The Dead Romantics by Ashely Poston
Florence ‘Flo’ Day is a novelist with one not very successful novel to her name. She has been working as a ghost writer for a famous novelist, but since her grade a dickback boyfriend quite literally dumped her she can’t find her groove. Her super sexy new editor tells her to get her ass in gear, but she can’t – and then her beloved father dies, her world shatters, and she returns home to the town she fled when she was eighteen. You see, Flo […]
We Are All Guilty Here (North Falls #1) by Karin Slaughter
Emmy Clifton works as a cop for a small town police force. At the start of the novel, she’s at the town’s fourth of July celebrations. She picks a fight with her no-good husband, then brushes off Madison, her friend’s teenage daughter. And then Madison disappears along with her friend Cheyenne. All that is found are the girls’ discarded bikes, and a large puddle of blood. Slaughter rose to fame with her Grant County series, and those books will always have a special place in […]
The Word is Murder (Hawthorne and Horowitz #1) by Anthony Horowitz
Anthony Horowitz is a reasonably well-known writer. He’s written Sherlock Holmes stories (with the express approval of Conan Doyle’s descendants, mind you). He’s written episodes of Midsomer Murders – the early ones, before the thing went haywire and we began to wonder why this quaint English district had such a high homicide rate. He’s doing well for himself. Therefore, when the boorish Daniel Hawthorne approaches him and asks him to collaborate on a novel, he is inclined to turn him down. Yet somehow, Hawthorne – […]
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
Brothers Peter (32) and Ivan (22) could not be more different. Peter is a successful human rights lawyer and university lecturer, attractive, a social butterfly. Ivan, on the other hand, is an underemployed, underachieving chess player. He’s awkward and while he’s not ugly, his second-hand clothing (a deliberate choice made for ethical, not financial reasons) and braces make him a far cry from his more glamorous brother. They are both still grieving from the death of their father from cancer, a few months prior. Instead […]
Let Me Lie by Clare Mackintosh
Anna Johnson is home alone with her eight week old daughter. It’s nearly Christmas, and Anna is struggling. Around this time last year, her mother took her own life. She jumped off the cliff in a copycat move that also took the life of Anna’s father several months prior to that. Anna’s partner Mark is loving and supportive, but when Anna receives a mysterious note that tells her her parents’ death may not have been suicide after all, he tries to talk her out of […]
Girl A by Abigail Dean
When we meet Lex Gracie, she is on her way to the prison where her mother has died. Her mother has left the few possessions she has to her children. Lex is the executor of her will. Lex, though, wants nothing to do with her mother. We learn why as the novel continues: years ago, the Gracie children were freed from what the press has deemed a “house of horrors”, where the starving children were chained to their beds as their increasingly erratic father fell […]
