A city transplant in a dog-obsessed small town becomes the prime suspect when the local dog walker is murdered in this charmingly quirky and clever mystery.
“A delightful mashup of Desperate Housewives and Best in Show, Murder Bites is laugh-out-loud funny and surprisingly heartwarming. A very fun ride, from a totally original new voice.”—Marisa Kashino, author of the Good Morning America Book Club pick Best Offer Wins
A LITERARY HUB MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR
Margot Cartwright is not exactly blending in with the residents of Glenville, South Carolina. An unwilling transplant from Washington, D.C., Margot feels like a fish out of water among the Lululemon-wearing, tiny-dog-owning, non-New Yorker-reading locals who are clamoring to have their fur babies star on Pawsh, a reality TV show about couture canines. (Sure, Margot loves her dog, but Sid Vicious is far too cool of a mutt for a show like that!) She even feels like an outcast amongst her family, and after she’s caught channeling her inner “Robin Hood” by stealing her neighbors’ pro-Pawsh signs, further cementing her title as the neighborhood pariah, she thinks things can’t possibly get any worse, right?
Wrong. When the local dog walker is killed in a bizarre incident involving an over-the-top Halloween display featuring multiple Home Depot skeletons, all eyes turn to Margot. To clear her name and save her family from falling apart, Margot vows to find the real killer before they strike again—but she can’t do it alone.
Enter Anne, a glamorous septuagenarian widow determined to maintain her reign over the HOA, and Sally-Claire, a "Mom Life" sweatshirt-clad member of the “Mommy Mafia” who might not be as perfect as she seems. Together, the unlikely trio (along with their canine companions) dives into the mystery, navigating the quirky and secretive world of Glenville’s residents. Can they solve the case before it’s too late, or will Margot’s reputation be permanently dog-eared?
Release date:
August 4, 2026
Publisher:
Bantam
Print pages:
320
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There was a skill required of disturbing the peace in your backward town, a careful choreography of limbs and breath, pacing and restraint, not unlike parkour or interpretive dance or spelunking. You had to strike at exactly the right moment—wait a second, not yet, not yet, okay, now—so as to ensure maximum impact. Margot always loved that part, right when everyone realized what was happening. One second the crowd was a sea of pleasant neutrality, and the next it all fell away. It was a powerful feeling, to know you could at any point make people drop their veneers. That you could cause their mouths to hang dumbly open, their eyes to bulge, that you could make them look like the blinking animals they really were. The whole thing went beyond just skill, really: Margot considered public disruption an art form. And she was mother-f***ing Leonardo da Vinci.
•
It was an afternoon in mid-September, one of those Southern days when summer is edging its way brilliantly into fall, the kind of day when teenage girls wear their new sweaters to school but end up with half-moons of sweat under their boobs by lunch. No clouds, low humidity, a gentle breeze—the perfect day for sabotage.
Margot grabbed her protest posters from the back seat of her Nissan Leaf, carefully draping the homemade sandwich board sign over Sid Vicious’s back, the large dog standing still and alert like he always did before a mission. She leaned down to kiss his black-and-white Eugene Levy eyebrows, and he happily licked her hand. Then Margot stood, gripping her own poster board tightly in her hands, and turned to the crowd gathered in Glenville’s town center.
The mayor, Kathy Jenkins, was standing on a stage erected on the center green. Behind her, a huge, glittery sign reading WELCOME, PAWSH! flapped in the breeze. Baja Men’s “Who Let the Dogs Out?” blared on the sound system. And next to her stood the show’s ten contestants, Glenville’s very own soon-to-be reality television stars, each either clutching a dog or a leash connected to a dog. Margot could see the obsidian gleam of Quinn Chandler’s and her Lhasa Apso’s matching pelts, while, as per usual, Tippi Hayburn was wearing her pug in a pink BabyBjörn on her chest. Sally-Claire Foster, Hattie O’Connor, and Weezie Whiteeagle, meanwhile, all seemed to have squeezed their canines into matching floral rompers that were dead ringers for the von Trapp children’s curtain wear.
A herd of busy Los Angeles types scurried around on stage in front of the contestants, carrying camera wires and barking into walkie-talkies about things like the ideal lighting for a bichon close-up. The crowd, meanwhile, was stacked with rows and rows of onlookers. It seemed that almost everyone in the county had shown up for this. After all, Pawsh’s first day of filming was the biggest thing to happen in Glenville since the local chain of gas stations started serving alcoholic slushies. And the dogs! Well, they were simply everywhere, romping and sniffing and yapping all across the green in their jaunty tartan smoking jackets and custom-fitted shearling booties.
As Margot surveyed the scene to make sure Richard and Harrison weren’t there, her stomach flipped. This might be the biggest audience she’d ever had, bigger than the time she duct-taped her body to a county commissioner’s Hyundai Sonata over the whole cutting-funding-for-the-local-animal-shelter thing. But then she looked down at Sid, his big, trusting eyes, and she remembered that he was her only friend here, the only being Margot had met in the last four years who’d actually embraced her, and she felt the nerves give way to a righteous indignation that flared bright in her chest. Margot didn’t owe these people anything, using their puppy mill designer dogs to quench their nauseating thirst for fame. She was, as per usual, in the right here.
