Fortunately for all of us who are trying to catch up with our TBR piles, there aren’t quite as many July book releases as June ones. If you’re a fan of cozy mysteries, you should be pleased. Of course, there are other titles as well. Check out this list.

Let’s start with one of the World War II novels so popular right now. Those books, including Sara Ackerman’s Radar Girls, focus on the women involved in the war. This one takes readers to Hawaii in a story inspired by the real Women’s Air Raid Defense. In the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Daisy Wilder enlists in a top secreet program, replacing male soldiers in a war zone for the first time. Under fear of imminent invasion, the WARDs guide pilots into blacked-out airstrips and track unidentified planes across Pacific skies. While not everyone thinks the women are up to the job, Daisy and her team have something to prove. (Release date is July 27.)

Esme Addison follows A Spell for Trouble with A Hex for Danger. The annual Mermaid Festival in Bellamy Bay celebrates the town’s enchanted history. But, this time water witch Aleksandra Daniels is asked to find a killer when her friend, Celeste, is arrested for the murder of a renowned artist. (Release date is July 13.)

Mia Malone conjures up delicacies while csting about for clues in Lynn Cahoon’s Two Wicked Desserts, continuing her Kitchen Witch series. Mia runs a catering business and cooking school while learning witchcraft from her grandmother. But Mia’s cat Mr. Darcy is possessed by the spirit of warlock Dorian Alexander. Dorian’s daughter Cindy inherited his spells, and she’s hoping they’ll help with her big break in Hollywood. But, Cindy’s trip to Idaho means she’s the number one suspect in the murder of a hitman whose body is found in the garden of Mia’s Morsels. Mia now has to conjure up a killer in this cozy that includes recipes. (Release date is July 27.)

How many of you think of The Face on the Milk Carton when you think of author Caroline B. Cooney? Now, in The Grandmother Plot, she tells the story of an irresponsible young man who loves his grandmother. When he places his beloved grandmother, now deep in dementia, in a nursing home, Freddy finds himself in the unfamiliar position of actually being accountable to someone. He visits often, cherishing and also hating the time he spends with the grandmother he always adored. When a fragile old woman already close to death is murdered in that nursing home, Freddy panics. He has to keep his grandmother safe, keep himself anonymous, and keep the police out of his life, or the complications become deadly. (Release date is July 5.)

It won’t be for everyone, but S.A. Cosby’s latest novel, Razorblade Tears, is one of the best books I’ve read this year. Two ex-cons, one a black man who became a successful business owner and has stayed straight for fifteen years, and the other a rowdy redneck, have something in common. Their sons married and have a little girl. Neither man accepted their sons’ lives, but, when the young men are murdered in what appears to be a targeted hit, they set out for revenge, no matter what it takes, and who it hurts on the way. It doesn’t sound like a story of change and redemption, does it? (Release date is July 6.)

Murder at the Lakeside Library is the first in Holly Danvers’ new Lakeside Library mysteries. Rain Wilmot returned to her family’s waterfront log cabin in Wisconsin after the untimely death of her husband. The cabin is peaceful, and comes with an infomral library that Rain’s mother, Willow, used to run. But as Rain prepares for the reopening of the library, all hopes for a peaceful life are shattered when she discovers the body of Thornton Hughes, a real estate buyer, on the premises. The community points fingers at Willow, and the town thought she was having an affair with the victim. Now, Rain wants to solve the case to exonerate her mother. (Release date is July 13.)

In Kaitlyn Dunnett’s latest mystery, Murder, She Edited, freelance edtor Mikki Lincoln is the new owner of an inherited rundown property outside of Lenape Hollow, New York. Her inheritance comes with a catch. Forgotten diaries hidden in the neglected house must be recovered, edited, and published across the Internet within one month. While searching for the mysterious memoirs and clues about the former owners, Mikki uncovers the story of an unsolved homicide and other rumored crimes. Worse, suspicious activity in the creepy, dilapidated barn suggests it really hasn’t been abandoned at all. (Release date is July27.)

