It’s the month of love, so I have a handful of novels that give romance fans a little something and crime fans a little something. They all pair beautifully with Valentine’s Day treats — including all the bags of candy that go on sale on February 15th!
A Killer Kind of Romance by Letizia Lorini
Scarlett Moore is hosting a crime book podcast when her life suddenly gets very complicated. Someone starts acting out the murders from the crime books she discusses on air, and she’s assigned the romance podcast at work (she doesn’t read romance!). Enter a handsome neighbor who turns her life into romance tropes but is also possibly a suspect in the new rash of murders…
The Princess and the PI by Nikki Payne
It’s truly bad luck for Fiona Addai that there’s a dead body when she gets caught trying to get her deceased brother’s invention back from the company that stole it. So then she teams up with the PI Maurice Bennett, demanding that he teach her how to be a real-life sleuth. But Maurice comes with his own baggage, being that he’s never been able to let go of an unsolved case involving Fiona’s father’s megachurch.
Partners in Crime by Alisha Rai
In what feels like another life, Mira Patel and Naveen Desai briefly dated after a matchmaking setup. Cut to the present when Mira’s aunt dies, and they’re thrust back into each other’s lives when Naveen is left in charge of the estate and they end up kidnapped together. Now they have to figure out who is after them and why…
Definitely Maybe Not a Detective by Sarah Fox
Emersyn Gray’s boyfriend ran off with her money, so she’s living in a seniors-only apartment building, raising her niece, and trying to figure out her life. Emersyn and her best friend come up with a plan to create a fake PI agency, Wyatt Investigations, and hire a “Wyatt” to scare her ex into giving her her money back. Except now she’s got a hot guy in her life, a dead superintendent, and everyone thinks her detective agency is real.
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It Had To Be You by Eliza Jane Brazier
What starts off as a hookup between strangers on a sleeper train from Florence to Paris morphs into a dangerous cat-and-mouse game because Eva and Jonathan are contract killers…This one is for fans of dark humor and Mr. & Mrs. Smith.
A Spy in the Struggle by Aya de León
After becoming a pariah in the private legal sector, Yolanda Vance accepts a job as a lawyer for the FBI. The problem is they don’t really want her as a lawyer; they need her to go undercover to bug the center of a teen activist group the FBI has labeled as extremists. The further she gets into the assignment, Yolanda’s Type A personality gets seriously tested, as do her many held beliefs, and her anti-love stance. Oh, and there’s the little issue of the former informant having been murdered.
Serial Killer Games by Kate Posey
Dolores dela Cruz is obsessed with true crime and wants to actually spot a serial killer in real life. So when Jake Ripper starts working at her job as the mysterious new temp, she becomes obsessed with him being her IRL serial killer. They’re drawn together by their mutual dark obsessions, but with a real serial killer on the loose (people are getting pushed off rooftops!), can anyone trust each other?
English (US) · 