If you liked this post, check out some more Bookish Bites:
In this post, we’ll scour our shelves for 25 books with red covers to celebrate the festive season!
There’s something about the colour red that perfectly captures the essence of Christmas! Red is bold, festive, and brimming with heart just like Santa holding a chilled can of cola.
This holiday season, let your bookshelf reflect some Christmas cheer with a collection of mystery and thriller reads sporting rosy red covers.
Whether you’re drawn to seasonal thrillers or literary masterpieces, red covers are the thread tying together these must-read gifts. Perfect for treating yourself, these novels will bring a touch of holiday spirit to your reading list.
We encourage you to always source books from your local independent bookshop. However, we understand this is sometimes not practical based on location or budget.
Therefore, this post contains Amazon affiliate links. This means, if you click on the link and purchase the book from that link, I get a few dollars at no extra cost to you! This way we can both restock our holiday shelves! 😀
Happy Reading, Friends!
Series or Standalone? :
This is a standalone novel.
"A Christmas Ghost" Book Blurb:
December 1st. Angie and her teenage son Rust prepare for Christmas, stringing fairy lights around their isolated home on the Somerset levels and decorating a tree with traditional ornaments. The first door of the advent calendar is opened, but the chocolate inside tastes off. Rust receives his first Christmas card, it’s unsigned and the message is ‘pinch, punch… first of the month’. The robin chirruping on a bough in a snowy woodland picture looks like a nasty piece of work. The cards keep coming, one each day and each more sinister than the last, and a frightened Angie recalls The Cards – a seasonal TV show from her childhood that featured similar happenings, and while she remembers it vividly, there is no evidence that it was ever broadcast. Christmas cheer is gradually poisoned, with cruels instead of carols, the turkey rotting in the fridge, unwelcome visits from the Merciless Gentlemen and the Jingle Basterds, and Rust becoming increasingly unwell. Angie begins to wonder if her childhood Christmases were in fact as joy filled as she remembers.
Grab yourself a copy:
Series or Standalone? :
This is a standalone novel.
"All Her Little Secrets" Book Blurb:
Ellice Littlejohn seemingly has it all: an Ivy League law degree, a well-paying job as a corporate attorney in midtown Atlanta, great friends, and a “for fun” relationship with a rich, charming executive, who just happens to be her white boss. But everything changes one cold January morning when Ellice arrives in the executive suite and finds him dead with a gunshot to his head. And then she walks away like nothing has happened. Why? Ellice has been keeping a cache of dark secrets, including a small-town past and a kid brother who’s spent time on the other side of the law. She can’t be thrust into the spotlight–again. But instead of grieving this tragedy, people are gossiping, the police are getting suspicious, and Ellice, the company’s lone black attorney, is promoted to replace her boss. While the opportunity is a dream-come-true, Ellice just can’t shake the feeling that something is off. When she uncovers shady dealings inside the company, Ellice is trapped in an impossible ethical and moral dilemma. Suddenly, Ellice’s past and present lives collide as she launches into a pulse-pounding race to protect the brother she tried to save years ago and stop a conspiracy far more sinister than she could have ever imagined.
Grab yourself a copy:
Series or Standalone? :
This is a standalone novel.
"Bad Cree" Book Blurb:
When Mackenzie wakes up with a severed crow’s head in her hands, she panics. Only moments earlier she had been fending off masses of birds in a snow-covered forest. In bed, when she blinks, the head disappears. Night after night, Mackenzie’s dreams return her to a memory from before her sister Sabrina’s untimely death: a weekend at the family’s lakefront campsite, long obscured by a fog of guilt. But when the waking world starts closing in, too — crows stalk her every move around the city; she gets threatening text messages from someone claiming to be Sabrina — Mackenzie knows this is more than she can handle alone. Travelling north to her rural hometown in Alberta, she finds her family still steeped in the same grief that she ran away to Vancouver to escape. They welcome her back, but their shaky reunion only seems to intensify her dreams — and make them more dangerous. What really happened that night at the lake, and what did it have to do with Sabrina’s death? Only a bad Cree would put their family at risk, but what if whatever has been calling Mackenzie home was already inside her?
Grab yourself a copy:
Series or Standalone? :
This is Book One in the ‘Bless Your Heart‘ series.