Murder in a Teacup is the latest Tea by the Sea mystery by Vicki Delany. Cape Cod tearoom proprietress and part-time sleuth, Lily Roberts stirs up trouble when she unwittingly serves one of her grandmother’s B&B guests a deadly cup of tea. A visit from her grandmother Rose’s dear friend, Sandra McHenry, turns into an unexpected, and unpleasant, McHenry family reunion. The squabbling boils over until Tea by the Sea’s serene afternoon service resembles a tempest in a teapot. Lily’s tearoom survives, but that night a member of the party dies from an apparent poisoning. It’s up to Lily, Rose, and their friends to get to the bottom of the poisoned pot of tea and find the culprit. (Release date is July 27.)

The fourth Countess of Harleigh mystery is Dianne Freeman’s A Fiancee’s Guide to First Wives and Murder. Frances Wynn, Countess of Harleigh, had just waved her mother and daughter off to Paris when Inspector Delaney shows up with a young French woman who claims she’s married to Frances’ fiance, George Hazelton. When George shows up, saying many of her claims of abduction and connections to Russian nobility are true, but he’s not married to her, and never was. He even convinces Frances to take her in for a short time. But, it’s shorter than they both thought when the young woman, Irena, is found murdered in Frances’ garden. Now, Frances and George have to find a killer in order to clear their own names. (Release date is July 27.)

Tess Gerritsen and Gary Braver join forces for Choose Me, “a sexy thriller with a dark twist”. Taryn Moore is young, beautiful, and brilliant…so why would she kill herself? Detective Frankie Loomis knows there’s more to the young woman’s death than a plunge off her balcony. When the autopsy reveals the college senior was pregnant, Frankie knows it could be a reason for suicide, or murder. English professor Jack Dorian was attracted to Taryn, but he also knew there was a dark side to her, a dangerous streak that threatened those she turned her affections to. When Frankie uncovers a trove of sordid secrets, it becomes clear Jack may know the truth. He’s guilty of deception. But, murder? (Release date is July 1.)

Kristin Harmel’s The Book of Lost Names was one of my mother’s favorite books, so she’s getting my copy of The Forest of Vanishing Stars. This is a coming-of-age World War II story about a young woman who uses her knowledge of the wilderness to help Jewish refugees escape the Nazis. After being stolen from her wealthy German parents and raised in the unforgiving wilderness of eastern Europe, a young woman finds herself alone in 1941 when her kidnapper dies. When she happens upon a group of Jews fleeing the Nazi terror, she learns what’s going out in the outside world. She teaches them all she can about surviving in the forest, while they teach her some surprising lessons about opening her heart. (Release date is July 6.)

Sherry Harris takes readers back to the Sea Glass Saloon in A Time to Swill. Saloon owner Chloe Jackson loves to run on the beach near her home in the Florida Panhandle. But, one morning, she spots a sailboat washed up on a sandbar. Hearing a cry, she climbs aboard the beached vessel to find a mewling kitten, and a human skeleton. Chloe’s friend, Ralph’s wife went missing twelve years ago on a sailboat with three other people. He remarried, and now he’s a murder suspect. Chloe’s investigation leads her into some rough waters. (Release date is July 27.)

In Carolyn Hart’s tenth Bailey Ruth Ghost Novel, Ghost Blows a Kiss, Bailey Ruth Raeburn is sent back to Adelaide, Oklahoma. This time, her task is to save a woman from drowning, prove she didn’t commit murder, and do a little matchmaking. (Release date is July 6.)

Debbie Macomber takes on a mid-life divorce, and what comes after in It’s Better This Way. Julia Jones tried to save her marriage of thirty-one years after her husband had an affair. But, he moved on, and married someone else. Finally, after selling the family house, she moves in a condominium complex for a fresh start. While Julia’s two adult daughters continue to stand by her, and her sister sets her up on occasional dates, Julia hasn’t been ready to move on herself. Then, by chance, she meets Heath Wilson, also a divorce with two adult children. Over time, their friendship blossoms into more until they’re forced to make hard decisions. (Release date is July 13.)

Brad Parks’ Unthinkable introduces Nate Lovejoy, a self-proclaimed nobody, a stay-at-home dad who doesn’t believe he’s important to anyone but his wife and their two daughters. So it’s a shock when members of a powerful secret society kidnap him, and take him to Vanslow DeGrange, who claims he’s foreseen a billion people could die, unless Nate acts. It doesn’t seem likely because DeGrange claims a lawsuit against the biggest power company in Virginia will trigger the incident, a lawsuit brought by Nate’s wife. Nate suspects a scam, until even he has to acknowledge that a billion people really could die unless Nate saves them. All he has to do is the unthinkable. (Release date is July 27.)

