I interrupt the packing process to bring you October Treasures in My Closet. I had a couple pleas for this one. I’ll tell you right up front that November and December will not be large lists. There is very little coming out those two months, and I’m not the only one who says that. January will be lengthy. In the meantime, let’s dive into the October book releases. The list includes several Christmas season novellas. And, don’t forget to check out the list below the annotations. Let me now what you want to read in October!

Heads up on Connie Berry’s Mistletoe and Murder. The Kate Hamilton series is one of my favorites, but as of the day I’m writing this, the publisher chose to only publish it in eBook format. I’m sorry for those who are fans of the series because this novella not only has a mystery, but it has the wedding we’ve all been anticipating. I’m sure Berry will mention it in the next book, but I’m disappointed that some fans can’t access it. Five days before her wedding to Detective Inspector Tom Mallory, Kate is trying to help a friend, Sheila, sell a coin collection and a valuable letter from Queen Victoria. But, a break-in and a fire set an investigation into motion, and Kate might be involved right up until her wedding. (Release date is Oct. 17.)

The seventeenth Bibliophile mystery, and Kate Carlisle’s first Christmas one is The Twelve Books of Christmas. In the middle of a wonderful Christmas holiday in Dharma, Brooklyn and Derek receive a frantic phone call from their dear friend Claire in Loch Ness, Scotland. The laird of the castle, Cameron MacKinnon, has just proposed to her! They plan to be married on New Year’s Day, and they want Derek and Brooklyn to be their witnesses. And while they’re visiting, Claire hopes that Brooklyn will be able to solve a little mystery that’s occurred in the castle library—twelve very rare, very important books have gone missing. Once in Scotland, Brooklyn starts working on the mystery of the missing books but is soon distracted by all of the thumping and bumping noises she’s been hearing in the middle of the night. You’d think the Ghost of Christmas Past had taken up residence. But when one of the guests is poisoned and another is killed by an arrow through the heart, Brooklyn and Derek know this is not the work of any ghost. (Release date is Oct. 24.)

Mark de Castrique’s Dangerous Women marks the return of etired FBI agent-turned-boardinghouse landlady, Ethel Fiona Crestwater (legend) and her double-first-cousin-twice-removed Jesse Cooper (sidekick). They’re the perfect heroes for a new investigation. In a case deciding the future of clean energy, everything hinges on how the chief justice of Supreme Court will lean. DANGEROUS WOMEN stirs up the perfect cocktail of ingenious spy-craft and political intrigue of Thomas Perry’s The Old Man brightened with the charming, uncanny energy of Killers of a Certain Age. This urgent, cleverly plotted high stakes thriller is set in motion by botched attack on two law clerks leaving one dead and the other in a coma. The ensuing cover up leaves a string of bodies and too many players at cross-purposes. It also leaves Chief Justice Clarissa Baxter with a target on her back. (Release date is Oct. 24.)

Booklist did a better review of Emily Critchley’s One Puzzling Afternoon than I did. “A clever, keep-’em-guessing murder mystery, an empathetic yet realistic portrayal of the toll dementia takes, and a meditation on how the brain can bury the most tragic memories…An outstanding must-read.” —Booklist, STARRED review

I kept your secret Lucy. I’ve kept it for more than sixty years…It is 1951, and at number six Sycamore Street fifteen-year-old Edie Green is lonely. Living with her eccentric mother and her mother’s new boyfriend, she is desperate for something to shake her from her dull, isolated life. So when the popular, pretty Lucy Theddle befriends Edie, she thinks all her troubles are over. Even though Lucy has a secret, one Edie is not certain she should keep. Then Lucy goes missing. Now in 2018, Edie is eighty-four and still living in the same small town, when one afternoon she glimpses Lucy Theddle, still looking the same as she did at fifteen. Her family write it off as one of her many mix ups, there’s a lot Edie gets confused about these days. But Edie knows she’s the key to finding Lucy. (Release date is Oct. 3.)

