EXCERPT: . . . this morning something was very different. They all seemed to be drawn to something down the street. Wait staff had joined customers to see what had pulled them from their tables to let their food go cold, some almost on tiptoes, necks outstretched as though it might enhance their view. Their faces were an even mix of worry and curiosity. It didn’t take too long to discover the focus of attention. Blue and red police car lights flickered in the distance. They were probably a couple of hundred metres away. Somewhere near my work.
ABOUT ‘NEVER BE THE SAME’: As Tom Rosemore heads to work, a jolting update shatters his world with the news that his boss has been found dead at the office. This grim revelation arrives amid Tom’s own struggles, compounding a tragedy that has fractured his family, leaving his teenage daughter to spiral into a depression, and his wife to waste away through a crippling exercise addiction. Amid the turmoil, Tom’s world darkens further as he becomes the prime suspect in his boss’s murder. Confronted by mounting evidence he cannot explain, including incriminating CCTV footage, he faces a tough battle convincing detectives of his innocence. Yet, beneath the surface lies the unsettling realisation that someone has tried to frame him. As accusations loom large, a greater horror unfolds with the sudden disappearance of his daughter on the very day he is questioned by police. Determined to find her in a race against time and the law, Tom is forced to take matters into his own hands. With police closing in, secrets begin to unravel, woven into the mystery of his boss’s murder.
MY THOUGHTS: I’m going to be brutally honest here – when I started this book I really didn’t like it. The first few chapters are lumpy, awkward. I doubted I would finish – I have this thing of reading at least one third of the book before abandoning it – but pushed on. By the time I got to the third, I was hooked. It was like the author had suddenly found his writing mojo, realised he was enjoying himself, and it just flowed.
Ther are two main threads to this novel – the murder of Tom’s boss George and the disappearance of Tom and Lisa’s daughter Rachel. Added to these main threads, there are several other minor threads waving about which are eventually woven into the main story.
Never Be the Same is a cracker of a thriller. I’m not going to say any more about the plot because I don’t want to drop any spoilers. Don’t expect any great depth to the characters – this is an action thriller – but I found it really didn’t matter. I was swept along, wondering what on earth was going on, who had murdered George and what had happened to Rachel.
The various threads are all tied up at the end and I finished the book (in less than 24 hours) with not one question unanswered.
So if you are looking for a good action thriller, grab a copy of Never Be the Same, push through those initial lumpy chapters and settle in for the ride.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
#NeverBetheSame #LukeWilliams #PinchpointPress
THE AUTHOR: For Luke, the writing bug didn’t sink its teeth in until late into his twenties. For the wrong side of a decade, he slowly and quietly worked on his first novel, sharing his endeavour with only his wife and a trusted friend. Now with the cat out of the bag, Luke openly crafts thrillers where everyday people face heart-pounding situations, blending family dynamics into gripping plots.
He grew up surrounded by the laid-back charm of the Mornington Peninsula, but these days you’ll find him somewhere in Melbourne’s equally relaxed Bayside suburbs. At home, he’s outnumbered by his wife and two energetic daughters.
DISCLOSURE: Thank you to author Luke Williams for providing a digital copy of Never Be the Same for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.
EXCERPT: . . . the app played its little triple chime and flashed a new message on her screen: Wow, you’re on a roll! As a Bronze member you can unlock special features currently in beta and not available to members of lesser stature. Would you like to unlock those features now? Abby read the message and realised this was the first time it asked her a question and actually gave her he ability to answer Yes or No. Usually, there was only a single ok button. Maybe that was one of the glitches they’d fixed with yesterday’s patch. She tapped Yes. The app closed, and a small hourglass appeared on her screen as it downloaded some type of update. When the hourglass vanished, the app’s logo appeared with v1.1 in the bottom corner. Would you like to try a Sugar or a Spice? The font was slightly different, but otherwise everything looked the same. Abby had been sitting with her feet curled up under her on the chair, and her legs had fallen asleep. She stretched out beneath her desk, let out a yawn, and clicked on Sugar. Would you kill a total stranger to save your partner’s life?
ABOUT ‘BEHIND A CLOSED DOOR’: Would you kill a total stranger to save someone you love?
Sugar & Spice is the latest app craze taking the world by storm, but for Abby and Brendan Hollander, downloading it leads to a dangerous game of life and death. When the app assigns them a series of increasingly taboo tasks, they soon find themselves caught up in a twisted web of seduction and violence.
MY THOUGHTS: Question: Do you ever read fully the terms and conditions of the apps you download? I don’t. Or rather, I didn’t. But after reading Behind a Closed Door, I many never download another app. In fact, I may even downgrade to a non-smart phone. J.D Barker has scared the living bejesus out of me!
I have often commented to friends that if you search for something online, you are later bombarded with information and products that you have researched. This happens to all of us. But what about when you are simply talking about something? – no online searches, no mentions or likes – just a purely verbal conversation between you and whoever. Increasingly often, this subject/item pops up on your feed. Is your technology listening to you? My honest opinion? HELL YES!
J.D. Barker has taken this premise one step further in this chilling thriller. A seemingly innocuous app that controls the lives of the characters. An app that promises to enhance your life, put the zing back in your struggling/flagging love life. An app that promises to reward you . . . just follow the prompts. How bad can it be? You can always uninstall the app – can’t you?
I have loved everything I have read by this author, but all his previous novels pale in comparison to Beyond A Closed Door. This is one wild, but totally believable ride. And because it is completely plausible, possible, it is all that more scary.
For those of you who may be put off by the mention of erotica – don’t be. It’s really quite tame – definitely no Fifty Shades of Grey (thank goodness), and one heck of a lot better written!
Several hours after having finished reading, my heart is still pounding wildly. I am looking sideways at the smart TV. Feeling grateful I have never selected the option to connect the fridge to the internet, and I never purchased an Alexa. No robot vacuum cleaner. My car with all the bells and whistles? Nah, sorry, but I can’t give up my heated seats. NOT FOR ANYTHING!
The best read of my 2024 reading year. Devious, diabolical and very, very frightening.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
#BEHINDACLOSEDDOOR #NetGalley
THE AUTHOR: A note from J.D. As a child I was always told the dark could not hurt me, that the shadows creeping in the corners of my room were nothing more than just that, shadows. The sounds nothing more than the settling of our old home, creaking as it found comfort in the earth only to move again when it became restless, if ever so slightly. I would never sleep without closing the closet door, oh no; the door had to be shut tight. The darkness lurking inside needed to be held at bay, the whispers silenced. Rest would only come after I checked under the bed at least twice and quickly wrapped myself in the safety of the sheets (which no monster could penetrate), pulling them tight over my head.
I would never go down to the basement.
Never.
I had seen enough movies to know better, I had read enough stories to know what happens to little boys who wandered off into dark, dismal places alone. And there were stories, so many stories.
Reading was my sanctuary, a place where I could disappear for hours at a time, lost in the pages of a good book. It didn’t take long before I felt the urge to create my own.
