Yablonsky, Bubbles: a hairdresser/journalist in Lehigh, Pennsylvania by Sarah Strohmeyer

Li Yan: Chinese detective, and Margaret Campbell, an American pathologist, in Beijing, China, by Peter May

Yarbrough, MacLaren: business-owner turned magistrate in Hopemore, Georgia by Patricia Houck Sprinkle

Yates, Gil: private investigator, alias Malvin Stark, a nerdy, unsuccessful real estate agent in Los Angeles, California by Alistair Boyle

Yeadings, Mike: a police superintendent in Thames Valley, England by Clare Curzon

Yoder, Magdalena: owner and manager of a Mennonite inn in Hernia, Pennsylvania by Tamar Myers

Younger, Cecil: an alcoholic private investigator in Sitka, Alaska by John Straley

Yun, Shan Tao: Shan Tao Yun, a Chinese bureaucrat imprisoned in a Himalayan labor camp by Eliot Pattison

Omar Yussef: 56-year-old schoolteacher in a Palestinian refugee camp, living in Bethlehem, Palestinian Authority, by Matt Beynon Rees