Getting started with mysteries

Looking for a mystery series to get lost in? This list has the first book in some popular series to get you started!
Updated September 19, 2022
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Getting started with mysteries

Looking for a mystery series to get lost in? This list has the first book in some popular series to get you started!
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The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
McCall Smith, Alexander
Paper Book
This first novel in Alexander McCall Smith’s widely acclaimed The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series tells the story of the delightfully cunning and enormously engaging Precious Ramotswe, who is drawn to her profession to “help people with problems in their lives.” Immediately...
One for the money
Evanovich, Janet
Paper Book
THE BOOK THAT STARTED IT ALL...Witty, fresh, and full of surprises, One for the Money catapulted Janet Evanovich and her incomparable heroine Stephanie Plum into crime-writing superstardom.Watch out, world. Here comes Stephanie Plum, a bounty hunter with attitude. She's from the burg, a blue-collar...
The cuckoo's calling
Galbraith, Robert
Paper Book
Published under a pseudonym, J. K. Rowling's brilliant debut mystery introduces Detective Cormoran Strike as he investigates a supermodel's suicide in "one of the best books of the year" (USA Today), the first novel in the brilliant series that inspired the acclaimed HBO Max series...
The mysterious affair at Styles
Christie, Agatha
CD
There has been a murder at Styles Court. Detective Poirot comes out of retirement to find out who would want the rich heiress Inglethorp dead, as well as have the impudence to poison her. The jagged plot turns keep Poirot - and the reader - guessing as suspicion shifts from one peculiar...
Case histories : a novel
Atkinson, Kate.
Paper Book
The first book in Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie Mysteries series, called "The best mystery of the decade" by Stephen King, finds private investigator Jackson Brodie following three seemingly unconnected family mysteries in Edinburg. Case one: A little girl goes missing in...
Still life
Penny, Louise.
Paper Book
Read the series that inspired Three Pines on Prime Video. In Still Life, bestselling author Louise Penny introduces Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec. Winner of the New Blood Dagger, Arthur Ellis, Barry, Anthony, and Dilys...
Whose Body?
Dorothy L. Sayers
The Bat
Nesbø, Jo
Paper Book
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER * In the electrifying first installment of the New York Times bestselling series, Harry Hole of the Oslo Crime Squad is dispatched to Sydney to observe a murder case. As he circles closer to the killer, Harry begins to fear that no one is safe, least of all those...
Death at La Fenice
Leon, Donna.
Paper Book
"A gripping first mystery, as beguiling and secretly sinister as Venice herself. Sparkling and irresistible." -- Rita Mae Brown The first book in the internationally bestselling Guido Brunetti detective series in which a high society murder leads Guido to investigate the darker side...
The cat who could read backwards
Braun, Lilian Jackson.
Paper Book
Prize-winning reporter Jim Qwilleran's latest assignment is to cover the art beat for the Daily Fluxion. Sounds easy enough--unless your art beat includes a stabbing in an art gallery, vandalized paintings, and a fatal fall from a scaffolding! Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
Chocolate chip cookie murder : a Hannah Swensen mystery
Fluke, Joanne
Paper Book
With allusions to the movie Fargo, Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder stars a red-haired cook called Hannah Swensen and a very eccentric assortment of Minnesota locals whose lives are disturbed by a killer in their midst.
Her royal spyness
Bowen, Rhys.
Paper Book
The Agatha Award winner debuts a 1930s London mystery series, featuring a penniless twenty-something member of the extended royal family. Her ridiculously long name is Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie, daughter to the Duke of Atholt and Rannoch. And she is flat broke. As the thirty-fourth...
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