Saturday, June 13, 2026

Five top mysteries set in the Boston area

Hannah Selinger is a James Beard Award-nominated lifestyle writer and mother of two based in Boxford, MA, and the author of the memoir Cellar Rat: My Life in the Restaurant Underbelly. Her print and digital work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Eater, Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and elsewhere. Her 2021 Bon Appétit essay, “In My Childhood Kitchen, I Learned Both Fear and Love,” is anthologized in the 2022 Best American Food Writing collection.

Selinger's new novel is Valley of the Moms.

At CrimeReads the author tagged "five titles, set in Massachusetts towns, [that] bring together people, plot, and place." One novel on the list:
Hank Phillippi Ryan, All This Could Be Yours

The 2026 winner of the Edgar Award, All This Could Be Yours traces the fly-by-night success of debut New York Times-bestselling author Tessa Calloway. Calloway, who recently relocated from Boston to the North Shore’s Rockport with her family, must dodge nefarious forces at every stop of her tour: apparent stalkers, fans who want to dig deep into her hidden past, and even duplicitous livery drivers.

Rockport makes a pivotal appearance in this work, a place meant to provide respite but that haunts the protagonist as she spins farther and farther from the life she knows.
Read about the other books on the list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue