Netgalley picks of the week | 19th – 26th June

This week we have a whole host of amazing books! For those of you who’ve been waiting for The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell, like I have been, well wait no further! It’s on Netgalley finally!

There’s also a republication of a sinister sounding true crime, several awesome UK read now books and a mysterious sci fi / fantasy book!

{CLICK ON THE PICTURES TO BE TAKEN TO THE NETGALLEY PAGE}

Title: The Visitors

Author: Catherine Burns

Synopsis: Marion Zetland lives with her domineering older brother John in a crumbling mansion on the edge of a northern seaside resort. A timid spinster in her fifties who still sleeps with teddy bears, Marion does her best to live by John’s rules, even if it means turning a blind eye to the noises she hears coming from behind the cellar door…and turning a blind eye to the women’s laundry in the hamper that isn’t hers. For years, she’s buried the signs of John’s devastating secret into the deep recesses of her mind—until the day John is crippled by a heart attack, and Marion becomes the only one whose shoulders are fit to bear his secret. Forced to go down to the cellar and face what her brother has kept hidden, Marion discovers more about herself than she ever thought possible. As the truth is slowly unraveled, we finally begin to understand: maybe John isn’t the only one with a dark side….

Genre: mystery & thrillers, literary fiction

Publishing: 26 Sep 2017

Request status: n/a

Title: The Shock

Author: Marc Raabe

Synopsis: When Laura Bjely goes missing during a storm on the Cote d’Azur, the only thing her friend Jan finds is her smartphone – with a disturbing film in the memory.

Back in Berlin, Jan’s neighbour is discovered with a bloody message left on her forehead.

As Jan searches for answers about what happened to Laura, he is thrown into a nightmare of madness and murder.

Genre: mystery & thrillers

Publishing: 24 Aug 2017

Request status: n/a

Title: Kill Me Twice

Author: Simon Booker

Synopsis: Karl Savage is dead. He must be. His ex, Anjelica, is in prison for murdering him in an arson attack. Multiple forensic experts testified to finding his charred remains. So when Anjelica begs investigative journalist Morgan Vine to prove her innocence, it seems an impossible task. It doesn’t matter that Karl was abusive. That Anjelica has a baby to care for. That she’s petrified of fire. The whole world knows Karl is dead.

Then he turns up outside Morgan’s window . . .

Genre: mystery & thrillers, general fiction

Publishing: 24 Aug 2017

Request status: n/a

Title: Heaven’s Crooked Finger

Author: Hank Early

Synopsis: Earl Marcus thought he had left the mountains of Georgia behind forever, and with them, the painful memories of a childhood spent under the evangelical rule of his father RJ’s church—a church built on fear, penance, and the twisting, writhing mass of snakes. But then an ominous photo of RJ is delivered to Earl’s home. The photograph is dated long after his father’s burial, and there’s no doubt that the man in the picture is very much alive.

As Earl returns to Church of the Holy Flame searching for the truth, faithful followers insist that his father has risen to a holy place high in the mountains. Nobody will talk about the teenage girls who go missing, only to return with strange tattoo-like marks on their skin. Rumors swirl about an old well that sits atop one of the mountains, a place of unimaginable power and secrets. Earl doesn’t know what to believe, but he has long been haunted by his father, forever lurking in the shadows of his life. Desperate to leave his sinful Holy Flame childhood in the past, Earl digs up deeply buried secrets to discover the truth before time runs out and he’s the one put underground.

Genre: mystery & thrillers

Publishing: 07 Nov 2017

Request status: requested (I couldn’t help myself!! Annie, I think you might like this one too 😉)

Title: The Silent Companions

Author: Laura Purcell

Synopsis: Newly married, newly widowed Elsie is sent to see out her pregnancy at her late husband’s crumbling country estate, The Bridge.

With her new servants resentful and the local villagers actively hostile, Elsie only has her husband’s awkward cousin for company. Or so she thinks. But inside her new home lies a locked room, and beyond that door lies a two-hundred-year-old diary and a deeply unsettling painted wooden figure – a Silent Companion – that bears a striking resemblance to Elsie herself…

Genre: mystery & thrillers, general fiction

Publishing: 05 Oct 2017

Request status: accepted (I’ve been waiting for this one for ages!!)

Title: The Night Market

Author: Jonathan Moore

Synopsis: It’s late Thursday night, and Inspector Ross Carver is at a crime scene in one of the city’s last luxury homes. The dead man on the floor is covered by an unknown substance that’s eating through his skin. Before Carver can identify it, six FBI agents burst in and remove him from the premises. He’s pushed into a disinfectant trailer, forced to drink a liquid that sends him into seizures, and is shocked unconscious. On Sunday he wakes in his bed to find his neighbor, Mia—who he’s barely ever spoken to—reading aloud to him. He can’t remember the crime scene or how he got home; he has no idea two days have passed. Mia says she saw him being carried into their building by plainclothes police officers, who told her he’d been poisoned. Carver doesn’t really know this woman and has no way of disproving her, but his gut says to keep her close.

Genre: mystery & thrillers

Publishing: 16 Jan 2018

Request status: n/a

Title: The Susan Effect

Author: Peter Hoeg

Synopsis: SUSAN SVENDSEN HAS AN UNUSUAL TALENT. She is an expert in finding out secrets. People feel compelled to confide in her and unwittingly confess their innermost thoughts. Her whole life, she has exploited this talent, but now her family is in jeopardy and there is a prison sentence hanging over her head.

