December already!  A too short, dark, and VERY BUSY month for a lot of folks.

Fictionophile’s readership is growing!  

Over the past month an additional 83 people have begun following this blog!  That makes a total of 979 followers altogether!   It would be SO awesome if I could reach 1000 followers by the end of the year!

I’ve been posting in my “Cover Love” series for some time now, AND, I have many more posts that I have planned in order to continue this series.  This month I posted my 13th entry in the series which showcased identical and very similar book covers.

I added a third entry in my blog series called “Mystery series to savour“.  Hope you follow along with me as I expound on mystery series that I have enjoyed SO much that I would, and hopefully, will, read again!

I’ve begun a new series of blog posts called “Trilogies to Treasure” that highlight some of my favorite trilogies.  The first installment showcases Denise Mina’s  Garnethill trilogy.

I’ve added several titles to my elibrary.  The following titles were purchased from Amazon.ca on sale.  All TEN of them together only set me back $21.48

Just click on the covers to learn more about the book via a link to Goodreads.

“The girls next door” by Mel Sherratt was on sale for $1.99

“The teacher” by Katerina Diamond was on sale for $ .99

“A Mersey killing” by Brian L. Porter was on sale for $4.99

“Between you and me” by Lisa Hall was on sale for $ .99

“Black December” by Scott Hunter was on sale for $ .99

“Deliver her” by Patricia Perry Donovan was $6.55

“The girl from the sea” by Shalini Boland was $3.99

“The liar” by Jennifer Wells was on sale for $ .99

“The Miranda warning” by Heather Day Gilbert was FREE

“The art of murder” by Nicola Slade was FREE

I added seven new titles from NetGalley to my TBR.  Don’t know how I lost control…  (red-faced with shame)  I have a partial excuse as three of these titles were publisher invites… and you don’t say ‘no’… do you?

“I found you” by Lisa Jewell – Atria Books 
In a windswept British seaside town, single mom Alice Lake finds a man sitting on the beach outside her house. He has no name, no jacket, and no idea how he got there. Against her better judgment, she invites him inside.
Meanwhile, in a suburb of London, twenty-one-year-old Lily Monrose has only been married for three weeks. When her new husband fails to come home from work one night she is left stranded in a new country where she knows no one. Then the police tell her that her husband never existed.
Twenty-three years earlier, Gray and Kirsty are teenagers on a summer holiday with their parents. Their annual trip to the quaint seaside town is passing by uneventfully, until an enigmatic young man starts paying extra attention to Kirsty. Something about him makes Gray uncomfortable—and it’s not just that he’s playing the role of protective older brother.
Two decades of secrets, a missing husband, and a man with no memory are at the heart of this brilliant new novel, filled with the “beautiful writing, believable characters, pacey narrative, and dark secrets” (London Daily Mail) that make Lisa Jewell so beloved by audiences on both sides of the Atlantic.

“Lillian Boxfish takes a walk” by Kathleen Rooney – St. Martin’s Press

It’s the last day of 1984, and 85-year-old Lillian Boxfish is about to take a walk.  As she traverses a grittier Manhattan, a city anxious after an attack by a still-at-large subway vigilante, she encounters bartenders, bodega clerks, chauffeurs, security guards, bohemians, criminals, children, parents, and parents-to-be—in surprising moments of generosity and grace. While she strolls, Lillian recalls a long and eventful life that included a brief reign as the highest-paid advertising woman in America—a career cut short by marriage, motherhood, divorce, and a breakdown.  A love letter to city life—however shiny or sleazy—Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney paints a portrait of a remarkable woman across the canvas of a changing America: from the Jazz Age to the onset of the AIDS epidemic; the Great Depression to the birth of hip-hop.