I first began to write as a child, spinning tales of ghosts and gremlins, mystical places and people. For most of us, that’s where it begins—as children we have such wonderful imaginations, some of us have simply found it hard to grow up. I’ve spent countless hours trying to explain to friends and family why I enjoy it, why I would rather lock myself in a quiet little room and put pen to paper for hours at a time than throw around a baseball or simply watch television. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I want to do just that, sometimes I wish for it, but even then the need to write is always there in the back of my mind, the characters are impatiently tapping their feet, waiting their turn, wanting to be heard. I wake in the middle of the night and reach for the pad beside my bed, sometimes scrawling page after page of their words, their lives. Then they’re quiet, if only for a little while. To stop would mean madness, or even worse—the calm, numbing sanity I see in others as they slip through the day without purpose. They don’t know what it’s like, they don’t understand. Something as simple as a pencil can open the door to a new world, can create life or experience death. Writing can take you to places you’ve never been, introduce you to people you’ve never met, take you back to when you first saw those shadows in your room, when you first heard the sounds mumbling ever so softly from your closet, and it can show you what uttered them. It can scare the hell out of you, and that’s when you know it’s good.
Barker resides in coastal New Hampshire with his wife, Dayna, and their daughter, Ember.
DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Hampton Creek Press, IBPA, via NetGalley for providing a digital ARC of Behind A Closed Door by J.D. Barker for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.
Happy hump day! It’s a stormy day here in New Zealand. Heavy rain but thankfully not particularly cold. I have been to Book Club at the library today and we had some very spirited discussions! I have come home with a bag of books to read – one library, the others borrowed from other group members. The librarian also talked to us about an app called Beanstack which a lot of libraries are using for inter-library reading challenges. I have been logging my reading on it for almost 3 weeks now and participating in the Master of Minutes challenge and the Bingo Genre Challenge. I’ll update you on my progress later in the post. But first, lets see what new books have arrived on my bedside table in the past week
I’ll deal with the library book first – On Call, a memoir from the life of a surgeon, daughter and mother by Ineke Meredith.
The world of surgery is strange, messy and intense. From a man presenting with fishhooks in his stomach to being punched in the face by a patient, it’s all in a mad day’s work for a female general surgeon. Even wit emergency operations in the wee hours and constantly being mistaken for a nurse, there are still moments of laughter and tenderness amid the chaos.
When Ineke’s parents in Samoa fall ill, she becomes torn between her roles as a surgeon, a daughter and a single working mother, leading her to ask: are the sacrifices of a life in scrubs worth it?
This is an extraordinary memoir from inside the operating room about the heart it takes to survive.
Now for my NetGalley ARC shelves: 5 new titles this week, which is better than the seven last week, BUT it has still pushed my total of books on my ARC shelf a few points higher. 😖
I selected Queen Macbeth by Val McDermid for two reasons. Firstly, I love Val McDermid’s writing, and secondly it fills the criteria of a retelling of one of Shakespeare’s plays for the World Book Day challenge on one of my Goodreads groups.
A thousand years ago in an ancient Scottish landscape, a woman is on the run with her three companions – a healer, a weaver, and a seer. The men hunting her will kill her – because she is the only one who stands between them and their violent ambition. She is no lady: she is the first queen of Scotland, married to a king called Macbeth. As the net closes in, what unfurls is a tale of passion, forced marriage, bloody massacre, and the harsh realities of medieval Scotland. At the heart of it is one strong, charismatic woman, who survived loss and jeopardy to outwit the endless plotting of a string of ruthless and power-hungry men. Her struggle won her a country. But now it could cost her life.
Thank you to my Goodreads friend CarolG for putting me onto The Fells by Cath Staincliffe. This is a new-to-me author.
A missing woman. A cold case. A dark secret, buried deep beneath the Yorkshire Dales. Summer 1997. Vicky Mott slips out the door of her remote stone cottage, and into the pale dawn light. She won’t wake her friends. Not after the night they just had.
She scrawls a note, her hand trembling with excitement. Gone to see the sun rise. V xxx
That’s the last anyone ever hears from vibrant twenty-year-old Vicky.
Everyone warned her. Of the predator stalking the lush green fells. Convicted killer Terence Bielby. He strangled three hikers before he got to Vicky. Now he has her blood on his hands, too.
It’s only a matter of time until the evidence surfaces . . .
2019. A human skeleton is discovered in a dark and treacherous cave beneath the Dales. The final resting place of Vicky Mott?
Detectives Leo Donovan and Shan Young think they’ve found the key to this decades-old mystery. But every answer they unearth only leads to more questions.
All Donovan’s instincts tell him that, this time, Bielby’s innocent.
But if the Fellside Strangler didn’t do it, then who?
I discovered Australian author Janet Gover earlier this year and just loved her writing! Her new book, Wedding Bells by the Creek (a Coorah Creek novel) is due for publication in July.
Are there some things that can’t be forgiven?
Helen Walsh has never stopped searching for the daughter who ran away from home when she was just fifteen. Now Tia has found her. Helen longs for her daughter’s forgiveness. Will a Coorah Creek wedding help heal their rift?
Ed Collins has walked Helen’s path, and he knows that she needs more than her daughter’s forgiveness. Ed feels compelled to help her, as he is increasingly drawn to her kind and loving heart.
Then Ed’s wife Stephanie returns to the tiny outback town – thirteen years after she deserted Ed and their young son, Scott. Steph was his first and only love, and now Ed is being asked to forgive.
But how do you forgive what you will never forget?
Maddie Please is an author who never fails to please me. Her latest book, Old Girls on Deck is another July release.
It’s never too late to sail a new course…
When retired Jill Parker wins an all-expenses paid mediterranean cruise for two she is thrilled! At 63 life in retirement has got a little bit bland for Jill and this might be just the holiday she and husband Eddy need to get the sparks back in their marriage.
But when Eddy admits he would much prefer to build his patio and look through the latest DIY magazine, Jill is left with only one other option – her sister Diana.
Diana has become rather reclusive since her husband, Caspar died, but perhaps this is the push she needs to bring some excitement back into her life, too?
Could this trip be just what both sisters need to reconnect and chart a new path for their futures?
Excited to be exploring new horizons and catching up, the sisters soon discover that not everything is smooth sailing on board. And as they enjoy cocktails together at sundown, they discover that they are both actually a little all at sea…
I’ll be reading Silent Ritual by Andrew James Greig thanks to Ceecee, another Goodreads friend. He is also a new-to-me author.
An ear-shattering scream pierces the quiet Glasgow street as a mother stands frozen in her doorway, groceries strewn at her feet. Her son holds a bloodied knife while his father lies dead before him.
As Logan Martin begins his prison sentence for the brutal murder of his father, the eighteen-year-old’s aunt hires private investigator Teàrlach Paterson. She believes Logan is innocent and wants Teàrlach to uncover the truth.
Teàrlach’s visit to the Martin family home yields two disturbing discoveries: a pentagram etched under the carpet in Logan’s sister’s bedroom, and a link to the sinister deaths of their elderly neighbours—a journal with the same ominous symbol lies in the couple’s home.
