As a book blogger, I spend a LOT of time reading other people’s blogs and reviews, and perusing the internet for fodder for my own blog.

Admit it. This is a virtual world where boundaries can be crossed without fear of catching Covid-19, so it is the only safe way to ‘travel’ right now.

The majority of blogs that I follow (and the ones I seem to enjoy the most) are those blogs that are based in the United Kingdom. This does not surprise me at all. The United Kingdom is my favourite setting for the books I choose to read. It is also where most of the publishing action is when it comes to my favourite genres of mystery/crime/thriller novels. On a personal note, my Mum was born in Lincolnshire, so the pull is strong. I’m an ardent anglophile.

One would think, that as I do all of my reading on my Kindle, that I could read just about any book out there. These are electronic files. Files that are easy to share and even easier to transport through space – instantly. But alas… this is NOT the case.When it comes to Kindle book availability, there is a GREAT DIVIDE between what is available to me in Nova Scotia, Canada versus what is available in the United Kingdom.

Although I’ve been able to procure some of my favourite UK reads via NetGalley and Edelweiss, there are still many that I would love to read and just can’t buy!

I thought I’d share with you some of the titles that are not available to purchase on Amazon.ca in any formatThese are SEVEN books that I want to buy that are not available in ANY format!

“Grave’s End” by William Shaw

(the newest novel in a series that I follow avidly)

Protest. Rebel. Die
An unidentified body is found in a freezer.
No one seems to know or care who it is or who placed it there.
DS Alexandra Cupidi couldn’t have realised that this bizarre discovery will be connected to the crisis in housing, the politics of environmentalism and specifically the protection given to badgers by the law. But there are dangerous links between these strange, reclusive, fiercely territorial creatures and the activism of Cupidi’s teenage daughter Zoe and her friend Bill South, her colleague Constable Jill Ferriter’s dating habits and long forgotten historic crimes of sexual abuse – and murder.

“The Good Turn” by Dervla McTiernan

(the third novel in one of my favourite series)

Police corruption, an investigation that ends in tragedy and the mystery of a little girl’s silence – three unconnected things that will prove to be linked by one small town.
While Detective Cormac Reilly faces enemies at work and trouble in his personal life, Garda Peter Fisher is relocated out of Galway with the threat of prosecution hanging over his head. But even that is not as terrible as having to work for his overbearing father, the local copper for the pretty seaside town of Roundstone.
For some, like Anna and her young daughter Tilly, Roundstone is a refuge from trauma. But even this village on the edge of the sea isn’t far enough to escape from the shadows of evil men.

“Three Hours” by Rosamund Lupton

(a novel that has been highly recommended to me by at least six different bloggers)

Three hours is 180 minutes or 10,800 seconds.
It is a morning’s lessons, a dress rehearsal of Macbeth, a snowy trek through the woods.
It is an eternity waiting for news. Or a countdown to something terrible.
It is 180 minutes to discover who you will die for and what men will kill for.
In rural Somerset in the middle of a blizzard, the unthinkable happens: a school is under siege. Told from the point of view of the people at the heart of it, from the wounded headmaster in the library, unable to help his trapped pupils and staff, to teenage Hannah in love for the first time, to the parents gathering desperate for news, to the 16 year old Syrian refugee trying to rescue his little brother, to the police psychologist who must identify the gunmen, to the students taking refuge in the school theatre, all experience the most intense hours of their lives, where evil and terror are met by courage, love and redemption.

“The Secrets of Strangers” by Charity Norman

(another title that comes highly recommended by other bloggers)

“A regular weekday morning veers drastically off-course for five strangers whose paths cross in a London café – their lives never to be the same again when an apparently crazed gunman holds them hostage. But there is more to the situation than first meets the eye and as the captives grapple with their own inner demons, the line between right and wrong starts to blur. Will the secrets they keep stop them from escaping with their lives?

