DonateAre you participating in the 2024 Adult Summer Reading Challenge but need help with this specific bingo square? We’ve got some suggestions for you! Browse through the titles and click to access the catalog record. Happy reading!
The following titles are all mysteries where a character solves the case while traveling.
Looking for more summer reading suggestions? Check our blog archive for more!
All By Myself, Alone / Mary Higgins Clark Alvirah and Willy Meehan take a luxury cruise aboard the Queen Charlotte from New York to Southampton, England. The ship’s passengers include 86-year-old Lady Emily Haywood, who possesses a fabulous emerald necklace once owned by Cleopatra. When a murderer strikes, Alvirah slips into sleuthing mode.
The Blue / Lucy Clarke Lana Lowe and her best friend Kitty are invited onto The Blue, a fifty-foot yacht making its way from the Philippines to New Zealand. Manned by a young crew of wanderers, The Blue is exactly the escape they are looking for. Yet Lana and Kitty discover that they aren’t the only ones with secrets they’d rather run from than reveal. And when one of their new friends disappears overboard after an argument with the other crew members, the dark secrets that brought each of them aboard start to unravel.
A Curious Indian Cadaver (Inspector Singh Investigates) / Shamani Flint Inspector Singh is sick of sick leave, so when Mrs Singh suggests they attend a family wedding in Mumbai, he grudgingly agrees. Unfortunately, the beautiful bride-to-be disappears on the eve of her wedding–did she run away to avoid an arranged marriage, or is there something more sinister afoot?
Descent / Tim Johnston The Rocky Mountains have cast their spell over the Courtlands, who are taking a family vacation before their daughter leaves for college. But when Caitlin and her younger brother, Sean, go out for an early morning run and only Sean returns, the mountains become as terrifying as they are majestic.
Device Free Weekend / Sean Doolittle Six college BFFs reunite on the private island off Puget Sound owned by social media CEO Ryan Cloverhill, the seventh member of their circle. Ryan stipulates that all devices are to be surrendered on arrival. Then the six guests wake up in Ryan’s luxury compound to find no sign of him, a single blinking touchscreen tablet the only means of communication to the outside world. They soon discover it’s not an escape room experience, but something far more dangerous.
The Guest List / Lucy Foley On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate a wedding. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned. But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. Resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?
Hatchet Island / Paul Doiron A call for help from a former colleague leads Maine game warden investigator Mike Bowditch and his girlfriend Stacey Stevens on a sea kayaking trip to a research station far off the coast. The island is a sanctuary for endangered seabirds, and the biologists are being threatened by local fishermen and stalked by a mysterious boatman who seems intent on trespassing on the refuge. Even worse, their leader, whose mind is slowly unraveling after the unexplained suicide of a young intern, has now gone missing. Soon, Mike and Stacey’s darkest fears will be confirmed.
The Island / Adrian McKinty Heather Baxter is newly married to Tom, a widowed doctor with a young son and teenage daughter. An Australian outback vacation seems like the perfect way to bring the new family together. When they discover the remote Dutch Island, off-limits to outside visitors, the family talks their way onto the ferry, taking a chance on an adventure far from the reach of iPhones. But the island is run by a tightly knit clan of locals, and everything feels wrong. Then a shocking accident propels the Baxters from an unsettling situation into an absolute nightmare.
Murder on the Orient Express / Agatha Christie While en route from Syria to Paris, in the middle of a freezing winter’s night, the Orient Express is stopped dead in its tracks by a snowdrift. Passengers awake to find the train still stranded and to discover that a wealthy American has been brutally stabbed to death in his private compartment. Incredibly, that compartment is locked from the inside. With no escape into the wintery landscape, the killer must still be on board. Fortunately, the brilliant Belgian inspector Hercule Poirot is also on board, having booked the last available berth.
Nine Perfect Strangers / Liane Moriarty Nine strangers book themselves a ten-day health retreat at Tranquillim House. They are there for different reasons, including to lose weight, renew a marriage, gain mindfulness, and overcome some of life’s obstacles. But the guests at haven’t reckoned on the House’s messianic but precariously stable director, whose secret agenda could be dangerous to their health.
The Only Survivors / Megan Miranda Cassidy Bent is reluctantly preparing for an annual ritual: the weeklong reunion at a secluded beach house on North Carolina’s Outer Banks of what were initially nine survivors of a horrific accident a decade earlier. The former classmates are the only ones who share the secrets of what they did to walk out of the woods alive. Then during this reunion, one member of the group goes missing, while an impending storm prevents anyone from leaving. But each survivor will do whatever they can to save the others — won’t they?
Reckless Girls / Rachel Hawkins When Lux McAllister and her boyfriend, Nico, are hired to sail college best friends Brittany and Amma to a remote island in the South Pacific, it seems like the opportunity of a lifetime. Meroe Island is every bit the paradise the foursome expects, but what they don’t expect is another boat. Jake and Eliza are a true golden couple: gorgeous, laidback, and rich. Now a party of six, the new friends settle in to experience the serenity of being completely off the grid. But with the arrival of a skeevy stranger sailing alone, cracks begin to emerge: Brittany and Amma haven’t been completely honest about their pasts, and Jake and Eliza’s rocky history begins to resurface. It starts to feel like the island itself is closing in on them. And when one person goes missing, and another turns up dead, Lux begins to wonder if any of them will make it off the island alive.
