The best books on claustrophobia

From the outside, it seems Grace has it all. Only she knows about the cracks in her picture-perfect life… and the huge secret behind them. After all, who can she trust?

Her brother Josh is thousands of miles away. Her best friend Coco walked away from her years ago, their friendship irreparably fractured. And her husband Marcus seems like a different man lately. But when her seven-year-old daughter makes a troubling accusation, Grace must choose between protecting her child and protecting her secret… before she loses everything.

COVID Societies presents a compelling and accessible overview of key sociocultural theories that can help us make sense of the diverse, dynamic and complex elements of the COVID crisis. Throughout the book, a series of intertwined threads cross back and forth between the macropolitical and micropolitical dimensions of COVID-19: contagion, death, risk, uncertainty, fear, social inequalities, stigma, blame and power relations. Overarching these threads are five complementary themes: the historicity of COVID societies; the tension between local specificities and globalising forces; the control and management of human bodies; the boundary between Self and Other; and the continuously changing sociomaterial environments in which the world is living with and through the shocks of the COVID crisis.

Emma is hitchhiking across the United States, trying to outrun a violent, tragic past, when she meets Lowell, the hot-but-dumb driver she hopes will take her as far as the Badlands. But Lowell is not as harmless as he seems, and a vicious scuffle leaves Emma bloody and stranded in an abandoned town in the Black Hills with an out-of-gas van, a loaded gun, and a snowstorm on the way.

Tinfoil Butterfly is a seductively scary, chilling exploration of evil—how it sneaks in under your skin, flaring up when you least expect it, how it throttles you and won't let go. The beauty of Rachel Eve Moulton's ferocious, harrowing, and surprisingly moving debut is that it teaches us that love can do that, too.

They thought they'd buried their secrets with her. They were wrong. Life has been good to Stephanie. Married to a college professor, she lives in a beautiful London house. It hasn’t always been like this. Nine years ago, Stephanie’s flatmate Alison vanished, presumed murdered. When a true crime TV researcher wants to interview her about the case, Stephanie must confront the past – what really happened to Alison?

It soon becomes clear that someone doesn’t want her digging for the truth and is willing to do anything to conceal a shocking web of lies. As her perfect life unravels, Stephanie realises she has woken a sleeping monster. And now her own life is on the line…

People can get a lot of things wrong when they step up to become a boss. They assume that being a manager involves certain ways of acting and behaving. But many of these assumptions are based on myths. In this book, Prof Cary Cooper and I attempt to debunk many of these myths to show what it means, in reality, to be a good boss. In the end it’s really all about being a decent, thoughtful, alert human being…how hard can that be?! (In practice, quite hard.)

Imagine: if we could combine dreams and reality in a world where we live forever.

Oliver believes his life to be one of disappointment and failure. Haunted by the memory of a mysterious woman he encountered thirty years ago, and obsessed with finding her, he embarks on a journey embracing grief, hope, myths, and legends to find her. He is drawn into diverse worlds, from ancient rural beliefs and traditions to emerging medical science, as he and the reader are led to question the boundaries between dreams, reality, and imagination.

The Broken Destiny is a profound book about a select group of South African children who were conceived in a laboratory and exiled to another planet. On the planet the factions are quickly apparent. Military, Agricultural. Zulu tribe and all these earthlings live alongside an ancient race known as the Minoans. A council rules with a strict hand and keeps the children hidden from many truths about who and what they really are. That is until a girl meets a boy from a different sector and a prophecy is set in motion that could cause Ava to become their salvation or their destroyer.

On a snowy Christmas Eve, a beautiful young mother goes out to buy a few last-minute gifts...and never returns. Thirty years later, her daughter picks up her trail. 

As the successful owner of an estate sale business, Audrey has put her mother’s disappearance behind her. Until the day Audrey clears out the home of a lonely old widow and finds some shocks. Street drugs in the silverware drawer, a trunkful of jewels in the attic, and the distinctive ring Audrey’s mother was wearing the night her car supposedly sank to the bottom of a New Jersey lake. Relentlessly, Audrey pursues clues to her family’s troubled history. Because the truth will set her free…unless it gets her killed.

Alice Deaton can’t believe her luck when she lands a new post at a medieval English manor house. Mired in debt, the elderly owners have transferred their beloved Bramley to a heritage trust. Alice must prepare it for opening to the public in the spring, with the former owners relegated to a private wing. But when the ghosts start appearing - the woman with the wounded hand and the boy in the burgundy hood - Alice realises why her predecessor might have left the isolated house so soon.

As she peels back the layers of the mystery, the secrets Alice uncovers haunting Bramley’s heart will be dark - darker than she could ever have imagined...

Mal sneaks back into his foster home after a bare-knuckle brawl to find that his brother has disappeared, leaving behind only a mysterious call for help. Laura calls her parents after a disastrous day only to find that they have no idea who she is. Someone or something has plucked these two out of memory, out of their own lives. With Mike, a high school teacher eaten by rage, and Remak, an investigator who knows more than he’s sharing, Mal and Laura must fight their despair and plunge deeper into the darkness, to grapple with the secret machinery of the world, and the force that pulls its levers.