I’m looking forward to S.C. Perkins’ third Ancestry Detective Mystery, Fatal Family Ties. Texas genealogist Lucy Lancaster reluctantly takes on a research case for a former co-worker, Camilla Braithwaite. Camilla has a newspaper feature on an ancestor, a Civil War corporal, and a liar, according to the article. He’s depicted as a phony and a deserter, and Camilla wants Lucy’s help clearing his name. The search will take them to the Texas History Museum, to Houston and back. Their first clue is a triptych painting, passed down in the Braithwaite family, with one missing panel. When a member of the family is murdered and another panel goes missing, it throws Lucy into the midst of a case in which any member of the family could be a suspect. (Release date is July 20.)

Cold Case detective Lauren Riley is on leave from the Buffalo Police Department due to an injury in LIssa Marie Redmond’s The Parting Glass. Instead of sitting around, she renews her PI license and accepts a case that sends her to rural Ireland. Twenty years earlier, a Picasso painting went missing, a painting that was the disputed part of a nasty divorce case. Now, the man who was the primary suspect in the theft has died, and Lauren is hired to find out what happened to the man and the painting. (Release date is July 6.)

The Bone Code is Kathy Reichs’ twentieth Temperance Brennan novel. Following a hurricane off the South Carolina coast, Tempe receives a phone call about a medical waste container that washed ashore, containing two decomposed bodies. The details remind her of an unsolved case from fifteen years earlier, one she handled in Quebec. While she’s gathering evidence in Montreal, authorities in South Carolina are becoming alarmed about a human flesh-eating contagion that is spreading. Tempe is so wrapped up in her research that it takes her a while to realize her cold case and the current case and contagion could be related. And, someone will do anything to protect a dark secret. (Release date is July 6.)

Silence in the Library, Katharine Schellman’s second Lily Adler mystery, is another wonderful historical mystery with a core group of fascinating characters. When Lily’s father shows up, despite the fact they’re estranged, she offers to visit a newly married friend of his. But, when the man ends up dead, Lily and her friend, Capt. Jack Hartley, team up with a shrew Bow Street investigator to find the killer. It’s a mystery that deals not just with a murder, but also with social issues of Regency England. (Release date is July 13.)

The twentieth book is one that should have been near the top of the list, but I definitely wanted to include this series debut because Gabby Allan’s Much Ado About Nauticaling has an unusual setting and amateur sleuth. Whitney Dagner returns home to Santa Catalina Island because she’s tired of her corporate job, NOT because she made an enormous mistake. She doesn’t return home with her tail between her legs. She didn’t catch her boyfriend cheating. She’s happy to be home, about to open her little gift shop while she operates the family’s glass bottom boat. At least she’s happy, until the body of one of the town’s influential men floats under the boat, and Whitney’s brother disappears, hiding because he’s the primary suspect. (Release date is July 27.)

Don’t forget these titles that I didn’t summarize.

Cameron, Lindsay – Just One Look (7/27)
Davis, Lindsey – A Comedy of Terrors (7/27)
Hendrix, Grady – The Final Girl Support Group (7/13)
Kitamura, Katie – Intimacies (7/20)
Lindsey, Julie Anne – The Cider Shop Rules (7/27)
Marks, Mary – Knot Ready for Murder (7/27)
McKevett, G.A. – A Few Drops of Bitters (7/27)
Parker-Chan – She Who Became the Sun (7/20)
Potts, Jean – The Only Good Secretary (7/23)
Quinn, Carrot – The Sunset Route (7/6)
Sahota, Sunjeev – China Room (7/13)
Scott, Laura – Dogged by Death (7/13)
Skenandore, Amanda – The Second Life of Mirielle West (7/27)
Valente, Catherynne M. – The Past is Red (7/20)
Webb, Brandon & John David Mann – Steel Fear (7/13)
Weiss, Leah – All the Little Hopes (7/27)
Wendig, Chuck – The Book of Accidents (7/20)
Wood, Tracey Enerson – The War Nurse (7/6)