Maddie Day kicks off the Cece Barton mystery series with Murder Uncorked. As the manager of Vino y Vida Wine Bar in Colinas, Cecelia “Cece” Barton’s first Alexander Valley harvest is a whirlwind of activity. Her twin sister, Allie Halstead, who owns a nearby Victorian bed & breakfast, is accustomed to the hustle and bustle of peak tourist season. But Cece barely has a moment to enjoy her new home in between worrying about her estranged college-age daughter, juggling her responsibilities at the bar, and navigating the sticky politics of the local wine association. Just when it seems things can’t grow any more intense, Colinas is rocked by a murder within the wine community . . . and Cece is identified as a possible suspect!. (Release date is Oct. 24.)

Julia Kelly introduces Evelyne Redfern in A Traitor in Whitehall. 1940, England: Evelyne Redfern, known as “The Parisian Orphan” as a child, is working on the line at a munitions factory in wartime London. When Mr. Fletcher, one of her father’s old friends, spots Evelyne on a night out, Evelyne finds herself plunged into the world of Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s cabinet war rooms. However, shortly after she settles into her new role as a secretary, one of the girls at work is murdered, and Evelyne must use all of her amateur sleuthing expertise to find the killer. But doing so puts her right in the path of David Poole, a cagey minister’s aide who seems determined to thwart her investigations. That is, until Evelyne finds out David’s real mission is to root out a mole selling government secrets to Britain’s enemies, and the pair begrudgingly team up. (Release date is Oct. 3.)

Paws to Remember is the fifteenth in Sofie Kelly’s Magical Cats series featuring librarian Kathleen Paulson and her enchanted cats. When a water leak repair results in a body being found behind the walls of the store run by the artists’ co-op that Kathleen’s friend, Maggie, is part of everyone is completely mystified as to whose body it is and who hid it there. But as the dust settles, her boyfriend, Detective Marcus Gordon, begins to suspect the body could belong to a young woman who disappeared more than thirty years ago. When a friend with a connection to the young woman asks Kathleen to look into the circumstances around the disappearance, she and her cats—who have special feline talent for catching felons—find themselves digging up secrets that at least one person in Mayville Heights would much prefer stay buried. (Release date is Oct. 17.)

Blood Sisters by Vanessa Lillie is about a Cherokee archeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs who is summoned to rural Oklahoma to investigate the disappearance of two women…one of them her sister. There are secrets in the land. As an archeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Syd Walker spends her days in Rhode Island trying to protect the land’s indigenous past, even as she’s escaping her own. While Syd is dedicated to her job, she’s haunted by a night of violence she barely escaped in her Oklahoma hometown fifteen years ago. Though she swore she’d never go back, the past comes calling. When a skull is found near the crime scene of her youth, just as her sister, Emma Lou, vanishes, Syd knows she must return home. She refuses to let her sister’s disappearance, or the remains, go ignored—as so often happens in cases of missing Native women. But not everyone is glad to have Syd home, and she can feel the crosshairs on her. Still, the deeper Syd digs, the more she uncovers about a string of missing indigenous women cases going back decades. To save her sister, she must expose a darkness in the town that no one wants to face—not even Syd. (Release date is Oct. 31.)

Ritu Mukerji’s Murder By Degrees is a historical mystery set in 19th century Philadelphia, following a pioneering woman doctor as she investigates the disappearance of a young patient who is presumed dead. Philadelphia, 1875: It is the start of term at Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. Dr. Lydia Weston, professor and anatomist, is immersed in teaching her students in the lecture hall and hospital. When the body of a patient, Anna Ward, is dredged out of the Schuylkill River, the young chambermaid’s death is deemed a suicide. But Lydia is suspicious and she is soon brought into the police investigation. (Release date is Oct. 17.)

Home at Night might be my favorite Mercy Carr mystery by Paula Munier. It’s Halloween in Vermont, winter is coming, and five humans, two dogs, and a cat are a crowd in Mercy Carr’s small cabin. She needs more room—and she knows just the place: Grackle Tree Farm, with thirty acres of woods and wetlands and a Victorian manor to die for. They say it’s haunted by the ghosts of missing children and lost poets and a murderer or two, but Mercy loves it anyway. Even when Elvis finds a dead body in the library. There’s something about Grackle Tree Farm that people are willing to kill for—and Mercy needs to figure out what before they move in. (Release date is Oct. 17.)

