The setting: a private girls’ boarding girl. The mission: to pursue the latest clue in a case that’s gone cold. The themes: trust, friendship, and class warfare. (Warning: f-bombs galore, like all French’s books.) Book club highlight: the supernatural. Does it strengthen the plot or not?

Jane Eyre lovers, you can relax: while Faye—and her heroine, Jane Steele—draw serious inspiration from Jane Eyre, It draws serious inspiration from Brontë's classic, it's not a retelling. Instead, it's delightfully meta: our titular narrator tells us the inspiration to write down her story came from "the most riveting book titled Jane Eyre." This Jane is a wise-cracking, whipsmart, unconventional young woman who rebels against Victorian convention, but she has a heart of gold. Though not a retelling, there are numerous winks to the original novel: Jane becomes a governess, there's a stand-in for Mr. Rochester, and of course, something important is locked away in an attic. Perfect for readers who love plucky Victorian heroines, like you'd find in Deanna Raybourn novels. Published March 22 2016.

This is the first of French's popular Dublin Murder Squad, although the series need not be read in order. Tana French writes an amazing psychological thriller, and her story here is tight, twisty, and unpredictable. The story has two primary threads: one revolves around a psychopath, the other around a supernatural disturbance, and you'll be sucked right into both. The murder is seriously grizzly, the book unputdownable—although be warned: the ending is highly controversial.

This nail-biter unravels the story of two girls who disappeared from the same tiny North Carolina town a decade apart. Ten years ago Nicolette Farrell left her hometown for good after her best friend vanished without a trace. She was never going back, but when she gets the call that her dad is sick she reluctantly heads home. Shortly after her arrival another girl vanishes—right after she'd been asking too many questions about the first girl's disappearance. The real twist here is the interesting format: after a short prologue, the story is told in reverse, starting with day 15 of the mystery and workings backwards to day 1. This would feel like a cheap trick if done poorly but it wasn't, and I loved it. If you need characters you can root for, this isn't the book for you. But if you love a creepy mystery in an evocative setting that is practically a character in its own right, bump this to the top of your list. A dark kind of fun.

It was supposed to be the perfect crime. But an avalanche stops the Orient Express in its tracks just before a passenger is found murdered in his berth, foiling the perpetrator's getaway, and trapping 13 potential suspects—each with an airtight alibi—in the train car with Inspector Hercule Poirot. If you've seen the movie, take note: Branagh changes Christie's ending. Hot tip: Dan Stevens's audio narration is fantastic.

Kubica has earned quite the reputation for edge-of-your-seat thrillers with her bestsellers The Good Girl and Pretty Baby, but this is the first of hers I've read. When her ever-reliable roommate goes missing, Quinn starts to investigate, and quickly discovers she may not have known her friend at all. Warning: the flap copy is deliberately misleading. I liked this well enough, even though it didn't make the cut for the Summer Reading Guide. Publication date May 17 2016.

If you need a completely bingeable mystery series right now, I highly recommend this one. With 15 books and counting, Maisie Dobbs remains a compelling heroine. The first book introduces Maisie as she trades wartime nursing for her own private investigation practice at the end of WWI. Her first case appears to be run-of-the-mill infidelity, but something tells her to look deeper. When she finds disturbing secrets connected to the Great War, she is forced to confront her own trauma in order to solve the case. Maisie’s strong empathy and nurse’s training make her uniquely suited to detective work, and learning more about her is just as delightful as following the mystery. The narration on this series is stellar. I highly recommend it on audio.

A nail-biter from Thriller Award winner Abbott, best known for The Fever, a book I've been meaning to read for ages. I know her by reputation, though I haven't yet read her work, and was surprised to hear this novel is focused on an elite teen gymnast, a tragedy that rocks her training facility, and the subsequent unraveling of everything the characters thought they knew about each other.

Penny's mysteries are alternately centered in the cozy village of Three Pines and the wider world. For this excellent follow-up to the game-changing Bury Your Dead, Inspector Gamache returns to Three Pines to solve a murder that's intimately tied to the world of fine art. The story is built around the concept of chiaroscuro—the contrast between dark and light that's significant in some artists' works, and in all our natures. It may sound obtuse, but Penny probes with a light hand. It works.

The action in this new suspenseful novel centers around a beautiful private communal garden in London. Most of the neighbors have lived there for years and trust each other implicitly; one family felt lucky to find their new flat when they were displaced from their home after a tragic fire. In the prologue, one of these new neighbors, 12-year-old Grace, is found in a corner of this supposedly idyllic garden, injured and unconscious after a neighborhood party. Jewell flashes back in time to introduce us to all the neighbors, and we discover much to mistrust as we try to figure out what happened to Grace. I read this as a Summer Reading Guide contender, and while it held my attention, it wasn't a favorite. Published June 7, 2016.

Part campus novel, part intricately-plotted mystery: this is Sayers’ tenth Lord Peter novel, the first told from the perspective of Harriet Vane, and undoubtedly one of her finest. (They needn’t be read in order.) When Ms. Vane returns to Oxford for her college’s reunion (the “gaudy” of the title), the festive mood on campus is threatened by an alarming outbreak of murderous threats. Sayers makes this much more than a crime novel, though it's a good one—Harriet grapples with questions of love and friendship, life and work, gender and class, and the writing life.

A special edition of the first three classic mysteries featuring British aristocrat and sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. I'm a big fan of this series.

I just love Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey novels. In this installment, Wimsey goes undercover at a post London ad agency to investigate a suspicious accident.

I was intrigued by the premise of this twisty thriller: a travel writer takes an assignment aboard an exclusive luxury cruise ship. Shortly after arriving, she wakes in the middle of the night to the sound of something heavy being thrown overboard. She's sure it's a body ... and yet no one is missing from the boat. She's compelled to figure out what really happened, which puts more than her own life in danger. Strongly reminiscent of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None.

There was never a question I'd continue with the Inspector Gamache series (although I will say that book 3 wasn't my favorite) but the series moves to the next level in this sixth installment, in which Penny finally brings a plotline she's only hinted at in previous books front and center, and it is riveting.

The Washington Post called this, "Deep and grand and altogether extraordinary....Miraculous."

Chamberlain is known for writing contemporary Southern fiction featuring strong female characters and not shying away from sensitive subjects. In this novel, her thirtysomething heroine's adoption process forces her to confront secrets she's been keeping for twenty years about her family of origin. Chamberlain uses two narrative voices—that of 14-year-old Molly and 20-years-older Molly, to explore the power of the secrets we keep out of fear and shame and the pretending that can actually make us strong. This is the first book I've read by Diane Chamberlain; The Silent Sister is next on my list.

This new thriller, described as Rear Window meets Get Out starts with a bang and never lets up; her familiar voice is put to good use in this shocking tale of history, lies, and gentrification. Sydney’s Brooklyn neighborhood is turning over fast, with longtime older tenants moving out and upstart young couples moving in. But when she accidentally discovers a sinister connection, these moves suddenly begin to look threatening. Add in a tortured past, present family challenges, a budding romance with a hot new neighbor (and heads up, f-bombs galore), and you’ve got a thrilling read.