While ritualistic murders plague the city, bodies placed precisely on an occult pentagram, bound in intricate knots, Teàrlach and his team unearth the sinister inspiration behind the killings in a mysterious ancient map.
Then, two young women are reported missing, and Teàrlach fears the worst. He’s inching closer to a killer who is weaving a complex web of murder rooted in Glasgow’s pagan past. But can Teàrlach stop the twisted soul from carrying out another cruel ritual? This time, one of his own is about to be in grave danger.
With my doing a fair bit of reading for pleasure in the past week, and a wee requesting spree, I have increased the number of titles on my NetGalley shelf from 515 to 519. I need to stop reading my friends’ reviews!🤣🤣 My feedback ration is somehow still at 72%, and I have 15 pending requests, down from 23.
I am a little ahead of schedule for my Aussie Readers May challenge having completed 6/10 reads I signed up for, and I have started the seventh book.
I am right on target to complete my Aussie Readers Autumn Challenge with 11/13 titles read and a little over two weeks to go.
Since I joined Beanstack 22 days ago, I have logged 6227 minutes reading and read 29 books. Our library has set a target of 2,000,000 minutes for the year. I have completed 7/24 genre challenges on my bingo card.
I am off to Dustin’s tomorrow. He is off on his annual boy’s weekend away with the mates he went through Tech with, so I am staying with Luke for the night, taking him to his hockey game Saturday morning then bringing him down to our place for the rest of the weekend. Dustin will pick him up Sunday night after he gets back. Luke and I are planning some serious brainstorming on the story we are writing – The Magic Island. I will do some work on it after aquarobics and grocery shopping this morning.
Sorry this post is late out. We had terrible weather yesterday and the internet kept cutting in and out, phone calls were dropping. I just couldn’t get the book covers to download. The weather is still stormy this morning, but my computer seems to be better behaved!
I had better get moving. I need to get ready for aquarobics and get on my way.
HELP! I am completely lost with the changes to this site . . . Where has everyone gone? I can’t find the posts of everyone I follow. I miss you! This is not fun! Put it back to how it was, WordPress, please . . .
Meanwhile if you have managed to navigate the new system, please pass on some tips, ’cause I am just spinning around in circles going nowhere!
Currently I am reading The Birds and Other Stories by Daphne Du Maurier. The Hitchcock movie sure is different than Du Maurier’s story and sorry, Mr Hitchcock, but I greatly prefer the original story to your screenplay. It’s definitely creepier.
‘How long he fought with them in the darkness he could not tell, but at last the beating of the wings about him lessened and then withdrew . . . ‘
A classic of alienation and horror, ‘The Birds’ was immortalised by Hitchcock in his celebrated film. The five other chilling stories in this collection echo a sense of dislocation and mock man’s sense of dominance over the natural world. The mountain paradise of ‘Monte Verità’ promises immortality, but at a terrible price; a neglected wife haunts her husband in the form of an apple tree; a professional photographer steps out from behind the camera and into his subject’s life; a date with a cinema usherette leads to a walk in the cemetery; and a jealous father finds a remedy when three’s a crowd . . .
I am listening to a title from my 2019 backlist, We Hope for Better Things written by Erin Bartels and narrated by Steina Neilson. This is a powerful debut novel telling the story of three generations of Balsam women, told against the backdrop of racism and violence in America.
When Detroit Free Press reporter Elizabeth Balsam meets James Rich, his strange request–that she look up a relative she didn’t know she had in order to deliver an old camera and a box of photos–seems like it isn’t worth her time. But when she loses her job after a botched investigation, she suddenly finds herself with nothing but time.
At her great-aunt’s 150-year-old farmhouse north of Detroit, Elizabeth uncovers a series of mysterious items, locked doors, and hidden graves. As she searches for answers to the riddles around her, the remarkable stories of two women who lived in this very house emerge as testaments to love, resilience, and courage in the face of war, racism, and misunderstanding. And as Elizabeth soon discovers, the past is never as past as we might like to think.
And my pleasure read this week is Hannah Richell’s The Search Party. I have read and loved everything this author has written.
A spellbinding locked-room mystery about a glamping trip gone horribly wrong when a powerful storm leaves the participants stranded and forced to confront long-held secrets and a shocking disappearance.
Max and Annie Kingsley have left the London rat race with their twelve-year-old son to set up a glamping site in the wilds of Cornwall. Eager for a dry run ahead of their opening, they invite three old university friends and their families for a long-needed reunion. But the festivities soon go awry as tensions arise between the children (and subsequently their parents), explosive secrets come to light, and a sudden storm moves in, cutting them off from help as one in the group disappears.
Moving between the police investigation, a hospital room, and the catastrophic weekend, The Search Party is a propulsive and twisty destination thriller about the tenuous bonds of friendship and the lengths parents will go to protect their children.
I must admit to being a little creeped out by the birds appearing on the cover of two out of three books that I am currently reading. Don’t laugh, but even chickens terrify me. The only good place for them is in the oven.
This week I have a total of five ARCs to read for review. I am very much looking forward to getting into Behind a Closed Door by J.D. Barker.
Would you kill a total stranger to save someone you love?
Sugar & Spice is the latest app craze taking the world by storm, but for Abby and Brendan Hollander, downloading it leads to a dangerous game of life and death. When the app assigns them a series of increasingly taboo tasks, they soon find themselves caught up in a twisted web of seduction and violence.
Old Girls Behaving Badly by Kate Galley will, I believe, be the perfect antidote to J.D. Barker’s dark read.
Something old, something new, something stolen…?
Gina Knight is looking forward to the prospect of retirement with her husband of forty-three years. Until, to her surprise, said husband decides he needs to ‘find himself’ – alone – and disappears to Santa Fe, leaving a Dear John letter in his wake.
Now Gina needs a new role in life, not to mention somewhere to live, so she applies for the position of Companion to elderly Dorothy Reed. At eighty-nine, ‘Dot’ needs someone to help her around the house – or at least, her family seems to think so. Her companion’s first role would be to accompany Dot for a week-long extravagant wedding party.
But when Georgina arrives at the large Norfolk estate where the wedding will take place, she quickly discovers Dot has an ulterior motive for hiring her. While the other guests are busy sipping champagne and playing croquet, Dot needs Georgina to help her solve a mystery – about a missing painting, which she believes is hidden somewhere in the house.
Because, after all, who would suspect two old ladies of getting up to mischief?
We Were the Universe by Kimberley King Parsons will be my next read. I really enjoyed Black Light by this author.
The trip was supposed to be fun. When Kit’s best friend gets dumped by his boyfriend, he begs her to ditch her family responsibilities for an idyllic weekend in the Montana mountains. They’ll soak in hot springs, then sneak a vape into a dive bar and drink too much, like old times. Instead, their getaway only reminds Kit of everything she’s lost lately: her wildness, her independence, and—most heartbreaking of all—her sister, Julie, who died a few years ago.
