Summer 2025 Reading List

It’s summer reading season! In today’s episode, Brook and Sarah discuss what they’re planning to watch and read over the break.

Discussed and mentioned

The Poisonous Solicitor: The True Story of a Nineteen Twenty’s Murder Mystery (2022) Stephen Bates

The Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder (2024) C.L. Miller

Listen for the Lie (2024) Amy Tintera

Lord Edgware Dies (1933) Agatha Christie

The Secret Adversary (1922) Agatha Christie

The Four Queens of Crime (2025) Rosanne Limoncelli

The Documents in the Case (1930) Dorothy L. Sayers

Holmes is Missing (2025) James Patterson and Brian Sitts

Holland (2025 film) Amazon Prime

For more information

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Related episodes:

Poisons (released June 17, 2025)

Ngaio Marsh (released November 14, 2023)

Margery Allingham (released March 19, 2024)

Agatha Christie 1 (released February 22, 2022)

Mysteries in Unusual Formats (released January 30, 2024)

Transcript

This transcript is generated by a computer and there may be some mis-spellings and strange punctuation. We try to catch these before posting, but some things slip through.

Sarah	Welcome to Clued in Mystery. I’m Sarah.
Brook	And I’m Brook, and we both love mystery.
Sarah	Hi, Brook.
Brook	Hi, Sarah. I just can’t believe that we are at the last episode of this season.
Sarah	I know we’re about to embark on our summer break and talk about what we are hoping to read during our time off.
Sarah	So this is a tradition that we’ve had on the show that in the summer and before our winter breaks, we talk about what we’re planning to read or watch. And then the first episode after our break, we revisit and share what our thoughts were about our lists. So, I’m very much looking forward, Brook, to hearing what you’ve got planned for the summer.
Brook	Well, thank you. And I’m looking forward to hearing your list, too. This is also a way for us to get different ideas from each other. But the first one on my list is called The Poisonous Solicitor: The True Story of a Nineteen Twenty’s Murder Mystery.
Brook	This is by Stephen Bates, and it was published in 2022 and shortlisted for a Gold Dagger Award from the Crime Writers Association. We recently just did the Poisons episode where we’re starting a new series of the methods for murder mysteries.
Brook	And so this one felt appropriate. Here’s the description. On a bleak Tuesday morning in February 1921, 48-year-old Catherine Armstrong died in her bedroom on the first floor of an imposing Edwardian villa.
Brook	Within 15 months of such a sad domestic tragedy, her husband Herbert Armstrong would be arrested, tried, and hanged for poisoning her with arsenic, the only solicitor ever to be executed in England.
Brook	Armstrong’s story was retold in a thousand newspaper articles across the world and may have also inspired the new breed of popular detective writers seeking to create a cunning criminal at the center of their thrillers.
Sarah	Oh, that sounds really interesting, Brook. I for my first ah book on my list, have something that ah you recommended, I believe, in our White Collar Crime episode that was earlier this season. And this is The Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder by C.L. Miller.
Sarah	And your description made it sound great, so I thought I would try and read it this summer. Freya Lockwood is shocked when she learns that Arthur Crocklefield, antiques dealer and her estranged mentor, has died under mysterious circumstances.
Sarah	She has spent the last 20 years avoiding her quaint English hometown, but when she receives a letter from Arthur asking her to investigate, sent just days before his death, Freya has no choice but to return to a life she had sworn to leave behind.
Sarah	Joining forces with her eccentric Aunt Carol, Freya follows clues and her instincts to an old manor house for an advertised antiques enthusiast’s weekend. But not all is as it seems.
Sarah	It’s clear to Freya that the antiques are all just poor reproductions and her fellow guests are secretive and menacing. What is going on at this estate and how is Arthur involved? More importantly, can Freya and Carol discover the truth before the killer strikes again?
Brook	Oh, I’m glad you’re going to be reading that, Sarah. I think you’re going to really enjoy ah the storyline, but the characters as well. So, I’m looking forward to hearing what you have to say.
Brook	Next on my list is Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera. And this is a 2024 release. And Tintera is usually a YA fantasy or dystopian author. But um in this release, she’s trying her hand at adult thrillers. After Lucy is found wandering the streets, covered in her best friend Savvy’s blood, everyone thinks she’s a murderer. Lucy and Savvy were the golden girls of their small Texas town, pretty smart and enviable. Lucy married a dream guy with a big ring and even bigger new home.
Brook	Savvy was the social butterfly loved by all. And if you believe the rumors, especially popular with the men in town, It’s been years since that horrible night, a night Lucy can’t remember anything about, and she has since moved to LA and started a new life. But now, the true crime hit podcast, Listen for the Lie, and its good-looking host, Ben Owens, have decided to investigate Savvy’s murder for the show’s second season.
Brook	Lucy is forced to return to the place she vowed to never set foot again to solve her friend’s murder, even if she’s the one that did it.
Sarah	Oh, I read that last year, I think, Brook. So, I hope you enjoy it. So next on my list, I have, um, and it really will depend on what comes through, at the library for my holds. And this is true, I think actually for most of my list.
Sarah	Um, but I have two books on hold from Agatha Christie. So I’ve either got Lord Edgware Dies, which was 1933 release or The Secret Adversary, release and The Secret Adversary is a Tommy and Tuppence book, which I haven’t read any Tommy and Tuppence stories, so I actually hope that that’s the one that comes in first.
