Here’s our summer roundup of mysteries perfect for lazy beach days and afternoons chilling in the backyard.

If you asked Ashe Cayne, he’d say his two favorite things are Shakespeare and golf. If you ask me, Cayne is one of my favorite fictional PIs. Cayne has swagger, style, striking wit and money to spend. Right before TV sweeps week, Cayne is hired to discover who’s threatening Morgan Shaw, Chicago’s top-rated news anchor. Cayne’s investigation collides with a police shooting of an unarmed Black man. Cayne is Black and an ex-cop. He knows “going after a Chicago cop is nothing short of declaring war.” He doesn’t hesitate. Smith’s dialogue-driven plot races to a breathless end. (Amistad, 368 pages.)

In her 1880s-set “Sugar,” Logue continues her entertaining chronicle of Irish immigrant Brigid Reardon’s life, one that’s become pretty chaotic. Brigid survived servitude in a St. Paul, Minnesota mansion and a murder conspiracy in Deadwood, S.D. She’s finally ready for a wee bit o’peace in her life. It’s not to be. While adjusting to being a homesteader in Cheyenne, the “‘magic city of the plains,'” Brigid discovers neighbor Ella Bates, hanging from a tree not far from her “soddy,” where Ella also had staked a homestead. What happened to Ella? Brigid means to find out. (University of Minnesota Press, 200 pages.)

Bertha Mellish is a “defiant agnostic.” Her roommate, Agnes, wants to be a doctor. She worships “the earthly body” — Bertha’s in particular, all the “glories of her.” But it’s 1897. Instead of building a future, Bertha is missing in lush woods near Mount Holyoke College. The search for Bertha unveils the difficult choices women, LGBT women in particular, made (and make) to survive and to love. Like Margaret Atwood’s “Alias Grace,” “Killingly” is an evocative novel crafted from an actual historical mystery where, according to Beutner, the subversive elements of a 19th-century women’s college are “thoroughly intertwined with oppression.” (Soho Crime, 360 pages.)

“Wouldn’t you like to experience something so absolutely singular?” a character asks Mike Brink, diagnosed with savant syndrome after a high school football injury. Brink “reroutes his life … like a river” and embraces his singularity, becoming a famous puzzle master. When he’s invited to solve a strange puzzle posed by a convicted murderer, Mike finds it “impossible to walk away.” You won’t be able to, either. This immersive, brilliant book is a labyrinth of ciphers, cryptograms, logic puzzles, word puzzles, and a doozy of a conspiracy. Wouldn’t you like to experience a book so singular? (Random House, 384 pages.)

Scottish author John Buchan’s “The Thirty-Nine Steps” began my love of novels where the protagonist is chased cross-country, forced to survive on wits and wooly blankets. Ware’s fast-paced fugitive story made me breathless. Jack (aka Jacintha), a cyber security stress-tester, discovers her murdered husband slumped over his computer in their London living room. Under questioning, Jack refuses a lawyer because it’ll be “weird and antagonistic.” After a pointed police interview, Jack realizes she’s the main suspect. She flees. While off the grid and on the run, Jack pieces together her husband’s final days, finding much more than his killer. (Scout Press, 368 pages.)

In 1920s India, women obey their husband’s demands in all things, especially areas of reproductive rights and body autonomy. With no available birth control and no access to doctors, Bombay’s child mortality and maternal deaths are high. Perveen Mistry, Bombay’s only female lawyer, is thrust into these tragic circumstances when she volunteers to defend a wealthy Bombay family’s young servant, who’s accused of aborting her fetus. Massey’s evocative mysteries featuring Mistry have always woven political, cultural and critical social issues into a compelling historical mystery. This one’s threads could be worn today. (Soho Crime, 432 pages. Out July 11.)

For London-based jazz singer Lena Aldridge, autumn in New York (as a 1934 song describes) seems “so inviting” with its “thrill of first-nighting” and “promise of new love.” After a harrowing Atlantic crossing, Lena stays in Harlem to get to know her beau Will, earn a chance to sing at the Apollo and learn more about her late father Alfie’s side of the family. Lena discovers Will and Alfie have serious family secrets. Hare’s accomplished mystery shifts between Lena’s Harlem in 1936 and her father’s in 1908, when autumn in New York was “often mingled with pain.” (Berkley, 352 pages. Out Aug. 29.)

This searing stunner of a book is a lamentation on place, how for “certain groups in America, trauma was … inheritance.” It’s like a Nina Simone song that contains “an infinite sort of sadness,” yet closes with a promise of hope. Toya Gardner, a Black artist, has returned to her grandmother’s house in the North Carolina mountains, a county “you didn’t land on by accident.” Toya’s art reckons with a past that too many idealize. Ernie Allison, a white deputy, finds a Klan contact list of government officials in a drunk’s car. The intersection of their stories drives the novel. (Putnam, 400 pages. Out Aug. 1.)

They are librarians in a “quaint town on the Platte River” and dangerous women. Margo’s a fugitive murderer; Patricia’s a struggling novelist. Margo’s a “killer nurse” hiding behind books she doesn’t read until she discovers Shirley Jackson’s “We Have Always Lived in the Castle.” Patricia’s “done making things up” until her pen decides Margo’s life is good plot fodder. Sims’ audacious story shifts between Margo and Patricia’s points of view in a battle of wits that’s mesmerizing. This exceptional novel is firmly in Highsmith territory (yep, another Patricia) and the ending is everything. (Putnam, 256 pages. Out July 18.)

As a child, journalist Coco Weber’s family moved from “the heart of Black Los Angeles” to Catalina Island where, years later, her family was slaughtered in a home invasion. Since then, Coco has filled her life with “words, men, and guilt,” which “demands ransom even when you’re broke.” Coco returns to the island to take care of an elderly aunt, escape an ex-boyfriend and “let it all work itself out.” Not going to be that easy, especially when elderly islanders are dying in unusual numbers. Howzell Hall’s prose is stiletto sharp and the plot’s a killer. (Thomas & Mercer, 428 pages. Out Aug. 1.)

Books reviewed by Carole E. Barrowman, special to the Star Tribune