Netgalley picks of the week | 18th – 8th January

Hello everyone! Here is my latest Netgalley picks blog post.

It’s been quite a while since I last did a Netgalley post, due to Christmas and New Years both falling on Monday’s this year! Therefore, this is a collection of all the books missed over those couple of weeks – I thought not much would have been uploaded over the bust Christmas period, but I was clearly wrong! It’s a very busy post today.

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

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Title: The Fortunate Brother

Author: Donna Morrissey

Synopsis: A dark, atmospheric and compelling novel about the aftermath of a murder in a claustrophobic rural community in Newfoundland. When a body is found in the lake suspicion falls on the troubled Now family and as the mystery unfolds other, far deeper, secrets are revealed.

Genre: mystery & thrillers, literary fiction

Publisher: Canongate Books

Publishing: 13 Mar 2018

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Title: Best Friends Forever

Author: Margot Hunt

Synopsis: How well do you really know your best friend?

Kat Grant and Alice Campbell have a friendship forged in shared confidences and long lunches lubricated by expensive wine. Though they’re very different women — the artsy socialite and the struggling suburbanite — they’re each other’s rocks. But even rocks crumble under pressure. Like when Kat’s financier husband Howard plunges to his death from the second-floor balcony of their South Florida mansion.

Howard was a jerk, a drunk, a bully and, police say, a murder victim. The questions begin piling up. Like why Kat has suddenly gone dark: no calls, no texts and no chance her wealthy family will let Alice see her. Why investigators are looking so hard in Alice’s direction. Who stands to get hurt next. And who is the cool liar — the masterful manipulator behind it all.

Genre: mystery & thrillers

Publisher: HQ

Publishing: 22 Jan 2018

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Title: Liars

Author: Frances Vick

Synopsis:

He loves you. He’d do anything for you. But you don’t even know him.

Jenny hasn’t had an easy life – no job and no money, with a sick mother and an abusive ex-stepfather. Not that anybody cares, she’s from the wrong side of town.

David has taken care of Jenny ever since they were at school together. He knows how special she is, how much she needs his support. David has a lot of love to give.

Jenny and David aren’t in a relationship. They aren’t even friends.

Jenny thinks she’s free to do what she wants, see who she likes. What does David think? Well, you’ll have to find out.

Genre: mystery & thrillers, general fiction

Publisher: Bookouture

Publishing: 26 Jan 2018

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Title: My Mother, The Liar

Author: Ann Troup

Synopsis: Two dead bodies. A lifetime of secrets.

When Rachel Porter’s estranged mother dies, she returns to her family home filled with dread about having to face her past, and the people who populated it.

Little does she know that there are dead bodies waiting to be discovered, and a lifetime of secrets are about to untangle.

Secrets kept by her mother, the liar.

Genre: mystery & thrillers, women’s fiction

Publisher: HQ Digital

Publishing: 12 Feb 2018

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Title: Obscura

Author: Joe Hart

Synopsis: She’s felt it before… the fear of losing control. And it’s happening again.

In the near future, an aggressive and terrifying new form of dementia is affecting victims of all ages. The cause is unknown, and the symptoms are disturbing. Dr. Gillian Ryan is on the cutting edge of research and desperately determined to find a cure. She’s already lost her husband to the disease, and now her young daughter is slowly succumbing as well. After losing her funding, she is given the unique opportunity to expand her research. She will travel with a NASA team to a space station where the crew has been stricken with symptoms of a similar inexplicable psychosis—memory loss, trances, and violent, uncontrollable impulses.

Crippled by a secret addiction and suffering from creeping paranoia, Gillian finds her journey becoming a nightmare as unexplainable and violent events plague the mission. With her grip weakening on reality, she starts to doubt her own innocence. And she’s beginning to question so much more—like the true nature of the mission, the motivations of the crew, and every deadly new secret space has to offer.

Genre: mystery & thrillers, sci-fi & fantasy

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer

Publishing: 08 May 2018

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Title: Missing Molly

Author: Natalie Barelli

Synopsis: Everyone has secrets, and Rachel Holloway is no exception. She’s worked hard to keep the past where it belongs: dead and buried. And so far, she’s been very successful.

But now the small newspaper where she works wants to produce a podcast on a cold case: the disappearance fifteen years ago of little Molly Forster, aged nine.

Some secrets should never see the light of day, and as far as Rachel is concerned, whatever happened to little Molly is one of them. Rachel has a life now, a boyfriend she loves and a three-year-old daughter she adores, and she will do anything to protect them.

But to do that, no one can ever know the truth: that she is Molly Forster.

Genre: mystery & thrillers

Publisher: The Last Bureau

Publishing: 05 Jan 2018

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Title: Find You in the Dark

Author: Nathan Ripley

Synopsis: For years, unbeknownst to his wife and teenage daughter, Martin Reese has been illegally buying police files on serial killers and obsessively studying them, using them as guides to find the missing bodies of victims. He doesn’t take any souvenirs, just photos that he stores in an old laptop, and then he turns in the results anonymously. Martin sees his work as a public service, a righting of wrongs.

