This Week in Books is a feature hosted by Lipsy at Lipsyy Lost and Found that allows bloggers to share:
- What they’ve recently finished reading
- What they are currently reading
- What they are planning to read next
A similar meme is run by Taking on a World of Words.
I finished reading The Impossible Thing by Belinda Bauer which, like all of Bauer’s books I’ve read, was delightfully quirky. I then read Marble Hall Murders by Anthony Horowitz which I also enjoyed, although I do still prefer his Detective Hawthorne series.
A summer’s evening in 1926, and six-year-old Celie Shepherd is hungry, desperate and dangling from a cliff, as she stretches out to steal something impossible. The bold theft will change Celie’s life, and the lives of many others.
One hundred years later, a remote home is ransacked by masked men. The only thing taken: a dusty box containing that same impossible thing. What could be so unique – and so valuable – that it is stolen again and again… and again?
So begins this extraordinary mystery from award-winning Belinda Bauer. The Impossible Thing brims with skulduggery at every turn, and is a blazing testament to Belinda Bauer’s status as one of our greatest living crime writers.
Susan Ryeland has had enough of murder.
She’s edited two novels about the famous detective, Atticus Pünd, and both times she’s come close to being killed. Now she’s back in England and she’s been persuaded to work on a third.
The new ‘continuation’ novel is by Eliot Crace, grandson of Miriam Crace who was the biggest selling children’s author in the world until her death exactly twenty years ago.
Eliot believes that Miriam was deliberately poisoned. And when he tells Susan that he has hidden the identity of Miriam’s killer inside his book, Susan knows she’s in trouble once again.
As Susan works on Pünd’s Last Case, a story set in an exotic villa in the South of France, she uncovers more and more parallels between the past and the present, the fictional and the real world – until suddenly she finds that she has become a target herself.
It seems that someone in Eliot’s family doesn’t want the book to be written. And they will do anything to prevent it.
I’ve just started reading The Midnight Train by Matt Haig.
When your life flashes before your eyes, what will matter most?
For Wilbur it was his time with Maggie, the love of his life. Their honeymoon in Venice. Before he threw it all away.
Years later, on the brink of his own death, a train arrives. It can take Wilbur back in time. To relive his most important moments. Soon he realises just how much he would have changed.
An adventure through time, The Midnight Train is a story of love and second chances, from the world of The Midnight Library.
My next read might be The Bone Queen by Will Shindler.
A chilling horror-thriller debut where a mother’s search for her missing daughter battles against the shadows of a historic, dangerous legend.
Single mother Jenna arrives on the tranquil shores of Athelsea fueled by the desperate hope to find Chloe, her teenage daughter who’s disappeared from their London home. She has no idea why–all she knows is that Chloe had changed in the previous two weeks, haunted by something, or someone, and the ferry ticket here is the only clue she has.
As she explores the village and interacts with the locals, Jenna soon realizes a macabre secret is being hidden in plain sight. A dark legend of a vengeful woman called the Bone Queen is spoken of in hushed tones amongst the villagers, some of whom are frantically trying to suppress the tale that has long terrorized their lives.
As Jenna starts to learn more about the Bone Queen and her previous victims, the village’s grip on reality begins to loosen and no one can say for sure who, or what, is responsible for the deaths and disappearances on Athelsea. Suffering from what she can no longer distinguish between paranoid hallucinations or real manifestations, Jenna must act quickly before Chloe is next…
The Bone Queen has left her mark, and one day she’ll collect.
And that’s my week in books! What are you reading this week? Let me know in the comments! 😎
Jo's Book Blog 
Ooh the new Matt Haig, hope you enjoy it! x
Looking forward to your thoughts on The Bone Queen. I’ve not been able to get my hands on a copy yet. Seems quite the departure from his brilliant crime fiction series though.
Happy reading, Jo! xx