In the grand tradition of writers who are drunks (or perhaps drunkards who write), this is a modern addition to the canon.
It’s always a remarkable feat when all you actually do is read a book, but in closing the cover, you feel you’ve been through an ordeal. Traveling with the protagonist to an isolated small-town writer’s retreat is claustrophobic and anxiety-inducing. This book reads like a whodunnit, but in the spirit of "how bad can this get?"
If you’ve ever fancied yourself a creative type, if you’ve ever known or feared an addiction, or if you’re just in the mood to disturb yourself — let this book take you somewhere you ought not to be.
Morris came to Manderlay Colony to write, to share his truth, and create something literary. But on his last night in the quiet, small town, a series of events leave him trapped, with shrinking funds and no sure means of escape. As the hours and days pass, the beer bottles pile up on the bar counter, and as he confronts a man from his past, his sense of self is challenged. Jonathan Harper's debut novel is snarky, at times brutal, exploration of the modern man who stands at the mouth of a tunnel, knowing that what's inside will change him,…
This was a slow burn secluded setting thriller with intricate details into these characters lives and how not everything is always as it seems. I was so drawn in to these two sisters's lives in the solitude of this campground they lived in and the activites that kept happening in the darkest hours of the night.
You don't know who to trust and it will have you guessing to the very end.
"A nail-biting story of sisterhood, suspicion, and suspense. When She Was Me weaves together past and present seamlessly to create a twist you won't see coming." - Tracy Sierra, author of Nightwatching
There's only one way out of these woods...
Ever since that night, twin sisters Cassie and Lenora have been inseparable. As the sole permanent residents of Cabin Two, their refuge on an isolated Tennessee campground, they manage to stay away from prying eyes, probing questions, and true crime junkies. Just the two of them, Cassie and Lenora against the world. The peace…
I have long had an interest in government conspiracies and have spent hundreds of hours researching the many experiments our government has foisted upon an unsuspecting populous. When the Church Committee released info on Projects MK Ultra, Bluebird, Artichoke, and others, people were stunned to realize what had been going on. Movies such as The Matrix dealt with mind control and the attempt to create the perfect soldier, and I am convinced such research and experimentation continues today.
This novel has so many reasons to recommend it. It incorporates radical experimentation and horrifying surgeries being done in a bizarre hospital. To make it even more mysterious, there is a hurricane threatening the island which complicates the investigation of US Marshall Teddy Daniels searching for a patient who has disappeared.
I loved the creepy island hospital and the use of weather as a character.
The basis for the blockbuster motion picture directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Shutter Island by New York Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane is a gripping and atmospheric psychological thriller where nothing is quite what it seems. The New York Times calls Shutter Island, “Startlingly original.” The Washington Post raves, “Brilliantly conceived and executed.” A masterwork of suspense and surprise from the author of Mystic River and Gone, Baby, Gone, Shutter Island carries the reader into a nightmare world of madness, mind control, and CIA Cold War paranoia andis unlike anything you’ve ever read before.
I love a good chilling tale where the reader can never be certain the supernatural is real or just an interpretation of the protagonist's state of mind. And this is exactly what Toon gives us with this tale of hidden secrets and unhealed trauma set in the isolated forests of the Scottish Highlands.
Lauren is too young to remember a mother who disappeared over a decade ago. Her father drinks to forget, and her neighbours know more than they let on. But then two things happen. Lauren and her father pick up a strange woman from the side of the road who disappears the following morning, and a local teenage girl goes missing, and Lauren finds herself in the middle of a village forced to remember the past.
WINNER of the McIlvanney Prize 2020 Shortlisted for Bloody Scotland's Scottish Crime Debut of the Year 2020 Longlisted for the Highland Book Prize 2020
'Hugely atmospheric, exquisitely written and utterly gripping' LUCY FOLEY, author of The Hunting Party 'It's both eerie and thrilling at once, and had me under its spell until the end' SOPHIE MACKINTOSH, author of Blue Ticket and The Water Cure ______________
They are driving home from the search party when they see her. The trees are coarse and tall in the winter light, standing like men.
