Kaeleigh's Staff Picks

Kaeleigh DeMeter, at Murder By The Book since 2023

Kaeleigh is an avid reader with a TBR list that may actually reach the moon one day. Coffee is life and she buys plants almost as often as she buys books. When she isn't lurking in book stores and trying to figure out where to put the new books she buys, she is teaching her daughter to love books as much as she does. And oh yea.. she is an investigator for the medical examiner's office too.

Some of her favorite authors include: Laini Taylor, Karin Slaughter, Elle Cosimano, Tana French, Richard Osman, Meg Gardiner, Alix E. Harrow, and Daniel O'Malley.

Staff Pick Badge
Vampires of El Norte By Isabel Cañas Cover Image
$28.00
ISBN: 9780593436721
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Berkley - August 15th, 2023

Dark, alluring, and gothic with a heart rending romance- these are just a few choice words to describe Isabel Canas’s latest novel. Set in the 1840’s along the Texas- Mexico border, Nena and Nestor have been inseparable since childhood with friendship blooming to romance as they grow. Then, on a dark, quiet night Nena is attacked by something stalking the night and Nestor flees fearing he will be blamed for Nena’s death. 

What Nestor did not know was that Nena survived and each has spent the last nine years grieving the loss of the other. When Nestor returns to the Ranchero to march with the other vaqueros to join the Mexican Army, he is shocked to find Nena alive. Nena, desperate to show she is worth more to the Ranchero as a curandera, a healer, than as a bride, begs her father to join the contingent of men to aid the army. With the threat of war bearing down, vicious creatures attacking in the night and the turbulence of their young romance, Nena and Nestor have the fight of their lives before them. 

From a gorgeous cover to lyrical prose, Vampires of El Norte is Canas’s second novel you want to consume immediately. I had the pleasure of listening to this novel courtesy of Penguin Random House Audio Publishing and Libro.fm and highly recommend the audio version of this book. The narration performed by Krysta Gonzales and Jose Nateras adds depth and heart you won’t want to miss.


The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession By Michael Finkel Cover Image
$28.00
ISBN: 9780525657323
Availability: Able to Backorder
Published: Knopf - June 27th, 2023

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • One of the most remarkable true-crime narratives of the twenty-first century: the story of the world’s most prolific art thief, Stéphane Breitwieser. • “The Art Thief, like its title character, has confidence, élan, and a great sense of timing."—The New Yorker


The Witch Hunter (A Ghosts of the Past Novel #1) By Max Seeck Cover Image
$18.00
ISBN: 9780593199664
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Berkley - October 27th, 2020

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A shocking murder in an affluent Helsinki suburb has ties to witchcraft and the occult in this thrilling U.S. debut from Finnish author Max Seeck.


The Trap By Catherine Ryan Howard Cover Image
$26.99
ISBN: 9781982694715
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Black Stone Publishing - August 1st, 2023

From award-winning, internationally bestselling crime writer Catherine Ryan Howard comes The Trap: an unsettling mystery inspired by a series of still-unsolved disappearances in Ireland in the nineties, wherein one young woman risks everything to catch a faceless killer.


Shutter By Ramona Emerson Cover Image
$16.95
ISBN: 9781641294812
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Soho Crime - April 25th, 2023

Rita Todacheene is a crime scene photographer for the Albuquerque Police Department. She spends all hours of the day responding to death scenes to capture the evidence. While her talents make her exceptional at her job, there is another lingering skill that makes her job and her life more difficult. Rita can see ghosts. When Rita photographs the scene of a woman who is presumed to have jumped from an overpass, her malicious ghost says otherwise, and Rita is pulled into a whirlpool of death, corruption and malevolence. Oscillating between Rita's past on the Navajo reservation with her grandmother and her present predicament, Shutter is a dark and stunning glimpse into death investigation, police corruption, Navajo culture and the supernatural. - Kaeleigh


Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner By Judy Melinek, MD, T.J. Mitchell Cover Image
$17.99
ISBN: 9781476727264
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Scribner - June 16th, 2015

“Fun…and full of smart science. Fans of CSI—the real kind—will want to read it” (The Washington Post): A young forensic pathologist’s “rookie season” as a NYC medical examiner, and the hair-raising cases that shaped her as a physician and human being.

Just two months before the September 11 terrorist attacks, Dr.