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Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

Mystery Book Club: Monday, January 12, 2026
A USA Today bestseller
Edgar Award Winner for Best Original Paperback
Audie Award Winner for Mystery
Libby Award Winner for Best Mystery

A lonely shopkeeper takes it upon herself to solve a murder in the most peculiar way in this captivating mystery by Jesse Q. Sutanto, bestselling author of Dial A for Aunties.
Vera Wong is a lonely little old lady—ah, lady of a certain age—who lives above her forgotten tea shop in the middle of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Despite living alone, Vera is not needy, oh no. She likes nothing more than sipping on a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy detective work on the Internet about what her Gen-Z son is up to.
Then one morning, Vera trudges downstairs to find a curious thing—a dead man in the middle of her tea shop. In his outstretched hand, a flash drive. Vera doesn’t know what comes over her, but after calling the cops like any good citizen would, she sort of . . . swipes the flash drive from the body and tucks it safely into the pocket of her apron. Why? Because Vera is sure she would do a better job than the police possibly could, because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands. Vera knows the killer will be back for the flash drive; all she has to do is watch the increasing number of customers at her shop and figure out which one among them is the killer.
What Vera does not expect is to form friendships with her customers and start to care for each and every one of them. As a protective mother hen, will she end up having to give one of her newfound chicks to the police?
Join us Monday, January 12, 2026, from 3:00pm - 4:00pm!
Registration is requested, not required. Mystery Book Club selections may change. Final selections will weigh your feedback, book availability, and genre balance. Any changes made will be announced at book club meetings, in our newsletter, and on the library's website.
New members are always welcome to the Mystery Book Club! Please sign up so we know how many people to expect and to receive event updates! For more information call the Reference Desk at 203-262-0626 ext. 2.
Stone Cold

Mystery Book Club: Monday, February 9, 2026
The electrifying new Joe Pickett novel from the New York Times–bestselling author.

Everything about the man is a mystery: the massive ranch in the remote Black Hills of Wyoming that nobody ever visits, the women who live with him, the secret philanthropies, the private airstrip, the sudden disappearances. And especially the persistent rumors that the man’s wealth comes from killing people.

Joe Pickett, still officially a game warden but now mostly a troubleshooter for the governor, is assigned to find out what the truth is, but he discovers a lot more than he’d bargained for. There are two other men living up at that ranch. One is a stone-cold killer who takes an instant dislike to Joe. The other is new—but Joe knows him all too well. The first man doesn’t frighten Joe. The second is another story entirely.
Join us Monday, February 9, 2026, from 3:00pm - 4:00pm!
Registration is requested, not required. Mystery Book Club selections may change. Final selections will weigh your feedback, book availability, and genre balance. Any changes made will be announced at book club meetings, in our newsletter, and on the library's website.
New members are always welcome to the Mystery Book Club! Please sign up so we know how many people to expect and to receive event updates! For more information call the Reference Desk at 203-262-0626 ext. 2.
The Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder

Mystery Book Club: Monday, March 8, 2026
In this fun, cozy, debut mystery, an antiques hunter investigates a suspicious death at an isolated English manor, embroiling her in the high-stakes world of tracking stolen artifacts.
What antique would you kill for?
Freya Lockwood is shocked when she learns that Arthur Crockleford, antiques dealer and her estranged mentor, has died under mysterious circumstances. She has spent the last twenty years avoiding her quaint English hometown, but when she receives a letter from Arthur asking her to investigate—sent just days before his death—Freya has no choice but to return to a life she had sworn to leave behind.
Joining forces with her eccentric Aunt Carole, Freya follows clues to an old manor house for an advertised antiques enthusiast’s weekend. But not all is as it seems. It’s clear to Freya that the antiques are all just poor reproductions, and her fellow guests are secretive and menacing. What is going on at this estate and how was Arthur involved? More importantly, can Freya and Carole discover the truth before the killer strikes again?
Join us Monday, March 8, 2026, from 3:00pm - 4:00pm!
Registration is requested, not required. Mystery Book Club selections may change. Final selections will weigh your feedback, book availability, and genre balance. Any changes made will be announced at book club meetings, in our newsletter, and on the library's website.
New members are always welcome to the Mystery Book Club! Please sign up so we know how many people to expect and to receive event updates! For more information call the Reference Desk at 203-262-0626 ext. 2.
The Last Remains