When she returns home to the Dallas suburbs, Kit tries to settle in to her routine—long afternoons spent caring for her irrepressible daughter, going on therapist-advised dates with her concerned husband, and reluctantly taking her mother’s phone calls. But in the secret recesses of Kit’s mind, she’s reminiscing about the band she used to be in—and how they’d go out to the desert after shows and drop acid. She’s imagining an impossible threesome with her kid’s pretty gymnastics teacher and the cool playground mom. Keyed into everything that might distract from her surfacing pain, Kit spirals. As her already thin boundaries between reality and fantasy blur, she begins to wonder: Is Julie really gone?
I have loved every book by Jessica Redland that I have read – thank you Carla @CarlaLovestoRead for introducing me to her books. Her latest is A New Dawn at Owl’s Lodge.
Could one chance meeting change your life forever?
Zara is at a crossroads in life. While she adores her job as a producer’s assistant working on hit TV shows, travelling around the country means she doesn’t truly feel that she has a home. With a fractured relationship with her family and unrequited love weighing heavily on her heart, she is torn about what her next step in life should be…
Snowy is hiding from the world. He’s devoted his life to home schooling his young son and caring for sick owls at his home, Owl’s Lodge, deep in the Yorkshire Wolds countryside. While he’s passionate about both, it’s a lonely existence and he’s starting to question his decisions. But how do you step back into a world you’ve pushed away for years…?
When Zara brings an injured owl to Owl’s Lodge, its frosty, reclusive owner is far from welcoming. Despite hostilities, there’s a connection that neither could ever have prepared themselves for. As they discover a shared passion, a new friendship blossoms, but both Zara and Snowy are used to shutting people out.
Can they both find the courage to open up and the strength to move on from their pasts? And what could this mean for their future happiness?
And finally for the week is a collection of short stories by Amor Towles, Table for Two.
Millions of Amor Towles fans are in for a treat as he shares some of his shorter fiction: six stories based in New York City and a novella set in Golden Age Hollywood.
The New York stories, most of which take place around the year 2000, consider the fateful consequences that can spring from brief encounters and the delicate mechanics of compromise that operate at the heart of modern marriages.
In Towles’s novel Rules of Civility, the indomitable Evelyn Ross leaves New York City in September 1938 with the intention of returning home to Indiana. But as her train pulls into Chicago, where her parents are waiting, she instead extends her ticket to Los Angeles. Told from seven points of view, “Eve in Hollywood” describes how Eve crafts a new future for herself—and others—in a noirish tale that takes us through the movie sets, bungalows, and dive bars of Los Angeles.
Written with his signature wit, humor, and sophistication, Table for Two is another glittering addition to Towles’s canon of stylish and transporting fiction.
Does anything there interest you? Or perhaps there’s something that’s already on your shelf . . . let me know.
Welcome to First Lines Friday, originally hosted by Reading is my Superpower.
Instead of judging a book by its cover, here are the first few lines which I hope will make you want to read this book.
These lines are from the library book I am currently reading.
<i> Dominic – Sunday afternoon
He has no idea how long he has been sitting there. There’s no clock in the room, just a table, three chairs and a single narrow window set high into the wall – too high to offer anything but a glimpse of the blank grey sky outside. It could have been twenty minutes since the police ushered him in and asked him to ‘wait here, please’; it could have been far longer. Dominic knows in moments of heightened stress that seconds can feel like minutes and minutes like hours, though the vending machine cup of tea that someone brought him cooled ages ago. He also knows that every time he thinks about what might be happening outside this room, he feels a painful constriction in his chest, a tight band pressing vice-like against his lungs, making breathing hard.
He would be more help out there. Not shut away in a hospital consulting room, sitting in his damp clothing, waiting to answer questions – questions he’s certain he won’t have the answers to. But the two detectives had been insistent – he was to assist with their enquiries. Almost, he thinks, as if they suspect him of something.</i>
So, what do you think?
Do you like what you’ve just read?
Does it make you want to read more?
These are the opening lines of <i>The Search Party</i> by Hannah Richell.
When I first saw this cover, it instantly gave me vibes of <i>The Birds</i>, Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s short story by the same name.
Five old friends reunite for an idyllic glamping holiday on the rugged Cornwall coast, but tensions rise when a storm leaves them stranded and someone goes missing.
Max and Annie Kingsley have left the London rat race with their twelve-year-old son to set up a glamping site in the wilds of Cornwall. Eager for a dry run ahead of their opening, they invite three old university friends and their families for a long-needed reunion and a relaxing weekend.
But the festivities soon go awry as tensions arise between the children (and subsequently their parents), explosive secrets come to light, and a sudden storm moves in, cutting them off from help as one in the group disappears.
Moving between a police investigation, a hospital room and the catastrophic weekend, The Search Party is a propulsive destination thriller about the tenuous bonds of friendship and the lengths parents will go to protect their children.
EXCERPT: 2017 – I never meant to kill the first one. She was an accident – her own fault, for the most part. And that second one? She was a casualty of necessity. Wrong place, wrong time. But this one . . . this one was different.
ABOUT ‘WHEN CICADAS CRY’: Zach Stander, a lawyer with a past, and Addie Stone, his indomitable detective and lover, find themselves entangled in secrets, lies, and murder in a small Southern town.
A high-profile murder case— A white woman has been bludgeoned to death with an altar cross in a rural church on Cicada Road in Walterboro, South Carolina. Sam Jenkins, a Black man, is found covered in blood, kneeling over the body. In a state already roiling with racial tenson, this is not only a murder case, but a powder keg.
A haunting cold case— Two young women are murdered on quiet Edisto Beach, an hour southeast of Walterboro, and the killer disappears without a trace. Thirty-four years later the mystery remains unsolved. Could there be a connection to Stander’s case?
A killer who’s watching— Stander takes on Jenkins’s defense, but he’s up against a formidable solicitor with powerful allies. Worse, his client is hiding a bombshell secret. When Addie Stone reopens the cold case, she discovers more long-buried secrets in this small town. Would someone kill again to keep them?
MY THOUGHTS: When Cicadas Cry is an absolutely stunning debut novel. Atmosphere oozes from every page. The tension in the final chapters left me with half-moons dug into my palms. I feared for Addie’s life.
Caroline Cleveland is one of those rare authors who can hit the ball right out of the park in all three elements of the successful novel – characters, setting and atmosphere. It is impossible to read this without coming to care greatly for the characters: Zach, who really needs to figure out just what he wants; Eli, the accused Sam’s grandfather; Colleton Burns, Eli’s great friend and a respected retired lawyer; Sam who is overly economical with the truth to his own detriment; and Addie with the big heart, quick mind and an ambition Zach isn’t currently sharing. Honestly, there were times I wanted to give Zach a quick slap upside his head – he can be extremely obtuse!
Cleveland captures the racial tensions around the BLM movement and uses it to great advantage in when Cicadas Cry. We have the two opposing factions, each wanting their very own brand of justice, never mind whatever the truth happens to be.
Pressures arising from the case cause tension between Zach and Addie, causing Addie to volunteer to investigate a cold case from some thirty odd years earlier, never dreaming to do so might put her life in danger. Now, I thought I had this all figured out, but was I ever wrong! Yes, I’m eating Humble Pie (with lashings of ice cream 😉)
The story is told from multiple points of view, including that of the killer, as in the excerpt above. This added another layer of mystery and even more tension to the storyline.
