Here are 61 books that Murder in Palm Springs fans have personally recommended if you like
Murder in Palm Springs.
Book DNA is a community of 13,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
I am Susie Black, an award-winning cozy mystery author. As a long-time desert dweller and professional people watcher, I’ve always been fascinated by the intrinsic relationship between the often unpredictable, severe desert weather and the distinctive, sometimes quirky people who choose to live in it. With the introduction of The Sunny Knight Mystery Series, I have created an entire series that is devoted to exploring that unique connection. The Forecast is…Murder! is the series debut title.
Caroline Popov is promoted to General Manager of the Night Hawk Casino in the California high desert.
I cheered as Caroline didn’t let anyone push her around. If, like me, you’re curious about the real story behind the gaming industry, but a trip to a casino isn’t in your future, this story is right up your alley.
I was blown away by gaming industry pro-Bertoia’s physical description of the casino, the emotional atmosphere that permeates the place, and the characters who play and work there that were so spot on. I checked my wallet to make sure I didn’t lose a bucket of bucks at the Blackjack table.
Caroline Popov, alone, heartbroken, and deeply in debt ends up in glamorous Palm Springs, California where Native casinos have just opened, offering employment to thousands. She lands a job at the Palm Oasis Casino where she is mentored by the charismatic tribal chairman, John Tovar.
Embraced by casino culture, Caroline works her way up to casino manager of the Night Hawk, in the High Desert town of Joshua Tree. There, she is responsible for managing multicultural team members, satisfying the demands of often unique guests, and growing revenue while rooting out corruption.
In the process of rediscovering her inner strength,…
Roxy Gleason, an innkeeper by trade and a bibliomancer by birth, has lived in the same small town on the Susquehanna River in Central Pennsylvania for her entire life. Tradition is strong here. Roxy understands the rules and is willing to play by them most of the time.
I am Susie Black, an award-winning cozy mystery author. As a long-time desert dweller and professional people watcher, I’ve always been fascinated by the intrinsic relationship between the often unpredictable, severe desert weather and the distinctive, sometimes quirky people who choose to live in it. With the introduction of The Sunny Knight Mystery Series, I have created an entire series that is devoted to exploring that unique connection. The Forecast is…Murder! is the series debut title.
Kate Tessler’s father and his retirement community coffee group come to her with a problem: their friend Larry's much younger wife claims her husband has dementia.
The group is convinced that Larry’s wife and her two adult, deadbeat kids are out to steal Larry’s money. But before they can authenticate the truth, their efforts are complicated when Larry is accused of committing a murder. Now they must prove Larry is both mentally competent and not a killer.
I love this saucy whodunit that came with the reminder that the term senior citizen doesn’t mean soft in the head. I cheered this fast-paced, witty cozy starring a gang of savvy seniors with humor, heart, and tenacity. Something Deadly on Desert Drive is perfect for fans of laugh-out-loud amateur detective stories who need no reminder that age is only a number.
Starting over at fifty might be hard, but it shouldn’t be deadly…
Still recovering from an injury that might have permanently derailed her career as an international war correspondent, Kate Tessler is living in her childhood bedroom and pondering her second act when another case lands in her lap. Kate’s father and his coffee group are worried. Their friend Larry married a younger woman who now insists he has dementia and won’t let any of his friends visit. They’re convinced that Larry’s wife and her two adult, dead-beat kids are out to steal his money. Can Kate help?
I am Susie Black, an award-winning cozy mystery author. As a long-time desert dweller and professional people watcher, I’ve always been fascinated by the intrinsic relationship between the often unpredictable, severe desert weather and the distinctive, sometimes quirky people who choose to live in it. With the introduction of The Sunny Knight Mystery Series, I have created an entire series that is devoted to exploring that unique connection. The Forecast is…Murder! is the series debut title.
Two sisters check into a hotel in their Arizona hometown to celebrate one another’s birthdays.
Their celebratory getaway is abruptly interrupted when one of the sisters discovers the corpse of a nasty hotel guest. Both sisters are hopeless snoops who can’t mind their own beeswax. So, naturally, they stick their noses everywhere they don’t belong to sniff out the killer, much to the consternation of the homicide detective in charge of the case.
Give me a madcap cast that takes readers on a raucous, wild rollercoaster ride at a breakneck pace in a fun romp with a plot that has more twists and turns than a pretzel, plenty of motives and red herrings like this one any day of the week.