We’re heading back to County Kerry, Ireland with Carlene O’Connor’s Some of Us Are Looking. In Dimpna Wilde’s veterinary practice, an imminent meteor shower has elevated the usual gossip to include talk of shooting stars and the watch parties that are planned all over Dingle. But there are also matters nearer at hand to discuss—including the ragtag caravan of young people selling wares by the roadside, and the shocking death of Chris Henderson, an elderly local, in a hit-and-run. Just hours before his death, Henderson had stormed into the Garda Station, complaining loudly about the caravan’s occupants causing noise and disruption. One of their members is a beautiful young woman named Brigid Sweeney, and Dimpna is shocked when Brigid later turns up at her practice, her clothing splattered in blood and an injured hare tucked into her shirt. Brigid claims that a mysterious stranger has been trying to obtain a lucky rabbit’s foot. Dimpna is incensed at the thought of anyone mutilating animals, but there is far worse in store. (Release date is Oct. 24.)

I always include David Rosenfelt’s Andy Carpenter mysteries because the covers are some of my favorite ones. “Twas the Bite Before Christmas is the twenty-eighth in the series. Reluctant lawyer Andy Carpenter is at the Tara Foundation’s annual Christmas party. The dog rescue organization has always been his true calling, and this is one holiday tradition he can get behind because every dog that’s come through the rescue—and their families—are invited to celebrate. This year’s party is no exception. But before the stockings can be hung by the chimney with care, homicide detectives ruin the evening. Derek Moore, one of the foundation’s best foster volunteers, is arrested for murder. Andy discovers Derek—whose real name is Bobby—is in the witness protection program after giving evidence against his former gang. The police believe Bobby murdered a member. But Bobby swears to Andy he didn’t do this. He’s built a new life, a new business, has two new dogs after being a double foster-failure. There isn’t much Andy likes about this case, but he likes Bobby. If he’s innocent, Andy wants to help. Before Andy can settle down for his long winter’s nap, he has a client’s name to clear, a murderer to catch, and two new dogs to look after: a golden and a Dalmatian. (Release date is Oct. 10.)

Those of us who are Virgil Flowers fans will be happy to see that John Sandford’s Judgment Prey features both Lucas Davenport and Virgil. Alex Sand was spending the evening at home playing basketball with his two young sons when all three were shot in cold blood. A wealthy federal judge, there’s no short list of people who could have a vendetta against Sands, but the gruesome murders, especially that of his children, turn their St. Paul community on its head. Sand was on the verge of a major donation to a local housing charity, Heart/Twin Cities, and with the money in limbo, eyes suddenly turn to his grieving widow, Margaret Cooper, to see what she might do with the money. Margaret, distraught over the death of her family, struggles to move forward, and can’t imagine how or why anyone would target her husband. With public pressure mounting and both the local police force and FBI hitting dead end after dead end, Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers are called in to do what others could not: find answers. With each potential lead flawed, Davenport and Flowers are determined to chase every theory until they figure out who killed the Sands. (Release date is Oct. 3.)

Peter Swanson’s The Christmas Guest is another novella. Ashley Smith, an American art student in London for her junior year, was planning on spending Christmas alone, but a last-minute invitation from fellow student Emma Chapman brings her to Starvewood Hall, country residence of the Chapman family. The Cotswold manor house, festooned in pine boughs and crammed with guests for Christmas week, is a dream come true for Ashley. She is mesmerized by the cozy, firelit house, the large family, and the charming village of Clevemoor, but also by Adam Chapman, Emma’s aloof and handsome brother. But Adam is being investigated by the local police over the recent brutal slaying of a girl from the village, and there is a mysterious stranger who haunts the woodland path between Starvewood Hall and the local pub. Ashley begins to wonder what kind of story she is actually inhabiting. Is she in a grand romance? A gothic tale? Or has she wandered into something far more sinister and terrifying than she’d ever imagined? (Release date is Oct. 17.)

