Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It was created by Marcia @ A Girl and Her Books but now has a permanent home here

 

I got two kindle eBooks this week and both were only £0.99 each.

 

The Railway Man's Wife by Ashley Hay 

 

In a small town on the land's edge, in the strange space at a war's end, a widow, a poet and a doctor each try to find their own peace, and their own new story.

In Thirroul, in 1948, people chase their dreams through the books in the railway's library. Anikka Lachlan searches for solace after her life is destroyed by a single random act. Roy McKinnon, who found poetry in the mess of war, has lost his words and his hope. Frank McKinnon is trapped by the guilt of those his treatment and care failed on their first day of freedom. All three struggle with the same question: how now to be alive.

Written in clear, shining prose and with an eloquent understanding of the human heart, The Railwayman's Wife explores the power of beginnings and endings, and how hard it can be sometimes to tell them apart. It's a story of life, loss and what comes after; of connection and separation, longing and acceptance. Most of all, it celebrates love in all its forms, and the beauty of discovering that loving someone can be as extraordinary as being loved yourself.

A story that will break your heart with hope. 

 

 

The Silent Hours by Cesca Major

An epic, sweeping tale of love and loss inspired by heartrending true events in the Unoccupied Zone of wartime France.

The Silent Hours follows three people whose lives are bound together, before war tears them apart:

Adeline, a mute who takes refuge in a convent, haunted by memories of her past;

Sebastian, a young Jewish banker whose love for the beautiful Isabelle will change the course of his life dramatically;

Tristin, a nine-year-old boy, whose family moves from Paris to settle in a village that is seemingly untouched by war.

Beautifully wrought, utterly compelling and with a shocking true story at its core, The Silent Hours is an unforgettable portrayal of love and loss.

Mailbox Monday

 

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It was created by Marcia @ A Girl and Her Books but now has a permanent home here

 

This week I received a copy of Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt from Hodder & Stoughton. I requested it through Bookbridgr quite a while ago and presumed I'd missed out, I was delighted when it arrived on Thursday as it is described as being reminiscent of vintage Stephen King. Those of you who like the sound of it won't have to wait too long either as the publication date is 28th April.

 

 

Whoever is born here, is doomed to stay until death. Whoever comes to stay, never leaves.

Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a seventeenth-century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Blind and silenced, she walks the streets and enters homes at will. She stands next to children's beds for nights on end. So accustomed to her have the townsfolk become that they often forget she's there. Or what a threat she poses. Because if the stitches are ever cut open, the story goes, the whole town will die.

The curse must not be allowed to spread. The elders of Black Spring have used high-tech surveillance to quarantine the town. Frustrated with being kept in lockdown, the town's teenagers decide to break the strict regulations and go viral with the haunting. But, in so doing, they send the town spiraling into a dark nightmare.

 

 

Mailbox Monday

 

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It was created by Marcia @ A Girl and Her Books but now has a permanent home here

 

Another from Netgalley and Transworld Publishers for me this week.  It's by Tammy Cohen, is called When She Was Bad and publication date is 21st April.

 

 

YOU SEE THE PEOPLE YOU WORK WITH EVERY DAY.

BUT WHAT CAN'T YOU SEE?

Amira, Sarah, Paula, Ewan and Charlie have worked together for years - they know how each one likes their coffee, whose love life is a mess, whose children keep them up at night. But their comfortable routine life is suddenly shattered when an aggressive new boss walks in ....

Now, there's something chilling in the air.

Who secretly hates everyone?

Who is tortured by their past?

Who is capable of murder?

Mailbox Monday

 

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It was created by Marcia @ A Girl and Her Books but now has a permanent home here

 

I received The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena from Netgalley and Transworld Publishers. It's a psychological thriller that is being published on 14th July and looks like just my kind of read.

 

 

You never know what's happening on the other side of the wall.

Your neighbour told you that she didn't want your six-month-old daughter at the dinner party. Nothing personal, she just couldn't stand her crying.

Your husband said it would be fine. After all, you only live next door. You'll have the baby monitor and you'll take it in turns to go back every half hour.

Your daughter was sleeping when you checked on her last. But now, as you race up the stairs in your deathly quiet house, your worst fears are realized. She's gone.

You've never had to call the police before. But now they're in your home, and who knows what they'll find there.

What would you be capable of, when pushed past your limit?

 

 

Mailbox Monday

 

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It was created by Marcia @ A Girl and Her Books but now has a permanent home here

 

I received a surprise book post this week from Headline. It's called The Butterfly Summer by Harriet Evans and is due to be published on the 19th May.