Resorting to Murder: Holiday Mysteries by various authors (Martin Edwards, ed.) Holidays offer us the luxury of getting away from it all. So, in a different way, do detective stories. This collection of vintage mysteries combines both those pleasures. From a golf course at the English seaside to a pension in Paris, and from a Swiss mountain resort to the cliffs of Normandy, this new selection shows the enjoyable and unexpected ways in which crime writers have used summer holidays as a theme. These fourteen stories range widely across the golden age of British crime fiction.
A Rule Against Murder / Louise Penny Armand and Reine-Marie Gamache are celebrating their wedding anniversary at Manoir Bellechasse, an isolated, luxurious inn not far from the village of Three Pines. But they’re not alone. The Finney family–rich, cultured, and respectable–has also arrived for a celebration of their own. Some surprising guests turn up at the family reunion, and a terrible summer storm leaves behind a dead body. It is up to Chief Inspector Gamache to unearth secrets long buried.
The Sanatorium / Sarah Pearse An imposing, isolated getaway spot high up in the Swiss Alps is the last place Detective Elin Warner wants to be. But Elin’s on break from her job, so when her estranged brother, Isaac, and his fiancée, Laure, invite her to celebrate their engagement at the hotel, she accepts. Arriving in the midst of a threatening storm, Elin immediately feels on edge. And when the following morning they discover Laure is missing, Elin must trust her instincts if they hope to find her.
A Share in Death / Deborah Crombie In this delightful series, Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid of Scotland Yard takes a holiday at his lovely Yorkshire time share. But before the stress of crime-solving begins to disappear, a body washes up in the whirlpool bath. Kincaid won’t be able to relax until the killer is sent packing.
The Singing Sands / Josephine Tey On his train back to Scotland for a well-earned rest, Inspector Alan Grant learns that a fellow passenger, one Charles Martin, has been found dead. It looks like a case of misadventure – but Grant is not so sure. Teased by some enigmatic lines of verse that the deceased had apparently scrawled on a newspaper, he follows a trail to the remote Outer Hebrides. And though it is the end of his holiday, it is also the beginning of an intriguing investigation into the bizarre circumstances shrouding Charles Martin’s death.
The Swell / Allie Reynolds Three years ago, passionate surfer Kenna Ward lost her two great loves–after her boyfriend drowned, she hung up her surfboard and swore off the water for good. But she is drawn back to the beach when her best friend, Mikki, announces her sudden engagement to a man Kenna has never met–a member of a tight-knit group of surfers. Kenna travels to a remote Australian beach, is tempted back into the surf, and drawn into the dazzling group. But members of the group begin to go missing. Kenna realizes that in order to protect Mikki and learn more about the surfers, she must become one of them…without becoming one of their victims.
They All Fall Down / Rachel Howzell Hall Delighted by a surprise invitation, Miriam Macy sails to a luxurious private island off the coast of Mexico, with six strangers–an ex-cop, a chef, a financial advisor, a nurse, a lawyer, and a young widow. But Miriam discovers they’ve been brought there under false pretenses–and all seven strangers harbor a secret. And strange accidents keep them suspicious of each other, as one by one . . . They all fall down.
The Villa / Rachel Hawkins As kids, Emily and Chess were inseparable. But by their 30s, their bond has been strained. So when Chess suggests a girls’ trip to Italy, Emily jumps at the chance. Villa Aestas in Orvieto is a high-end holiday home now, but in 1974, it was known as Villa Rosato, and rented by a notorious rock star, Noel Gordon. Noel invited musician Pierce Sheldon to join him. But he also set in motion a chain of events that ended in Pierce’s brutal murder. As Emily digs into the villa’s history, she begins to think there might be more to the story of that fateful summer in 1974.
We Were Never Here / Andrea Bartz Emily is in the mountains of Chile with her best friend, Kristen, on their annual reunion trip. But on the last night of their trip, Emily enters their hotel suite to find blood and broken glass on the floor. Kristen says the cute backpacker she’d been flirting with attacked her, and she had to kill him in self-defense. Even more shocking: The scene is horrifyingly similar to last year’s trip, when another backpacker wound up dead. Emily can’t believe it’s happened again–can lightning really strike twice?
Who Is Maud Dixon? / Alexandra Andrews Florence Darrow always felt she was destined for greatness, but her life as a low-level publishing employee is making her doubt herself. All that changes when she sets off for Morocco with her new boss, the celebrated but reclusive author Maud Dixon. At last, Florence feels she’s leading the life she deserves. But when she wakes up in the hospital after a terrible car accident, with no memory of the previous night–and no sign of Maud–a dangerous idea begins to take form …
The Woman in Cabin 10 / Ruth Ware Lo Blacklock, a journalist who writes for a travel magazine, has been given the assignment of a lifetime: a week on a luxury cruise with only a handful of cabins. At first, Lo’s stay is nothing but pleasant. But as the week wears on, Lo witnesses what she can only describe as a dark and terrifying nightmare: a woman being thrown overboard. The problem? All passengers remain accounted for–and so, the ship sails on as if nothing has happened, despite Lo’s desperate attempts to convey that something (or someone) has gone terribly, terribly wrong …
You Shouldn’t Have Come Here / Jeneva Rose Grace Evans, an overworked New Yorker looking for an escape from her busy life, books an Airbnb on a ranch in the middle of Wyoming. The owner, handsome Calvin Wells, is eager to introduce her to his easygoing way of life. But there are things Grace isn’t too pleased about: A lack of cell phone service. A missing woman. And a feeling that something isn’t right with the ranch.