Here are 100 books that Black Valley Farm fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’ve been hooked on true crime podcasts ever since Serial burst onto the scene in 2014. My favourites are set in remote locations and breathe life into long-forgotten cases, giving victims’ families hopes of resolution and delivering justice. Initially dispassionate podcasters often find themselves sucked into the stories they cover, continuing for years in a bid to discover the truth. I’m fascinated by what motivates the men and women behind the microphones, which inspired me to write my own podcast novel. Now Unsolved is out there, I love reading other authors’ takes on true crime podcasters and these are five of my favourites – dark and sinister with buckets of atmosphere!
One of the things that appeals to me about true crime podcasts is the idea that people who have harboured secrets for decades can be ready to set them free.
In Beneath Devil’s Bridge, young true crime podcaster Trinity Scott wants to make a name for herself and interviewing the killer locked up for the shocking murder of a local teenager is her way to do that. Despite having confessed to the crime, he now claims he wasn’t the killer after all.
The revelations aired in the podcast episodes force ex-police officer Rachel Walczak to question everything she thought she knew. Beautifully written, the characters in this book got right under my skin and the small-town backdrop is the perfect setting.
A true crime podcast yields new revelations about a shocking murder in a riveting novel of suspense by Washington Post and Amazon Charts bestselling author Loreth Anne White.
True crime podcaster Trinity Scott is chasing breakout success, and her brand-new serial may get her there. Her subject is Clayton Jay Pelley. More than two decades ago, the respected family man and guidance counselor confessed to the brutal murder of teenage student Leena Rai. But why he killed her has always been a mystery.
In a series of exclusive interviews from prison, Clayton discloses to Trinity the truth about what happened…
I’ve been hooked on true crime podcasts ever since Serial burst onto the scene in 2014. My favourites are set in remote locations and breathe life into long-forgotten cases, giving victims’ families hopes of resolution and delivering justice. Initially dispassionate podcasters often find themselves sucked into the stories they cover, continuing for years in a bid to discover the truth. I’m fascinated by what motivates the men and women behind the microphones, which inspired me to write my own podcast novel. Now Unsolved is out there, I love reading other authors’ takes on true crime podcasters and these are five of my favourites – dark and sinister with buckets of atmosphere!
When I had the idea for my book, I had originally wondered about writing full podcast episodes but abandoned that idea as it was so tricky. In Six Stories Matt Wesolowski does exactly that and very successfully.
In the book, elusive podcaster Scott King investigates the murder of a teenager at a deserted outward-bound centre on Scarclaw Fell. As the reader you’re put in the shoes of listeners as King digs deeper into the horrifying setting and the group of people who were staying at the centre and live nearby.
This is the first in the series of six atmospheric novels. They’re chilling, unpredictable, and will keep you up at night. Matt’s writing skills blow me away.
Elusive online journalist Scott King investigates the murder of a teenager at an outward bound centre, in the first episode of the critically acclaimed, international bestselling Six Stories series...
For fans of Serial
'Bold, clever and genuinely chilling' Sunday Mirror
'Haunting, horrifying, and heartrending. Fans of Arthur Machen, whose unsettling tale The White People provides an epigraph, will want to check this one out' Publishers Weekly
'Wonderfully horrifying ... the suspense crackles' James Oswald
'A complex and subtle mystery, unfolding like dark origami to reveal the black heart inside' Michael Marshall Smith
I’ve been hooked on true crime podcasts ever since Serial burst onto the scene in 2014. My favourites are set in remote locations and breathe life into long-forgotten cases, giving victims’ families hopes of resolution and delivering justice. Initially dispassionate podcasters often find themselves sucked into the stories they cover, continuing for years in a bid to discover the truth. I’m fascinated by what motivates the men and women behind the microphones, which inspired me to write my own podcast novel. Now Unsolved is out there, I love reading other authors’ takes on true crime podcasters and these are five of my favourites – dark and sinister with buckets of atmosphere!
This book broke my heart. Runaway Sadie Smith is on a mission to avenge her murdered sister Mattie. West McCray is the podcaster on the trail of the missing teenager, desperate to find her before it’s too late.
Interspersing podcast episodes with Sadie’s perspective, the story is dark and the events horrifying. There’s something about Sadie that creeps inside you and stays with you long after the final page. Utterly captivating and brutal, it’s the kind of book that makes me want to be a better writer. It also made me cry!
Technically YA but I’m not sure my young teenager would cope with this yet so I’m keeping it…
A missing girl on a journey of revenge and a Serial - like podcast following the clues she's left behind.
Sadie hasn't had an easy life. Growing up on her own, she's been raising her sister Mattie in an isolated small town, trying her best to provide a normal life and keep their heads above water.
But when Mattie is found dead, Sadie's entire world crumbles. After a somewhat botched police investigation, Sadie is determined to bring her sister's killer to justice and hits the road following a few meager clues to find him.