Detective Sandra Whittal sees the situation differently. On a meteoric rise in police ranks due to her case‑closing efficiency, Whittal is suspicious of the mysterious source she calls the Finder, especially since he keeps leading the police right to the bodies. Even if he isn’t the one leaving bodies behind, how can she be sure he won’t start soon?

On his latest dig, Martin searches for the first kill of Jason Shurn, the early 1990s murderer who may have been responsible for the disappearance of his wife’s sister. But when he arrives at the site, he finds more than just bones. There’s a freshly killed body—a young and missing Seattle woman—lying among remains that were left there decades ago. Someone else knew where Jason Shurn left the corpses of his victims…and that someone isn’t happy that Martin has been going around digging up his work. And when a crooked cop with a tenuous tie to Martin vanishes, Whittal begins to zero in on the Finder.

Hunted by a real killer and by Whittal, Martin realizes that in order to escape, he may have to go deeper into the killer’s dark world than he ever thought…

Genre: mystery & thrillers

Publisher: Atria Books

Publishing: 19 Jun 2018

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Title: Only the Rain

Author: Randall Silvis

Synopsis: When family man and war veteran Russell loses his job as a quarry worker, his life suddenly seems more like a waking nightmare than a chance to finally live the American dream. Facing bills, a new baby, and a bone-dry bank account, he’s got nothing left to lose. Russell comes to the rescue of a naked stranger dancing in the rain, and what was supposed to be a straightforward good deed turns into a spiral of danger. When Russell finds an enticing stash of money in the woman’s house, he knows the cash could be his only hope. Taking just a handful will save his family’s future.

His “victimless crime” seems to be anything but risky—until the criminals he robbed come looking for their dirty money. Russell’s ready to surrender it, but then his daughter gets sick…and he must choose between saving her or giving the devils their due. Someone’s going to pay. The question is, how much?

Genre: mystery & thrillers, general fiction

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer

Publishing: 01 Jan 2018

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Title: The Last Thing She Ever Did

Author: Gregg Olsen

Synopsis: The community along Oregon’s Deschutes River is one of successful careers and perfect families. For years, up-and-comers Liz and Owen have admired their good friends and neighbors, Carole and David. They appear to have it all—security, happiness, and a beautiful young son, Charlie.

Then Charlie vanishes without a trace, and all that seemed safe is shattered by a tragedy that is incomprehensible—except to Liz.

It took one fleeting moment for her to change the lives of everyone she loves—a heartrending accident that can’t be undone. Neither can the second-worst mistake of her life: concealing it. As two marriages crack and buckle in grief and fear, Liz retreats into her own dark place of guilt, escalating paranoia—and betrayals even she can’t imagine. Because there’s another good neighbor who has his own secrets, his own pain, and his own reasons for watching Liz’s every move.

And only he knows that the mystery of the missing boy on the Deschutes River is far from over.

Genre: mystery & thrillers, general fiction

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer

Publishing: 01 Jan 2018

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Title: The Good Son

Author: You-Jeong Jeong

Synopsis: Who can you trust if you can’t trust yourself?

Early one morning, twenty-six-year-old Yu-jin wakes up to a strange metallic smell, and a phone call from his brother asking if everything’s all right at home – he missed a call from their mother in the middle of the night. Yu-jin soon discovers her murdered body, lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs of their stylish Seoul duplex. He can’t remember much about the night before; having suffered from seizures for most of his life, Yu-jin often has trouble with his memory. All he has is a faint impression of his mother calling his name. But was she calling for help? Or begging for her life?

Genre: mystery & thrillers

Publisher: Penguin Books

Publishing: 05 Jun 2018

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Title: The Lonely Witness

Author: William Boyle

Synopsis: When a young woman with a sordid past witnesses a murder, she finds herself fascinated by the killer and decides to track him down herself.

Amy was once a party girl, but she now lives a lonely life, helping the house-bound to receive communion in the Gravesend neighborhood of Brooklyn. She stops in at one of the apartments on her route, where Mrs. Epifanio, the elderly woman who lives there, says she hasn’t seen her usual caretaker, Diane, in a few days. Supposedly, Diane has the flu—or so Diane’s son Vincent said when he first dropped by and vanished into Mrs. E’s bedroom to do no-one-knows-what.

Amy’s brief interaction with Vincent in the apartment that day sets off warning bells, so she assures Mrs. E that she’ll find out what’s really going on with both him and his mother. She tails Vincent through Brooklyn, eventually following him and a mysterious man out of a local dive bar. At first, the men are only talking as they walk, but then, almost before Amy can register what has happened, Vincent is dead. For reasons she can’t quite understand, Amy finds herself captivated by both the crime she witnessed and the murderer himself. She doesn’t call the cops to report what she’s seen. Instead, she collects the murder weapon from the sidewalk and soon finds herself on the trail of a killer.