 

 

This is the story of Nina Parr, a girl who has grown up in London with her mother after her father's early death catching butterflies in the Amazon. She knows nothing about him, or his family, and has got to the age of almost twenty-five accepting this, until one day in a dusty old library off Piccadilly she bumps into an old lady who seems to recognise her...

 

 

Mailbox Monday

 

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It was created by Marcia @ A Girl and Her Books but now has a permanent home here

 

Just one for me this week but I'm so excited about it, a book proof of This Must Be The Place by Maggie O'Farrell. It's due to be published by Headline on 16th May.

 

Meet Daniel Sullivan, a man with a complicated life.

A New Yorker living in the wilds of Ireland, he has children he never sees in California, a father he loathes in Brooklyn and a wife, Claudette, who is a reclusive ex-film star given to shooting at anyone who ventures up their driveway.

He is also about to find out something about a woman he lost touch with twenty years ago, and this discovery will send him off-course, far away from wife and home. Will his love for Claudette be enough to bring him back?

THIS MUST BE THE PLACE crosses continents and time zones, giving voice to a diverse and complex cast of characters. At its heart, it is an extraordinary portrait of a marriage, the forces that hold it together and the pressures that drive it apart.

Maggie O'Farrell's seventh novel is a dazzling, intimate epic about who we leave behind and who we become as we search for our place in the world.

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It was created by Marcia @ A Girl and Her Books but now has a permanent home here

 

This week I was lucky enough to get Five Rivers on a Wooded Plain by Barney Norris via Netgalley. This was on my wishlist and is published by Doubleday on 21st April 2016.

 

 

'There exists in all of us a song waiting to be sung which is as heart-stopping and vertiginous as the peak of the cathedral. That is the meaning of this quiet city, where the spire soars into the blue, where rivers and stories weave into one another, where lives intertwine.'

 

One quiet evening in Salisbury, the peace is shattered by a serious car crash. At that moment, five lives collide – a flower seller, a schoolboy, an army wife, a security guard, a widower – all facing their own personal disasters. As one of those lives hangs in the balance, the stories of all five unwind, drawn together by connection and coincidence into a web of love, grief, disenchantment and hope that perfectly represents the joys and tragedies of small town life.

 

 

 

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It was created by Marcia @ A Girl and Her Books but now has a permanent home here

 

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas. This week I downloaded two eBooks from the Amazon 12 days of Kindle sale.

 

 

The Good Girl by Mary Kubica

I've been following her for the past few days. I know where she buys her groceries, where she has her dry cleaning done, where she works. I don't know the colour of her eyes or what they look like when they're scared. But I will.

 

  Mia Dennett can't resist a one-night stand with the enigmatic stranger she meets in a bar.
But going home with him might turn out to be the worst mistake of Mia's life... 

An addictively suspenseful and tautly written thriller, The Good Girl is a compulsive debut that reveals how, even in the perfect family, nothing is as it seems...

 

 

 

 

 

Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson's dazzling debut novel is a deeply moving story of family heartbreak and happiness.

Ruby Lennox begins narrating her life at the moment of conception, and from there takes us on a whirlwind tour of the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of an English girl determined to learn about her family and its secrets.

 

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It was created by Marcia @ A Girl and Her Books but now has a permanent home here

 

I downloaded the Kindle edition of The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries this week and started reading it yesterday. 

 

Have yourself a crooked little Christmas with The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries.

Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler collects sixty of his all-time favorite holiday crime stories--many of which are difficult or nearly impossible to find anywhere else. From classic Victorian tales by Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Thomas Hardy, to contemporary stories by Sara Paretsky and Ed McBain, this collection touches on all aspects of the holiday season, and all types of mysteries. They are suspenseful, funny, frightening, and poignant.

Included are puzzles by Mary Higgins Clark, Isaac Asimov, and Ngaio Marsh; uncanny tales in the tradition of A Christmas Carol by Peter Lovesey and Max Allan Collins; O. Henry-like stories by Stanley Ellin and Joseph Shearing, stories by pulp icons John D. MacDonald and Damon Runyon; comic gems from Donald E. Westlake and John Mortimer; and many, many more. Almost any kind of mystery you’re in the mood for--suspense, pure detection, humor, cozy, private eye, or police procedural—can be found in these pages.

