all the murder mystery books on my tbr🔎

Hello friends, welcome back to another video. Today we're going to be going through all the murder mystery books on my TBR. Now, I have done this video before. I did this video about a year and a half ago, but that has very much changed. There's only a few books on here that were in that video. It's mostly new ones, and since murder mystery is my favourite genre, well, my favourite sub-genre, because these are just murder mysteries. I have probably at least double the amount of mysteries on my TBR, these included, but I've been very strict and we're just including murder mysteries in this. So, yeah, I thought it was time to do another video. I know a lot of you get recommendations from me. Let's just get into it and chat about all the murder mysteries on my TBR. I think there's about 36. But before we get into the video, I want to say a massive thank you to the sponsor of today's video, which is Shortform. Shortform is super powered book summaries. It's literally like book summaries like you never could have imagined them before. It is comprehensive coverage of all of the book's key ideas explained to you in a really digestible way, plus commentary and analysis, which is one of the coolest parts. We'll get onto that. I've been a bit jealous this year of people going back to school, because I miss learning. I really miss learning. So Shortform has been such a saviour for me at the moment. When I'm busy doing a lot of stuff, I don't have a tonne of time to read loads of non-fiction books, but this is a way for me to digest ideas quickly and kind of consume the content and figure out which non-fiction books I would like to actually read fully most. Shortform has such a wide range of genres. There's politics, there's self-improvement, there's history, there's productivity. They drop a new book guide every week, and you can also request books. 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There is one big category at the end that's just everything else, but it's mostly split into categories and they'll be timestamps down below for you. So let's just get into it. Okay. Whenever you're ready. I'm ready. Okay. I'm ready. Whenever you're ready. I'm ready. First category, let's just do Agatha Christie and related books because that's like a very simple category. I have four Agatha Christie books on my TBR. We have Peril at End House and Lord Edgware Dies, which are the next two in the Occupy Row series I'm reading. I'm reading them in order, mostly I've read Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile already out of order, but other than that, I am reading these in order and I haven't, I don't think I've made progress in the series this year. I read Death on the Nile, but I have not made progress in the series. So I would like to read at least one of these, if not both of these in the rest of this year. You know, they're super short. Agatha Christie was not messing about. She said, I have a word count and I'm sticking to it. I mean, Peril at End House is only 237 pages and the font is pretty big. And then I also have these special editions. These are the only two special editions I have not read yet. We have the ABC Murders and 450 from Paddington. This I'm not going to get around to for ages because I'm not going to read it until I get up to this point in the series. 450 from Paddington is Miss Marple and I've never read a Miss Marple before. And I feel like I should read this soon-ish because the Marple anthology is coming out and like, I want to buy it, but I'm like, Megan, can you justify buying it when you haven't read any Miss Marple? I feel like my introduction to Miss Marple needs to be Agatha herself. So I should probably read this soon as well, but I don't know when I'm going to get around to it. Two books that are related to Agatha Christie. We have The Monogram Murders, which is a continuation of Urquhara by Sophie Hanna. So it says Agatha Christie at the top. It's done with the Agatha Christie estate. So this is like her new books that get published. Is she still alive? No. I'm excited to read this, but I definitely feel like I need to maybe read a few more Agathas and then read this and see how they compare. I don't know. I've never read Sophie Hanna and I am intrigued by a few of her mystery thrillers that she writes under her own name as well. Haven't They Grown is one that I'm really interested in. So yeah, I do like the covers. I like the designs of these. And I think it's a very fun idea to kind of keep Agatha Christie alive through another medium, but it's quite low rated because I think people get mad that this is in existence. And then we have Aggie Morton Mystery Queen. This is like a middle grade following Agatha Christie when she's young and solves a mystery. I think it's a murder. Yeah, they find a body on the piano. So yeah, it's her and her friend, what's he called? A Belgian boy, Hector Pero, as they solve a mystery