Booklist, the American Library Association’s book review journal, calls this buzzy debut novel “The Queen’s Gambit of classical music.” The coming-of-age drama is nominally about a gifted African-American violinist whose rare Stradivarius is stolen, but emerges as a portrait of generations of racism and its impoverishing effect on the classical world, and the artists within it.

Nostalgia powers this pulsing read about an FBI agent who attempts to solve two seemingly unrelated teen massacres in small-town New Jersey— one in 1999 at a Blockbuster video store, the other 15 years later at an ice cream shop – both during the night shift. Each lone survivor has secrets to keep in what Lee Child calls “instantly immersive, pacy and propulsive.”

We keep reading variations on Jane Austen’s masterworks – from para-fiction about peripheral characters to Pride & Prejudice and Zombies – so authors keep writing them. This is the 14th in Barron’s ongoing series featuring Austen as an amateur sleuth, and it is rich in historical detail about the restorative Cheltenham spa Austen and her sister Cassandra visited in 1916, the year before she died, when the author’s health was failing.

Fans of Patrick Süskind’s bestseller Perfume: The Story of a Murderer are in for a treat with this suspenseful novel about a New York bespoke perfumer who creates scents that help clients trigger and relive memories – a service with a fatal cost. The U.S. author is a fragrance enthusiast, so the evocative writing explores the emotional connections of smell.

Candlish, a British suspense writer, had a breakout psychological drama in the early days of the pandemic with The Other Passenger, and this one is just as pacy. In the titular posh apartment building, a lighting designer catches a glimpse of a person who couldn’t possibly be alive — because she killed them. It’s a page turner, literally, because the main character is also writing a memoir for her creative-writing class and the novel takes on story-within-a-story twists.

The title combines the name of the two friends in this thought-provoking psychological chiller: one of them is the Black adopted daughter of wealthy white parents while the other covets her lifestyle, as they both navigate the white spaces of country clubs and privilege. Like their friendship, it’s an intense and at times gory read about control and toxic friendship (think: Black Swan) that blooms into a surreal social horror worthy of Jordan Peele.

Hornclaw, a ruthless, 65-year-old, contract assassin, is so solitary, her only companion is an old rescue dog. So when she gets injured on a job, she has to contend with her fragile health and the financial downside of her potential retirement. This quirky and often funny thriller was a sensation in its native South Korea, in no small part because of its rueful insights on grief and aging. 

Raymond Chandler’s cynical gumshoe transposed to gritty, modern-day Los Angeles? We’ll take that case! Especially when it’s written by Ide, the acclaimed Japanese-American crime writer of the IQ series, who grew up in South Central L.A. It concerns a dame, and a missing persons case with a Hollywood connection.

Claudia Lin, a Golden Age mystery aficionado, has a day job verifying data of customers at a referrals-only dating agency; after a client vanishes, she finds herself sleuthing just like her literary heroes — albeit she is investigating the reality of the trade-offs behind 21st-century tracking apps and predictive algorithms. As Claudia contends with the “model minority” expectations of her Chinese-American family, Pek’s smart debut becomes a pitch-perfect mix of classic murder mystery (with allusions peppered throughout) and a meditation on the ethics and privacy of contemporary technology.

In this gripping and immersive tale set in 1968, teenage Matt is looking for Jazz, his hippie older sister, who he thinks has been abducted. On the cusp of the summer of love, he traverses some now-famous psychedelic haunts in Laguna Beach, Calif., where LSD savant Timothy Leary teaches higher consciousness amid anti-Vietnam protests. The journey is just as interesting as the outcome because it’s equal parts picaresque and time capsule.

This Canadian author and University of Toronto librarian’s debut cozy is set in a thinly veiled facsimile of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the university’s downtown Toronto campus. The bookish whodunit concerns a rare Bible that’s gone missing, and seasoned librarian Liesl, 60, and on the verge of retirement, must step into a leadership role and deal with missing manuscript. There are the requisite oddball bibliophiles, academics and donors, but what shines is the portrait of a woman and her long marriage – much of it spent taking care of a husband with mental illness – who finds herself in a time of renewal.