A missing child is every parent’s worst nightmare. Emotionally driven, tense, full of despair and hope, these stories captivate me. When I decided to include a cold case mystery of a toddler’s disappearance in my debut novel, I dove deep into both true crime and fictional novels on the subject. These books represent a range of gripping mysteries about not only finding missing children, but the scrutiny and heartache their mothers face. I hope you find these stories as absorbing, powerful, and suspenseful as I do!
Tense and twisty, All the Dangerous Things is psychological suspense at its finest.
It alternates between the past and present, letting dual mysteries unfold. Both storylines are equally interesting and surprising. I was surprised at nearly every turn, and despite my best efforts, unable to predict how either storyline would unfold.
What I really enjoyed is that it would have been easy to dislike the main character, but by learning her backstory in alternating chapters, I grew more invested in this complicated character as the story went on.
The gripping new atmospheric thriller from the author of the instant New York Times bestseller, A Flicker in the Dark
From the author of New York Times bestseller, A Flicker in the Dark, comes an atmospheric new thriller about one woman's search for the truth
'I devoured this in two evenings and i'm adding Stacy as a go-to author... Thriller fans will adore this read.' Prima
'Pacy and sinister, ALL THE DANGEROUS THINGS has a palpable tension that keeps the pages turning.' Sunday Times and internationally bestselling author, Karin Slaughter
'Brilliant! ... I had to finish this marvelous thriller in…
I have always been interested in and captivated by horror and the darker genres, drawing and painting initially and later on as a writer. I am a full-time tattooist now but I still enjoy writing, and I produced several short stories as well as finished my vampire/Egyptian mythology novel Pharaoh during the coronavirus lockdown when I was unable to work in the tattoo studio. I still draw and paint, and it can be fun illustrating and producing artwork for my fiction, where sometimes one feeds off another.
An amazing and surprising read. When a madman is buried alive by five teenagers who take the law into their own hands, it is hardly a new idea for him to come back for revenge upon them. But Jim Brown takes it several stages further with more dark twists than you could possibly think of.
On the night of a raging electrical storm, a group of teenage boys gather on a secluded hill in Oregon to bury one of their own...alive. It isn't murder, because the "victim" is a willing participant. For sneering, knife-wielding punk Whitey Dobbs it's just a gang-initiation stunt. For the others, however, it's a carefully planned act of revenge – designed to give Whitey Dobbs the fright of his life. But even the best-laid plans can go wrong. And when this joke is over, nobody will be laughing...except maybe Whitey Dobbs.
Twenty-two years later, the events of that stormy night are…
I adore crime fiction, especially mysteries. They make sense. In the real world, crime rarely has the resolution of fiction, and almost never has Belgian detectives with very neat moustaches, or old ladies solving a who-dunnit… I grew up reading these books, mentally inhaling everything from Christie to Rankin to McDermid, and now I spend my days writing brutal but quite silly murders solved by a woman who would really rather wear an old grey fleece and jeans than a sparkly dress, and her friends, the fictional TRASH drag family. Murder mysteries are fun – perfect escapism. In a world so messed up as ours is right now, don’t we need to escape into fiction?
Darker than the others on my list, this is a dip into the world of true crime podcasts and a really twisty, edgy read.
The main character, Cal Lovett, is passionate about justice, and about getting to the root of a crime – not just for the family and the people involved, but for doing the right thing.
This book kept me awake until I’d finished it, and blew me away by the end.
The word ‘gripping’ is massively overused in crime fiction reviews but Unsolved is as gripping as a gripping thing that grips the reader. Hard.
'A remarkable suspense debut... exciting and unsettling.' A.J. Finn, author of The Woman in the Window
He won't rest until he finds out the truth...
Cal Lovett is obsessed with finding justice for the families of missing people. His true crime podcast is his way of helping others, even if he can't help himself.
His sister, Margot, disappeared when he was a child. Only one man seems to know something. But he's behind bars and can't be trusted.
So when the family of a missing Scottish woman begs for his help, he heads to Aberdeenshire in search of the truth.…
I’ve always been deeply moved by how people of substantiative faith translate it into literature. After all, an important difference exists between Christian fiction and fiction by Christian authors. The author, who understands that this life is not everything, is able to infuse so much more depth, emotion, and truth into the narrative than his counterpart. Shortly after watching the movie The Song of Bernadettein Oxford, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote to his son in the RAF to say, “My mind and heart are still filled with Bernadette Soubirous, and long may they be so. Every quality of a ‘fairy story,’ plus truth and sanctity, is an overwhelming mixture.”
This beautifully written children’s book was very meaningful when my mother read it aloud many years ago. The tale follows a poor boy named Diamond who resides in a chilly hayloft above a horse (also named Diamond). It is written with such tenderness and engaging detail that it can’t help but draw the reader into its pages.
