Ten! Yes, ten new titles arrived to review this week. What was I thinking? But so many of my favorite authors have put books up on NetGalley this week, that I just couldn’t resist!
So, what are these titles?
If Something Happens to Me by Alex Finlay. I have enjoyed every book I have read by this author; he sure knows how to write a tense and absorbing read!
The crushing blow to the head. Hands yanking him from the vehicle. His girlfriend’s piercing scream…
For the past five years, Ryan Richardson has relived that terrible night. With no trace of Ali after she is abducted, a cloud of suspicion hangs over him, though he is never charged. Trying to put his past behind him, Ryan changes his name and enters law school.
It’s on a summer trip to Italy that he gets the call: his missing car has finally been found, submerged in a lake in his hometown. But inside the car are two dead men. The only trace of Ali is a cryptic note, the envelope in her handwriting stating If something happens to me…
Reeling from the news, Ryan sees the man who has haunted his nightmares since the night Ali was taken. But how could that be possible, so far from home? His search for answers leads him to England and France, but the truth may lie in the shape of two very different people back in the USA.
Dog Days by Wendy Corsi Straub is the next instalment of the Lily Dale mysteries. I have come to feel a great affection for these characters.
After attending a family wedding in Chicago, young widow Bella Jordan is returning to the guesthouse she runs in Lily Dale – the quirky upstate New York lakeside village famous for its spiritual mediums – when she catches a glimpse of the impossible at the airport: her late husband Sam.
A former science teacher, Bella is grounded in facts and logic. She doesn’t believe in ghosts. But even when she’s back home with the competing distractions of her quirky guests, small son Max, resident pet cats and a very unexpected litter of puppies, Bella can’t find a good explanation for what she’s seen.
The situation gets even stranger when her psychic friend Odelia tells her that she made contact with Sam’s spirit and he shared a significant name: Kevin . . . Bacon!
Bella doesn’t know what to think, but when she glimpses Sam again and things start to vanish around her, she knows she has to get to the bottom of the strange happenings – even if that means letting go for good . . .
Fiona Walker is an author whose books I can never wait to get my hands on! Her latest is The Art of Murder.
Welcome to the beautiful English village of Inkbury. Tucked deep in the North Wessex Downs, its only claim to fame is the picturesque riverside that once appeared in a Richard Curtis movie. That is, until the murder…
Former stand-up comic Juno Mulligan has been suffering a serious sense-of-humour failure. Not only has she lost the love of her life, but she’s having to relocate to the (admittedly idyllic) village of Inkbury to watch out for her elderly mother, who she’s genuinely worried might be marrying a wife-killer.
She hopes that her old friend, disgraced-journalist-turned-novelist Phoebe Fredericks can help her crack the case of whether her mother’s perma-tanned, iceberg-smiled, three-times-a-widower fiancé is hiding a murderous past.
But before they have a chance, the local art dealer washes up distinctly dead in the village’s famous river. His lover is in the frame, but Juno and Phoebe suspect that there is a deeper secret… One that relates to Phoebe’s own past and Juno’s present.
Will the unofficial Village Detective Agency solve the mystery before the killer strikes again? In sleepy Inkbury, as they soon discover, living one’s best midlife can be murder.
Beth Moran is an author who always gives me all the feels with her heartwarming novels. It Had To Be You is one I just had to read.
Growing up, sisters Libby and Nicky never knew who they’d find at breakfast.
Their parents fostered children of all ages, and although the girls loved playing their part in providing a safe haven, it meant that life was rarely peaceful.
Now as a single mother of two, Libby’s life is still anything but peaceful. In her work as an antenatal coach, as well as for the charity she and Nicky run for teenage mothers, Libby uses all the skills she learnt growing up surrounded by children. Her days are full, caring for her family, the mothers-to-be and the latest strays she has welcomed into her home. But in the dark of the lonely nights, Libby worries she’s falling apart at the seams.
One troubled boy and a reckless decision she made thirteen years ago still haunts her.
Two hearts that were broken, still not mended.
The time has come for Libby to look out for herself. As her family, friends and her community have known forever, Libby is one of a kind, and if she can just learn to love herself, she may be able to welcome back the love she let slip through her fingers.
I have heard a lot about, but whom I have never read until now. The Blood Promise is the first installment in a new Scottish crime series.
A deadly gift
Imogen Clark wakes up on her 16th birthday to find her parents dead at the breakfast table, along with a message from their killer.
A twist of fate
Detectives Jazzy Solanki and Annie McQueen join the investigation, but the more they discover, the more Jazzy suspects that the killing is a twisted message for her. Jazzy shares the same birthday as Imogen, and believes that this is more than a coincidence.
A race to catch a killer
When Jazzy discovers the connection between the killer and the stalker who has been following her for years, she is forced to confront the dark past she was desperate to keep hidden. She must stop at nothing to solve the case, before she becomes the next victim…
The first of two Australian titles this week is Down the Track by Stella Quinn, also a new-to-me author.
Dr Joanne Tan is an expert in a lot of things. Love isn’t one of them.