It’s a birthday weekend with the gift of murder.Recently widowed, Emma Banefield looks forward to a getaway birthday weekend with her free-wheeling sister, Nicole Earp, sipping chocolate martinis at the peaceful, historic, small town Dulce Inn. When a rude stranger, a nasty food critic, and a madhouse of temperamental artists greet them, all hope for a tranquil weekend evaporates faster than dew on a hot desert morning.Overlooking the riotous atmosphere is doubly hard after Em discovers the body of a hotel guest, and a second murder affects Nic personally. Now, entrenched in a caper that pits them against a surly…
Roxy Gleason, an innkeeper by trade and a bibliomancer by birth, has lived in the same small town on the Susquehanna River in Central Pennsylvania for her entire life. Tradition is strong here. Roxy understands the rules and is willing to play by them most of the time.
I am Susie Black, an award-winning cozy mystery author. As a long-time desert dweller and professional people watcher, I’ve always been fascinated by the intrinsic relationship between the often unpredictable, severe desert weather and the distinctive, sometimes quirky people who choose to live in it. With the introduction of The Sunny Knight Mystery Series, I have created an entire series that is devoted to exploring that unique connection. The Forecast is…Murder! is the series debut title.
As someone whose early career was spent in a family business, Arson and Americanos took me on a delightful trip down memory lane.
It was just like old home week as I cheered the familiar banter and playful bickering between third-generation spunky barista Hazel, her mom, and grandma.
Give me a whodunit like this one, starring an endearing cast and a loyal protagonist with heart and courage who is willing to step up and put everything on the line when it counts the most, and I’ll show you an unputdownable story you’ll be sad to see end.
When her family’s coffee shop goes down in flames, can this spunky barista prove it was arson?Hazel Hewitt loves being in the coffee business with her mom and grandma. But when their cafe burns to the ground, her mom’s beloved boyfriend appears to be at fault. Joe will lose everything if he’s blamed for this, and since he’s the closest thing Hazel has to a father, she knows she needs to step in.Hazel’s brother and the rest of their town’s police force think this is a simple case of negligence on Joe’s part. So when she’s not making plans with…
I’ve loved mystery novels since picking up my older sister’s Agatha Christie collection as a pre-teen. Over the years I’ve come to love novels with badass women detectives, especially when the world-building pulls you into a place and time that is almost an additional character, where you can feel the weather, smell the buildings, and taste the fear. And it certainly doesn’t hurt to add a social justice angle. Having read so many, I finally decided to write my own mystery set in the East Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights where I grew up, not anywhere near the Hollywood version.
There’s a freeway sign on the way to Palm Springs that directs you to “Other Desert Cities.” I love that sign because it so captures the desert, and so does Katherine V. Forrest in her 10th installment of a Kate Delafield mystery. Brought out of retirement by threats from an innocent woman she put in jail when she was a cop, Delafield must marshal her defenses and her feelings to return to the arid tranquility she thought she’d found.
I have always been drawn to the ocean. When I decided to start writing novels, I knew that I wanted to set them in coastal locations. I live in the Boston suburbs and spend time whenever I can at the beach. I have written books centered in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Cape Cod. I am working on a story set on the north shore of Massachusetts. I am a high school social studies teacher of twenty-four years and a parent of two teenagers. All of my writing includes cooking and the enjoyment of good food as a major focus. I hope my books make you hungry!
Although not coastal, this book’s Palm Springs setting is full of swimming pools and a feeling of escape to somewhere new. I laughed, I cried, and I adored the dynamic between Patrick and his adorable niece and nephew.
Secondary characters, such as the three neighbors and other family members, added depth and emotion to the story. I seriously read this book in 24 hours!
National Bestseller • Wall Street Journal Bestseller • USA Today Bestseller An NPR Book of the Year Semi-finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor Finalist for the 2021 Goodreads Choice Awards
From the bestselling author of Lily and the Octopus and The Editor comes a warm and deeply funny novel about a once-famous gay sitcom star whose unexpected family tragedy leaves him with his niece and nephew for the summer.
Patrick, or Gay Uncle Patrick (GUP, for short), has always loved his niece, Maisie, and nephew, Grant. That is, he loves spending time with them when they come out…
Working as a prosecutor, trial lawyer for defendants, and as a magistrate, I’m always bothered by the misconception most people have of our criminal justice system. Unfortunately, cops are crooked, judges are corrupt, and witnesses lie on the stand. Not everyone, not every day, but more often than you would ever imagine. I write true crime books about cases where the underlying focus is on officials who are incompetent, derelict in their duties, or simply downright corrupt. The cases are always suspenseful, but justice is rarely served, and both the defendant and the public are the ones who lose.
After you read the book, you need to see Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood.
In the summer of 1969, in Los Angeles, a series of brutal, seemingly random murders captured headlines across America. A thin trail of circumstances eventually tied the Tate-LeBianca murders to Charles Manson, a would-be pop singer of small talent living in the desert with his "family" of devoted young women and men. What was the motivation behind such savagery?
The murders marked the end of the sixties and became an immediate symbol of the dark underside of that era. Vincent Bugliosi was the prosecuting attorney in the Manson trial, and this book is his riveting account of how he built his case from what a defense attorney dismissed as only “two fingerprints and Vince Bugliosi.”