A hush fell over the crowd, and Margot looked up to see that a short cameraman with a buzz cut was now crouched before the mayor, who was gripping a microphone in her hand. The show’s host, Kimmie Digiorno, stood next to her with her own dogs, Pebbles and Bam-Bam. Kimmie was a D-list influencer famous for TikToks in which Pebbles and Bam-Bam did dog food taste tests while blindfolded.
“It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for,” the mayor said into the microphone. “I couldn’t be more excited to welcome Pawsh to Glenville and officially kick off filming for season two!”
Kimmie lifted a tiny TikTok microphone to her lips, the square echoing with her raspy voice as she twirled her long black-and-green braids around her head like helicopter blades. “Where’s my Pawsh army at, y’all? It’s time to find our next doggie superstar!”
The human crowd erupted into cheers, while the canine crowd emitted a series of yips. Margot heard Sid huff next to her, as if he was as appalled by his fellow species as she was.
“Before Kimmie introduces our contestants, I have to give a shout-out to the person who made all this happen.” The mayor flicked back a strand of her hair, cut close to her head with spiky tufts at the back, side-swept bangs, and streaky chunks of blonde highlights—the kind of hairstyle that screamed I send my plate back four times at Olive Garden—and grinned into the microphone. “Boomer, get up here!”
A noxious wrath pulsed across Margot’s body as she watched her nemesis stomp up the stage’s steps. Boomer’s hair was buzzed and bleached a white-blonde, and he had the face of a Build-A-Bear: tiny, dark eyes; a button nose seemingly engineered for boop-ing; and a small mouth stitched into a forever grin. His humongous biceps were poking out of a sleeveless muscle tee, and Margot could have sworn he was flexing as he turned to the crowd and gave them a dopey wave. The rainbow sprout of his sister’s hair was visible as Bambi jumped up and down with a long whooooo!
“If Boomer hadn’t followed his dreams and left his hometown for L.A., if he hadn’t met Kimmie and started walking these two little munchkins,” said the mayor, gesturing to Pebbles and Bam-Bam, “well, who knows if little old Glenville, South Carolina, would have ever hit the Hollywood map!”
The crowd cheered louder for Boomer, and the sound was a string of freight cars rocketing through Margot’s skull, rattling her organs around inside her like Yahtzee dice. If she was going to do this, it had to be now, before her body actually exploded with contempt. She licked her lips, trying to channel the energy of Mel Gibson standing before a Scottish battlefield—minus the whole mullet business—and stepped forward in her Doc Martens.
“Adopt, don’t shop!” she yelled, walking toward the green and raising her sign with its matching message above her head. She heard Sid fall into step beside her, the sandwich board flapping against his fur. “End designer dog mills! Keep Pawsh out of Glenville!”
At first only a few heads turned her way, and Margot remembered to breathe from her diaphragm so she projected better, a hack she’d picked up from an opera MasterClass she’d streamed after she lost her voice protesting the dredging of a local wetland home to the threatened frosted flatwood salamander.
Deep inhale. “ADOPT, DON’T SHOP! END DESIGNER DOG MILLS! KEEP PAWSH OUT OF GLENVILLE!”
A hush fell across the crowd, and Margot felt hundreds of eyes—man and beast—turn her way. Kimmie and Boomer stood on their toes, craning their heads to see where the noise was coming from, while the mayor simply let her forehead fall into her hands. The microphone picked up her muttering: “Freaking Margot, are you kidding me? Not again.”
“ADOPT, DON’T SHOP! END DESIGNER DOG MILLS! KEEP—”
“Ugh, cut! Cut!” Kimmie stomped her feet, and Margot saw the man in front of the stage lower his camera. “What in the literal hell is going on? Who is this Greenpeace-ass Sasquatch ruining our take? We’re gonna have to shoot this whole thing over again!”
Boomer leaned forward. “Oh, dang, that’s Margot Cartwright,” he said, Kimmie’s mic picking up his voice as he stepped backward nervously. “She’s kinda, uh, you know.” He waved his hands in the air by his head, the universal sign for that bitch is cray, then emitted two grunt-like chuckles. Huh-huh.
The mayor’s short, extremely ripped assistant had used the filming pause to scurry up to her and offer a bottle of water, which she waved off angrily. She turned to Kimmie and plastered a tight smile on her face. “I’ll take care of this.”
Mayor Kathy brought the microphone to her mouth. “This is not the time, Margot. Everyone is very excited about the first day of filming, and this needs to go smoothly. Now, if you have any issues with the show, you’re welcome to take it up with my office—”
Margot sucked down another monster inhale. “ADOPT, DON’T SHOP!” Sid let out a bark next to her, and she felt a surge of pride.
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