FEATURING:
-        Unscrupulous Santas
-        Crimes of Christmases Past and Present
-        Festive felonies
-        Deadly puddings
-        Misdemeanors under the mistletoe
-        Christmas cases for classic characters including Sherlock Holmes, Brother Cadfael, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Ellery Queen, Rumpole of the Bailey, Inspector Morse, Inspector Ghote, A.J. Raffles, and Nero Wolfe. 

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It was created by Marcia @ A Girl and Her Books but now has a permanent home here

 

I received two review books this week:

The One in a Million Boy by Monica Wood

Miss Ona Vitkus has - aside from three months in the summer of 1914 - lived unobtrusively, her secrets fiercely protected.

The boy, with his passion for world records, changes all that. He is eleven. She is one hundred and four years, one hundred and thirty three days old (they are counting). And he makes her feel like she might be really special after all. Better late than never...

Only it's been two weeks now since he last visited, and she's starting to think he's not so different from all the rest.

Then the boy's father comes, for some reason determined to finish his son's good deed. And Ona must show this new stranger that not only are there odd jobs to be done, but a life's ambition to complete . .

Published by Headline on 5th April 2016

The Ballroom by Anna Hope

 

Where love is your only escape ....

1911: Inside an asylum at the edge of the Yorkshire moors,
where men and women are kept apart
by high walls and barred windows,
there is a ballroom vast and beautiful.
For one bright evening every week
they come together
and dance.
When John and Ella meet
It is a dance that will change two lives forever.
            


Published by Doubleday and Transworld on 11th February 2016

I loved Anna Hope's previous novel Wake and you can read my review here
 

 

Mailbox Monday

 

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It was created by Marcia @ A Girl and Her Books but now has a permanent home here

 

This week I received a copy of A Snow Garden and Other Stories from Transworld Publishers. It's a short story collection by Rachel Joyce and looks like a great read for the winter and the lead up to Christmas.

 

 

Seven stories to span the Christmas holidays:

A Faraway Smell of Lemon:  The School Term has ended. It is almost Christmas but Binny, out last-minute shopping couldn't feel less like wishing glad tidings to all men. Ducking out of the rain she finds herself in the sort of shop she would never normally visit.

The Marriage Manual: Christmas Eve. Two parents endeavour to construct their son’s Christmas present from a DIY kit and in the process find themselves deconstructing their marriage.

Christmas at the Airport: A glitch in the system, travellers stranded and all sorts of lives colliding in the face of a sudden birth...

The Boxing Day Ball: Maureen has never been out with the local girls before. Who knew that a disco in the Village Hall could be life-changing?

A Snow Garden: Two little boys, dumped with their divorced father for his share of the Christmas holidays and none of them with a clue how to enjoy it.

I'll Be Home for Christmas The most famous boy in the world comes home hoping to escape the madness with a normal family Christmas.

Trees: As if Christmas wasn't wearing enough, now his elderly parent is asking for a hole in the ground … Father and son break old habits and plant a tree to mark the start of the new year.

Six stories as funny, joyous, poignant and memorable as Christmas should be.

 

 

Publication date: 5th November 2015

 

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It was created by Marcia @ A Girl and Her Books but now has a permanent home here

 

This week I received an ARC of Fiona Barton's debut novel, The Widow. It's a psychological thriller due to be published by Bantam Press on 14th January 2016. There's a lot of anticipation and hype surrounding this book already and I have to say since I started reading it yesterday I can see why.

 

We've all seen him: the man - the monster - staring from the front page of every newspaper, accused of a terrible crime.

But what about her: the woman who grips his arm on the courtroom stairs – the wife who stands by him?

Jean Taylor’s life was blissfully ordinary. Nice house, nice husband. Glen was all she’d ever wanted: her Prince Charming.

Until he became that man accused, that monster on the front page. Jean was married to a man everyone thought capable of unimaginable evil.

But now Glen is dead and she’s alone for the first time, free to tell her story on her own terms.

Jean Taylor is going to tell us what she knows.

Mailbox Monday

 

 

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It was created by Marcia @ A Girl and Her Books but now has a permanent home here

 

Three for me this week, all review books:

 

In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware 

 

Nora hasn’t seen Clare for ten years. Not since Nora walked out of school one day and never went back.
In a dark, dark wood there was a dark, dark house
Until, out of the blue, an invitation to Clare’s hen do arrives. Is this a chance for Nora to finally put her past behind her?
And in the dark, dark house there was a dark, dark room
But something goes wrong. Very wrong.
And in the dark, dark room…
Some things can’t stay secret for ever.

 

The Summer of Secrets by Sarah Jasmon 

 

One day she was there . . .

and the next day, the day after the fire, she was gone.

