Confession time. I went a little crazy this month and amassed a whopping 14 new review commitments. I am going to blame my greed insanity on self isolation, because well…. I can’t blame myself, can I? These fourteen titles all look amazing and I can’t wait to read them. Looks like I’ll have extra reading time, so that will help.
Anyway, here is my latest book haul via the bubble:
Here are the EIGHT titles I downloaded from NetGalley in March
A newly engaged woman is summoned to her aunt’s storybook mansion in the Catskill mountains – her beloved aunt has been killed in a tragic car accident and her uncle is gravely ill and at the end of his life, to the scene of her sister’s mysterious and traumatic disappearance sixteen years earlier. She discovers that some family secrets will not stay buried and sometimes old ghosts haunt forever.
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Pub date: September 2020
I’ve read and enjoyed this author’s work in the past and the cover drew me in…
Hope Close: a leafy, tranquil backwater in the heart of the English countryside. But when Andy Meyer moves in, it soon becomes clear that picture-perfect homes can hide less-than-perfect lives. Fresh from rehab and with no interest in meeting his neighbours, Andy erects forbidding gates to keep the ghosts of his past—and any prying eyes—at bay.
Next door, in the grandest house, Layla is unhappily married to a much older man and desperately misses her young son, who has been banished to boarding school. When lonely Nicole from over the road confides her own secret heartache to Layla, the two women form an unlikely bond—until one of them attracts the attention of their mysterious new neighbour.
The only person to sense something dangerous about Andy is busybody Joan. But will her suspicions bring her more than she bargains for?
As the past catches up with the residents of Hope Close, it becomes clear that the intriguing new neighbour isn’t the only one with something to hide…
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Pub Date: March 2020
The cover was what first attracted me, then the blurb cinched the deal! A ‘new to me’ author.
Anna Andrews finally has what she wants. Almost. She’s worked hard to become the main TV presenter of the BBC’s lunchtime news, putting work before friends, family, and her now ex-husband. So, when someone threatens to take her dream job away, she’ll do almost anything to keep it.
When asked to cover a murder in Blackdown―the sleepy countryside village where she grew up―Anna is reluctant to go. But when the victim turns out to be one of her childhood friends, she can’t leave. It soon becomes clear that Anna isn’t just covering the story, she’s at the heart of it.
DCI Jack Harper left London for a reason, but never thought he’d end up working in a place like Blackdown. When the body of a young woman is discovered, Jack decides not to tell anyone that he knew the victim, until he begins to realise he is a suspect in his own murder investigation.
One of them knows more than they are letting on. Someone isn’t telling the truth. Alternating between Anna’s and Jack’s points of view, His & Hers is a fast-paced, complex, and dark puzzle that will keep readers guessing until the very end.
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Pub Date: July 2020
I thoroughly enjoyed this author’s “Sometimes I Lie”, so I’m anxious to read more of her work.
Freddy left her childhood home in Newhaven twenty-two years ago and swore never to return. But now her parents are dead, and she’s back in her hometown to help her brothers manage the family fishmonger. Nothing here has changed: the stink of fish coming up from the marshes; the shopping trolleys half-buried by muddy tides; the neighbours sniffing for a new piece of gossip.
It’s not what Freddy would have chosen, but at least while she’s here she’ll get to see her childhood best friends, Toni and Mags. At school, the three of them were inseparable. The teachers called them the Mermaids for their obsession with the sea, and with each other.
Then Mags goes missing, and Freddy must decide. Go back home to her new life, or stay in Newhaven and find her friend?
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Pub Date: May 2020
I really liked this author’s “The Detective’s Daughter” and was interested to read her latest, stand-alone novel. I’ll be taking part in the official blog tour for this title on May 11th.
That’s the thing about old friends… they never let you forget.
The first time Jemma and Matt were invited to Polskirrin – the imposing ocean-view home belonging to Matt’s childhood friend Lucas Jarrett – it was for an intimate wedding that ended in tragedy. Jemma will never forget the sight of the girl’s pale body floating listlessly towards the rocky shore.
Now, exactly one year later, Jemma and her husband have reluctantly returned at Lucas’s request to honor the anniversary of an event they would do anything to forget.