“The Girl at the Window” by Rowan Coleman

(another title that comes highly recommended)

Ponden Hall is a centuries-old house on the Yorkshire moors, a magical place full of stories. It’s also where Trudy Heaton grew up. And where she ran away from…
Now, after the devastating loss of her husband, she is returning home with her young son, Will, who refuses to believe his father is dead.
While Trudy tries to do her best for her son, she must also attempt to build bridges with her eccentric mother. And then there is the Hall itself: fallen into disrepair but generations of lives and loves still echo in its shadows, sometimes even reaching out to the present…

“The Other You” by J.S. Monroe

(recommended to me four times)

Kate used to be good at recognising people. So good, she worked for the police, identifying criminals in crowds of thousands. But six months ago, a devastating car accident led to a brain injury. Now the woman who never forgot a face can barely recognise herself in the mirror.
At least she has Rob. Young, rich, handsome and successful, Rob runs a tech company on the idyllic Cornish coast. Kate met him just after her accident, and he nursed her back to health. When she’s with him, in his luxury modernist house, the nightmares of the accident fade, and she feels safe and loved.
Until, one day, she looks at Rob anew. And knows, with absolute certainty, that the man before her has been replaced by an impostor.
Is Rob who he says he is? Or is it all in Kate’s damaged mind?

“A Window Breaks” by C.M. Ewan

(another blogger recommendation)

If your family was targeted in the middle of the night, what would you do?
You are asleep. A noise wakes you.
You stir, unsure why, and turn to your wife.
Then you hear it.
Glass. Crunching underfoot.
Your worst fears are about to be realized.
Someone is inside your home.
Your choices are limited.
You can run. Or stay and fight.
What would you do?

Here are THREE more titles that are available in paper format, but NOT available in Kindle format.  As I ONLY read the Kindle format, this makes them unattainable for me. Yes, there is a button you can click AND, though I’ve clicked this button many, many, times for many, many, titles, I have never seen any results.

“The Secrets of Primrose Square” by Claudia Carroll

(another title which comes highly recommended)

There are so many stories hidden behind closed doors . . .
It’s late at night and the rain is pouring down on the Dublin city streets. A mother is grieving for her dead child. She stands silently outside the home of the teenage boy she believes responsible. She watches . . .
In a kitchen on the same square, a girl waits anxiously for her mum to come home. She knows exactly where she is, but she knows she cannot reach her.
A few doors down, and a widow sits alone in her room. She has just delivered a bombshell to her family during dinner and her life is about to change forever.
And an aspiring theatre director has just moved in to a flat across the street. Her landlord is absent, but there are already things about him that don’t quite add up . . .
Welcome to Primrose Square.

“The Lost Lights of St. Kilda” by Elisabeth Gifford

(recommended highly by four of my favourite bloggers)

When Fred Lawson takes a summer job on St Kilda in 1927, little does he realise that he has joined the last community to ever live on that desolate, isolated island. Only three years later, St Kilda will be evacuated, the islanders near-dead from starvation. But for Fred, that summer is the bedrock of his whole life…
Chrissie Gillies is just nineteen when the researchers come to St Kilda. Hired as their cook, she can’t believe they would ever notice her, sophisticated and educated as they are. But she soon develops a cautious friendship with Fred, a friendship that cannot be allowed to develop into anything more…
Years later, to help deal with his hellish existence in a German prisoner of war camp, Fred tells the tale of the island and the woman he loved, but left behind. And Fred starts to wonder, where is Chrissie now? And does she ever think of him too?

“Night Waking” by Sarah Moss

(read a glowing review of this on another blog)

Historian Anna Bennett has a book to write. She also has an insomniac toddler, a precocious, death-obsessed seven-year-old, and a frequently absent ecologist husband who has brought them all to Colsay, a desolate island in the Hebrides, so he can count the puffins. Ferociously sleep-deprived, torn between mothering and her desire for the pleasures of work and solitude, Anna becomes haunted by the discovery of a baby’s skeleton in the garden of their house. Her narrative is punctuated by letters home, written 200 years before, by May, a young, middle-class midwife desperately trying to introduce modern medicine to the suspicious, insular islanders. The lives of these two characters intersect unexpectedly in this deeply moving but also at times blackly funny story about maternal ambivalence, the way we try to control children, and about women’s vexed and passionate relationship with work. Moss’s second novel displays an exciting expansion of her range – showing her to be both an excellent comic writer and a novelist of great emotional depth.

Have YOU ever encountered a situation where you want to buy a book that is UNAVAILABLE for you to purchase?  Was it a book that IS available in other countries, but not yours?  I’d be interested in hearing about your experience in the comments.