together. And I just think this is a really cute idea. And I just like books that re-imagine classic mystery culture with a new lens. On that note, let's get into some books that reference other stuff. So our retellings or re-imaginings or reference other media and pop culture in the murder mystery. First is Pride and Premeditation. This is a Jane Austen murder mystery. I still need to read this. I need to get around to this whole series. So yeah, this is a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, which I have a very strong affinity with Pride and Prejudice. If you don't know, I used to watch the Colin Firth version whenever I was sick as a child. It would always be what I would watch whenever I was off school sick. So I love Pride and Prejudice. I read it when I was younger, when I was like a kid with my mum, but I haven't read it since then. I can't really remember. But I still watch, you know, I know everything that happens because I watch the adaptation. And that's like a six hour adaptation. So it's pretty in depth of what happens. In this, Lizzie and Darcy are lawyers at separate firms. They're like batting it out against each other. They're solving a murder, essentially. I've heard mixed things about this, but I just think it's such a fun idea. I mean, like Pride and Prejudice is a murder mystery. The other book I mention a lot, I talk about a lot, is In the Hall with a Knife by Adela Peterfreund. This is inspired by Clue, Cluedo. It's a Clue mystery. Me to everyone who calls Cluedo Clue. That is not correct. This is a YA murder mystery set at this school and all of the characters, like Scarlet, Mustard, Green, are all characters in the book, which I just think is so much fun. And all the books in the series are like In the Hall with a Knife, In the Something with the Something. Like, that's what they're all themed on. I just like, I really like adaptations of pop culture in murder mystery. I just think it's so much fun. I just, I really, really love it. Like, I just, I tend to like that in all my books when it's referential to something. I just think it's a fun moment. So I've spoken about this so much over the years, about how much I want to read it. But, you know, it's one of those series I'm holding off on. I'm really holding off on starting any series at the moment, if I can avoid it, because I'm trying to get to a certain number of current reading series by the end of the year. Probably in January and I'll then just start like... I'm debating starting this next month. I think I might do it because I want to read it so bad and have wanted to for so long that I want to read it while I'm still so excited to read it. This is a graphic novel I bought in my most recent... Oh my god, my camera just thought I was an infant. It like says, like when it's filming, it'll be like portrait, item, or whatever, landscape, and it just said infant. I didn't even like... God, I know I look young, but I mean... I bought this when I went book shopping in London. It is House of Lost Horizons and I didn't know, it says it's top from the world of Hellboy. Now, I don't know anything about Hellboy. Literally know nothing. I've done some research, I think maybe one of the characters in this is like a minor character from that, but it's not a very big link. And this is like your classic murder mystery, like old school, set in a manor kind of situation, historical, and I'm just so excited to read this. I know a lot of you have actually like picked this up from your library and stuff since I mentioned it in that vlog. I've never seen a graphic novel murder mystery before, like I've always wanted one, I've never seen one before, so I got so excited when I saw this and I would love to find more. I would really love to find more. Next we have The Christmas Murder Game by Alexandra Benedict. Now, this got bad reviews when it came out, I'm not gonna lie to you, but I'm gonna try and read it this Christmas because like, I think it needs to be done. I feel like I need to read this Christmas, otherwise it's gonna be a whole nother Christmas till I read it, which is a problem. We've got like a family tree in it. Yeah, I haven't heard the best reviews for it, but it's Christmas and it's a murder mystery and that's what Christmas is about, isn't it? Yeah. And then finally, this last one is referential to the murder mystery genre. It's like self-referential, which I'm obsessed with. I really need to read this. This is your guide to not getting murdered in a quaint English village by Maureen Johnson and Jay Cooper. So it's basically, this is kind of a graphic novel, I guess. I wouldn't say graphic novel, I'd say more like illustrated book. It's obviously very tiny. It will say, this is the village and it has a map and it'll say like, these are our characters and it has like little illustrations with like, the characters that are really common. Furnishings and features, ways to die, like all this stuff. I can't wait