But what Lucas has in store for his guests is nothing like a candlelight vigil. Someone who was there that night remembers more than they’ll admit to, and Lucas has devised a little game to make them tell the truth.
Jemma believes she and Matt know nothing about what happened to that woman… but what if she’s wrong? Before you play a deadly game, make sure you can pay the price…
Publisher: Bookouture
Pub Date: April 2020
A ‘new to me’ author that I’ve heard great things about from my fellow bloggers.
With its winding high street lined with a greengrocers, post office, pub and church, Melstead St Mary is the perfect Suffolk village. Neighbours look out for neighbours, and few things trouble the serene surface of the community.
But when residents start to receive anonymous letters containing secret information about their pasts – secrets that no one else is meant to know – life in Melstead St Mary is about to change, possibly forever…
Publisher: Orion
Pub Date: April 2020
I was invited to take part in a blog tour for this title and the synopsis won me over. I’ve never read anything by this author before. Watch for my blog tour review on April 22nd.
Just because you feel ordinary doesn’t mean you aren’t extraordinary to someone else.
Sixty-two-year-old Elsie knows what she likes. Custard creams at four o’clock, jigsaw puzzles with a thousand pieces, her ivy-covered, lavender-scented garden.
Ten-year-old Billy would rather spend his Saturdays kicking a ball, or watching TV, or anything really, other than being babysat by his grumpy neighbour Elsie and being force fed custard creams.
If it was up to them, they’d have nothing to do with each other. Unfortunately, you can’t choose who you live next door to.
But there is always more to people than meets the eye…
Elsie doesn’t know that Billy’s afraid to go to school now, or why his mother woke him up in the middle of the night with an urgent shake, bags already packed, ready to flee their home.
Billy doesn’t know that the rusting red tin he finds buried in Elsie’s treasured garden is a ticking time bomb waiting to explode her carefully organised life. And that when he digs it up, he is unearthing a secret that has lain dormant for twenty-eight years…
Publisher: Bookouture
Pub Date: April 2020
I was invited to take part in a blog tour for this title. Watch for my review on April 3rd.
When Fern Douglas sees the news about Astrid Sullivan, a thirty-four-year-old missing woman from Maine, she is positive that she knows her. Fern’s husband is sure it’s because of Astrid’s famous kidnapping—and equally famous return—twenty years ago, but Fern has no memory of that, even though it happened an hour outside her New Hampshire hometown. And when Astrid appears in Fern’s recurring nightmare, one in which a girl reaches out to her, pleading, Fern fears that it’s not a dream at all, but a memory.
Back home in New Hampshire, Fern purchases a copy of Astrid’s recently published memoir—which may have provoked her original kidnapper to abduct her again—and as she reads through its chapters and visits the people and places within it, she discovers more evidence that she has an unsettling connection to the missing woman. As Fern’s search becomes increasingly desperate, she hopes to remember her past so she can save Astrid in the present…before it’s too late.
Publisher: Atria Books
Pub Date: August 2020
Another ‘new to me’ author. The synopsis is what spurred me to request this one…
Here are the SIX titles I downloaded from Edelweiss in March
Detective Inspector St. John Strafford has been summoned to County Wexford to investigate a murder. A parish priest has been found dead in Ballyglass House, the family seat of the aristocratic, secretive Osborne family.
The year is 1957 and the Catholic Church rules Ireland with an iron fist. Strafford—flinty, visibly Protestant, and determined to identify the murderer—faces obstruction at every turn, from the heavily accumulating snow to the culture of silence in this tight-knit community. As he delves further, he learns the Osbornes are not at all what they seem. And when his own deputy goes missing, Strafford must work to unravel the ever-expanding mystery before the community’s secrets, like the snowfall itself, threatens to obliterate everything.
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Pub Date: October 2020
I’ve not read anything by this author before and since he is so highly acclaimed, I thought it was high time I did.
Consumption has ravaged Louise Pinecroft’s family, leaving her and her father alone and heartbroken. But Dr. Pinecroft has plans for a revolutionary experiment: convinced that sea air will prove to be the cure his wife and children needed, he arranges to house a group of prisoners suffering from the disease in the caves beneath his new Cornish home. While he devotes himself to his controversial medical trials, Louise finds herself increasingly discomfited by the strange tales her new maid tells of the fairies that hunt the land, searching for those they can steal away to their realm.