The meticulous detective work with which the story begins, the prosecutor’s view of a complex murder trial, the reconstruction of…
In the summer of 1969, in Los Angeles, a series of brutal, seemingly random murders captured headlines across America. A famous actress (and her unborn child), an heiress to a coffee fortune, a supermarket owner and his wife were among the seven victims. A thin trail of circumstances eventually tied the Tate-LeBianca murders to Charles Manson, a would-be pop singer of small talent living in the desert with his "family" of devoted young women and men. What was his hold over them? And what was the motivation behind such savagery? In the public imagination, over time, the case assumed the…
I am the Agatha-winning author of the Rare Books Cozy Mystery series. My first in the series, below, won the Agatha Award for Best First Mystery Novel. I’ve worked for more than twenty years in museums and symphonies and have the great fortune of being married to a librarian. When not writing, I’m drawing and painting. I live in Maryland with her family. Although I’m not much of a baker, I won’t ever turn down a sweet lokshen kugel.
One of the reasons I started working for museums was that I trained as a painter and in art history, so Hailey Lind’s Annie Kincaid Mystery series was a particular delight. Her main character, Annie, is a former art forger turned faux finisher.
However, she can’t seem to put her past behind her after realizing her curator ex-boyfriend’s new big painting acquisition is a fake. I enjoy a good redemption story, especially when mixed with history and artifacts.
When Annie Kincaid informs her ex-boyfriend, curator Ernst Pettigrew, that the Brock Museum's fifteen-million-dollar Caravaggio painting is a fake, a bizarre chain of events is set in motion, forcing Annie to enter into an underworld of art forgers--a place she swore she left behind. Original.
The one thing you’ll find in common about the books I recommend and the books I write is the attention to detail. As a retired police officer, I know that it was often the smallest of details that helped solve a crime. In my books, you’ll find an inordinate amount of information that was never known to the public, and I think that’s what truly holds a reader’s interest. Killing Women is the true story of serial killer Don Miller, and you’ll be abhorred at what he did to his victims. Are you ready for his release in 2031?
As a high school senior planning a career in law enforcement, I was mesmerized by Joseph Wambaugh’s account of the kidnapping of two Los Angeles police officers in 1963, and the murder of one of them. Wambaugh unsympathetically details the stories of the two men convicted in the case, while at the same time humanizing the officer who survived and suffered from humiliation and guilt again and again throughout seven years of court proceedings against the men who kidnapped him and murdered his partner. The courtroom dialogue is verbatim, and to me, that leads to a feeling that the reader is actually there watching the proceedings. Wambaugh is a superb writer, and I consider this book is another must-read.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A fascinating account of a double tragedy: one physical, the other psychological.”—Truman Capote
This is the frighteningly true story of two young cops and two young robbers whose separate destinies fatally cross one March night in a bizarre execution in a deserted Los Angeles field.
“A complex story of tragic proportions . . . more ambitious than In Cold Blood and equally compelling!”—The New York Times
“Once the action begins it is difficult to put the book down. . . . Wambaugh’s compelling account of this true story is destined for the bestseller lists.”—Library Journal
I’ve always hated horror movies and anything scary—but I love true crime. I’m particular in how I consume it; I prefer to listen to it rather than read it and never at night. But give me a Dateline marathon and I’m a happy woman. While much of my own writing is far from true crime (Twin Willows Trilogy is YA urban fantasy, and What They Don’t Know is contemporary YA), my thriller The Forgetting explores dark subject matters—so dark, in fact, that my agent said to me, “But you seem so nice.” I am, for the most part…but I’m also not afraid to shine a flashlight into the darkness that lives in all of us.
In 1974, two couples sailed into the Palmyra Atoll in search of a tropical paradise—but only one couple sailed back. When Eleanor “Muff” Graham’s body washes up on shore 6 years later, Buck Walker and his former girlfriend Stephanie Stearns are charged with her murder, but the outcome of their trials surprises everyone. Written by Stearns’ famed defense attorney Vincent Bugliosi, this story has everything: a tropical island teeming with tension, two couples whose ideologies were bound to come to a head, and a wild court case that will have you on the edge of your seat until the very end.
ALONE WITH HER NEW HUSBAND on a tiny Pacific atoll, a young woman, combing the beach, finds an odd aluminum container washed up out of the lagoon, and beside it on the sand something glitters: a gold tooth in a scorched human skull. The investigation that follows uncovers an extraordinarily complex and puzzling true-crime story. Only Vincent Bugliosi, who recounted his successful prosecution of mass murderer Charles Manson in the bestseller Helter Skelter, was able to draw together the hundreds of conflicting details of the mystery and reconstruct what really happened when four people found hell in a tropical paradise.…