Lauren and her father Niall live alone in the Highlands,…
I spent my adolescence reading young adult novels that featured characters who were nothing like me, and yearned to read about characters who shared my struggle in mediating my community’s cultural expectations as a first-generation Australia. This is the inspiration for writing own voices stories as these are the books I wished I’d been able to read. I draw on my Bosnian-Muslim cultural heritage to write own voices stories for young people, who like me, are searching to mediate their identity and take pride in their diverse culture. Own voices books are an opportunity to learn and celebrate culture and diversity, and to show young people that they are not alone in the world.
A fractured fairytale recreating the Rapunzel effect with 16 y.o. Karuna trapped in the tower, in this case a high-rise-commission flat, by her mother when she discovers her pregnancy.
This is beautifully written novel about the complicated relationships between mothers and daughters, and especially the fracture of being parented by migrant parents who hold to cultural expectations with their Australian-born offspring, a story that I could relate to on so many levels.
Reading this novel, I felt slightly claustrophobic and lost with Karuna’s mother being so well characterised; the things she was going were almost cruel, but you could feel the thick love just pouring from her, while Karuna’s struggle of independence and autonomy was so poignant and understandable.
This is a novel with so many layers and so much heart.
From one of Australia's most celebrated authors comes a mother-daughter drama exploring the faultlines between love and control.One hundred days. It's no time at all, she tells me. But she's not the one waiting.In a heady whirlwind of independence, lust and defiance, sixteen-year-old Karuna falls pregnant. Not on purpose, but not entirely by accident, either. Incensed, Karuna's mother, already over-protective, confines her to their fourteenth-storey housing-commission flat, to keep her safe from the outside world - and make sure she can't get into any more trouble.Stuck inside for endless hours, Karuna battles her mother and herself for a sense of…
I love books that whisk me away and keep me reading long into the night. There’s something so exciting about realizing you’ve been reading for so long that you have no idea what the time is or if it’s even the same day. I’m also incredibly passionate about horror and what it can teach us about ourselves and our society. Being diagnosed with epilepsy at the age of 12 made me feel isolated and alone, but horror granted me a form of escapism and taught me to embrace what made me feel different, something each of these books does. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did!
I love haunted house stories, and this one was genuinely creepy. It is a first-person account of the growing paranoia of a couple looking to escape their own demons, with both unable to communicate the weird things happening in their house.
I love how it subverted your usual ghost story elements. Instead of leaky pipes, weird spaces appear in the walls. Instead of creepy moans, bruises appear out of nowhere. Is it psychosis? Sickness? Or is something otherworldly in the house? I don’t know. The unsettling horror is ambiguity amplified by a failure of communication, and that’s why I find it so creepy.
Finalist for the Chicago Review of Books Fiction Award, Dan Chaon's Best of 2017 pick in Publishers Weekly, one of Vol. 1 Brooklyn's Best Books of 2017, a BOMB Magazine "Looking Back on 2017: Literature" Pick, and one of Vulture's 10 Best Thriller Books of 2017.
Jac Jemc's The Grip of It is a chilling literary horror novel about a young couple haunted by their newly purchased home
Touring their prospective suburban home, Julie and James are stopped by a noise. Deep and vibrating, like throat singing. Ancient, husky, and rasping, but underwater. “That’s just the house settling,” the real…
I've been to many writing retreats so I loved reading a story set in writing retreat hosted by a famous author. But what I loved even more was the absolutely twisted mind of the author who turned that writing retreat into a literal nightmare--it also made me scream "why didn't I think of that!" It was a blast to read from start to finish.
“Sex, suspense, and the supernatural fuel this propulsive debut.” —People
A young author is invited to an exclusive writer’s retreat that soon descends into a pulse-pounding nightmare—in the vein of The Plot and Please Join Us.
Alex has all but given up on her dreams of becoming a published author when she receives a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: attend an exclusive, month-long writing retreat at the estate of feminist horror writer Roza Vallo. Even the knowledge that Wren, her former best friend and current rival, is attending doesn’t dampen her excitement.