Being thirty-something, broke, divorced and in a cold war with her ten-year-old son is a lot, but Jo’s handling it. Just. At least she is until her job at the Natural History Museum is put in jeopardy. An invitation to dig up dinosaur bones on a remote Queensland sheep station arrives at just the right time.
It’s not her first trip to Yindi Creek, but it’s not as though anyone will remember her from fifteen years ago … And by anyone, of course, she means the pilot she had that fling with. The fling that taught her she’s far safer sticking to science …
Gavin ‘Hux’ Huxtable, helicopter pilot and reluctant sheep-shearer, has turned his broken heart into a secret (and successful) writing career. But running into Jo again, all these years down the track, stirs up a lot more than outback country dust.
A missing person, a fossilised legbone and a nosy country cop force Jo and Hux together and the sparks that start flying don’t go unnoticed by the locals …
Digging up the past isn’t easy. Digging up the truth can be even harder.
Susan Loves Books is to blame for this title! I saw it on her post and had to have it! The Irish Key by Daisy O’Shea is the first in The Emerald Isles series.
‘Take the key, my pet. I can’t ever go back. The last letter I had from Ireland was clear about that. But one day you may need a safe haven, and it’s the one thing I can give you. Ireland is in your blood, it will keep you safe.’
When Grace arrives tired, tearful and rain-soaked in Roone Bay, the little Irish village where her grandmother Caitlin grew up, she is overwhelmed with longing for Caitlin’s safe, warm arms. The crumbling wreck of Caitlin’s once-beautiful childhood cottage – whose key Grace was given on her wedding day as a secret refuge if she ever needed it – is not the fresh start she’d hoped for. But with her young daughter Olivia to look after and a painful past to hide from, Grace has to stay strong.
Plucking up the courage to ask for help from her kind new neighbours – including quietly rugged carpenter Sean Murphy – Grace gets to work making the house habitable. Soon the view of the deep emerald sea has her captivated, Olivia is blossoming, and Sean makes her laugh in a way she’d forgotten she could…
As she learns more about her family history, with Sean by her side, Grace’s curiosity unearths only further mystery. What drove Caitlin away from Ireland, never to return? But when Grace uncovers a long-lost letter to Caitlin that reveals the heartbreaking truth, she is suddenly threatened by her own devastating secrets.
Grace may have finally found a home for her little family. But when faced with everything she ran from, will the past tear her apart once more? Or will Grace find the strength to stand up for her daughter, her love for Sean, and her new life in Ireland?
David Mark is an author I read religiously. When the Bough Breaks is his latest offering and also the start of a new series.
Traffic cop Sal Delaney’s past is catching up with her . . .
North of England . Cumbria . Salome Delaney didn’t have a great start in life. But her abusive childhood came to a tragic conclusion with the killing of her tyrant mother, Trina, by a jealous ex-boyfriend. At least, that’s what the police say. Sal has never believed kind Wulf, who tried to protect her from her mother’s dark side, could have committed such a crime, but the evidence was irrefutable . . . and who else could have done it?
Now an adult, with a good job as a Collison Investigation Officer, Sal’s done her best to put the past behind her. But one snowy morning she’s called to an accident scene, and she recognizes the body – Barry Ford, the man her mother left Wulf for, all those years ago.
It soon becomes clear this wasn’t just an accident – it was murder. And Wulf, now out of prison, lives very close by . . .
The question of who really killed her mother has haunted Sal her whole life, but as she launches a complex investigation, which gets darker by the hour, she starts to wonder if she really wants to know the answer after all.
Two of this weeks new ARCs are audiobooks – the first is The Intruders, written by Louise Jensen and narrated by Helen Keeley.
They were told to leave. They should have listened.
The perfect opportunity…
A manor house available rent-free to house-sitters is an offer too good to miss for Cass and James, who have been saving for a deposit on their own home for so long.
Although it had been abandoned for almost thirty years, after a home invasion left almost all the inhabitants dead, it is an amazing chance for them to build their future.
But is it worth the price?
Shortly after moving in things take a sinister turn. Objects disappear and turn up in odd places, the clock always stops at the same time, the house is strangely oppressive and sometimes it feels like Cass and James are not alone.
Newington House may have bad energy, and a dark reputation. But surely there’s no reason for history to repeat itself, is there?
The second audiobook is also my second Australian title this week – Red River Road is written by Anna Downes, a new-to-me author, and narrated by Maddy Withington.
Katy Sweeney is looking for her sister. A year earlier, just three weeks into a solo vanlife trip, her free-spirited younger sister, Phoebe, vanished without a trace on the remote, achingly beautiful coastal highway in Western Australia. With no witnesses, no leads, and no DNA evidence, the case has gone cold. But Katy refuses to give up on her.
Using Phoebe’s social media accounts as a map, Katy retraces her sister’s steps, searching for any clues the police may have missed. Was Phoebe being followed? Who had she met along the way, and how dangerous were they?
And then Katy’s path collides with that of Beth, who is on the run from her own dark past. Katy realizes that Beth might be her best—and only—chance of finding the truth, and the two women form an uneasy alliance to find out what really happened to Phoebe in this wild, beautiful, and perilous place.
I think I need to ban myself from NetGalley for a while! What do you think?
Enjoy the remainder of your week, and happy reading!