In the summer of 1983, when Helen is sixteen, Victoria Dover and her eccentric family move in next door, at once making her lonely world a more thrilling place. But the summer ends with a terrible tragedy, and everyone involved – her father and the entire Dover family – simply disappears.
Then one day, thirty years later, Victoria comes back.

The Mistake I Made by Paula Daly

 

The Mistake I Made is the latest page-turner from one of the England’s most captivating new thriller writers. In her provocative and riveting third novel, Paula Daly focuses her masterful eye for psychological suspense and family drama on an indecent proposal that has fatal repercussions.

Single mother Roz has reached breaking-point. After the dissolution of her marriage, Roz’s business has gone under, debts are racking up, the rent is late (again), and she's struggling to provide for her nine-year-old son, who is starting to misbehave in school. Roz is in trouble. Real trouble.

When Roz returns home from work one day and finds an eviction notice, she knows that it’s time for action—she has two weeks to find a solution otherwise they will be kicked out of their home. Increasingly desperate, Roz doesn’t know where to turn. Then the perfect opportunity presents itself. At her sister’s fortieth birthday party, Roz meets Scott Elias—wealthy, powerful, and very married. But the impression Roz leaves on him is indelible. He tracks her down and makes Roz an offer to spend the night with him—for money. He wants no-strings-attached intimacy and can guarantee total discretion. Could it be as simple as it sounds? With that kind of cash, Roz could clear her debts and get her life back on track. But as the situation spirals out of her control, Roz is forced to do things she never thought herself capable of. Can she ever set things right again?


 

 

 

 

Mailbox Monday

 

 

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It was created by Marcia @ A Girl and Her Books but now has a permanent home here

 

This week I got & read Finders Keepers by Stephen King. He's my favourite author and I started reading the book an hour after the postman had delivered it.

 

“Wake up, genius.” So begins King’s instantly riveting story about a vengeful reader. The genius is John Rothstein, a Salinger-like icon who created a famous character, Jimmy Gold, but who hasn’t published a book for decades. Morris Bellamy is livid, not just because Rothstein has stopped providing books, but because the nonconformist Jimmy Gold has sold out for a career in advertising. Morris kills Rothstein and empties his safe of cash, yes, but the real treasure is a trove of notebooks containing at least one more Gold novel.
Morris hides the money and the notebooks, and then he is locked away for another crime. Decades later, a boy named Pete Sauberg finds the treasure, and now it is Pete and his family that Bill Hodges, Holly Gibney, and Jerome Robinson must rescue from the ever-more deranged and vengeful Morris when he’s released from prison after thirty-five years. 

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It was created by Marcia @ A Girl and Her Books but now has a permanent home here

Only one for me this week, A Thorn Among the Lilies by Michael Hiebert. I'm reading it now, I've enjoyed the author's previous two novels in the Detective Leah Teal series so was pleased to get the latest from Netgalley. It's published by Kensington on 30th June.

Detective Leah Teal is privy to most of the secrets in her hometown of Alvin, but there are always surprises to be had. Like the day she agrees to take her daughter, Caroline, to see a psychic for a reading. The psychic hones in on Leah instead, hinting at a string of gruesome killings and insisting that she intervene to prevent more deaths.

When you go looking for trouble, you never know how much you'll find. Sure enough, the psychic's scant clues lead Leah to a cold case from six years ago, when a young woman was found shot to death, her eyelids sewn shut. As Leah digs deeper into old files, a second unsolved case surfaces with the same grisly pattern. While her shrewd young son, Abe, observes from the sidelines, Leah races to prevent another horrific murder, unaware of just how deep the roots of evil can go.

Taut, suspenseful, and rich in Southern atmosphere, A Thorn Among the Lilies is a mesmerizing novel of loss and vengeance, and the lengths some will go to out of loyalty and love.

Mailbox Monday

 

 

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It was created by Marcia @ A Girl and Her Books but now has a permanent home here

 

This week I received The Quality of Silence by Rosamund Lipton from Netgalley. It's due to be published by Little Brown on 2nd July.

Set in the extreme landscape of Alaska, THE QUALITY OF SILENCE follows the story of Yasmin and her deaf daughter Ruby. Yasmin arrives in Alaska to be told her husband, Matt, is dead, the victim of a catastrophic accident. Yasmin, unable to accept this as truth, sets out into the frozen winter landscape, taking Ruby with her in search of answers. But as a storm closes in, Yasmin realises that a very human danger may be keeping pace with them. And with no one else on the road to help, they must keep moving, alone and terrified, through an endless Alaskan night.