Forty years later, Hester arrives at Morvoren House to take up a position as nurse to the now partially paralyzed and mute Miss Pinecroft. Hester has fled to Cornwall to try to escape her past, but surrounded by superstitious staff enacting bizarre rituals, she soon discovers her new home may be just as dangerous as her last.
Publisher: Penguin Books
Pub Date: June 2020
I’ve read several books by this author and her dark, gothic thrillers never disappoint.
It’s the end of a night out and Joanna is walking home alone. Then she hears the sound every woman dreads: footsteps behind her, getting faster. She’s sure it’s him—the man from the bar who wouldn’t leave her alone. So Joanna makes a snap decision. She turns, she pushes. Her pursuer tumbles down the steps and lies motionless, facedown on the ground. Now what?
Addictive and compelling, The Choice follows the two paths Joanna’s future might take, depending on the choice she makes. If she calls the police right away, she can save the man’s life. Yet doing so puts her own innocence at risk, as she waits for judgment on a charge of assault and the hope that her husband and everyone she loves will stand by her. But if she runs and goes home as if nothing has happened, no one will ever know. No one saw her do it, and it’s only up to Joanna to keep quiet…forever.
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Pub Date: June 2020
This novel was originally titled “Anything You Do Say” and I’ve wanted to read it for ages.
England, 1970. On the one-year anniversary of the Harrington family’s darkest night, their beautiful London home goes up in flames. Mrs. Harrington, the two children, and live-in nanny Rita relocate to Foxcote Manor, ostensibly to recuperate. But the creeping forest, where lost things have a way of coming back, is not as restful as it seems. When thirteen-year-old Hera discovers a baby girl abandoned just beyond their garden gate, this tiniest, most wondrous of secrets brings a much-needed sunlit peace, until a visitor detonates the family’s tenuous happiness. All too soon a body lies dead in the woods.
Forty years later, London-based Sylvie is an expert at looking the other way. It’s how she stayed married to her unfaithful husband for more than twenty years. But she’s turned over a new leaf, having left him for a fresh start. She buried her own origin story decades ago, never imagining her teenage daughter would have a shocking reason to dig the past up–and to ask Sylvie to finally face the secrets that lead her back to Foxcote Manor.
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Pub Date: July 2020
I’ve long been a fan of Eve Chase and I’m always on the lookout for any of her new titles.
Catherine House is a school of higher learning like no other. Hidden deep in the woods of rural Pennsylvania, this crucible of reformist liberal arts study with its experimental curriculum, wildly selective admissions policy, and formidable endowment, has produced some of the world’s best minds: prize-winning authors, artists, inventors, Supreme Court justices, presidents. For those lucky few selected, tuition, room, and board are free. But acceptance comes with a price. Students are required to give the House three years—summers included—completely removed from the outside world. Family, friends, television, music, even their clothing must be left behind. In return, the school promises a future of sublime power and prestige, and that its graduates can become anything or anyone they desire.
Among this year’s incoming class is Ines Murillo, who expects to trade blurry nights of parties, cruel friends, and dangerous men for rigorous intellectual discipline—only to discover an environment of sanctioned revelry. Even the school’s enigmatic director, Viktória, encourages the students to explore, to expand their minds, to find themselves within the formidable iron gates of Catherine. For Ines, it is the closest thing to a home she’s ever had. But the House’s strange protocols soon make this refuge, with its worn velvet and weathered leather, feel increasingly like a gilded prison. And when tragedy strikes, Ines begins to suspect that the school—in all its shabby splendor, hallowed history, advanced theories, and controlled decadence—might be hiding a dangerous agenda within the secretive, tightly knit group of students selected to study its most promising and mysterious curriculum.
Publisher: Custom House
Pub Date: May 2020
There is just something about a boarding house tale that attracts me every time. This is a ‘new to me’ author.
All Beth has to do is drive her son to his Under-14s away match, watch him play, and bring him home.
Just because she knows her ex-best friend lives near the football ground, that doesn’t mean she has to drive past her house and try to catch a glimpse of her. Why would Beth do that, and risk dredging up painful memories? She hasn’t seen Flora for twelve years. She doesn’t want to see her today, or ever again.
