Aug 13, 2026 · 4 min listen · Last updated August 13, 2026
From storyflo. This is your daily audio brief. Here are today's top 5 true crime stories. Let's get into it. First, from CrimeReads (Literary Hub). Sunning and Sleuthing: A Cozy Summer Reading List from Lucy Connelly.
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Daily True Crime Brief · August 13th
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Sunning and Sleuthing: A Cozy Summer Reading List from Lucy Connelly
There is a reason I set my cozy mysteries in lovely towns where I would like to visit or live in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. I need an escape. Every time I write a new book, I get to visit that town and the characters I created. I imagine it is like that for most cozy mystery writers. I’ve pulled together a list for you to lose yourself in this summer. Whether you’re on vacation or sitting in your living room with the air conditioner full blast, you’ll have a fun time visiting these cozy mystery locations.
5 Cli-Fi Novels and Eco-Thrillers Where Nature Has Main Character Energy
I’ve always had a thing for nature. Maybe it’s because I’m a true Gen X’er and as a kid I lived outside, unattended. Maybe it’s because the beauty of the Alberta prairies has been the backdrop of my entire life. Maybe it’s simply my human bodies innate need to connect to something bigger. So many hours of my childhood were spent outside—mostly getting up to no good, sure, but outside it was. I have walked the river valleys of the cities I’ve lived in throughout my twenties for hours on end. I’ve breathed in the magnificence of the Rocky Mountains while camping.
The Power and Promise of Virgin Islands Noir and Mystery
In the historical writings that we have, the women and men sit and wait in their canoes, showing no sign of aggression. They watch, hands at rest, as the men on the deck of the caravel—dirty from their months of sea travel—watch them back. These women and men have been sent by their people with a purpose: See what the strangers want. See if they are friendly. Even in Christopher Columbus’s own account, he and his men attack first, offering no warnings as they surround the canoe and open fire. It was only then that the men and women in the canoe revealed themselves to be warriors.
Rory Cormac on the Mavericks of Britain’s Cold War Era Forgery Empire
t appeared a perfectly ordinary scene. With Christmas approaching and the trees of Hampstead losing their last leaves, a figure entered the local post office to send a batch of New Year greetings cards to Nigeria. The clerk would barely have looked up. Weeks later, in early 1968, British diplomats in Lagos opened the package with surprise. The card was anything but ordinary; what lay inside was no greeting.
The Best Debut Crime Novels of the Month: August 2026
Leslie Bazzett’s debut, Mia, drops you into the expatriate world of San Miguel de Allende, where a young mother clings to an older woman who starts to fill her own mother’s role. The friendship spirals into a dark, obsessive dance, pulling the protagonist into a cascade of memories and increasingly terrible choices. It feels like a modern take on Highsmith’s psychological tension, with the simple warning “be careful who you pretend to be” stretched to devastating extremes.
Ryan Lowell’s Freight is a nonstop noir road trip that follows a semi‑truck barreling toward the US‑Canadian border. As the rig moves, you meet a sprawling cast of characters each tangled in a larger plot to capture it. The novel balances a gritty, voice‑driven style with a surprisingly contemporary look at American crime, keeping the momentum high while still digging into the humanity of its players.
A.P. Thayer’s Tapeworm opens a cracked, dried‑up lake in Southern California and lets climate change release an ancient, worm‑filled horror. Vacationers become unwilling hosts for a legion of reasonable, goal‑oriented worms, turning a familiar setting into a bizarre, subterranean nightmare. It’s the first title from Zando’s Evil Twin imprint, adding a fresh, slightly absurd twist to the current horror renaissance.
W.H. Chizmar’s Them splits between a pre‑apocalypse government lab where a bureaucrat discovers the folly of playing god, and the post‑apocalypse scramble of a lone survivor dodging scorpion‑like alien monsters. The story is brutal and epic, mixing survival horror with a classic pride‑before‑the‑fall arc, all under a sky ruled by giant space bugs.
Margrét Ann Thors’s Freyja is an icy, emotionally resonant debut set in Iceland. A mother fiercely protects her daughter from a buried past involving the disappearance of a childhood friend in the remote Dark Valley. The prose is crystal clear, the plotting tight, and the emotional depth hits hard—love, loneliness, self‑reliance, anger, and peace all feel intensely lived.