“The girl in the garden” by Melanie Wallace – Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

An unforgettable novel about a young woman and her infant son, abandoned at a seaside motel in New England, and the secrets of the townspeople who provide them with shelter.
When June arrives on the coast of New England, baby in arms, an untrustworthy man by her side, Mabel—who rents them a cabin—senses trouble. A few days later, the girl and her child are abandoned.   June is soon placed with Mabel’s friend, Iris, in town, and her life becomes entwined with a number of locals who have known one another for decades: a wealthy recluse with a tragic past; a widow in mourning; a forsaken daughter returning for the first time in years, with a stranger in tow; a lawyer, whose longings he can never reveal; and a kindly World War II veteran who serves as the town’s sage. Surrounded by the personal histories and secrets of others, June finds the way forward for herself and her son amid revelations of the others’ pasts, including loves—and crimes—from years ago.

“The shivering turn” by Sally Spencer – Severn House

Introducing Oxford-based private investigator Jennie Redhead in the first of a brand-new mystery series.         

‘My daughter’s not just run away – she’s dead!’ When Mary Corbet walks into private investigator Jennie Redhead’s rundown Oxford office one pleasant spring day in 1974, she is a desperate woman. Although she’s convinced her daughter has been murdered, she can get neither the police nor her husband to agree with her.  Jennie is not convinced either, but more out of compassion than conviction agrees to take the case. The only clue she has to go on is a fragment of an obscure 17th century poem she finds in Linda’s bedroom: Or will you, like a cold and errant coward/Abandon all and make a shivering turn. But from that one clue Jennie’s investigations will lead her beyond the city’s dreaming spires to Oxford’s darker underbelly, in which lurks a hidden world of privilege, violence and excess.

“How will I know you?” by Jessica Treadway (an invitation from Grand Central Publishing)

On a cold December day in northern upstate New York, the body of high school senior Joy Enright is discovered in the woods at the edge of a pond. She had been presumed drowned, but an autopsy shows that she was, in fact, strangled. As the investigation unfolds, four characters tell the story from widely divergent perspectives: Susanne, Joy’s mother and a professor at the local art college; Martin, a black graduate student suspected of the murder; Harper, Joy’s best friend and a potential eyewitness; and Tom, a rescue diver and son-in-law of the town’s police chief. As a web of small-town secrets comes to light, a dramatic conclusion reveals the truth about Joy’s death.

“Gone without a trace” by Mary Torjussen – an invitation from Berkley Publishing Group

Hannah Monroe’s boyfriend, Matt, is gone. His belongings have disappeared from their house. Every call she ever made to him, every text she ever sent, every photo of him and any sign of him on social media have vanished. It’s as though their last four years together never happened. As Hannah struggles to get through the next few days, with humiliation and recriminations whirring through her head, she knows that she’ll do whatever it takes to find him again and get answers. But as soon as her search starts, she realizes she is being led into a maze of madness and obsession. Step by suspenseful step, Hannah discovers her only way out is to come face to face with the shocking truth…

“The timekeeper’s son” by Sara Baker – an invitation from Deeds Publishing

In the small town of Milledge, Georgia, aspiring teenage filmmaker Josh Lovejoy hits a jogger while driving late at night. But this is not just any jogger: the victim is prominent local activist and historian David Masters. The accident not only puts Masters in the hospital in a coma, it shatters the fragile Lovejoy household. Adrift from friends and family, a shocked Josh reluctantly takes up his court-ordered community service work at the Good Shepherd School for Disabled Children. Meanwhile, the comatose Masters is visited by the ghost of the singer Peggy Lee, and his childless wife Meg, consumed with grief, fantasizes that Josh is the son she might have had.  In love with an unstable girl, and estranged from his angry father and preoccupied mother, Josh escapes to New York City. Things there do not go as planned and, overwhelmed, Josh makes a fateful decision that puts him beyond the help of his family. Facing physical and spiritual annihilation, he must choose between the death of the heart and the acceptance of the imperfect good that is his life. Josh’s story reminds readers that while our lives may be flawed, they can still be embraced with love.

That’s seven more review commitments… Woe is me.  I guess Santa came early.

I’ve been trying to have a lot of willpower in requesting NetGalley titles.  As you can see, I failed dismally this month.  I’m still chasing the elusive 80% badge.  I’m standing at 69% as of today. (Down one percentage point from last month – GULP)

I was EXCITED to find out that one of my favorite authors has a new book coming out!

Fredrik Backman’s “Bear town” will be published by Atria Books on or near May 2, 2017