Mystery Book Club: April 13, 2026
The discovery of a missing woman’s bones force Ruth and Nelson to finally confront their feelings for each other as they desperately work to exonerate one of their own in this not-to-be-missed Ruth Galloway mystery from USA Today bestselling author Elly Griffiths.
When builders discover a human skeleton during a renovation of a café, they call in archeologist Dr. Ruth Galloway, who is preoccupied with the threatened closure of her department and by her ever-complicated relationship with DCI Nelson. The bones turn out to be modern—the remains of Emily Pickering, a young archaeology student who went missing in 2002. Suspicion soon falls on Emily’s Cambridge tutor and also on another archeology enthusiast who was part of the group gathered the weekend before she disappeared—Ruth’s friend Cathbad.
As they investigate, Nelson and his team uncover a tangled web of relationships within the archeology group and look for a link between them and the café where Emily’s bones were found. Then, just when the team seem to be making progress, Cathbad disappears. The trail leads Ruth a to the Neolithic flint mines in Grimes Graves. The race is on, first to find Cathbad and then to exonerate him, but will Ruth and Nelson uncover the truth in time to save their friend?
Join us Monday, April 13 2026, from 3:00pm - 4:00pm!
Registration is requested, not required. Mystery Book Club selections may change. Final selections will weigh your feedback, book availability, and genre balance. Any changes made will be announced at book club meetings, in our newsletter, and on the library's website.
New members are always welcome to the Mystery Book Club! Please sign up so we know how many people to expect and to receive event updates! For more information call the Reference Desk at 203-262-0626 ext. 2.
Blind Descent

Mystery Book Club: May 11, 2026
A would-be killer is drawing Anna Pigeon deep into the darkness-and closer to hell than she's ever gone before.
"Anna Pigeon, the intrepid National Park Service ranger in Nevada Barr's superb wilderness mysteries, has had some perilous experiences in the five novels that preceded Blind Descent, but none compares with this thrilling subterranean adventure in the underground caverns of Lechuguilla, 'a monster man-eating cave' in New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns. When a fellow ranger is injured in a caving accident, Anna chokes back the willies of claustrophobia and joins the rescue team. Burrowing 800 feet below ground, she negotiates airless tunnells, gaping pits, vaulting caverns and silently flowing rivers, each hazard with a daunting name like Razor Blade Run or the Wormhole. At the end of the dangerous descent, she reaches her friend and hears her say, 'It wasn't an accident.' A would-be killer is drawing Anna Pigeon deep into the darkness-and closer to hell than she's ever gone before.
Join us Monday, May 11, 2026, from 3:00pm - 4:00pm!
Registration is requested, not required. Mystery Book Club selections may change. Final selections will weigh your feedback, book availability, and genre balance. Any changes made will be announced at book club meetings, in our newsletter, and on the library's website.
New members are always welcome to the Mystery Book Club! Please sign up so we know how many people to expect and to receive event updates! For more information call the Reference Desk at 203-262-0626 ext. 2.
Broken Ground

Mystery Book Club: June 8, 2026
Internationally bestselling author Val McDermid is one of our finest crime writers, and her gripping, masterfully plotted novels have garnered millions of readers from around the globe. In Broken Ground, cold case detective Karen Pirie faces her hardest challenge yet.
Six feet under in a Highland peat bog lies Alice Somerville’s inheritance, buried by her grandfather at the end of World War II. But when Alice finally uncovers it, she finds an unwanted surprise―a body with a bullet hole between the eyes. Meanwhile, DCI Pirie is called in to unravel a case where nothing is quite as it seems. And as she gets closer to the truth, it becomes clear that not everyone shares her desire for justice. Or even the idea of what justice is.
An engrossing, twisty thriller, Broken Ground reaffirms Val McDermid’s place as one of the best crime writers of her generation.
Join us Monday, June 8, 2026, from 3:00pm - 4:00pm!
Registration is requested, not required. Mystery Book Club selections may change. Final selections will weigh your feedback, book availability, and genre balance. Any changes made will be announced at book club meetings, in our newsletter, and on the library's website.
New members are always welcome to the Mystery Book Club! Please sign up so we know how many people to expect and to receive event updates! For more information call the Reference Desk at 203-262-0626 ext. 2.
Queens of Crime

Mystery Book Club: July 13 2026
London, 1930. The five greatest women crime writers have banded together to form a secret society with a single goal: to show they are no longer willing to be treated as second class citizens by their male counterparts in the legendary Detection Club. Led by the formidable Dorothy L. Sayers, the group includes Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham and Baroness Emma Orczy. They call themselves the Queens of Crime. Their plan? Solve an actual murder, that of a young woman found strangled in a park in France who may have connections leading to the highest levels of the British establishment.

May Daniels, a young English nurse on an excursion to France with her friend, seemed to vanish into thin air as they prepared to board a ferry home. Months later, her body is found in the nearby woods. The murder has all the hallmarks of a locked room mystery for which these authors are famous: how did her killer manage to sneak her body out of a crowded train station without anyone noticing? If, as the police believe, the cause of death is manual strangulation, why is there is an extraordinary amount of blood at the crime scene? What is the meaning of a heartbreaking secret letter seeming to implicate an unnamed paramour? Determined to solve the highly publicized murder, the Queens of Crime embark on their own investigation, discovering they’re stronger together. But soon the killer targets Dorothy Sayers herself, threatening to expose a dark secret in her past that she would do anything to keep hidden.

