95 Books Like Class Reunions Are Murder

Financial whiz Julia Snowden returns to her Maine hometown to rescue the family’s clambake business. Although she has financial acumen, she lacks true knowledge of how a clam bake works. She learns the hard way when a murder and a wedding reception don’t mix. I wasn’t familiar with the inner workings of clam bakes, from menu to preparation, but I learned with Julia. I also enjoy Ross’s writing style. The combination of the storytelling plus the facts interwoven make this a good book choice.

Social media expert Maddy Montgomery, left standing at the altar, is #StartingOver in small-town Michigan after inheriting her great-aunt’s bakery and a 200-pound English Mastiff named Baby. Her plan to sell the bakery and go back to her sophisticated life is spoiled by a restriction in the will requiring her to spend a year in New Bison. Maddy doesn’t bake, and her Louboutins aren’t made for walking giant dogs, but the locals are friendly, and Lake Michigan is beautiful. Maddy feels ready to take on the challenge—until New Bison’s mayor is fatally stabbed, and her fingerprints are on the knife. When there’s another murder, she even begins to suspect the one person she has trusted. Maddy’s snarky dialog and clever use of hashtags, along with the irresistible Baby, make this a stand-out.

In The Rocky Road to Ruin, CIA librarian Riley Rhodes returns home to the charming Connecticut town of Pennimen, where she helps run the Udderly Delicious Ice Cream Shop and solves a murder to clear her friend’s name.

The mystery kept me guessing, the ice cream flavors made my mouth water, and the two adorable cats melted my heart like the summer sun melts ice cream.

I recently read an advance copy of A Trip with Trouble (releases October 2022), the 2nd Mountain Lodge Mystery. In the first book in the series, protagonist Misty Murphy turned fifty, got divorced, and invested her settlement in a mountain lodge that she knew nothing about running. A Trip with Trouble finds the inn totally rented out to Dangerous Curves Motorcycle Club, a group of women who plan to ride the Blue Ridge Parkway. On a ride that Misty is invited to join, things go awry when the tail gunner (last rider) is found dead. Although I enjoyed the whodunit aspects of the book, Kelly’s vivid descriptions of the Blue Ridge Parkway area and the mountains grounded the book in reality. A quick read that I stayed up far too late so I could finish it in one sitting. (The book has certain chapters told through the eyes of… show more.

In this book by Jennifer J. Chow, I loved how the differences between Yale Yee, the sleuth, and her cousin, Celine, not only created tension throughout the book but ultimately played on each of their strengths to solve the mystery. 

The two cousins are thrown together when quiet Yale is tapped by her dad to run the family bubble tea stand at L.A.’s night market. Loud and flamboyant Celine, a social media influencer, arrives in L.A. and gets tasked with helping Yale out.

Chow does a great job of showing the two girls' very different personalities and adding in that family tension. On top of that, the L.A. night market is fascinating! I hope this will be a long-running series!  

Every time a new Irish Village Mystery by Carlene O’Connor comes out, I’m first in line at the bookstore.

I love Garda Siobhan O’Sullivan and her siblings, whom she fondly refers to as the O’Sullivan Six. In this book, the ninth in the series, I was delighted to revisit the village of Kilbane in County Cork as Siobhan and her swoon-worthy husband, Garda Macdera Flannery, follow the clues to catch a murderer who took out one of the contestants of a televised baking show.

The humor in this series always leaves me laughing out loud and ready for another visit with the O’Sullivans.   

This book gives me everything I want in a cozy mystery—Christmas, a snowy Montana village, killer chocolates, a mystery bookstore, and a protagonist with an identical twin sister! What more could you want?

I love the dynamics between twin sisters Hanna and Alex as they juggle duties in Murder and Mayhem, the book and chocolate shop they own together. Romeril delivers humor and the quirkiness of small-town life like a pro. I loved all the twists and turns that kept me guessing to the sweet end! 

I adored Sarah E. Burr's book. Hazel and her Aunt Poppy each have their own magical “whim” that has been passed down in their bloodline. 

The characters are perfectly quirky, the setting is quaint, and the mystery has enough twists and turns to leave me satisfied. I loved that the book started out with Hazel and Poppy, but by the end, the family had grown. So, I won’t spoil anything; I’m not going to say more about that! It was a fantastic read, and I’ll be gobbling down the rest of the series. 

I adore the character of Sam Holland. She is a badass cop, not willing to take crap from anyone, even her fellow officers, with a smart mouth that gets her into as much trouble as it gets her out of. Her character is written with such nuance and honesty that she’s someone I’ve willingly followed through 22 books (and counting).

Sam works twice as hard to make sure she’s living up to her own expectations as much as anyone else’s, always afraid of falling short, something I think we all tend to be too hard on ourselves about at times. The love interest throughout the series sometimes struggles with her strong personality, even as he admires her for it, which I think lends a depth of realism to their relationship as it grows and sometimes flounders.

Nigeria is the largest country in Africa and is filled with conflicting and contrasting customs, rituals, and institutions that have tentacles that reach deep into its modern society. I find it hard to close a gripping psychological thriller. Still, in this book, even Philip Taiwo, the criminal psychologist sent to investigate the murders of three college students, has psychological problems of his own that have to be addressed. 

I love books that use the psychology of human behavior as the basis to unravel a crime. In this book, I glimpsed a sector of Nigerian society I didn’t know existed. Kayode’s book was filled with heart-thumping intrigue and so many twists and turns that I couldn’t stop listening.