"Bless Your Heart" Book Blurb:
It’s 1999 in Southeast Texas and the Evans women, owners of the only funeral parlor in town, are keeping steady with…normal business. The dead die, you bury them. End of story. That’s how Ducey Evans has done it for the last eighty years, and her progeny–Lenore the experimenter and Grace, Lenore’s soft-hearted daughter, have run Evans Funeral Parlor for the last fifteen years without drama. Ever since That Godawful Mess that left two bodies in the ground and Grace raising her infant daughter Luna, alone. But when town gossip Mina Jean Murphy’s body is brought in for a regular burial and she rises from the dead instead, it’s clear that the Strigoi–the original vampire–are back. And the Evans women are the ones who need to fight back to protect their town. As more folks in town turn up dead and Deputy Roger Taylor begins asking way too many questions, Ducey, Lenore, Grace, and now Luna, must take up their blades and figure out who is behind the Strigoi’s return. As the saying goes, what rises up, must go back down. But as unspoken secrets and revelations spill from the past into the present, the Evans family must face that sometimes, the dead aren’t the only things you want to keep buried.
Grab yourself a copy:
Series or Standalone? :
This is a standalone novel.
"Conjuring the Witch" Book Blurb:
There are witches in the woods. These are the words the reverend of the Lilin Assembly of Our Lord repeats to his parishioners each week. Steve and Nicole Warby think it’s just a metaphor, until Nicole takes a walk in those woods and comes back changed. Something came out of them with her, and the simple small-town life they’ve always known is forever altered when they discover the dark secrets buried deep and those intent on keeping them there. Fearing for his wife’s sanity, and his own comfortable status in the church, Steve is unsure if he wants to help or ignore the problems. The reverend believes there are witches in the woods, and he thinks Nicole is only the most recent.
Grab yourself a copy:
Series or Standalone? :
This is a standalone novel.
"Everybody Knows" Book Blurb:
Welcome to Mae Pruett’s Los Angeles, where “Nobody talks. But everybody whispers.” As a “black-bag” publicist tasked not with letting the good news out but keeping the bad news in, Mae works for one of LA’s most powerful and sought-after crisis PR firms, at the centre of a sprawling web of lawyers, PR flaks, and private security firms she calls “The Beast.” They protect the rich and powerful and depraved by any means necessary. After her boss is gunned down in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel in a random attack, Mae takes it upon herself to investigate and runs headfirst into The Beast’s lawless machinations and the twisted systems it exists to perpetuate. It takes her on a roving neon joyride through a Los Angeles full of influencers pumped full of pills and fillers; sprawling mansions footsteps away from sprawling homeless encampments; crooked cops and mysterious wrecking crews in the middle of the night.
Grab yourself a copy: 
Series or Standalone? :
This is a standalone novel.
"Gangland" Book Blurb:
In the late 1970s, The Outfit, led by Tony Accardo, has the entire city of Chicago in its grip. When the bracelet he bought his wife is stolen in a jewellery heist, Tony has his loyal soldier Nicky Passero track it down—by whatever means necessary. What Accardo doesn’t know: Nicky has a secret which has made his life impossible and has put him in the pocket of the FBI.
Grab yourself a copy:
Series or Standalone? :
This is Book One in the ‘Kopp Sisters‘ series.
"Girl Waits With Gun" Book Blurb:
Constance Kopp doesn’t quite fit the mould. She towers over most men, has no interest in marriage or domestic affairs, and has been isolated from the world since a family secret sent her and her sisters from the city to the country fifteen years before. When a powerful, ruthless factory owner runs down their buggy, a dispute over damages turns into a war of bricks, bullets, and threats as he unleashes his gang on their farm. The sheriff enlists her help, and it turns out that Constance has a knack for outwitting (and disarming) the criminal element, which might just take her back out into the world and onto a new path in life.
Grab yourself a copy:
Series or Standalone? :
This is a standalone novel.
"Grey Dog" Book Blurb:
The year is 1901, and Ada Byrd — spinster, schoolmarm, amateur naturalist — accepts a teaching post in isolated Lowry Bridge, grateful for the chance to re-establish herself where no one knows her secrets. She develops friendships with her neighbours, explores the woods with her students, and begins to see a future in this tiny farming community. Her past — riddled with grief and shame — has never seemed so far away. But then, Ada begins to witness strange and grisly phenomena: a swarm of dying crickets, a self-mutilating rabbit, a malformed faun. She soon believes that something old and beastly — which she calls Grey Dog — is behind these visceral offerings, which both beckon and repel her. As her confusion deepens, her grip on what is real, what is delusion, and what is traumatic memory loosens, and Ada takes on the wildness of the woods, behaving erratically and pushing her newfound friends away. In the end, she is left with one question: What is the real horror? The Grey Dog, the uncontainable power of female rage, or Ada herself?
