A serial killer is targeting female college students, leaving their bodies posed as famous women from literature. The police are at a loss with the clues, but a book-obsessed professor attempts to take on the killer, along with a cast of dogged academics and story-hungry journalists, perfect for fans of the Magpie Murders and The Woman in the Window.

Near a small college campus, a student is found strangled in an abandoned barn on the outskirts of town. She's been posed to look like a painting of Hamlet's Ophelia, the scene taunting the police with messages that they don't understand. Detective Ian Carter is known as a strait-laced cop, but seeing the girl's body leaves him shaken and uncertain of where to turn—until a chance meeting with a charmingly awkward literature professor ends with her accidentally seeing, and solving, a clue left by the killer.

Professor Emma Reilly knows that the books she loves might hold the key to unraveling the killer's crimes, now that a second murder has been discovered, with the victim posed as Lady Shallot this time. However, when the murderer strikes too close to home and kills a third student, one from Emma’s classes, she realizes that the safety of her insular life might be nothing more than an illusion. She must find the strength to confront a killer who is turning the stories she loves into lurid scenes of death.

With its dual POV, Murder by the Book features a neurodivergent character in a timely exploration of the current tensions in crime fiction. It's a compelling mystery with notes of dark academia that’s perfect for spooky season and beyond.