to read this. I think this is just such a fun thing. As someone who loves murder mystery, something that is so self-referential of it, I've been saving it for the perfect moment, but I probably need to just go ahead and read it because it's one of the books, again, that I want to read the most. It will take like probably an hour max to read this. It's a lot of pictures, but I think it would be a really, really fun read. Okay, next let's just chat about two continuations of series that I have. So I have the next two in the Lady Hardcastle mysteries, which is my favourite cozy mystery series. I've only read the first three. It's been a while again since I've read one of these, but I do love them very much. So we have a picture of murder and the burning issue of the day. And I really want to finish this series because I don't really want to start any more cozy mystery series until I finish this one. So I would really like to make at least a progress in reading one more before the end of the year. And again, it's the perfect time of year to read this stuff, really. This one's set in late October, so I may read it around that time if I can. There's so many of these books. I've just did my full TBR and like I have a few videos where I can fit, you know, a few books in, but I can only fit as many books. Like I can't fit all of them in. So I'm thinking, oh I could fit you in, oh I could fit you in, but I can't fit them all in. So like what am I supposed to do? And then this is kind of a series. I have two more Sesshi Yokamizos. I have the Inugami Curse and the Village of Eight Graves. I've only read one of these. I've read the Honjin Murders. This author, Sesshi Yokamizo, is like the Agatha Christie of Japanese crime fiction. So he has this really expansive series following the same detective. The Honjin Murders is the first one, but they're slowly adapting his books. There's been more that have come out since these, maybe at least one more I think is out now, but they're not like necessarily translating them in order. So they're like picking, say if it was Agatha Christie, they'd pick like Murder on the New York Express, Death on the Nile, like Murder of Roger Ackroyd, like the big ones. Imagine like the ones that are in the special editions. They're kind of translating those is my understanding, and slowly making their way through the series. Yeah, I loved the Honjin Murders. I loved reading a translated murder mystery from like a different culture. It was such a different reading experience. So yeah, we'd love to get to one of these soon as well. My next category is my most fun one, and it is Thursday Murder Club ripoffs. I think with the success of the Thursday Murder Club, there's been this big boom in the murder mystery world of old people solving mysteries. I was saying the other day though, I want this trend to like continue into other genres. Like I want more older characters in fantasy, or in romance, or like whatever. It feels very stuck in murder mysteries, and there's loads of them. I have five here, a lot of these are series. So it's just an interesting trend. So we have Death and Croissants by Ian Moore. We're following an Englishman who runs a B&B in France. One of his older guests disappears, only leaves a bloody handprint on the wallpaper. Another guest persuades him to investigate the disappearance, and then the hen is killed. Can you see the hen? We're like the X-men. Why are you laughing? Not the hen! We could deal with the man, but not the hen. So yeah, I've wanted to read this for a long time. I think it's again like a cozy mystery. I think all of these are series though, so again I'm trying to be careful with how many of them I start. One that a lot of you have recommended to me, don't worry, I own it, I want to get around to it, is The Marlowe Murder Club. I think these are all the same. An old woman, sorry, and her two friends solving a murder mystery, and they call themselves The Marlowe Murder Club. All of these books meeting each other. You're what? I'm you. She's like out swimming in the Thames, which like, Judith, do you want to swim in the Thames? Like do people do that? Swimming in the Thames? Like if you're in like an estuary where it's like opened out into the sea, fine, but like in London by Big Ben with all the ---- that's in there? Okay Judith. So yeah, she's swimming in the Thames and she witnesses a murder and teams up with her friends to solve it. The synopses of these are very quick because they're all the same. Spoonful of Murder, this was recently gifted to me by one of my patrons. Every Thursday three retired school teachers have their coffee o'clock sessions at the Thirsk Garden Centre Cafe. They bump into ex-colleague, by the next Thursday the ex-colleague is dead and they want to solve it. It's the same thing, except they're all school teachers this time. One I recently received from Book of the Month was Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Rabon. A lot of you have been recommending this to me. This one's a bit different in that we're following ex-assassins, so I was talking about how it reminds me of the Lady Hardcastle mysteries because in that she's an ex-spy. So in this one they're ex-assassins and it's kill or be killed, so to survive they have to keep killing people essentially. Yeah, sounds really good, sounds right up my street. I actually hadn't heard about it until Book of the Month had it as one of their selections and then a lot of you since then have been talking to me about it but I hadn't heard of it before that, so very excited for this. And then finally we have Murder Before Even Song. This is following a vicar and he solves a mystery in his quaint village where one of his parishioners has been stabbed in the neck with a pair of saccateurs, which is just the perfect quaint mystery. Yeah, this is one of my most, like, anticipated books of the year. Also how cute are the end pages? They're little doggies! This doesn't have a category, well I suppose the category is classic. I only have one and it's Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I'm gonna try and read this soon but I've only just realised, like, how long this is. She's huge but she's so beautiful. She's a mammoth, of course. So this is like a lot of his main mysteries. Oh my god, it's like 500 pages of, like, long stuff. But I feel like I've owned this for a long time, it's time to read it. Then next I have some 2022 releases I still haven't got to. We have, well, I say still haven't got to, I literally bought these, like, a couple days ago. We have The It Girl and The Three Dahlias. I still don't know. I think one is British and one's American but I don't know which one's... I think Dahlia is British, Dahlia is American. Right? I don't know. So The It Girl by Ruth Ware I think is a murder mystery. It's like, it's tentatively here. We're following a girl who discovered her best friend dead, I think at Oxford when they were students there together. A man got sentenced, got sent away and someone comes to her and says, I don't think that's actually who killed her. So that's that one. And then this one I feel like is a bit inspired by Agatha Christie. We have three actresses who have played this lady detective who was written by this famous author. They've all played her in different generations. They get invited to her estate by, like, the relatives that now live there for, like, this event and I think a murder happens and they team up to investigate it. So I think this is a little bit inspired by Agatha Christie. Imagine if Urquh-Pirro was, like, a female, female detective and, like, different actors who had played him, like Kenneth Branagh. What's the one who really played Urquh-Pirro? I can't remember what the guy's name is. David Suchet? Suchet? I can't remember. Imagine if they all teamed up to solve a murder mystery. That's basically what this is. We have The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James. I read my first Simone St. James earlier this year and it was The Broken Girls and it was five stars. One of my favourite books I've read so far this year. So I'm very excited to get to this one. In this there's a murder that happened in the 1970s. This woman was very much connected to it but she, there wasn't enough evidence, she got away. And in 2017 we've got this girl who runs a true crime website who wants to go and interview her and she interviews her and there's something strange going on at this woman's house. The woman is, like, very, who's accused of the murder, is very, like, secluded, she lives in this strange place. And the thing I love about Simone St. James, there's always this paranormal element that I feel like she does so well. I mean, I've actually, I've read one. Because she was unqualified. But to my knowledge, there's always a paranormal element that is what I want from a thriller, where it's, like, I hate when I read a horror or a thriller or a mystery that's set up like, oh, is there ghosts? And then it gets debunked. Like, it turns out there's not a ghost, there's no paranormal element. Whereas Simone St. James is not necessarily like, oh, this book is about ghosts, or any of her books. But there's just a little element that you don't know what's real and what's not, you know? It's just, it's, like, exactly what I want. It's exactly what I want. And then the last one is You're Invited by This is, like, it's my kind of thing. Everyone goes to this, uh, secluded island for a wedding, and a murder happens. I think there might be more than one murder. It might be, like, everyone's getting killed. It says, what could be worse than your ex-boyfriend marrying your childhood best friend, getting accused of her murder? Oh my god, fun. And as we know, I loved the guest list where there was a wedding, or secluded island, and there was murder. So. And now we have our final section, which is everything else. I think