I love exploring old homes. Whether I’m on a historic house tour, an estate sale, or a real estate open house, I love seeing the glimpses of the people who once occupied the home. When my mom passed away, I hired an estate sale organizer to help me clear out her house and became fascinated with the estate sale business. What a great way to peek into other people’s houses and lives and perhaps discover their darkest secrets! That’s how I started writing my Palmyrton Estate Sale Mystery Series.
A once-elegant Victorian mansion in London has been chopped up into individual “bed-sit” apartments occupied by a quirky assortment of tenants, each with his or her own secrets. The enjoyment of this book lies in the claustrophobic atmosphere of the house and the unbearable tension of wondering how each tenant will escape the killer in their midst.
No. 23 has a secret. In this bedsit-riddled south London wreck, lorded over by a lecherous landlord, something waits to be discovered. Yet all six residents have something to hide. Collette and Cher are on the run; Thomas is a reluctant loner; while a gorgeous Iranian asylum seeker and a 'quiet man' nobody sees try to stay hidden. And watching over them all is Vesta - or so she thinks. In the dead of night, a terrible accident pushes the neighbours into an uneasy alliance. But one of them is a killer, expertly hiding their pastime, all the while closing…
I am a writer of psychological thrillers. I have a keen interest in psychology and how events and experiences in our childhood shape who we become. When I work on a new book, I always build a detailed profile of my characters’ childhoods – and as I write thrillers, these are often challenging ones with issues like narcissistic parents or siblings, coping with grief, mental illness, or bullying. My plot will always be at least partly driven by the secrets my characters form in their childhood or early life, and so I also really value this depth in the psychological thrillers I read.
The first thing that drew me into this book is the feeling of “I could see that happening… what would I do if it were me?” The second really enticing element comes when McAllister introduces a future timeline where the three siblings have had a falling out and their cover-up plan seems to have not worked. There is then a constant question of how did they get from here to there? The book is further enriched by the interesting relationships between the two sisters and brother. They each have their role in the family dynamic, largely set by a traumatic event in their childhood, and these have a significant impact on how they respond – individually and collectively – to this new highly stressful event.
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING RICHARD & JUDY SUMMER PICK AND THIS SUMMER'S MOST COMPULSIVE NOVEL
'Incredibly tense and gripping' ADELE PARKS 'Kept me guessing and kept me fooled. Clever, pacy and so gripping that my heart raced' C.L. TAYOR 'This absolutely blew me away. Properly unputdownable' 5***** READER REVIEW 'Another unputdownable what-would-you-do thriller, rich with McAllister's trademark twists and emotional depth' ERIN KELLY ________
What would you do to protect your family?
ANYTHING.
During a family holiday in Italy, you get an urgent call from your sister.
There's been an accident: she hit a man with her car and he's…
I am a sociologist with a longstanding interest in the social aspects of medicine and public health. I started with research on HIV/AIDS. Since then, I have written many books and conducted a multitude of studies on how people understand and experience health and illness and how they seek help when they are sick or feel at risk from disease. When COVID-19 hit the world in early 2020, it was not long before I started to think about what my research training and expertise could offer to understanding the social impacts of this new pandemic. I started to write about COVID and research on people’s everyday experiences.
One of the first novels set in COVID times, The Fell, by British author Sarah Moss, is presented from the perspective of four neighbours living in an English village over the timespan of a single night in the winter of 2020. The narrative charts their experiences and reflections on life as they struggle with boredom, loss of employment, having to work and learn from home, and feelings of isolation and claustrophobia. One of the characters simply can’t take it anymore and leaves her home during a period of mandated quarantine. These people care about and watch over each other as best they can, but the feelings of being under surveillance are strong. A dark but compelling read, masterfully written.
“A slim, tense page-turner . . . I gulped The Fell down in one sitting.” —Emma Donoghue, author of The Pull of the Stars
From the award-winning author of Ghost Wall and Summerwater, Sarah Moss's The Fell is a riveting novel of mutual responsibility, personal freedom, and the ever-nearness of disaster.
At dusk on a November evening, a woman slips through her garden gate and turns up the hill. Kate is in the middle of a two-week mandatory quarantine period, a true lockdown, but she can’t take it anymore—the closeness of the air in her small house, the confinement. And…