But she can’t resist. She parks outside the open gates of Newnham House, watches from across the road as Flora and her children Thomas and Emily step out of the car. Except… There’s something terribly wrong. Flora looks the same, only older. As Beth would have expected. It’s the children. Twelve years ago, Thomas and Emily were five and three years old. Today, they look precisely as they did then.
They are still five and three. They are Thomas and Emily without a doubt – Hilary hears Flora call them by their names – but they haven’t changed at all.
They are no taller, no older… Why haven’t they grown?
Publisher: William Morrow
Pub Date: February 2020
I’ve read several books by Sophie Hannah in the past and enjoyed them. And THIS PREMISE captivated my interest.
Have you read any of these stellar titles yet? Do you plan to?
Let me know in the comments. ♥
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Until…. Samantha and her ten-year old son, Billy, move in next door. Samantha is a single mum who works irregular shifts in a restaurant. She enlists Elsie to babysit Billy after school. This unremarkable request will spark a cosmic change to both their lives. For one thing, despite adhering to her scheduled tasks, Elsie finds herself not following them quite so closely. AND, after getting Billy to help her in the garden, she discovers that he is quite ‘green-fingered’ which creates a bond between them.
Billy is one unhappy boy. His Mum has made him move to this small village away from all his friends in London. They seem to be poor all of a sudden. Billy’s Mum will not buy him a mobile phone and they don’t even have a television! He feels particularly hard done by and this is exacerbated by the fact that he is being bullied at his new school.
Until that is… one day he digs up an old, rusty, red tin. When Elsie sees what he has unearthed, she yells at him and he vows to not go there again.
Elsie, upon seeing the tin, is overcome with emotion. The tin holds her secrets. Secrets she has been holding close to her chest for almost three decades.
Ruby Hummingbird is a novelist based in the English countryside. She loves nothing more than writing uplifting and heartwarming fiction that gets her readers reaching for the tissues. When she isn’t storytelling, she can be found tending to her beloved sunflowers or sipping on hazelnut lattes.
Edna Burnside and Lily Bainbridge – Two elderly spinsters whose cottage backs upon the “Old Vicarage” where the body was found. Also, they cared for the young Oscar regularly after his mother deserted the family many years ago. Now quite feeble, they know something that could help Tyler and his team, yet are unable or unwilling to do so. Edna is dying of cancer and Lily is suffering from mild dementia. She knows she should be able to remember something important, but the memories have escaped into the ether of her illness. Lily begins to receive threatening letters, yet she cannot fathom what they pertain to.
Anyone who knows me, or follows this blog knows for sure that I have more than enough to read. I’ll never run out of great reading material.
It’s almost the end of March, and as my small way of celebrating everything Irish I thought I’d highlight 20 crime series set in Ireland. I normally participate in “
Kate Waters is a journalist in her mid forties. She is married to an oncologist and is the mother of two sons. Devoted to her work, she is very good at what she does.
DC Gaby Darin has just moved to Pembrokeshire, Wales after a difficult work-related experience in Swansea. She is teamed up with DCI Rhys Walker, a man who seems to have hidden secrets but is a copper that she respects.
Born in Dublin, Ireland, Jenny O’Brien says she is a wife and mother first – a writer second. She has written romance, thrillers, and children’s books.
At a tender age, Mary Blunt used deception to wheedle her way into a position as maid at the mansion of the Burton family, in mid-19th century New Hampshire. It is a household with six servants who work for Mr. Burton, a textile tycoon. His wife is blind, and retains a ‘companion’ by the name of Rebecca. Mrs. Eugenie Burton is childless and has resorted to taking laudanum to make her 
days more palatable.
Yesterday our province has declared a ‘
At the end of the day, we are all in the same boat. The entire world is affected. That holds its own kind of perverse comfort – knowing that you’re NOT alone.
Jim’s passing has left her reeling. Apparently Jim had kept secrets from her, and now she is unsure of everything. She had thought that they shared everything, but now… she doesn’t know what to think. Grieving, and feeling betrayed by her husband’s lies, she enlists her friend Thomas, who just happens to be a policeman, to help her discover just what Jim was up to for all those years.
Schrödinger – the Skelf family’s ginger tabby, was a welcome diversion throughout the novel. Aloof, yet affectionate, Schrödinger was fond of bringing home dead birds for his family…