Grab yourself a copy:
Series or Standalone? :
This is Book One in the ‘Keera Duggan‘ series.
"Her Deadly Game" Book Blurb:
Keera Duggan was building a solid reputation as a Seattle prosecutor, until her romantic relationship with a senior colleague ended badly. For the competitive former chess prodigy, returning to her family’s failing criminal defence law firm to work for her father is the best shot she has. With the right moves, she hopes to restore the family’s reputation, her relationship with her father, and her career. Keera’s chance to play in the big leagues comes when she’s retained by Vince LaRussa, an investment adviser accused of murdering his wealthy wife. There’s little hard evidence against him, but considering the couple’s impending and potentially nasty divorce, LaRussa faces life in prison. The prosecutor is equally challenging: Miller Ambrose, Keera’s former lover, who’s eager to destroy her in court on her first homicide defense. As Keera and her team follow the evidence, they uncover a complicated and deadly game that’s more than Keera bargained for. When shocking information turns the case upside down, Keera must decide between her duty to her client, her family’s legacy, and her own future.
Grab yourself a copy:
Series or Standalone? :
This is a standalone novel.
"Indian Burial Ground" Book Blurb:
All Noemi Broussard wanted was a fresh start. With a new boyfriend who actually treats her right and a plan to move from the reservation she grew up on—just like her beloved Uncle Louie before her—things are finally looking up for Noemi. Until the news of her boyfriend’s apparent suicide brings her world crumbling down. But the facts about Roddy’s death just don’t add up, and Noemi isn’t the only one who suspects that something menacing might be lurking within their tribal lands. After over a decade away, Uncle Louie has returned to the reservation, bringing with him a past full of secrets, horror, and what might be the key to determining Roddy’s true cause of death. Together, Noemi and Louie set out to find answers…but as they get closer to the truth, Noemi begins to wonder whether it might be best for some secrets to remain buried.
Grab yourself a copy:
Series or Standalone? :
This is a standalone novel.
"Lenny Marks Gets Away With Murder" Book Blurb:
Lenny Marks is good at not remembering. She has spent the last twenty years not thinking about the day her mother left her when she was still a child. Her stepfather’s parting words, however, remain annoyingly unforgettable: ‘You did this.’ Now thirty-seven, Lenny prefers contentment and order over the unreliability of happiness and the messiness of relationships. She fills her days teaching at the local primary school, and her nights playing Scrabble with her pretend housemate, watching reruns of Friends and rearranging her thirty-six copies of The Hobbit. Recently though, if only to appease her beloved foster-mum, Lenny has set herself the goal of ‘getting a life’. Then, out of the blue, a letter arrives from the Adult Parole Board. And when her desperate attempts to ignore it fail, Lenny starts to unravel. Worse, she starts to remember.
Grab yourself a copy:
Series or Standalone? :
This is Book One in the ‘Susan Ryeland‘ series.“
“Magpie Murders” Book Blurb:
Editor Susan Ryland has worked with bestselling crime writer Alan Conway for years. Readers love his detective, Atticus Pünd, a celebrated solver of crimes in the sleepy English villages of the 1950s. But Conway’s latest tale of murder at Pye Hall is not quite what it seems. Yes, there are dead bodies and a host of intriguing suspects, but hidden in the pages of the manuscript lies another story: a tale written between the very words on the page, telling of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition and murder.
Grab yourself a copy:
Series or Standalone? :
This is Book One in the ‘Natalie King‘ series.
"Medea's Curse" Book Blurb:
Forensic psychiatrist Natalie King works with victims and perpetrators of violent crime. Women with a history of abuse, mainly. She rides a Ducati a size too big and wears a tank top a size too small. Likes men but doesn’t want to keep one. And really needs to stay on her medication. Now she’s being stalked. Anonymous notes, threats, strangers loitering outside her house. A hostile former patient? Or someone connected with a current case? Georgia Latimer—charged with killing her three children. Travis Hardy—deadbeat father of another murdered child, with a second daughter now missing. Maybe the harassment has something to do with Crown Prosecutor Liam O’Shea—drop-dead sexy, married and trouble in all kinds of ways. Natalie doesn’t know. Question is, will she find out before it’s too late?
