Book of the month

Book of the month

Modern Fiction Book of the Month – August 2021

Tracing the fifteen-year fallout of a toxic high school rumour, a riveting, astonishingly original debut novel about the power of stories – and who gets to tell them. This genre-defying novel is by turns a campus novel, psychological thriller, horror story and crime noir, each narrative frame stripping away the fictions we tell about women, men and the very nature of truth.

Mystery Book of the Month – August 2021

All murder mysteries follow a simple set of rules. In the 1930s, Grant McAllister, a mathematics professor turned author, worked them out, hiding their secrets in a book of crime stories. Then Grant disappeared… ’So, so clever. A twisty story and an education in the maths of murder mysteries, Agatha Christie would take her hat off to this one - bravo!’ – Sarah Pinborough

Mystery Book of the Month – July 2021

Eight strangers. One deadly invitation. Welcome to Raven Hall…  After years of abandonment, Raven Hall has been restored to its former glory. For one night only, it is playing host to an evening of murder mystery. The guests have gathered. The roles have been cast. But someone is playing a sinister game, one with devastating consequences. And as the guests are about to discover, the truth is much darker than fiction. Raven Hall is waiting for you… ”A page-turning gothic story with a big house – and a shocking family secret.” 

Modern Fiction Book of the Month – July 2021

Jude is popular, beautiful, wealthier than most in Deep Valley. Cindy is Jude’s neighbour – younger, poorer, a kid from the kind of family everyone knows will come to no good. Jude is black and Cindy is white. One summer, Jude disappears. Search parties go out but come back empty-handed and strangely pleased. Jude thought she was better than everyone else. Look at her now. Meanwhile Cindy is performing a vanishing act of her own. She is slipping out of her old life and into someone else’s. She is becoming Jude... ”A richly atmospheric debut about lost innocence and rural America.”

Noir Book of the Month – June 2021

A harrowing story about racism and brutality that is more urgent now than ever. Set against the backdrop of the simmering racial tension produced by the LA Riots and the O.J. Simpson trial, comes this powerful hardboiled noir of violence and obsession. Pittsburgh, 1995. Twenty-two-year-old Bobby Saraceno is a biracial black man, passing for white. Bobby has hidden his identity from everyone, even his best friend and fellow comic-book geek, Aaron, who just returned from prison a newly radicalized white supremacist.

Modern Fiction Book of the Month – June 2021

In the feverish tropics of the Andaman Islands, a young botanist tends to a fragile rose he has imported to welcome his bride. Hoping their marriage will bloom in this strange life, hundreds of miles from the east coast of India, he is entranced by Chanda Devi's fierce nature and unusual gifts; speaking to trees and the ghosts of former colonialists. Prize-winning Indian bestseller.

Mystery Book of the Month – May 2021

In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders. But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves. Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it’s too late? *Recommended by Stina*

Modern Fiction Book of the Month – May 2021

The debut novel from the popular actor and author of How Not To Be A Boy. After her husband’s death, and a crisis-packed period which follows, Kate is transported through time to the day she and her husband met – the first day of Freshers Week. Can she alter the course of events that led to his eventual death? *Recommended by Jan*

Modern Fiction Book of the Month – April 2021

Scabby Queen is a portrait of a woman who refuses to compromise, and a picture of a country that does nothing but. It’s about the silencing of women’s voices, about the destructive power of the celebrity machine, but most of all it is about empathy: its motives, its limits and the way it endlessly transformed. *Recommended by Jan*

Mystery Book of the Month – April 2021

She always went too far. DS Alexandra Cupidi has done it again. She should have learnt to keep her big mouth shut, after the scandal that sent her packing – resentful teenager in tow – from the London Met to the lonely Kent coastline. Murder is different here, among the fens and stark beaches. Salt Lane is the first in the new DS Alexandra Cupidi series. With his trademark characterisation and flair for social commentary, William Shaw has crafted a crime novel for our time that grips you, mind and heart.
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