Raleigh/Durham Mystery and True Crime Book Club for Women

November true crime is Guilty Creatures.

From Amazon:
Mike and Denise Williams had a tight knit, seemingly unbreakable bond with childhood friends, Brian and Kathy Winchester. The two couples were devout, hardworking Baptists who lived perfect, quintessentially Southern lives. Their friendship seemed ironclad. That is, until December 16, 2000, when Denise’s husband Mike disappeared while hunting on Lake Seminole.
After no body was found, everyone assumed that Mike had drowned in a tragic accident, his body eaten by alligators. But things took an unexpected turn when, within five years of Mike’s disappearance, Brian Winchester divorced his wife and married Denise. Their surprising romance set tongues talking. People began wondering how long they had been a couple, and whether they had anything to do with Mike’s death. It took another twelve years for the truth to come out—and when it did, it was unimaginable.
Now, the full, “richly atmospheric, deeply researched, and terrifying true crime” (Betsy Bonner, author of Round Lake) tale is revealed as never before. Through tenacious research and clear-eyed prose, Guilty Creatures probes the psychology of a couple who killed and explores how it feels to live for eighteen years with murder on the soul.

This is also now a Netflix documentary "Mr. and Mrs. Murder" if you don't have time to read the book.

Mystery for November is Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke.
From Amazon:
When it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its own rules -- a fact that Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger, knows all too well. Deeply ambivalent about growing up black in the lone star state, he was the first in his family to get as far away from Texas as he could. Until duty called him home.
When his allegiance to his roots puts his job in jeopardy, he travels up Highway 59 to the small town of Lark, where two murders -- a black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman -- have stirred up a hornet's nest of resentment. Darren must solve the crimes -- and save himself in the process -- before Lark's long-simmering racial fault lines erupt. From a writer and producer of the Emmy winning Fox TV show Empire, Bluebird, Bluebird is a rural noir suffused with the unique music, color, and nuance of East Texas.

Careless People is our January True Crime read.

The Return of Ellie Black is our first mystery of 2026.

From Amazon:

In this “page-turning suspense novel, shrewd character study, and captivating mystery” (Stephen King) Detective Chelsey Calhoun’s life is turned upside down when she gets the call that Ellie Black, a girl who disappeared years earlier, has resurfaced in the woods of Washington state—but her reappearance leaves Chelsey with more questions than answers.

It’s been twenty years since Detective Chelsey Calhoun’s sister vanished when they were teenagers, and ever since she’s been searching: for signs, for closure, for other missing girls. But happy endings are rare in Chelsey’s line of work.

Then a glimmer: local teenager Ellie Black, who disappeared without a trace two years earlier, has been found alive in the woods of Washington state.

But something is not right with Ellie. She won’t say where she’s been, or who she’s protecting, and it’s up to Chelsey to find the answers. She needs to get to the bottom of what happened to Ellie: for herself, and for the memory of her sister, but mostly for the next girl who could be taken—and who, unlike Ellie, might never return.

The “haunting and evocative” debut thriller from New York Times bestselling author Emiko Jean, The Return of Ellie Black is both a feminist tour de force about the embers of hope that burn in the aftermath of tragedy and a “gripping psychological thriller” (The Seattle Times) that will shock you right up until the final page.

Right now this is $1.99 on Kindle.