Grab yourself a copy:
Series or Standalone? :
This is Book One in the ‘Ministry of Unladylike Activity’ series.
"The Ministry of Unladylike Activity" Book Blurb:
1940. The world is at war, and a secret arm of the British government called the Ministry of Unladylike Activity is training up spies. Enter May Wong– courageous, stubborn, and desperate to help end the war so that she can go home to Hong Kong (and leave her annoying school, Deepdean, behind forever). May knows that she would make the perfect spy. After all, grown-ups always underestimate children like her. When May and her friend Eric are turned away by the Ministry, they take matters into their own hands. Masquerading as evacuees, they travel to Elysium Hall, home to the wealthy Verey family – including snobby, dramatic Nuala. They suspect that one of the Vereys is passing information to Germany. If they can prove it, the Ministry will have to take them on. But there are more secrets at Elysium Hall than May or Eric could ever have imagined. And then, someone is murdered.
Grab yourself a copy:
Series or Standalone? :
This is Book One in the ‘Mycroft Holmes‘ series.
"Mycroft Holmes" Book Blurb:
Set in England and Trinidad, the story centres on Mycroft, a recent university graduate working for the British Secretary of State for War.Mycroft learns from his best friend of troubling events occurring in Trinidad – mysterious disappearances, dead children and strange, backward facing footprints in the sand. Mycroft goes to Trinidad to investigate and to follow his fiance, Georgiana, who was raised on the island. Sherlock has a cameo as a King’s College student.
Grab yourself a copy:
Series or Standalone? :
This is a standalone novel.
"Red Rabbit" Book Blurb:
Grab yourself a copy:
Series or Standalone? :
This is a standalone novel.
"Silver Nitrate" Book Blurb:
Montserrat has always been overlooked. She’s a talented sound editor, but she’s left out of the boys’ club running the film industry in ’90s Mexico City. Then her best friend Tristan introduces her to his new neighbour – cult horror director Abel Urueta, who promises that he can change all of their lives, if only they’ll help him finish what he claims is a cursed film by a Nazi occultist. Disbelieving, but with nothing to lose, Montserrat and Tristan agree to help. However, as they work together to unravel the mystery of the film and its obscure creator, the pair might find out that sorcerers and magic are not only the stuff of movies.
Grab yourself a copy:
Series or Standalone? :
This is a standalone novel.
"Sleep Tight" Book Blurb:
Father Silence once terrorised the rural town of Twisted Tree, disguising himself as a priest to prey on the most vulnerable members of society. When the police finally found his “House of Horrors,” they uncovered nineteen bodies and one survivor–a boy now locked away in a hospital for the criminally insane. Nearly two decades later, Father Silence is finally put to death, but by the next morning, the detective who made the original arrest is found dead. A new serial killer is taking credit for the murder and calling himself the Outcast. The detective’s daughter, Tess Claibourne, is a detective herself, haunted by childhood trauma and horrified by the death of her father and the resurgence of Father Silence’s legacy. When Tess’s daughter is kidnapped by the Outcast, Tess is forced to face her worst fears and long-buried memories. With no leads to follow, she travels back to Twisted Tree to visit the boy who survived and see what secrets might be buried in the tangled web of his broken mind.
Grab yourself a copy:
Series or Standalone? :
This is a standalone novel.
"Someone You Can Build A Nest In" Book Blurb:
Shesheshen has made a mistake fatal to all monsters: she’s fallen in love. Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by impolite monster hunters, she constructs a body from the remains of past meals: a metal chain for a backbone, borrowed bones for limbs, and a bear trap as an extra mouth. Badly hurt by the hunters, Shesheshen’s nursed back to health by Homily, a warm-hearted human. Homily is kind and would make a great co-parent: an ideal place to lay Shesheshen’s eggs so their young can devour Homily from the inside out. But as they grow close, Shesheshen realizes that eating her girlfriend isn’t an option. Just as Shesheshen’s about to confess her identity, Homily reveals something else: she’s hunting a shapeshifting monster that supposedly cursed her family. Has Shesheshen seen it anywhere? Shesheshen didn’t curse anyone, so now she has to figure out why Homily’s twisted family thinks she did. As Shesheshen’s hunt for the monster becomes increasingly deadly, the bigger challenge remains: learning how to build a life with, rather than in, the woman she loves.