When Cicadas Cry is a beautifully written novel that held me entranced from beginning to end. The author’s notes at the end are particularly interesting so don’t be tempted to skip them.
⭐⭐⭐⭐.5
#WhenCicadasCry #NetGalley
THE AUTHOR: Caroline Cleveland is the founding partner of the law firm Cleveland & Conley, LLC, where she represents private and public employers, including law enforcement. A native South Carolinian, she inevitably writes from a Southern perspective. She gravitates — both as a writer and a reader — toward mystery and suspense, and she cannot resist a character with a dark secret.
She lives in Charleston, South Carolina with her husband, David.
DISCLOSURE: I was privileged to receive both a digital and audio ARC for review. My thanks go to both Union Square & Co., a subsidiary of Sterling Publishing and Dreamscape Media respectively. The audiobook is ablely narrated by Adam Barr.
All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.
Do you have problems with deciding where contemporary fiction ends and historical begins? I certainly do. Is a book set in the 1960s or 70s historical fiction? It doesn’t feel like it to me, because I have lived through those times. But to someone in their 20s, it must seem so. Does anyone have any guidelines which may help iron out my confusion and indecision? I’d be grateful if you share them.
So here we are on hump day again. I have finally decided to stop fighting the greys in my hair and give in to them. My hair grows really fast, so two weeks after I have been to the hairdresser, I have a noticeable skunk stripe. It’s extremely frustrating, because I end up pulling my hair back into a ponytail all the time in an effort to make it less noticeable. Can you see Pete smirking? Because he says it doesn’t work. He’s probably right. I went to the hairdresser yesterday and Tracy put an ash blond through my hair to match my ‘skunk’ stripe as my husband so eloquently terms it, and I love it! I really don’t know why I was so anti going grey for so long!
So, what’s new on my bedside table this week?
I have had more book mail from Fremantle Press – just the one this time. Thank you, Clare and Adam. Right Way Down and Other Poems is an anthology of poems for children chosen by Rebecca M/ Newman and Sally Murphy, and illustrated by Briony Stewart. I have been dipping in and out at odd moments and am mostly loving what is offered. Expect my review soon.
Stand on your head with Sally Murphy.
Explode some dynamite with Cristy Burne.
Shoot some hoops with Cheryl Kickett-Tucker.
Grow a poettree with Meg McKinlay.
Curl up next to your cat with Amber Moffat.
Watch a bit of Stink-o-Vision with James Foley.
These and loads more poems by Australian poets are there to discover in Right Way Down. With striking illustrations by Briony Stewart, these poems will have you laughing, thinking, and playing with words – whichever way you read them.
And, oh dear! I have seven new ARC titles from NetGalley. How did that happen?
I’ll blame aliens . . . or computer hackers. Or alien computer hackers! (sorry, Luke and I have been working on a story together and I am very much still in stories-Luke-would-like mode.)
Death is No Excuse by David Baker jumped out at me because Pete and I are STILL procrastinating over our wills. I know, I know. But hopefully this book will have all the answers and get me motivated to finish everything.
What do Abraham Lincoln, Pablo Picasso, Aretha Franklin and Howard Hughes all have in common? They died without wills, left messy estates and tormented their surviving families who had to lawyer up and fight through the resulting nightmares for years. Whether the reasons for this are death denial, penny-pinching or just too busy to be bothered, the majority of Americans will die in exactly the same predicament—no wills, no planning and nobody lined up to help their surviving families get what’s coming to them. “Death Is No Excuse” is an insightful roadmap through the legal potholes of unplanned death and disability, offered by a veteran attorney who’s handled the worst of these cases for over forty years. It’s a plain-spoken, surprisingly entertaining guide to everything you need to know about planning for death or disability, as well as other calamities that can occur along the way, be they divorce, avoidable tax burdens or getting ripped off as you toddle into old age. Told in twenty-three brisk chapters, each punctuated with a case history of life gone off the rails when people ignore the insights this book offers, “Death Is No Excuse” tells you how to avoid the pitfalls of un-planned death and disability.
Most of you will know by now that Stuart MacBride is one of my very favorite authors. His latest book is In a Place of Darkness and due for publication June 2024 (that’s so as all you other Stuart MacBride fans can preorder it.)
THE CLOCK IS TICKING…
Detective Constable Angus MacVicar has just landed his dream job – transferred out of uniform and assigned to Oldcastle’s biggest ongoing murder investigation: Operation Telegram, hunting the ‘Fortnight Killer’.
Every two weeks another couple is targeted. One victim is left at the scene, their corpse used as a twisted message board. The second body is never seen again.
This should be the perfect chance for Angus to prove himself, but instead of working on the investigation’s front line, he’s lumbered with the forensic psychologist from hell. A sarcastic know-it-all American, on loan from the FBI, who seems determined to alienate everyone while dragging Angus into a shadowy world of conspiracies, lies, and violence.
It’s been twelve days since the Fortnight Killer last struck, and the investigation’s running out of time. Angus’s shiny new job might just be the death of him…
I was excited to be approved for Amor Towles collection of short stories, Table For Two. That cover makes me think of Sean Connery as James Bond and his martini, ‘shaken not stirred’. Yes, I know it’s a wine glass and Sean Connery would probably have assassinated the bartender for such a transgression, but it’s the vibes the cover gives off.
Amor Towles
shares some of his shorter fiction: six stories based in New York City and a novella set in Golden Age Hollywood.
The New York stories, most of which take place around the year 2000, consider the fateful consequences that can spring from brief encounters and the delicate mechanics of compromise that operate at the heart of modern marriages.
In Towles’s novel Rules of Civility, the indomitable Evelyn Ross leaves New York City in September 1938 with the intention of returning home to Indiana. But as her train pulls into Chicago, where her parents are waiting, she instead extends her ticket to Los Angeles. Told from seven points of view, “Eve in Hollywood” describes how Eve crafts a new future for herself—and others—in a noirish tale that takes us through the movie sets, bungalows, and dive bars of Los Angeles.
Both this title and the next were a case of cover love! As winter is rapidly closing in (we had a frost last night and another expected tonight) I am drawn to anything summery. The End of Summer is by new-to-me author Charlotte Philby.
Your mother is not who you think she is…
When the phone rings in Judy McVee’s Languedoc farmhouse, she knows her past has finally caught up with her. It’s her daughter, frantically asking why there are journalists on her London doorstep making terrible accusations.
Decades earlier, Judy was a girl with big plans – to ensnare a rich husband, to make something of herself, to rise above her upbringing and leave behind past tragedies. Wealthy young widower Rory Harrington seemed the perfect target – but Judy hadn’t reckoned on actually falling in love with him.
Now her daughter Francesca, who has secrets of her own, must come to terms with the realisation that the mother she thought she knew wasn’t real. Where has Judy gone – and was anything she told her family true?
