Books like Brandy & bullets by Donald Bain

A chilling, factual account of the 1959 shotgun murders of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, where four members were killed with no clear motive or clues.

Jack Reacher, an ex‑military policeman, arrives in Margrave, Georgia, only to be arrested for murder—an accusation he insists is false, but in a town where he has no allies, his pursuit of truth becomes a race against time.

Hard‑boiled detective Sam Spade races to recover a priceless, gem‑encrusted statuette while double‑crosses and danger creep from every corner.

James Ellroy’s hard‑boiled crime novel follows detectives as they unravel Los Angeles’s darkest mystery, the unsolved murder of the Black Dahlia, blending gritty police work with atmospheric noir.

Mickey Haller, a cynical Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer, tackles a high‑paying case that turns out to be far more dangerous than it first appears.

In the seventh Christie‑Christie mystery, Jessica Fletcher visits a haunted Scottish castle where a local lass is murdered in the same grisly fashion as a famed witch.

When her friend Martha is accused of her husband’s murder in Las Vegas, mystery‑solver Jessica Fletcher returns to investigate the crime, combing the suspect’s history while under intense media scrutiny.

Court Gentry returns to the CIA after five years on the run, but a Hong Kong assignment forces him into a high‑stakes hunt across Southeast Asia for Fan Jiang, a former Chinese computer warfare operative now wanted dead.

On a luxury ocean liner, amateur detective Jessica Fletcher directs a stage production and discovers a murder mystery among the passengers, turning an indulgent voyage into a hunt for a deadly killer.

Jessica Fletcher returns to her Maine hometown of Cabot Cove for a quiet Christmas, only to discover the neighbor who played Santa at the annual celebration has been murdered.

Margaret Lawrence introduces her unforgettable heroine, Hannah Trevor, whose disregard for convention sets her apart from the other women of the small town of Rufford, Maine. Yet as a midwife, Hannah is intimately involved in the lives of people simultaneously capable of great joy and deeply scarred by a bloody war of revolution. Now, in the midst of a merciless winter, an abomination has occurred: a young Rufford wife and mother has been raped and murdered in her home. Few knew the tormented victim well, but she named her three attackers in a horrified letter of accusation written before she died. And one of the accused is Daniel Josselyn - a wealthy man of honor, a wounded war veteran, and Hannah's one-time lover, the father of her illegitimate daughter. A savage crime has touched Hannah's world, impelling her to join her dear, damaged friend, local constable Will Quaid, in his investigation.

"The town (Eastport) and its warmly wondrous citizens continue to enchant!"-- Booknews from The Poisoned PenWhen ex--Wall Streeter Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree bought a charming 1823 fixer-upper in tiny Eastport, Maine, she figured she'd also bought herself a tranquil, stress-free life. But Jake soon learned that appearances can be deceiving, and that even small towns have their share of dark secrets -- including murder.Wreck The HallsPeople hardly ever lock their doors in Eastport. So when Jake and her best pal, Ellie, arrive at Faye Anne Carmody's kitchen door, they knock and walk right in. But though Christmas is just two weeks away, what they find is far from festive: a dazed Faye Anne covered with blood, and her no-good husband -- the town butcher, Merle -- nowhere in sight. Nowhere, that is, until Jake discovers his body -- tidily wrapped in his own butcher paper.... It doesn't take long for news of the murder to race through the small town, and just about everyone has a theory about the grisly crime that has robbed Eastport of its least-liked citizen. But while police chief Bob Arnold considers it an open-and-shut case, Jake and Ellie aren't convinced of Faye Anne's guilt. Jake has enough going on in her life without trying to investigate a murder. After all, she's just married her longtime love, Wade, and the pair plan to spend the winter rehabilitating the paint-encrusted windows in Jake's old house. But Jake has to admit that there are a lot of details that don't add up: for example, Faye Anne's complaint that she was being stalked, and blood-splattered evidence at the crime scene that just doesn't make sense. Then there is the diary that Faye Anne's secret, sometime boyfriend claims is hidden somewhere in her house. Could Faye Anne's own journal be the key to unlocking an even more fiendish murder plot, or is her double-crossing lover trying to frame her?When yet another Eastport citizen turns up dead, Jake realizes the murderer's trail began long before the night Merle Carmody died. But what keeps eluding her and Ellie is the motive behind the mystery. The truth is so close, they can almost taste it -- but can they stop the shrewd killer before he chisels another victim's name onto a tombstone?From the Hardcover edition.

In her seventeenth fictional adventure, Jessica Fletcher travels to Provence for haute cuisine and finds herself caught in a culinary murder mystery.

Jessica Fletcher visits Napa Valley for research, but a waiter’s murder pulls her into a vineyard mystery involving ex-Hollywood star Bill Ladington and a cast of suspects. With detective George Sutherland, she pursues the killer.

Detective‑novelist Jessica Fletcher investigates a string of mysterious accidents among figure skaters, culminating in a fatality at the arena.