Grab yourself a copy:
Series or Standalone? :
This is Book 21 in the ‘Agent Pendergast‘ series.
"The Cabinet of Dr Leng" Book Blurb:
FBI Special Agent A. X. L. Pendergast always wants to protect his protegee Constance Greene from harm. But, against all odds, Constance has found a way to travel back in time. Heading to New York City in the late 1800s, Constance returns to the century of her birth to embark on a dangerous quest: stopping the era’s most infamous serial killer, Dr. Enoch Leng, from bringing his nefarious plans to fruition. If Constance can stop Dr. Leng, she can finally prevent the events that led to the shocking deaths of her sister and brother… but can she survive herself, when up against one of the cleverest and most evil men of his age?
Grab yourself a copy:
Series or Standalone? :
This is a standalone novel.
"The McMasters Guide to Homicide" Book Blurb:
Who hasn’t wondered for a split second what the world would be like if a person who is the object of your affliction ceased to exist? But then you’ve probably never heard of The McMasters Conservatory, dedicated to the consummate execution of the homicidal arts. To gain admission, a student must have an ethical reason for erasing someone who deeply deserves a fate no worse (nor better) than death. The campus of this “Poison Ivy League” college–its location unknown to even those who study there–is where you might find yourself the practice target of a classmate…and where one’s mandatory graduation thesis is getting away with the perfect murder of someone whose death will make the world a much better place to live.
Grab yourself a copy:
Series or Standalone? :
This is a standalone novel.
"The Militia House" Book Blurb:
It’s 2010, and the recently promoted Corporal Loyette and his unit are finishing up their deployment at a new base in Kajaki, Afghanistan. Their duties here are straightforward–loading and unloading cargo into and out of helicopters–and their days are a mix of boredom and dread. The Brits they’re replacing delight in telling them the history of the old barracks just off base, a Soviet-era militia house they claim is haunted, and Loyette and his men don’t need much convincing to make a clandestine trip outside the wire to explore it. It’s a short, middle-of-the-day adventure, but the men experience a mounting agitation after their visit to the militia house. In the days that follow they try to forget about the strange, unsettling sights and sounds from the house, but things are increasingly . . . not right. Loyette becomes determined to ignore his and his marines’ growing unease, convinced that it’s just the strain of war playing tricks on them. But something about the militia house will not let them go.
Grab yourself a copy:
Series or Standalone? :
This is Book One in the ‘Her Majesty the Queen Investigates’ series.
"The Windsor Knot" Book Blurb:
The morning after a dinner party at Windsor Castle, eighty-nine-year-old Queen Elizabeth is shocked to discover that one of her guests has been found murdered in his room, with a rope around his neck. When the police begin to suspect her loyal servants, Her Majesty knows they are looking in the wrong place. For the Queen has been living an extraordinary double life ever since her coronation. Away from the public eye, she has a brilliant knack for solving crimes. With her household’s happiness on the line, her secret must not get out. Can the Queen and her trusted secretary Rozie catch the killer, without getting caught themselves?
Grab yourself a copy:
Series or Standalone? :
This is Book One in the ‘Secret Staircase‘ series.
"Under Lock and Skeleton Key" Book Blurb:
After a disastrous accident derails Tempest Raj’s career, and life, she heads back to her childhood home in California to comfort herself with her grandfather’s Indian home-cooked meals. Though she resists, every day brings her closer to the inevitable: working for her father’s company. Secret Staircase Construction specializes in bringing the magic of childhood to all by transforming clients’ homes with sliding bookcases, intricate locks, backyard treehouses, and hidden reading nooks. When Tempest visits her dad’s latest renovation project, her former stage double is discovered dead inside a wall that’s supposedly been sealed for more than a century. Fearing she was the intended victim, it’s up to Tempest to solve this seemingly impossible crime. But as she delves further into the mystery, Tempest can’t help but wonder if the Raj family curse that’s plagued her family for generations—something she used to swear didn’t exist—has finally come for her.
Grab yourself a copy:
If you liked this post, check out some more Bookish Bites:
