The Judge Dee mysteries, by Robert van Gulik, are loosely based on a real magistrate in China during the Tang Dynasty, in the 7th century CE. Somewhat unusually, they are published in the US by University of Chicago Press, which is not typically a hotbed of mystery books, but does have a few authors/series in their portfolio. I’ve read and enjoyed almost all of the Judge Dee books, but there are four that are not available via UChi Press in the US – The Chinese Bell Murders, The Chinese Gold Murders, The Chinese Nail Murders, and The Chinese Lake Murders.
But now The Chinese Gold Murders is available from Penguin in the UK, and it’s also only £0.99 at the moment. So I happily indulged!
Also note that if you live in Canada or other countries with “life+50” public domain laws, then you may be able to find these books for free at websites like Faded Page.
And finally, I was really happy to recently have a review copy of The Conspiracies of the Empire, which is the second book in a modern-day continuation of the Judge Dee books, written by Qiu Xiaolong, who is probably better known for his excellent Inspector Chen series. I liked Conspiracies too, so if you run out of the van Gulik ones, it’s nice to know there are a few more to be read as well.
Three Judge Dee books are on sale right now at Kindle US for $2.99 each…
Murder in Canton was, per SYKM, a finalist for the 1966 Gold Dagger award: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004HO5M8A
The Monkey and The Tiger is really a collection of two novellas: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004HO5M80
Judge Dee at Work is a collection of eight short stories: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A41UGNQ
All four are also available via KU, if you have that.