Genre: mystery & thrillers

Publisher: Pegasus Books

Publishing: 01 May 2018

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Title: Hold My Hand

Author: M. J. Ford

Synopsis: How long do you hunt for the missing?

A horrible vanishing act…

When a young Josie Masters sees a boy wearing a red football shirt, Dylan Jones, being taken by a clown at a carnival, she tries to alert the crowds. But it’s too late. Dylan has disappeared…

Thirty years later, Josie is working as a police officer in Bath. The remains of the body of a child have been found – complete with tatters of a torn red football shirt. Is it the boy she saw vanish in the clutches of the clown? Or is it someone else altogether?

And then another child disappears…

Genre: mystery & thrillers

Publisher: Avon Books

Publishing: 08 Mar 2018

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Title: Skin Deep

Author: Liz Nugent

Synopsis:  ‘Once I had cleared the bottles away and washed the blood off the floor, I needed to get out of the flat.’

Cordelia Russell has been living on the Côte d’Azur for ten years, posing a posh English woman fallen on hard times. But her luck is running out. Desperate to escape her grotty flat and grim reality, Cordelia spends a night at a glittering party. Surrounded by the young, beautiful and privileged she feels her age and her poverty. As dawn breaks she stumbles home through the back streets. Even before she opens her door she can hear the flies buzzing. It hasn’t taken long for the corpse in her bedroom to commence decomposing…

Genre: mystery & thrillers

Publisher: Penguin Books (UK)

Publishing: 05 Apr 2018

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Title: The Perfect Girlfriend

Author: Karen Hamilton

Synopsis: Juliette loves Nate.
She will follow him anywhere. She’s even become a flight
attendant for his airline, so she can keep a closer eye on him.

They are meant to be.
The fact that Nate broke up with her six months ago means nothing.
Because Juliette has a plan to win him back.

She is the perfect girlfriend.
And she’ll make sure no one stops her from
getting exactly what she wants.

True love hurts, but Juliette knows it’s worth all the pain…

Genre: mystery & thrillers

Publisher: Hatchette

Publishing: 27 Feb 2018

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Title: Little Beast

Author: Julie Demers

Synopsis: It’s 1944, and a little village in rural Quebec sits quietly beside an aging mountain and an angry river. The air tastes of kelp, and the wind keeps knocking over the cross. Beside that river an eleven-year-old girl lives with her parents. Her mother is very sad, and her father has vanished because he can’t bear to look at his own daughter. You see, this little girl has suddenly sprouted a full beard.

And so her mother has shut the curtains and locked the girl inside to keep her safe from the townspeople, the Boots, who think there’s something wrong with a bearded little girl. And when they come for her, she escapes into the wintry night…

Genre: general fiction, literary fiction

Publisher: Coach House Books

Publishing: 22 May 2018

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Title: Things Bright and Beautiful

Author: Anbara Salam

Synopsis: Mission House was not built for three people. Especially when one of them won’t stop humming.

1954, the South Pacific islands. When Beatriz Hanlon agreed to accompany her missionary husband Max to a remote island, she knew there would be challenges. But it isn’t just the heat and the damp and the dirt. There are more insects than she could ever have imagined, and the islanders are strangely hostile. And then there are the awful noises coming from the church at night. Yet as the months go by, Bea slowly grows accustomed to life on the island. That is until an unexpected and interminably humming guest arrives, and the couple’s claustrophobic existence is stretched to breaking point. Events draw to a terrible climax, and Bea watches helplessly as her husband’s guilt drives him into madness. It’s not long before Bea finds herself fighting for her freedom, and her life.

Genre: general fiction, literary fiction

Publisher: Coach House Books

Publishing: 22 May 2018

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Title: Half Moon Bay

Author: Alice LaPlante

Synopsis: Jane loses everything when her teenage daughter is killed in a senseless accident. Jane is devastated, but sometime later, she makes one tiny stab at a new life: she moves from San Francisco to the tiny seaside town of Half Moon Bay. She is inconsolable, and yet, as the months go by, she is able to cobble together some version of a job, of friends, of the possibility of peace.

And then, children begin to disappear. And soon, Jane sees her own pain reflected in all the parents in the town. She wonders if she will be able to live through the aching loss, the fear all around her. But as the disappearances continue, she begins to see that what her neighbors are wondering is if it is Jane herself who has unleashed the horror of loss.

Genre: general fiction

Publisher: Scribner

Publishing: 10 Jul 2018

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That’s it (!!) for this week everyone! I’m trying to stay away from Netgalley at the moment, so none of these books have been requested by me, even though I really like the look of a few of them!

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