The Next Mrs Parrish by Liv Constantine is a sequel to The Last Mrs Parrish, which I am going to have to get from the library or pick up from a secondhand shop.
Amber Patterson Parrish has come a long way. Hard work and immaculate planning turned her from invisible wallflower to prominent socialite, but there have been bumps along the way. Less than a year after her husband Jackson’s tax-evasion scandal, Amber reigns supreme over the Bishops Harbor community. But with Jackson being released from prison, Amber’s free time – and money – is vanishing.
Meanwhile, Daphne Parrish left Bishops Harbor after her divorce from Jackson, swearing she would never go back. But when one of her daughters runs away from home, desperate to see her father, Daphne agrees to return for the summer. Jackson swears he’s a changed man, but Daphne knows all too well that he can’t be trusted.
When a ghost from Amber’s past emerges looking for revenge, these three find unlikely allies in one another. But who is playing who? When all is said and done, they’ll have to fight tooth and nail for everything they have left in this zero-sum game.
I have read several of Kate Quinns books with varying degrees of success, but after reading a few rave reviews of The Briar Club I knew I just had to have it and, what do you know, it was ‘read now’ for me! It was meant to be. 😉
Washington, D.C., 1950
Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, an all-female boarding house in the heart of the US capital, where secrets hide behind respectable facades.
But when the mysterious Grace March moves into the attic room, she draws her oddball collection of neighbours – a poised English beauty, a policeman’s daughter, a frustrated female baseball star, and a rabidly pro-McCarthy typist – into an unlikely friendship.
Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their troubled lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. And when a shocking act of violence tears the house apart, the Briar Club must decide once and for all: who is the true enemy in their midst?
And last but not least is the audiobook of The Other Year by Rea Frey, and narrated by Brittany Pressley.
Can the entire course of a life be traced back to a single moment?
On a coveted two-week beach vacation, working mom Kate Baker’s nine-year-old daughter, Olivia, vanishes suddenly among the waves—a heart-dropping incident that threatens to uproot her entire reality. But in the next moment, Olivia resurfaces, joyously splashing.
What would I do if she didn’t come up? Kate wonders. How would I live without her?
In another set of circumstances that hold a different fate, Kate doesn’t have to wonder. Because in that “other” world, in the pulse-pounding seconds after Olivia goes under, she doesn’t come back up.
Told in parallel timelines, Kate begins to live two lives—one in which Olivia resurfaces and one in which she doesn’t. In the reality that follows her daughter’s death, she maneuvers through every mother’s worst nightmare, facing grief, rage, and the question of purpose in the aftermath of such profound loss. She endures, day by day, in a world without her daughter.
In her alternate timeline, while she explores a tremulous romance with her best friend, Jason, she finds herself grappling with the ex-husband who abandoned Kate and Olivia years prior. Even as Kate scrambles to hold her daughter close, Olivia pulls further away. The line between joy and loss seems to get thinner with each passing day.
Woven into a single story, both Kates discover a breathtaking fragility and resilience in their respective journeys. Bringing to light the drastic polarities dire circumstances often create, The Other Year explores truths about love, loss, and the sharp turns any life can take in the blink of an eye.
Well I hope you see something there that gets your requesting finger twitching!
I had a lovely afternoon with Luke yesterday, picking him up from school (i had trouble finding his new classroom and was late!😬) then taking him to swimming class. He is swimming like a little fish now. We played in the playground at the pool complex for a while then headed home to inspect the new cattle, as yet unnamed, and the chicken coop. After hockey Saturday morning Luke is going to pick up the eight chickens he has bought. The breeder has said that they should start laying in the next 2 – 3 weeks, then he will have eggs for sale at the gate. He is a very enterprising seven-year-old!
Pete should be home soon with his new (well new to us) Toyota Hilux ute! Me thinks he has watched too many Barry Crump ads over the years 😂🤣If you have never seen them, do a search for Barry Crump Toyota advert. It is classic kiwiana!
Well, the temperature is dropping so I need to get the clothes off the line, shut all the windows and doors which have been wide open through the middle of the day, and light the fire. I also need to think about what to have for dinner tonight because, right now, I have no ideas!
EXCERPT: ‘Hi everyone! I’m Phoebe and I’m a travel addict and van-lifer. I’m about to take me, myself and I off on the adventure of a lifetime – the big lap of Australia. Only two more sleeps to go. And before you ask, no I’m not scared. The first thing people say when I tell them I’m travelling alone is “Be careful”. Don’t even get me started on my parents’ response. But the world is full of magic, and solo travel offers way more rewards than risks. It’s just that the bad stories get told way more often than the good. . . .’
ABOUT ‘RED RIVER ROAD’: Katy Sweeney is determined to find her sister. A year earlier, just three weeks into a solo vanlife trip, free-spirited Phoebe vanished without a trace on Western Australia’s remote and achingly beautiful Coral Coast. With no witnesses, no leads, and no DNA evidence, the case has gone cold. But Katy refuses to give up.
Using Phoebe’s social media accounts as a map, Katy starts to retrace her steps, searching for the clues that the police have missed. Was Phoebe being followed? Who had she met along the way, and what danger did they pose? Was she as happy as her sun-bleached, lens-flared photos seem to suggest?
Then Katy’s path collides with that of Beth, a young woman on the run from her own dark past—and very recent present. And as Katy realizes that Beth might be her best and only chance of finding the truth, the two women form an uneasy alliance to venture forth into increasingly wild territory to find out what really happened to Phoebe in this breathtaking but maybe deadly place, and how her fate connects them all.
MY THOUGHTS: Red River Road, brilliantly written by Anna Downes and superbly narrated by Maddy Withington, blew me away. Tense, twisty, atmospheric and addictive are just a few of the superlatives I could use to describe this. I held my breath so often during the narrative, it’s a wonder I didn’t black out!
When I started, my first thoughts were ‘FFS! Not another alcoholic, unreliable narrator!’ But I’m pleased to report that’s not how it panned out.
The narrative is related from three POV: Katy, Beth and a 15-year-old boy, Wyatt, whose mother is also missing. All three of these main characters come across as slightly flaky and unreliable at times. Not constantly, just at times. The tension starts pretty much straight away and never completely disappears. If Anna Downes aim is to stop women travelling on their own, she has definitely succeeded with me.
There are a lot of threads to this plot which are slowly woven together to present the full picture, which turned out to be something I had never envisaged. Not even remotely imagined. There is some pretty heavy subject matter, but very little of it graphically described, including sexual assault, mental health issues, and stalking – both physically and on social media. There are some excellent and diverting red herrings, and lots of lies and secrets.
There is a general air of creepiness – who to trust? Anyone? No one? That man with the soulful eyes, reading a book? Those two women? The person I’m travelling with? Damn, I felt unsafe just reading this and I am no shrinking violet. Much is made of local legends, myths and reports of missing women. Just how can someone and their van just disappear off the face of the earth? Well, it turns out it’s quite easy . . .
What sealed the five-star rating for me was that final line in the book. Superbly chilling!
