories he wants to recover is whether he has committed the murder of which he has been accused. A mysterious stranger with a gun has been following him while he attempts to simultaneously understand what has happened in his past while doing all he can to extricate himself from a seemingly hopeless situation and regain his reputation. He does not yet know that he is in great jeopardy and there is no one he can trust to rescue him from the abyss.’
I don’t have long to wait for this forthcoming release. I have a couple of Woolrich titles on my TBR pile (which naturally does not stop me from hankering for more!). I like how his plots have the potential to go in lots of different directions and that their trajectory is never a done deal or guaranteed. One of my favourite reads by him to date is Deadline at Dawn (1944).
Book No. 6: Murder by the Clock (1929) by Rufus King
Release Date: January 2025
Synopsis
‘The body of Herbert Endicott is discovered by his wife at 8:37 PM, dead in his walk-in closet. The circumstances seem suspicious but there is no evidence of foul play, so Lieutenant Valcour, New York’s most astute investigator, orders an autopsy on site. The doctor discovers a faint heartbeat and, with an injection of adrenaline, Endicott is alive again. But just a few hours later, he has been shot dead—this time for good. From this puzzling set-up, an atmospheric and tense mystery ensues, with Valcour’s research turning up more questions than answers. Before twenty-four hours are up, the solution will be uncovered.’
This is an author I have known about for a while, but have never tried, so I was excited to see that American Mystery Classics were reprinting a novel by him. I don’t know what to expect but the plot sounds intriguing based on the blurb. This title has been selected as my book group’s March read, so stay tuned for a small flurry of reviews later this year.
Book No. 7: Silence After Dinner (1953) by Clifford Witting
Release Date: May 2025
Synopsis
‘“I feel the net drawing in around me even closer and closer. Dufydd has appeared suddenly in Southmouth. He will never forgive. I remember his last words to me. “Remember to come back, man, for if you do not, vengeance will follow.” What did he mean by that? Who’s vengeance? The communists? Or had he guessed what I was going to do?”
It was a far cry from Communist China to the peaceful village on the South Downs, but to be a self-confessed murderer, keeping his agonized diary, it could buy no peace. But then who was the writer of the diary?
“A clergyman committed two murders — one perhaps justified, one definitely not — in China in 1947. That clergyman is now in England and involved with the village of Yateham. But there are three, one of them defrocked, who are connected in one way or another with the village. Which one is the killer? And which one murders one of the others? Or was the murderer possibly the young baronet, protecting the reputation of his betrothed? The novel is entertaining and well worth reading.
— From The Mystery Fancier, Vol. 12, No. 3, Summer 1990.”’
The current synopsis info seems to be partially taken from The Mystery Fancier, but this might change nearer to publication. Regardless, the blurb description certainly encourages reader curiosity as to what this story will be about. I have been enjoying the Witting reprints that have been released in recent years, so I am eager to try this one.
Galileo Publishing are also reprinting Mischief in the Offing by Witting (1958), The Mystery at Orchard House (1946) by Joan Coggin and have further reprints in the pipeline which will be revealed later in the year.
Modern Crime Fiction
Book No. 8: Death in the Aviary (2025) by Victora Dowd
Release Date: September 2025
Synopsis
‘December 1929, and young back-room journalist Charlotte Blood is sent to the isolated Ravenswick Abbey in the wilds of Dartmoor to investigate the murder of the heir to the Ravenswick fortune. She faces a locked room mystery like no other, a crime impossible to solve. Almost a year ago, on New Year’s Eve, nine members of the Ravenswick household stepped into a vast, ornate lift installed for the ailing head of the family, Lord Ravenswick. The power failed. The lift stopped. In the darkness, a single shot was fired. As the light returned, the occupants were met with the sight of Charles Ravenswick, the heir, dead on the floor, the gun lying in the centre of the lift. No one could have got in. No one could have got out. All have motives. None have alibis. Charlotte Blood arrives under the pretence of reporting on the family’s infamous ravens. She finds a house haunted by suspicion and secrets. She must unravel the mystery and with it the terrible truth behind the Ravenwicks. Her search will not only lead her down a dangerous path, it will reveal some of the dark secrets that lurk in her own life…’
I have enjoyed Dowd’s Smart Women’s series, so I was intrigued when she shared online that she would be writing a new mystery set in the 1920s. Like her previous stories, Death in the Aviary features a seemingly impossible crime, this time set in a lift, which is an intriguing choice. The plot of the novel is located predominantly in Dartmoor, so I am sure there will be plenty of gothic atmosphere.
Book No. 9: Marble Hall Murders (2025) by Anthony Horowitz
Release Date: April 2025
Synopsis
‘Susan Ryeland has had enough of murder.
She’s edited two novels about the famous detective, Atticus Pünd, and both times she’s come close to being killed. Now she’s back in England and she’s been persuaded to work on a third. The new ‘continuation’ novel is by Eliot Crace, grandson of Miriam Crace who was the biggest selling children’s author in the world until her death exactly twenty years ago. Eliot believes that Miriam was deliberately poisoned. And when he tells Susan that he has hidden the identity of Miriam’s killer inside his book, Susan knows she’s in trouble once again. As Susan works on Pünd’s Last Case, a story set in an exotic villa in the South of France, she uncovers more and more parallels between the past and the present, the fictional and the real world – until suddenly she finds that she has become a target herself.’
An annual Horowitz is always a treat, and I am interested to see where he takes his Susan Ryeland series next. The metafictional aspect of Horowitz’s plots is one of many things I enjoy about his writing.
Book No. 10: Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife (2025) by Martin Edwards
Release Date: September 2025
Synopsis
‘Six down-on-their-luck people with links to the world of crime writing have been invited to play a game this Christmas by the mysterious Midwinter Trust. The challenge seems simple but exciting: Solve the murder of a fictional crime writer in a remote but wonderfully atmospheric village in north Yorkshire to win a prize that will change your fortunes for good. Six members of staff from the shadowy Trust are there to make sure everyone plays fair. The contestants have been meticulously vetted but you can never be too careful. And with the village about to be cut off by a snowstorm, everyone needs to be extra vigilant. Midwinter can play tricks on people’s minds… The game is set – but playing fair isn’t on everyone’s Christmas list. After all, when the prize is to die for, it’s so tempting to inject a little murder into the mystery.’
This was a lovely surprise to learn about last month, as I didn’t know this book was in the works. The interactive format of the narrative with built in puzzles sounds intriguing and the plot itself has much scope for metafiction. The Christmas mystery section of my TBR pile is somewhat bare (as I managed to read several of them in December), so this novel will be a great addition.
Honourable Mentions: I would also like to do a shout out for Not to Be Taken: A Puzzle in Poison (1938) by Anthony Berkeley (British Library Crime Classics) and Blood on the Cat (1946) by Nancy Rutledge (American Mystery Classics). I have read both novels, but I am really pleased they are being reprinted this year.
What books are you looking forward to being released in 2025?