Night Birds by Margaret Sweatman
Farrar is approached by one of Zugravi’s associates who insists that Farrar accompany him to an open-pit gold mine in Transylvania with a view to becoming an investor.
Psychological Thriller
The Chorus Beneath Our Feet by Melanie Schnell
Mary’s brother Jess has just returned to his hometown after serving eight years in the military in Afghanistan. His sight has been compromised by an injury, and he brings with him the body of his close friend, a fallen soldier.
Honeydew by Ben Zalkind
In Honeydew, Ben Zalkind’s new novel, tech billionaire Moses Honeydew is intent on tunnelling into the core of the earth. I suspect readers will either be automatically sold on the book after hearing this, or put off.
Dengue Boy by Michel Nieva, trans. Rahul Bery
An object of disgust, Dengue Boy is marked from birth as an outcast. Beset by a sudden thirst for blood, which only female mosquitoes possess, Dengue Boy realizes in adolescence that she is really Dengue Girl and sets out to exact her revenge on the wealthy people and tourists for whom her mother toils tirelessly.
Strangers at the Red Door by Dennis Bock
During his stay, he takes the reader on a roller-coaster journey through the eyes of a Westerner witnessing life under oppression in places like Hong Kong and mainland China, where teenagers play with drones, yet banned books are smuggled into the country.
THROWBACK: The Dark King Swallows the World by Robert G. Penner
As Nora, the protagonist of Robert G. Penner’s The Dark King Swallows the World points out early on, an empiricist “only believes what there’s evidence for. Things you can see with your own eyes,” and for much of my reading and writing life this has held true for me as both a consumer and a practitioner of fiction.
The Queen by Nick Cutter
The prologue brings the reader immediately into a situation of nightmares, filling a mind with fantastic scenarios one would want to immediately pinch themselves awake from.
Throwback: The Raven’s Revenge by Kevin Sands
Will they succeed and figure out the Raven’s identity, or will they die trying? Follow the three kids’ journey of cat and mouse all over London, where anything could turn for the worst in this intense and thrilling finale of the Blackthorn series.
I Died On A Tuesday by Jane Corry
After an early morning swim and with a bright future in publishing in London ahead of her, Janie White cycles home on the quiet streets of her Devon village.
The Hitchcock Hotel by Stephanie Wrobel
Seventeen years ago, something came between a group of university friends. This particular weekend though they are reunited as one of the group, Alfred, has bought an old house in their university town. He renovated it into The Hitchcock Hotel, a homage to his favourite director, which is now celebrating its first anniversary.
Lucid by Jenna Boholij
As she blows out the candles on her thirtieth birthday cake in the opening of Lucid, Charlie Marin reveals herself to be the antagonistic force driving Jenna Boholij’s literary thriller.
Charlie has a successful job, compassionate family and friends, and a boyfriend in Winnipeg, but she cannot move past the death of her twin Cara, who died at age thirteen. The details of how she died are hidden away, but this loss makes Charlie numb to her circumstances and all possibilities for her future.
Elevator in Sài Gòn by Thuận, translated by Nguyễn An Lý
The daughter finds her mother’s notebook, sewn into her pillow, and begins to investigate a figure from her revolutionary past: a man named Paul Polotsky, who lived in Paris in the 1950s. Back in Paris, she manages to track him down and begins to follow him, her life narrowing on this sole focus. What, exactly, was the relationship between her mother and Polotsky?
Bird Suit by Sydney Hegele
Bird Suit’s fictional town of Port Peter could be any number of small towns on a lake, overrun with summer tourists buying ice cream and cheap souvenirs on the boardwalk, filling up the local pubs and motels, knocking up the local girls – before disappearing in September. There are, however, two things that make Port Peter special: its perfect peaches and its Birds. “The women of the town tell one another about the Birds in secret… When a Port Peter girl gets pregnant by a tourist boy, a woman in her life gives her all the information she needs to know.”
Autokrator by Emily A. Weedon
While unfortunately we already know what it looks like when those who aren’t men are denied rights, and what it looks like when hard-won rights are being eroded, Autokrator takes the chilling thought experiment in a more extreme direction: what if women had no rights at all?
We Used To Live Here by Marcus Kliewer
When Eve, new co-owner of a house on Heritage Lane, number to be determined… opens the door to a sweet family looking to revisit the father’s family home, she desperately wants to say no and worked up the courage, and fake use of her partner, to say it.