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
#RedRiverRoad #NetGalley
THE AUTHOR: ANNA DOWNES was born and raised in Sheffield, UK, but now lives just north of Sydney, Australia with her husband and two children. She worked as an actress before turning her attention to writing.
DISCLOSURE: Thank you to W.F. Howes via NetGalley for providing an audio ARC of Red River Road written by Anna Downes and narrated by Maddy Withington for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.
Another back title from my 2018 NetGalley shelf . . .
EXCERPT: Prologue The Girl from Belgrade
The first thing they took was her passport. The man jumped down from the cab of the lorry and snapped his fingers at her. Click-click. She already had her passport in her hands, ready for her first encounter with authority, and as she held it out to the man she saw, in the weak glow of the Belgrade streetlights, that he had a small stack of passports. They were not all burgundy red like her Serbian passport. These passports were green and blue and bright red – passports from everywhere. The man slipped her passport under the rubber band that held the passports together and he slipped them into the pocket of his thick winter coat. She had expected to keep her passport. She looked at him and caught a breath. Old scars ran down one side of his face making the torn flesh look as though it had once melted. Then the man clicked his fingers a second time. Click-click. She stared at her kid brother with confusion. The boy indicated her suitcase. The man wanted the suitcase. Then the man with the melted face spoke in English, although it was not the first language of either of them. ‘No room,’ he said, gesturing towards the lorry. But she gripped her suitcase stubbornly and she saw the sudden flare of pure anger in the man’s eyes. Click-click, went his fingers. She let go. The suitcase was the second thing he took. It was bewildering. In less than a minute she had surrendered her passport and abandoned her possessions. She could smell sweat and cigarettes on the man and she wondered, for the first time, if she was making a terrible mistake. She looked at her brother. The boy was shivering. Belgrade is bitterly cold in January with an average temperature of just above freezing. She hugged him. The boy, a gangly sixteen-year-old in glasses that were held together with tape on one side, bit his lower lip, struggling to control his emotions. He hugged her back and he would not let her go and when she gently pulled away he still held her, a shy smile on his face as he held his phone up at head height. They smiled at the tiny red light shining in the dark as he took their picture. Then the man with the melted face took her arm just above the elbow and pulled her towards the lorry. He was not gentle. ‘No time,’ he said. In the back of the lorry there were two lines of women facing each other. They all turned their heads to look at her. Black faces. Asian faces. Three young women, who might have been sisters, in hijab headscarves. They all looked at her but she was staring at her brother standing on the empty Belgrade street, her suitcase in his hand. She raised her hand in farewell and the boy opened his mouth to say something but the back doors suddenly slammed shut and her brother was gone. She struggled to stay on her feet as the lorry lurched away, heading north for the border. By the solitary light in the roof of the lorry, she saw there were boxes in the back of the vehicle. Many boxes, all the same. Birnen – Arnen – Nashi – Peren, it said on the boxes. Grushi – Pere – Peras – Poires. ‘Kruske,’ she thought, and then in English, as if in preparation for her new life. ‘Pears.’ The women were still staring at her. One of them, nearest to the doors, shuffled along to find her space. She was some kind of African girl, not yet out of her teens, her skin so dark it seemed to shine. The African gave her a wide, white smile of encouragement, and graciously held her hand by her side, inviting the girl from Belgrade to sit down. She nodded her thanks, taking her seat, and thinking of the African as the kind girl. The kind girl would be the first to die.
ABOUT ‘DIE LAST’: 12 DEAD GIRLS
As dawn breaks on a snowy February morning, a refrigerated lorry is found parked in the heart of London’s Chinatown. Inside, twelve women, apparently illegal immigrants, are dead from hypothermia.
13 PASSPORTS
But in the cab of the abandoned death truck, DC Max Wolfe of West End Central finds thirteen passports.
WHERE IS SHE?
The hunt for the missing woman will take Max Wolfe into the dark heart of the world of human smuggling, mass migration and 21st-century slave markets, as he is forced to ask the question that haunts our time.
What would you do for a home?
MY THOUGHTS: I have enjoyed this series but somehow missed reading Die Last (Max Wolfe #4) when it was published. I was excited when I found it on my shelf. Unfortunately, Die Last never really gripped me like Tony Parsons’ books usually do. It may have been the content – human trafficking. I had this ‘been there, done that’ feeling.
Initially the whole human trafficking subject was treated with a great deal of empathy and compassion. I can only imagine how desperate you would have to be to agree to being smuggled into a foreign country; how frightened. But somewhere along the way the tone changed. It may have had something to do with Max’s boss who didn’t seem to have a very high regard for human life at all; not for that of her staff and certainly not for the refugees.
There’s a bit of everything in Die Last – human traffickers, old style gangster families, Chinese tongs and corrupt businessmen.
The resolution to this left me stunned – in more ways than one. I didn’t see it coming re who was behind the human trafficking. I liked that he did, in the end, get his just desserts, BUT I was with my favorite character, Edie Wrenn when she cried, ‘Max, no! No, Max, no!’ I couldn’t see the justification of what he was doing – the wrong people were being punished and I just couldn’t see the point to it.
While this isn’t my favorite book of the series, it certainly is a thought-provoking one.
Die Last by Tony Parsons was published 22 February 2018. I listened to the audiobook of Die Last, superbly narrated by Colin Mace.
⭐⭐⭐.3
#DieLast #NetGalley
THE AUTHOR: Tony Parsons is a British award-winning journalist, broadcaster and bestselling author of contemporary books.
Born in Romford, Essex, Parsons dropped out of school aged sixteen in order to work on the night shift of Gordon’s Gin Distillery in Islington, London, before being offered a journalism job on New Musical Express.
He for the next couple of years travelled with and wrote about legendary musicians such as The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, The Clash, The Sex Pistols and others, before eventually leaving his job to pursue writing.
Tony, whose books have been translated into over 40 languages, currently lives in London with his wife, daughter and their dog.
DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Random House, UK, Cornerstone, Arrow via NetGalley for providing a digital ARC of Die Last by Tony Parsons for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.
Happy Sunday afternoon! It has been a beautiful day here in y corner of New Zealand, but now the wind is getting up and the temperature is dropping.
As you may have noticed, I’ve been running a bit behind with my posts the past couple of days. My brother-in-law who had a severe stroke in November and who has been in care at the local rest home since, has passed away. We have family staying on and off until after the funeral on Wednesday. So my erratic posts will continue for a few days yet.
I am currently listening to Red River Road, written by Anna Downes and narrated by Maddy Withington, who is a new-to-me and excellent narrator.
Katy Sweeney is determined to find her sister. A year earlier, just three weeks into a solo vanlife trip, free-spirited Phoebe vanished without a trace on Western Australia’s remote and achingly beautiful Coral Coast. With no witnesses, no leads, and no DNA evidence, the case has gone cold. But Katy refuses to give up.
Using Phoebe’s social media accounts as a map, Katy starts to retrace her steps, searching for the clues that the police have missed. Was Phoebe being followed? Who had she met along the way, and what danger did they pose? Was she as happy as her sun-bleached, lens-flared photos seem to suggest?
