FORreaders who like mysteries that are suspenseful but not frightening, here are five new and recent books that may keep you up late finding out whodunnit — but won’t scare you out of sleeping altogether.

Sixty-year-old widow Vera Wong’s rigidly structured schedule — up at 4:30 a.m. to exercise, in bed before 9 p.m. — is disrupted one morning when she finds a body on the floor of her teahouse in San Francisco’s Chinatown. The police believe it’s an accidental death, yet the indefatigable Vera is convinced that the man has been murdered, and she’s determined to find the killer. In Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers (Berkley), Jesse Q. Sutanto details how Vera’s investigation cracks opens her cloistered life to new possibilities, people, and even danger. Sutanto deftly combines her Indonesian-chinese background, quick wit, a fast-paced plot, and a quirky protagonist to create a highly entertaining mystery with a nifty twist at the end.

Janice Hallett presents readers with a unique challenge in The Twyford Code (Atria): The story is told entirely through transcripts of audio files. But don’t be daunted by the format; Hallett is a deft storyteller. Steven “Smithy” Smith is an endearingly self-aware ex-con obsessed by a children’s book by Edith Twyford. He believes that the book contains a secret code that leads to buried treasure. Smithy follows clues all around England and eventually finds himself in danger from other frantic treasure hunters and shadowy figures from his past. He also discovers some tragic, long-buried secrets about his family. The madcap plot will keep readers in suspense until the final page.

It’s been four years since Deborah Crombie published an installment of her best-selling series featuring Scotland Yard sleuths (and spouses) Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James. Her new book, A Killing of Innocents (William Morrow), was worth the wait as Crombie once again showcases her ability to intertwine family drama with a gripping police procedural. A young doctor named Sasha Johnson is found stabbed in London’s Russell Square, and Duncan and his team must find the killer. The pressure builds when a second doctor, the man who supervised Sasha, is found stabbed several days later. Meanwhile, Gemma, chafing at her new desk job, is only too happy to do some off-hours undercover work for Duncan’s team. Crombie fans will welcome updates on Duncan, Gemma, and other favorite characters, but A Killing of Innocents stands on its own for anyone new to the series.

In her debut novel, The Golden Spoon (Atria), Jessa Maxwell takes a classic detective fiction device — suspects all gathered in a country mansion — and blends it with the cutthroat competition of a baking show. Six finalists gather at a rural Vermont estate for Bake Week, an annual, nationally televised event where amateur bakers compete to win the “Golden Spoon.” Hosted by Betsy Martin, TV baker extraordinaire, Bake Week is an American tradition. But everything seems a bit off this year, beginning with the fact that the producers have forced Betsy to take on Archie Morris, the lecherous star of another popular cooking show, as co-host. Meanwhile, someone is sabotaging this year’s competition. Tempers flare, but things really heat up when Archie is murdered — and everyone is a suspect.

Harbinder Kaur is newly arrived in London, after being promoted to Metropolitan Police detective inspector, when she’s thrust into a high-profile case involving two murdered members of Parliament in Elly Griffiths’s engrossing Bleeding Heart Yard (Mariner). Both murdered men were in the same class at a posh school as teens and, interestingly, so was Cassie Fitzgerald, a police officer whom Harbinder supervises. As the investigation proceeds, it appears the murders may somehow be related to the tragic death of another classmate years ago. The serpentine storyline allows Griffiths to fully explore the classmates’ past and present relationships — while Harbinder doggedly sifts through the connections to uncover the killer. First seen in Griffiths’s Edgar-winning The Stranger Diaries, Harbinder, a gay, Sikh woman, is a complicated, fascinating character.