Cyd Redondo is back in Wendall Thomas’ Cheap Trills. After her mother sneaks off on an Eat, Pray, Love tour to Bali that goes horribly wrong, travel agent Cyd Redondo must outwit a ring of songbird smugglers and take on a killer, all while trying to keep three orphaned, endangered Bali Starling chicks alive in her purse. It’s 2007 and Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, has Eat, Pray, Love fever. Every book club in town is devouring the bestseller and all of Cyd’s senior citizen clients are dying to head to exotic Bali. But the travel agent in Cyd only sees its dangers—three active volcanos, six venomous snake species, no wheelchair ramps, about fifteen possible tropical diseases, and the death penalty for smugglers. So she’s hurt and furious, but also terrified, when her mother, Bridget, sneaks off with two friends on a Bali tour booked by Cyd’s archnemesis, Peggy Newsome. Of course, Bridget and her friends wind up stranded and smack dab in the middle of a murder investigation. Now Cyd must navigate Balinese culture, battle songbird smugglers and thieving monkeys, commandeer a funicular railway, infiltrate an underground Tupperware network, and find the real killer, all while trying to keep three hungry, endangered Bali Starling chicks alive in her purse . . . (Release date is Oct. 30.)

Lisa Unger’s holiday thriller is Christmas Presents. The publisher calls it a novella, but it’s 224 pages, so I don’t think so.

Instead of presents this Christmas, a true crime podcaster is opening up a cold case…Madeline Martin has built a life for herself as the young owner of a thriving business, The Next Chapter Bookshop, despite her tragic childhood and now needing to care for her infirm father. When Harley Granger, a failed novelist turned true crime podcaster, drifts into her shop in the days before Christmas, he seems intent on digging up events that Madeline would much rather forget. She’s the only surviving victim of Evan Handy, the man who was convicted of murdering her best friend Steph, and is suspected in the disappearance of two sisters, also good friends of Madeline’s, who have been missing for nearly a decade. It’s an investigation that has obsessed her father Sheriff James Martin right up until his stroke took his faculties. (Release date is Oct. 24.)

A woman risks everything to end her family’s centuries-old curse, solve her mother’s disappearance, and find love in this mesmerizing novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Spells for Forgetting. In the small mountain town of Jasper, North Carolina, June Farrow is waiting for fate to find her. The Farrow women are known for their thriving flower farm—and the mysterious curse that has plagued their family line. The whole town remembers the madness that led to Susanna Farrow’s disappearance, leaving June to be raised by her grandmother and haunted by rumors. It’s been a year since June started seeing and hearing things that weren’t there. Faint wind chimes, a voice calling her name, and a mysterious door appearing out of nowhere—the signs of what June always knew was coming. But June is determined to end the curse once and for all, even if she must sacrifice finding love and having a family of her own. (Release date is Oct. 17.)

Check out these other titles with October release dates.

Bhatia, Tasneem – The Hormone Shift (10/3)
Biller, Anna – Bluebeard’s Castle (10/10)
Campbell, Michele – The Intern (10/3)
Clare, Cassandra – Sword Catcher (10/10)
Coomer, Jesse – The Language of Breath (10/24)
Davis-Goff, Sarah – Silent City (10/17)
Gilmore, Clare – Love Interest (10/10)
Morrissey, Hannah – When I’m Dead (10/31)
Nesbo, Jo – The Night House (10/3)
Palma, Raul – A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens (10/3)
Peele, Jordan (editor) – Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror (10/3)
Rader-Day, Lori – The Death of Us (10/3)
Schwarzenegger, Arnold – Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life (10/10)
Silver, Josie – A Winter in New York (10/3)
Sindu, SJ – The Goth House Experiment (10/17)
Stone, Sly – Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) (10/17)
Winkler, Henry – Being Henry: The Fonz…and Beyond (10/31)