there's, like, six, seven back there? We have Like A Sister by Kelly Garrett. This might have actually come out, no, I think this came out the end of last year. No, it came out this year. It should have been in that last section. So we have sisters. I think one's, like, a reality TV star. She's found dead. Police say it's a suicide. Her sister's like, nope. I don't think that's happened. And she endeavors to find out what happened to her sister. This has been rated quite low, but I wonder if it's, like, the kind of thing that I would love, and people are rating it low for the wrong reasons. We have True Crime Story, another one I've been speaking a ton about. Sorry to talk about it too much. It's an interesting book because, again, it's kind of self-referential. It opens up with a letter from the publisher. This is part of the book, but it's, like, setting the scene. It's about a girl who goes missing, but I think it is pretty much a murder mystery. And it's all emails and interviews and stuff like that. I'm so excited. So excited. We have Murder Most Unladyliked by Robin Stevens. This is a series I really want to start probably next year when I'm no longer under the counting series curse. This is a middle grade murder mystery series, and I do love middle grade series. I have not been reading enough of middle grade this year, and just, like, I've never really read a middle grade murder mystery series. I've read middle grade horror that I've really enjoyed, but, yeah, I just think there's something cozy and comforting about a series like this. Then I got sent two books by one of my lovely patrons, Kayla, the other week. We have The Man in Black and The Mansfield Park Murder. I can never remember which one's first. These are actually referential as well. They should have been in the referential section. This one's a, like, retelling on Mansfield Park, and this one's a retelling of Charles Dickens. I don't know which one. It says a Charles Dickens novel, but it's mysteries based on those set in, like, 1800s London. We're following the same investigator as well, Charles Maddox, in both of them. So, yeah, these sound really cool. They've just come out. There's, like, literally no reviews for them on Goodreads yet, so super excited to read these and see what I think of them. One that I have been so excited to read since I got it, like, a year ago, and I don't hear a lot of people talk about it, is Sleep by C.L. Taylor. It's another isolated murder mystery. There's seven guests at this hotel, like, little B&B kind of situation. They get snowed in, and then one of them is killed. It's, like, my favorite kind of thing. But I know Mara from Books Like Woe speaks to this very highly, and as you'll know, she's my booktube twin, where she recommended me three books, and I gave them all five stars. Like, I really feel like I can rely on Mara for the recommendations. So, yes, I definitely want to get around to this soon. We have Before You Knew My Name by Jacqueline Bablitz. This is another one that was sent to me by one of my patrons. This was sent to me by Sophie. So, one girl in this we meet at the beginning, and she ends up being New York City's next murder victim. And I think the other girl finds her body, and it's very much about how their stories intertwine. When this has been pitched to me, it's very much pitched as, like, it focuses on the victims of these murders rather than the perpetrators. I think that's something that often gets lost in the murder mystery genre, that it's important, like, focusing on the victim and their life and the value that that had. So, I'm excited to read this for a bit of a different take. And then a really interesting book, finally, is Six Stories by Matt Roslowski. So, this, I think, again, is all interviews, pretty much. It is, like, a true crime podcast about a mystery that happened in the 1990s. And he conducts six interviews throughout the book, this podcaster, to figure out what happened, how this murder happened. I think interviewing his friends, the people that knew him. It's another one that's been really recommended to me, and it's only just over 200 pages. So, definitely one I should get to maybe, like, a 24-hour readathon or something like that. That is all of the murder mysteries that are on my TBR. That's all of them. Please let me know which of these you want me to read the most, which ones you've enjoyed, which ones you're most looking forward to reading yourself, which ones you've never heard of before but think sound interesting. I would absolutely love to know. If you've gotten to the end of the video, comment the murder weapon of your choice. I love doing that on videos like this because I get to know your inner psyche. So comment the emoji of a murder weapon of your choice, like, I don't know, knife, candlestick. Comment that down below if you got to the end. Thank you guys so much for watching as always, and I'll see you very soon in another video. Bye!