Beth Cartwright’s debut novel Feathertide is an enchanting tale of one young girl’s quest to find the father she’s never known. Born covered in the feathers of a bird, and kept hidden in a crumbling house full of secrets, Marea has always known she was different, but never known why. And so to find answers, she goes in search of…
Curated by book squirrels
Penguin Books UK
Witnessing a fatal accident involving an acquaintance of hers, on the same day that her granddaughter arrives for a prolonged stay, proves to be a watershed moment not only for Astrid Strick but also her family in All Adults Here, the latest novel from Emma Straub. Astrid Strick has always tried to do her best for her three children. Now,…
In Lost Souls Deputy Coroner and new father Clay Edison’s latest case triggers two parallel investigations into long-buried family ties and secrets, against a backdrop of halted construction work, activists and protestors, court hearings, missing records and more personal threats, in this new novel by father-son duo, Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman. Deputy Coroner Clay Edison is juggling a new baby…
Gilly Macmillan’s latest novel To Tell You The Truth features the ultimate in unreliable narrators, as past and present events in Lucy Harper’s life seem to align with disturbing similarity, when an unsettling house move forces her back to the scene of a traumatic childhood event. Lucy Harper has a talent for invention… She was nine years old when her…
Mary Beth Keane’s Ask Again, Yes is the story of two families, neighbours in upstate New York, and how life can change in an instant but may take a generation before things begin to heal. Gillam, upstate New York: a town of ordinary, big-lawned suburban houses. The Gleesons have recently moved there and soon welcome the Stanhopes as their new…
Then She Vanishes opens with an uncharacteristic and shocking act, no clear motive behind it, but as Claire Douglas soon shows us, things are rarely that straightforward, especially when it comes to family. Heather and Jess were best friends – until the night Heather’s sister vanished. Jess has never forgiven herself for the lie she told that night. Nor has Heather. But…
As a local archaeological dig unearths harsh burial rites and customs, secrets in the Vermuydens’ own more recent past threaten their fragile equilibrium in Fiona Neill’s latest novel. After a chaotic childhood, Grace Vermuyden is determined her own daughters will fulfil the dreams denied to her. Lilly is everyone’s golden girl, the popular, clever daughter she never had to worry…
I am cheating ever so slightly with the book for X in the A to Z Challenge by choosing Exhibit Alexandra which came out in paperback last month retitled His Perfect Wife. Alexandra Southwood has vanished. Her husband, Marc, is beside himself. It isn’t long before the police are searching for a body. But Alexandra is alive – trapped, far…
Eve Chase’s second novel The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde is a dual timeline story about mothers and daughters, sisters, secrets and grief, which switches between 1959 and some fifty years later when new owners move in to the house at the centre of a tragic local mystery. In the heatwave of 1959, four sisters arrive at Applecote Manor to relive…
Fredrick Backman’s Beartown was a firm favourite* among the books I read last year, so I was very happy to see him return to that ice hockey town in a large Swedish forest in Us Against You. Can a broken town survive a second tragedy? By the time the last goal is scored, someone in Beartown will be dead ….