The book follows the child’s adventures following his exciting meeting with the beautiful North Wind. It is a refreshingly different and uplifting kind of children’s literature, and it truly is a breath of fresh air.
In this Radio Theatre audio drama adaptation of George MacDonald's classic story, a beautiful woman known as the North Wind blows through a small village in Victorian London, and everyday lives are mysteriously enveloped by a power and a glory. Along the way, she visits a poor stable boy named Diamond and takes him with her on her journeys. "At the Back of the North Wind" explores the place of death in our lives, social injustice, and our deep need for love and forgiveness. C. S. Lewis, author of the classic Chronicles of Narnia series, said of MacDonald, "What he…
Every country suffers from stereotypes, few more than Scotland. Since the nineteenth century, if not earlier, we—and the rest of the world—have built a fantasy history of romantic kilted highlanders, misty glens, and Celtic romance which bears very little relationship to the much richer, much more complex reality of Scotland's past. As a writer and scholar one of my goals has been to explore that past and to dispel—or at least explain—the myths which still obscure it. I live in a small fishing village on the east coast of the country. There are very few kilts and no misty glens.
Surviving in a single manuscript, printed once in 1844, and forgotten almost instantly, the Breiffe Narration is, without doubt, one of the masterpieces of Scottish prose. It is the autobiography, partial in more ways than one, of Father Gilbert Blackhall (d. 1671), a soldier turned Catholic priest from Aberdeenshire who was the confessor to three leading noblewomen during the tumultuous period of the civil wars. Blackhall evades robbers, rescues his noble charges from dastardly plots, and travels halfway across Europe in a first-person narrative written in a rich, broad Scots and full of vivid dialogue (presumably more invented than remembered, but splendid for all that). My copy has almost been read to pieces.
Leather Binding on Spine and Corners with Golden Leaf Printing on round Spine (extra customization on request like complete leather, Golden Screen printing in Front, Color Leather, Colored book etc.) Reprinted in 2019 with the help of original edition published long back [1844]. This book is printed in black & white, sewing binding for longer life, Printed on high quality Paper, re-sized as per Current standards, professionally processed without changing its contents. As these are old books, we processed each page manually and make them readable but in some cases some pages which are blur or missing or black spots.…
I was a small child when I saw Elizabeth’s photograph in the newspapers. She'd been stolen when she was a few months old and reunited with her family four years later. Many decades afterwards, I traced the photograph for research purposes. It was exactly as I remembered: a confused, little girl who'd believed she was an adored, only child until she was removed from the woman who stole her. Perhaps she’s the reason I’m fascinated by books about children reared under an assumed identity. Such books have offered me a glimpse into another world where such an act is committed and set against a fascinating, informative background.
As a writer, I'm intrigued by collaborations between authors. It must be an exhilarating experience to co-write a book, but are there also difficulties as the authors merge their different genres and styles into a seamless narrative?
This book had a theme that interested me, and I was keen to see how two minds could work in creative tandem. Did the authors develop different characters? Did they write alternating chapters? Did they disagree over elements of the plot? Curiosity as well as sheer enjoyment carried me through this colorful and nail-biting story about a stolen child and the earth-shattering effects it had on the lives of two very disparate women.
A mother with a dark secret... A daughter dying to tell.
When 3-month-old Max is abducted, his parents are plunged into their worst nightmare. Devastated mum Sarah only took her eyes off him for a second, but that doesn't stop her guilt. Even husband Jake can't hide his anger that their little boy went missing on her watch.
By contrast there are smiles and celebration at a caravan park in Lincolnshire, as baby Blaze is introduced to the Star family. Jenna and Gary are delighted with the new addition to their family. He is their fourth child and a real…
I’m a children’s book author-illustrator who loves picture books that can tackle difficult topics in a unique way. Along with Where Is Poppy?, I’ve also illustrated The Remember Balloons, written by Jessie Oliveros, which helps to gently explain Alzheimer’s and memory loss to kids without sugarcoating the realities of the illness. I think books can be a great tool for helping kids understand and process ideas that can be a little heavy or overwhelming, even for adults.
This book is a quiet and moving book about the loss of a father, which is also a lovely ode to nature.
It feels even more special knowing that Brian Pinkney finished the final art of this book after his father, Jerry, passed away, mirroring the boy in the story whose father leaves behind a final page in his sketchbook for him to finish.
In this moving account of loss, a boy takes a walk in the woods and makes a discovery that changes his understanding of his father.
A week after the funeral I stare in the morning mirror Angry that my father’s eyes Stare back at me.
Confused and distraught after the death of his father, a boy opens an envelope he left behind and is surprised to find a map of the woods beyond their house, with one spot marked in bright red. But why? The woods had been something they shared together, why would his father want him to go…