Sarah	So I’ll read the description of that. The Great War is over and jobs are scarce. Tommy Beresford and Prudence ‘Tuppence’ Cowley, who were friends before the war, run into each other in London and discover they are both equally short of money and opportunities.
Sarah	On a whim, they decide to start a business, advertising themselves as the Young Adventurers. Their first job leads them into a series of increasingly dangerous situations involving international spies, a society beauty, a Russian count, the wreck of the Lusitania, an amnesia patient, an American millionaire, and a fiendishly clever arch-criminal known only as Mr. Brown.
Sarah	By the time the dust settles, all the puzzle pieces have been fitted together, and the young couple have realized their feelings for each other and have become engaged.
Brook	That’s such a fun one, Sarah. I hope that comes in in time for you to read it.
Brook	Well, I did not put a Golden Age ah story on my list this time. However, this is a nod to that. This one is The Four Queens of Crime by Roseanne Limoncelli, and it just released this spring in 2025.
Brook	1938, London. The four queens of British crime fiction, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham, are hosting a gala to raise money for the Women’s Voluntary Service to help Britain prepare for war.
Brook	Baronet Sir Henry Heathcote has loaned Hursley House for the event and all the elites of London society are attending. The gala is a brilliant success, despite a few hiccups, but the next morning, Sir Henry is found dead in the library.
Brook	Detective Chief Inspectors Lillian Wiles and Richard Davidson from Scotland Yard are quickly summoned and discover a cluster of potential suspects among the guests. Quietly recruiting the four queens of crime, DCI Wiles must sort through the aftermath of Sir Henry’s death to solve the mystery and identify the killer.
Sarah	Brook, this sounds amazing. I love the idea of these women working together to solve a mystery. I I love the trope of a famous person, famous real life person investigating mystery.
Brook	I do too. I thought you would like the setup on this one and to have all four of them together. I’m looking forward to seeing how the author portrays their different personalities. And I think it’s going to be ah a lot of fun.
Sarah	So I actually have two Golden Age books on my list. The second is by Dorothy L. Sayers, and this is The Documents in the Case.
Sarah	And I wanted to read this because it is told in an unusual format. And we did an episode a long time ago about that. So, this was published in 1930. The grotesquely grinning corpse in the Devonshire shack was a man who died horribly, with a dish of mushrooms at his side.
Sarah	His body contained enough death-dealing muscarine to kill 30 people. Why would an expert on fungi feast on a large quantity of this particularly poisonous species? A clue to the brilliant murderer, who had baffled the best minds in London, was hidden in a series of letters and documents that no one seemed to care about, except the dead man’s son.
Brook	Wow, you’re going to hit two previous episodes, Sarah. You’ve got Unusual Format, and Poisons. And probably a few other items in there, too.
Sarah	Well, and Dorothy L. Sayers, right?
Brook	And Dorothy L. Sayers.
Brook	Well, I have one more pick, and this is something we haven’t done before, and that is Sarah and i are both choosing one of the same books for our list. And the one we’re going to be reading is a continuation of a series we started as a read-along, and it’s Holmes is Missing by James Patterson and Brian Sitz, and this also just released in 2025.
Brook	Success has come quickly to Holmes, Marple, and Poe investigations. The New York City agency led by three detectives, Brendan Holmes, the brain, Margaret Marple, the eyes, and August Poe, the muscle.
Brook	With famous names and mysterious pasts, the firm is one major case away from cementing its professional reputation. But as a series of child abductions tests the PIs’ legendary skills, the cerebral home’s absence leaves a gaping hole in the agency roster.
Brook	Only by closing ranks and solving the mystery within can they recover all that’s been lost. So, I’m really excited to be both reading the same book this summer, and then we can talk about it when we’re finished.
Sarah	Yeah, I think this will be really fun, Brook, especially because we did do a read-along for the first book, as you said.
Sarah	So I’ve got a couple of other books that I think I would like to read, but I don’t know if they’re going to come through in my library loan requests.
Sarah	So if they do come through, maybe I’ll share them in our wrap up episode. Um, but, uh, do you have anything else, Brook, that you’re planning to read or watch this summer?
Brook	I do have one ah movie that I’m hoping to watch, and this is Holland with Nicole Kidman. ah It just recently released on Prime Video. In this wildly unpredictable thriller, Nicole Kidman is the meticulous Nancy Vandergroot, a teacher and homemaker whose picture-perfect life with her family in tulip-filled Holland, Michigan, tumbles into a twisted tale.
Brook	Nancy and a friendly colleague become suspicious of a secret, only to discover nothing in their lives is what it seems.
Brook	And, you know, there might be a certain reason why this premise interests me so much, but you’ll have to stay clued in on updates from Sarah and me to find out exactly why.
Sarah	Well, that sounds like a great show, Brook, and I look forward to hearing what you think. Brook, it sounds like you have a great list and some wonderful mysteries in store.
Brook	As do you, Sarah, I can’t wait for our recap episode coming sooner than we probably think it will. And we hope, listeners, that you have a great list of mysteries that are in your queue for this summer.
Brook	Let us know what’s on your list. But for today and for this season, thank you for joining us on Clued in Mystery. I’m Brook.
Sarah	And I’m Sarah. And we both love mystery.