Then Susan gets a timely offer from a former government official: use her power one more time and have all charges dropped. To get her life back in order, she must track down the last surviving members of a secret think tank, the Future Committee, and find out the details in this committee’s mysterious final report. But there are some powerful people determined that the report is never revealed.

Genre: mystery & thrillers, general fiction

Publishing: 03 Aug 2017

Request status: n/a

Title: The Adversary

Author: Emmanuel Carrere

Synopsis: ON THE SATURDAY MORNING OF JANUARY 9, 1993, WHILE JEAN CLAUDE ROMAND WAS KILLING HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN, I WAS WITH MINE IN A PARENT-TEACHER MEETING…

With these chilling first words, acclaimed master of psychological suspense, Emmanuel Carrère, begins his exploration of the double life of a respectable doctor, eighteen years of lies, five murders, and the extremes to which ordinary people can go.

Genre: mystery & thrillers, biographies & memoirs

Publishing: 06 Jul 2017

Request status: n/a (want to tho!!)

Title: The Death of Her

Author: Debbie Howells

Synopsis: A woman’s body is discovered on a Cornish farm, battered and left for dead in a maize field. Airlifted to hospital, her life hanging in the balance, no one’s sure who she is. Three days later she comes round, but her memory is damaged. She knows her name – Evie – but no more, until she remembers another name. Angel – her three-year-old daughter. As the police circulate Evie’s photo, someone recognizes her. Charlotte knew her years ago, at school, when another child went missing. Leah Danning, who vanished whilst in Evie’s care. When the police search Evie’s home, there’s no sign of Angel. More disturbingly, there’s no evidence that she ever lived there, forcing the police to question whether Evie’s having some kind of breakdown. But even from the darkest place she’s ever known, Evie believes her daughter is alive. The police remain unconvinced – unaware that on the fringes of Evie’s life, there’s someone else. Someone hidden, watching her every move, with their own agenda and their own twisted version of reality.

Genre: mystery & thrillers, general fiction

Publishing: 24 Aug 2017

Request status: read now

Title: Are You Sleeping

Author: Kathleen Barber

Synopsis: Josie Buhrman has spent the last ten years trying to escape her family’s reputation and with good reason: her father was murdered, her mother ran away to join a cult, and her twin sister Lanie, once Josie’s closest friend and confidant, betrayed her. Now, Josie has settled in New York with her boyfriend Caleb, and that’s where she intends to stay. The only problem is that she has lied to Caleb about every detail of her past – starting with her last name. Then investigative reporter Poppy Parnell sets off a media firestorm with a hit podcast that reopens the case of her father’s murder and Josie’s carefully constructed world begins to unravel. She is forced to return to her hometown where she must confront the lies from her past – as well as those on which she has staked her future.

Genre: mystery & thrillers, general fiction

Publishing: 10 Aug 2017

Request status: read now

Title: One Perfect Lie

Author: Lisa Scottoline

Synopsis: Single mother Heather would do anything for her son, Jordan. His talent on the high-school baseball field could be his only ticket to college. Yet there are those in Jordan’s team who have the potential to lead him down a darker path. Not least their coach – a new teacher with a dark, hidden agenda of his own.

But there is no such thing as a perfect façade. And under pressure the cracks will soon appear…

If your child conceals the truth, how can you be sure that they are safe?

Genre: mystery & thrillers, general fiction

Publishing: 02 Nov 2017

Request status: read now

Title: The Fifth Doll

Author: Charlie N. Holmberg

Synopsis: Matrona lives in an isolated village, where her life is centered on pleasing her parents. She’s diligent in her chores and has agreed to marry a man of their choosing. But a visit to Slava, the local tradesman, threatens to upend her entire life.

Entering his empty house, Matrona discovers a strange collection of painted nesting dolls—one for every villager. Fascinated, she can’t resist the urge to open the doll with her father’s face. But when her father begins acting strangely, she realizes Slava’s dolls are much more than they seem.

When he learns what she’s done, Slava seizes the opportunity to give Matrona stewardship over the dolls—whether she wants it or not. Forced to open one of her own dolls every three days, she falls deeper into the grim power of Slava’s creations. But nothing can prepare her for the profound secret hiding inside the fifth doll.

Genre: general fiction, sci fi & fantasy

Publishing: 25 Jul 2017

Request status: n/a

Title: To Die in Spring

Author: Ralf Rothmann

Synopsis: Distant, silent, often drunk, Walter Urban is a difficult man to have as a father. But his son—the narrator of this slim, harrowing novel—is curious about Walter’s experiences during World War II, and so makes him a present of a blank notebook in which to write down his memories. Walter dies, however, leaving nothing but the barest skeleton of a story on those pages, leading his son to fill in the gaps himself, rightly or wrongly, with what he can piece together of his father’s early life.

This, then, is the story of Walter and his dangerously outspoken friend Friedrich Caroli, seventeen-year-old trainee milkers on a dairy farm in northern Germany who are tricked into volunteering for the army during the spring of 1945: the last, and in many ways the worst, months of the war. The men are driven to the point of madness by what they experience, and when Friedrich finally deserts his post, Walter is forced to do the unthinkable.

Genre: general fiction

Publishing: 08 Aug 2017

Request status: n/a

That’s it for this week everyone!

Have you requested any of these books, or now plan to? I’d love to hear your thoughts!