Then Katy’s path collides with that of Beth, a young woman on the run from her own dark past—and very recent present. And as Katy realizes that Beth might be her best and only chance of finding the truth, the two women form an uneasy alliance to venture forth into increasingly wild territory to find out what really happened to Phoebe in this breathtaking but maybe deadly place, and how her fate connects them all.
I am reading The Flower Sisters by Michelle Collins Anderson and this is certainly keeping my attention.
At birth, Violet and Rose Flowers were identical, save for a tiny bluish-purple mark gracing Violet’s slender neck. By nineteen, their temperaments distinguish them, as different as the flowers their mother named them for—Violet, wild and outgoing, and Rose, solitary and reserved. Still, they are each other’s world. Then, on a sweltering, terrible August night in 1928, an explosion rocks Lamb’s Dance Hall in Possum Flats, Missouri, engulfing it in flames, leaving one twin among the dozens dead, and her sister’s life forever changed.
Fifty years later, Daisy Flowers is dumped on her grandmother Rose’s doorstep for the summer. A bright, inquisitive fifteen-year-old, Daisy bargains her way into an internship at the local newspaper—where she learns of the mysterious long-ago tragedy and its connection to her family. Rose, now the local funeral home director, grows increasingly alarmed as her impulsive granddaughter delves into Possum Flats’ history, determined to uncover the horrors and heroes of the fiery blast.
For a small town, Possum Flats holds a multitude of big secrets, some guarded by the living, some kept by the dead. And through Rose, Daisy, Dash—a preacher who found his calling that fateful night—and others, those ghosts gradually come into the light, forcing a reckoning at last.
I am also reading What Happened to Charlotte Salter by Nicci French
On the day of Alec Salter’s fiftieth birthday party, just before Christmas 1990, his wife Charlotte vanishes. Most of the small English village of Glensted is at the party for hours before anyone realizes Charlotte is missing. While Alec brushes off her disappearance, their four children—especially fifteen-year-old Etty—grow increasingly anxious as the cold winter hours become days and she doesn’t return. When Charlotte’s coat is found by the river, they fear the worst. Then the body of the Salters’ neighbor, Duncan Ackerley, is found floating in the river by his son Morgan and Etty. The police investigate and conclude that Duncan and Charlotte were having an affair before he killed her and committed suicide. Thirty years later, Morgan Ackerley, a successful documentarian, has returned to Glensted with his older brother Greg to make podcast based on their shared tragedy with the Salters. Alec, stricken with dementia, is entering an elder care facility while Etty helps put his affairs in order. But as the Ackerleys ask to interview the Salters, the entire town gets caught up in the unresolved cases. Allegations are made, secrets are revealed, and a suspicious fire leads to a murder. With the podcast making national news, London sends Detective Inspector Maud O’Connor to Glensted to take over the investigation. Resented by her mostly male colleagues, she has no tolerance for either their sexism or their incompetence. And she will stop at nothing to uncover the truth as a new and terrifying picture of what really happened to Charlotte Salter and Duncan Ackerley emerges.
This week I hope to read, but probably won’t – Never be the Same by Luke Williams, an author ARC.
As Tom Rosemore heads to work, a jolting update shatters his world with the news that his boss has been found dead at the office. This grim revelation arrives amid Tom’s own struggles, compounding a tragedy that has fractured his family, leaving his teenage daughter to spiral into a depression, and his wife to waste away through a crippling exercise addiction. Amid the turmoil, Tom’s world darkens further as he becomes the prime suspect in his boss’s murder. Confronted by mounting evidence he cannot explain, including incriminating CCTV footage, he faces a tough battle convincing detectives of his innocence. Yet, beneath the surface lies the unsettling realisation that someone has tried to frame him. As accusations loom large, a greater horror unfolds with the sudden disappearance of his daughter on the very day he is questioned by police. Determined to find her in a race against time and the law, Tom is forced to take matters into his own hands. With police closing in, secrets begin to unravel, woven into the mystery of his boss’s murder.
With Winter Comes Darkness by Robbi Neal
A terrible accident burns down a family’s life on the same day a murder is committed. From the ashes of these acts comes revelation, darkness, and the truth. Psychological suspense and profound family drama meet in this heartrending and original Australian novel.
1975, Ballarat Alice is happy in her world and in return for her happiness the world is good to her. She has everything she needs – a lovely house and children, and a devoted husband. Even though her journalism job doesn’t pay much, she doesn’t have to worry about the bills. All is well with her world until a terrible accident rips a child from her, a profound betrayal is uncovered, and things fall apart.
On the same day Alice’s world collapses, a man is found brutally murdered on respected teacher Ellery’s farm. Ellery can’t remember what happened but there is blood on his clothes, and he is arrested.
Neither Alice nor Ellery realise that their paths in life are about to intertwine and a desperate bargain is about to be made. A bargain that could save or destroy them in their quest to draw some light and fathom the darkness that surrounds them.
Secrets of Riverside by Mandy Magro
Can love conquer all? A moving story of overcoming the past and second chances from bestselling Australian romance author Mandy Magro. Can their love heal the shadows of the past?
After losing her family in a tragic fire when she was a child, Amelia Price has battled to put the shattered pieces of her life back together. Even so, she’s never felt like she belongs anywhere, and she longs for stability and love. When a mysterious letter turns up at her apartment with hints that she’ll uncover the truth behind what happened all those years ago if she goes to the sleepy, picturesque town of Riverside, she sets off on a journey to tropical Far North Queensland.
Jarrah King owns and runs the Riverside Roadhouse. He loves the simpleness of country living, and the fact it gives him complete anonymity. Over the years he’s made a life for himself under a new name, however his past has never stopped haunting him.
When a sassy blonde takes up the new cook position, he can’t help but be drawn to her vivacious personality. But he can tell there’s also pain hiding underneath her bubbly facade and he longs to erase those shadows. However, lowering his defences to let her in may risk his new identity, as well as everything he holds dear.
Can Amelia show him that love is worth the risk? Or will the secrets of their entwined past tear them apart forever?
And, One Long Weekend by Shari Low
When all seems lost, hope remains… Val Murray has mislaid her most precious mementoes of the people she’s loved and lost. Can her family, the wonders of technology and a little divine intervention somehow mend her shattered heart?
Sophie Smith had to take a rain check on a marriage proposal. Will her bid to turn back the clock lead her to her greatest love or yet another heartbreak?
Alice McLenn stood by her husband, Larry when a scandal cost them everything. When he hits the headlines again, Alice has an opportunity to leave – but can she find the strength to finally walk away?
Rory Brookes was forced to turn his back on his parents to save his career and marriage. Now, he’s lost his job and wife on the same day. Is it too late to make amends with the one person who never let him down?
Three days. Four broken hearts. Just one weekend to make them whole again.
Sorry, this post isn’t going to be a chatty one, and I am going to apologise in advance for probably not being able to visit everyone’s posts over the next few days, but I need to spend time with family. I am meeting a lot of extended family for the first time ever! Isn’t it sad that we only seem to catch up when someone dies. I am going to try and do better.
Sandy's Book a Day Blog 