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It was created by Marcia @ A Girl and Her Books but now has a permanent home here

 

This week I received two ebooks from Netgalley. They are due to be published by Random House UK, Transworld Publishers in the next few months.   

 

 

The Truth According To Us by Annie Barrows: 

 

BY THE CO-AUTHOR OF THE BESTSELLING THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY.

 

There are small towns in America that never seem to change, places where time holds still, and where nothing has or will – ever - happen.

 

This is a lie.

 

Summer, 1938: the small town of Macedonia, West Virginia, is celebrating its 150th anniversary, to be commemorated with parades, picnics, and most importantly, a book recounting its history. Its reluctant author, the debutante Miss Layla Beck, recently disinherited by her father, arrives in town with one goal – to get out of it as quickly as possible.

Macedonia’s history seems simple enough - brief and uneventful. Then Layla meets the Romeyns: Jottie, Willa, Felix, Emmett, a family at once entertaining, eccentric, seductive, and inextricably bound up in Macedonia’s most well-kept historical secret – a secret yet to be told.

Annie Barrows’ THE TRUTH ACCORDING TO US will spirit you away into a town from a by-gone age, where customs and habits may be different, but where the hearts of its inhabitants, both dark and loving, remain recognisable to all.  

 

 

Take Me With You by Catherine Ryan Hyde:

 

Seth and his little brother Henry haven’t had the most stable of upbringings. Their father has been in and out of jail; their mother took off years ago and hasn't been seen since. Life is constantly uncertain - but a twist of fate could be just what they need.

 

August stopped drinking the day his son died. While on a journey that’s very close to his heart, a breakdown leaves him stranded in a small town and at the mercy of the local mechanic - Seth and Henry’s father.

 

But then August is presented with an offer he doesn't expect: take the two boys with him for the summer, and pay no charge for the repairs.

 

As the unlikely trio set out on their road trip, the most unlikely, unforgettable friendship begins to take shape.

 

 

 

Mailbox Monday

 

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It was created by Marcia @ A Girl and Her Books but now has a permanent home here

 

Only one for me this week, Day Four by Sarah Lotz which I received from the publisher. It is the follow up to The Three and is published by Hodder & Stoughton on 21st May.

Four days into a five day singles cruise on the Gulf of Mexico, the ageing ship Beautiful Dreamer stops dead in the water. With no electricity and no cellular signals, the passengers and crew have no way to call for help. But everyone is certain that rescue teams will come looking for them soon. All they have to do is wait.

That is, until the toilets stop working and the food begins to run out. When the body of a woman is discovered in her cabin the passengers start to panic. There's a murderer on board the Beautiful Dreamer... and maybe something worse.

 

 

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It was created by Marcia @ A Girl and Her Books but now has a permanent home here

 

 

This week I received a copy of A Robot In The Garden by Deborah Install from the publisher. It was published on 23rd April by Doubleday/Transworld Digital and is already getting very good reviews. I'm really looking forward to reading it.

 

 

Ben Chambers wakes up to find an unfamiliar object - rusty and lost - sitting underneath the willow tree in his garden. Refusing to throw it on the skip as his wife Amy advises, he takes it in.

 

Ben does not want children, or even a job, and now he has found yet another reason to stay in his study and ignore everyone.

 

It is only when Amy walks out that Ben realises he has alienated all the human beings in his life. He has only one friend left.

 

This is the story of a unique friendship, and how one man opens his heart to a past he did not want, and a future he cannot lose.

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books came in their mailbox during the last week. It was created by Marcia @ A Girl and Her Books but now has a permanent home here

Just one for me, an arc of The Dead Lands by Benjamin Percy.  I love post apocalyptic novels so I'm really looking forward to reading it, I'll probably start it later this week.

 

In Benjamin Percy's new thriller, a post-apocalyptic reimagining of the Lewis and Clark saga, a super flu and nuclear fallout have made a husk of the world we know. A few humans carry on, living in outposts such as the Sanctuary-the remains of St. Louis-a shielded community that owes its survival to its militant defence and fear-mongering leaders.

Then a rider comes from the wasteland beyond its walls. She reports on the outside world: west of the Cascades, rain falls, crops grow, civilisation thrives. But there is danger too: the rising power of an army that pillages and enslaves every community they happen upon.

Against the wishes of the Sanctuary, a small group sets out in secrecy. Led by Lewis Meriweather and Mina Clark, they hope to expand their infant nation, and to reunite the States. But the Sanctuary will not allow them to escape without a fight.