Inspired by a true story in Sayers’ own life, New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict brings to life the lengths to which five talented women writers will go to be taken seriously in the male-dominated world of letters as they unpuzzle a mystery torn from the pages of their own novels.
Join us Monday, July 13, 2026, from 3:00pm - 4:00pm!
Registration is requested, not required. Mystery Book Club selections may change. Final selections will weigh your feedback, book availability, and genre balance. Any changes made will be announced at book club meetings, in our newsletter, and on the library's website.
New members are always welcome to the Mystery Book Club! Please sign up so we know how many people to expect and to receive event updates! For more information call the Reference Desk at 203-262-0626 ext. 2.
Shadow of the Solstice

Mystery Book Club: Monday, August 10, 2026
The Navajo Nation police are on high alert when a U.S. Cabinet Secretary schedules an unprecedented trip to the little Navajo town of Shiprock, New Mexico. The visit coincides with a plan to resume uranium mining along the Navajo Nation border. Tensions around the official’s arrival escalate when the body of a stranger is found in an area restricted for the disposal of radioactive uranium waste. Is it coincidence that a cult with a propensity for violence arrives at a private camp group outside Shiprock the same week to celebrate the summer solstice? When the outsiders’ erratic behavior makes their Navajo hosts uneasy, Officer Bernadette Manuelito is assigned to monitor the situation. She finds a young boy at grave risk, abused women, and other shocking discoveries that plunge her and Lt. Jim Chee into a volatile and deadly situation.
Meanwhile, Darleen Manuelito, Bernie’s high spirited younger sister, learns one of her home health clients is gone–and the woman’s daughter doesn’t seem to care. Darleen’s curiosity and sense of duty combine to lead her to discover that the client’s grandson is also missing and that the two have become ensnared in a wickedly complex scheme exploiting indigenous people. Darleen’s information meshes with a case Chee has begun to solve that deals with the evil underside of human nature.
Join us Monday, August 10, 2026, from 3:00pm - 4:00pm!
Registration is requested, not required. Mystery Book Club selections may change. Final selections will weigh your feedback, book availability, and genre balance. Any changes made will be announced at book club meetings, in our newsletter, and on the library's website.
New members are always welcome to the Mystery Book Club! Please sign up so we know how many people to expect and to receive event updates! For more information call the Reference Desk at 203-262-0626 ext. 2.
The Dog Who Knew Too Much

Mystery Book Club: Monday, September 14, 2026
Humor and intrigue combine for a “thoroughly entertaining comic mystery” (Booklist) as Spencer Quinn’s engaging and unlikely team of crime solvers takes on the case of a boy gone missing from a wilderness camp.
The kid’s mother thinks her ex-husband snatched their son, but Chet’s always reliable nose leads Bernie in a new and dangerous direction. Meanwhile, matters at home get complicated when a stray puppy that looks suspiciously like Chet shows up. Affairs of the heart collide with a job that’s never been tougher, requiring our intrepid sleuths to trust each other even when circumstances—and a rival P.I.—conspire to keep them far apart.
Join us Monday, September 14 2026, from 3:00pm - 4:00pm!
Registration is requested, not required. Mystery Book Club selections may change. Final selections will weigh your feedback, book availability, and genre balance. Any changes made will be announced at book club meetings, in our newsletter, and on the library's website.
New members are always welcome to the Mystery Book Club! Please sign up so we know how many people to expect and to receive event updates! For more information call the Reference Desk at 203-262-0626 ext. 2.
The Searcher

Mystery Book Club: Monday, October 19, 2026
"This hushed suspense tale about thwarted dreams of escape may be her best one yet . . . Its own kind of masterpiece." --Maureen Corrigan, The Washington Post
"A new Tana French is always cause for celebration . . . Read it once for the plot; read it again for the beauty and subtlety of French's writing." --Sarah Lyall, The New York Times
Cal Hooper thought a fixer-upper in a bucolic Irish village would be the perfect escape. After twenty-five years in the Chicago police force and a bruising divorce, he just wants to build a new life in a pretty spot with a good pub where nothing much happens. But when a local kid whose brother has gone missing arm-twists him into investigating, Cal uncovers layers of darkness beneath his picturesque retreat, and starts to realize that even small towns shelter dangerous secrets.
"One of the greatest crime novelists writing today" (Vox) weaves a masterful, atmospheric tale of suspense, asking how to tell right from wrong in a world where neither is simple, and what we stake on that decision.
Join us Monday, October 19, 2026, from 3:00pm - 4:00pm!
Registration is requested, not required. Mystery Book Club selections may change. Final selections will weigh your feedback, book availability, and genre balance. Any changes made will be announced at book club meetings, in our newsletter, and on the library's website.
New members are always welcome to the Mystery Book Club! Please sign up so we know how many people to expect and to receive event updates! For more information call the Reference Desk at 203-262-0626 ext. 2.