 And so 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 favorite genre, well my favorite sub-genre because these are just murder mysteries. I have probably at least doubled the amount of mysteries on my TBR, these included. But I've been very strict and we're just including murder mysteries in there. So yeah, I thought it was time we 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 books, key ideas explained to you in a really digestible way, plus commentary and analysis, which is one of the corners 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 savior for me at the moment. When I'm busy doing a lot of stuff, I don't have a ton of time to read loads of nonfiction books. But this is a way for me to digest ideas quickly and kind of consume the content and figure out which nonfiction 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 there'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 Parallel Endhouse and Lord Edred Dyes with the next two in the Urquiparo series that I'm reading. I'm reading them in order mostly. I've read Murder on the Orange 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 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 Parallel Endhouse 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 and 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 Occupy 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 so what? 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 like mystery thrillers that she writes like 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 an 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 Perot as they solve a mystery together. And I just think this is a really cute idea and I just like you know 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 are 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 um 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 matter of mystery. But I can't mention a lot. I talk about a lot. It's In the Hall with a Knife by a Peter Fried. This is inspired by Clue or Cludo. This is a Clue mystery. That is not correct. This is a YA men 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 spoke 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 currently reading series by the end of the year. Probably in January or else then just start I'm debating starting this next month. I think I might do it because I want to read it so bad and have one or two for so long that I I want to read it while I'm still so excited to read it. It's 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 a portrait um item or whatever landscape and it just said infant. I didn't even know. 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's just the 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 length and this is like your classic murder mystery like old school set in a manner 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 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 other 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 but it's obviously very tiny. It will say this is the village and it has a map and it will 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 favorite 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 got there's so many 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 Yokomizos I have the Inagami Curse and the Village of Eight Graves I've only read one of these I've read The Honjin Murders. This author Sesshi Yokomizos 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 had picked like Murdoly or Express Death on the Nile like Murdo and Roger Accroy like the big ones. Imagine like the ones are in the Special Editions they're kind of translating those is my understanding and slowly making their way through the series. Yeah I love The Honjin Murders I loved reading a translated murder mystery from like a different culture with 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 and fantasy or in romance or like whatever it feels very stuck in murder mysteries and there's loads of them. I have five here and 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 and 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 like the egg smile. Why are you laughing? Not the hen. We could deal with the man but not the hen. So yeah I 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 that might start. One that a lot of you recommended to me don't worry I own it I want to get round to it is the Marlowe Murder Club. I think these were the same an old woman solving and her two friends solving a murder mystery and they call themselves the Marlowe Murder Club. All of these books meeting each other. For 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 shit 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 Snopsies of these are very quick because they're all the same. The Spoonful of Murder this is recently gifted to me by one of my patrons. Every Thursday three retired school teachers have their coffee o'clock sessions at the Thask 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 that I recently received from Book of the Month was Killers of a Certain Age by Diana Raybonne. A lot of you have been recommending this to me. This one's a bit different in that we're following ex-assassin so I was talking about how it reminds me of the Lady Hard Castle 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 all right 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 Sakaters 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 are 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 realized 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. The next I have some 2022 releases I still haven't got to we have well I say some got to I literally bought these like a couple days ago. We have The It Girl and the three Dalias Dalias I still don't know I think one is British and one's American but I don't know which ones I think Dalia is British Dalia's 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 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 Urquiporo was like a female female detective and like different actors who played him like Kenneth Branagh uh what's the one who really played Urquiporo I can't remember what the guy's name is David Sushay Sushay 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 favorite 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 was 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 interleaves her and there's something strange going on at this woman's house she 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 is always this paranormal element that I feel like she does so well I mean I actually I've read one because she was unqualified but to my knowledge it'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 Amanda J. Tisser this is like it's my kind of thing everyone goes to this 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 love to the guest list where there was a wedding or secluded island and it was murder so and now we have our final section which is everything else I think there's like six seven bucks here 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 writing 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 unladylike by Robin Stevens this is a series I really want to start probably next year when I'm no longer under the counting series cast 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 ones first these are actually references 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 and 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 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 a 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 um 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 a Jacqueline Bibliots this was 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 the beginning as 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 story's intertwined 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 is to the important like focusing on the victim and their life and the values of 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 uh 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 one 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 you're in a psyche so comment the emoji of a murder weapon of your choice like I don't know knife candlestick I don't know 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