'For me this book adds the excitement of the TV series 'Dexter' to the best puzzle elements of Agatha Christie. The book challenges its reader not only to solve crimes, but also to decide whether murder is ever justified - even by its great main character.
View Woman of the Dead
'The Wicker Man' meets the 'Furies' on a remote island, where young boys have started to go missing. But this is no ordinary island. There is a house of horrors that makes Amityville look like child's play, and a level of madness that would make Edgar Allan Poe blanch. A worthy successor to Mary Shelley.
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Horror, thriller and fantasy meet in this novel, which kept me awake through the night wanting to see how it would end. Liz, a troubled black woman, visits her nearly all-white birthplace to attend the wedding of her best friend Mel. When Mel’s young daughter disappears, it sets in motion long-forgotten memories of a creature in the woods that abducts and maims little black girls. Tense, page-turning stuff.
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Autistic mother Sunday lives with her teenage daughter, Dolly, in a small cottage in the Lake District. When outwardly polished and seemingly charming couple, Vita and Rollo, come to live next door, Dolly and Sunday soon come under their spell. I loved the brooding atmosphere in the book, as much as the voice of Sunday who is brutally honest telling the story.
View All the Little Bird-Hearts
A BBC film crew travel to India for a documentary on an open prison where murderers live with their families in peace and harmony, or so the prison warden would like us to believe. However, tranquility and boredom is not what the reporters need for their story... Colourful, with vivid imagery of scrutinised, closeted prison life locked around Ray and her developing moral conflict veiled by an uncomfortable menacing feeling throughout.
This gripping and tense novel is beautifully written and kept me engaged throughout. While the plot driver might be fantastical - a murdered family returns from the afterlife and has one night for a surgeon to heal their wounds - this story is grounded in reality. The exasperation of the surgeon at his limited equipment and the desperation of the parents wishing to save their children had me racing through to the end.
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Enigmatic, puzzling, compelling. A book that defies easy categorising. It is the story of a group of islands - The Dream Archipelago - and the stories held within them. The layers of the story unfold, though not always in sequence, with secrets gradually revealing themselves, allowing you, the reader to piece the puzzle together.
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A Paris in the fallout of war between rival magicians' Houses, angels regularly falling out of heaven, a dragon realm under the Seine, addiction to angel essence clearly replacing narcotics and their associated gangland crime. There are so many elements here to grapple with as the author invites you to join her in welding together this gripping fantasy, crime, thriller mash up. An epic read.
Delight in the shocking combination of a light-hearted tone and vicious humour in this serial killer romp. Told with deadpan humour, you'll find yourself siding with the damaged main character as she leads an increasingly twisty killing spree, uncovering other people's secrets and narrowly escaping discovery along the way. While told with a light touch this book does include themes of abuse of children and the elderly as well as grief and loss.
View You’d Look Better as a Ghost
Ada is born and reborn in a 15th century Ghanaian village, a world war 2 concentration camp and modern day London and Berlin. Her lives are linked by a bracelet and a narrator who embodies a door knocker, a hut and a passport - and who has a long running tussle with God to be born a human. Moving yet often funny, I loved the whole concept and originality of this debut novel and its progress through the centuries. God is brilliant!
View Ada's RealmYou won’t find the biggest bestsellers on Whichbook as everyone knows about them already. But you can use your enjoyment of a current bestseller to see titles with a similar mood that you might try next.
