#BookHaul: May 2017

This is my most loved and feared blog post to write each month – loved, because how could acquiring more books cause you anything by a feeling of love in your heart? And feared, because why is my TBR taller than me!? You know the drill, so let’s get right to it!

Review Copies:

Vile City by Jennifer Lee Thomson (Thick As Thieves Promo Services)

DI Duncan Waddell has big problems. He’s borderline diabetic. The paperwork is piling up faster than the underwear at a porn shoot. Now his best pal DC Stevie Campbell, who’s in a coma after being attacked by a suspect, has started to talk to him. Trouble is, only Waddell can hear him. The last thing he needs is the country’s biggest case to land on his lap.

Three women have gone missing in the city he used to love, but is fast coming to despise, victims of the GLASGOW GRABBER, as their assailant has been dubbed by local hack and all round thorn in Waddell’s backside, Catriona Hastie.

Shelley Craig is the latest victim, snatched as she and her boyfriend took a shortcut through Glasgow city centre. And she’ll do anything to make it home.

The Silence by Katharine Johnson (Emma Mitchell PR)

Doctor Abby Fenton has a rewarding career, a loving family, an enviable lifestyle – and a secret that could destroy everything.
When human remains are discovered in the grounds of an idyllic Tuscan holiday home she is forced to confront the memories she has suppressed until now and relive the summer she spent at the villa in 1992. A summer that ended in tragedy. The nearer she gets to the truth the closer she comes to losing her sanity.
In order to hold onto the people she loves most, she must make sure they never discover what she did. But the reappearance of someone else from that summer threatens to blow her secret wide open.

One To Watch by Rachel Amphlett (Emma Mitchell PR)

Sophie Whittaker shared a terrifying secret. Hours later, she was dead.
Detective Kay Hunter and her colleagues are shocked by the vicious murder of a teenage girl at a private party in the Kentish countryside.
A tangled web of dark secrets is exposed as twisted motives point to a history of greed and corruption within the tight-knit community.
Confronted by a growing number of suspects and her own enemies who are waging a vendetta against her, Kay makes a shocking discovery that will make her question her trust in everyone she knows.

Wolves in the Dark by Gunnar Staalesen (Orenda Books)

Reeling from the death of his great love, Karin, Varg Veum’s life has descended into a self-destructive spiral of alcohol, lust, grief and blackouts. When traces of child pornography are found on his computer, he’s accused of being part of a paedophile ring and thrown into a prison cell. There, he struggles to sift through his past to work out who is responsible for planting the material … and who is seeking the ultimate revenge. When a chance to escape presents itself, Varg finds himself on the run in his hometown of Bergen. With the clock ticking and the police on his tail, Varg takes on his hardest – and most personal – case yet. Chilling, shocking and exceptionally gripping, Wolves in the Dark reaffirms Gunnar Staalesen as one of the world’s foremost thriller writers.

Dying To Live by Michael Stanley (Orenda Books)

When the body of a Bushman is discovered near the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, the death is written off as an accident. But all is not as it seems. An autopsy reveals that, although he’s clearly very old, his internal organs are puzzlingly young. What’s more, an old bullet is lodged in one of his muscles… but where is the entry wound?
When the body is stolen from the morgue and a local witch doctor is reported missing, Detective ‘Kubu’ Bengu gets involved. But did the witch doctor take the body to use as part of a ritual? Or was it the American anthropologist who’d befriended the old Bushman? As Kubu and his brilliant young colleague, Detective Samantha Khama, follow the twisting trail through a confusion of rhino-horn smugglers, foreign gangsters and drugs manufacturers, the wider and more dangerous the case seems to grow.

Girl On Point by Cheryl Guerriero

Alexandra Campbell’s life comes to a crashing halt the night her younger sister is killed during a convenience store robbery. Shattered by guilt, Alex distances herself from her friends and family. Months later, with the police investigation stalled, she fears justice may never be served.
Determined to avenge her sister’s murder, Alex disguises herself and joins the gang responsible for the shooting. To identify the one who pulled the trigger, she must put her own life at risk in a world of dangerous criminals. But the longer she plays her new game, the more the lines blur between loyalty and betrayal.

Netgalley Copies:

A Stranger In The House by Shari Lapena

Why would you run scared from a happy home?
You’re waiting for your beloved husband to get home work. You’re making dinner, looking forward to hearing about his day.
That’s the last thing you remember.
You wake up in hospital, with no idea how you got there. They tell you that you were in an accident; you lost control of your car whilst driving in a dangerous part of town.
The police suspect you were up to no good. But your husband refuses to believe it. Your best friend isn’t so sure. And even you don’t know what to believe . . .

All The Good Things by Clare Fisher

What if you did a very bad thing… but that wasn’t the end of the story.
‘Twenty-one year old Beth is in prison. The thing she did is so bad she doesn’t deserve ever to feel good again.
But her counsellor, Erika, won’t give up on her. She asks Beth to make a list of all the good things in her life. So Beth starts to write down her story, from sharing silences with Foster Dad No. 1, to flirting in the Odeon on Orange Wednesdays, to the very first time she sniffed her baby’s head.
But at the end of her story, Beth must confront the bad thing.
What is the truth hiding behind her crime? And does anyone – even a 100% bad person – deserve a chance to be good?

The Marsh King’s Daughter by Karen Dionne

‘I was born two years into my mother’s captivity. She was three weeks shy of seventeen. If I had known then what I do now, things would have been a lot different. I would have been a lot more understanding of my mother. I wouldn’t have adored my father.’

When the notorious child abductor known as the Marsh King escapes from a maximum security prison, Helena immediately suspects that she and her two young daughters are in danger.

No one, not even her husband, knows the truth about Helena’s past: they don’t know that she was born into captivity, that she had no contact with the outside world before the age of twelve – or that her father raised her to be a killer.

And they don’t know that the Marsh King can survive and hunt in the wilderness better than anyone… except, perhaps his own daughter.

The Walls by Hollie Overton

What if you could get away with murder?
Single mom Kristy Tucker works as a press agent for the Texas Department of Corrections handling everything on death row from inmate interviews, to chronicling the last moments during an execution. Her job exposes Kristy to the worst of humanity and it’s one that’s beginning to take its toll.
So when Kristy meets Lance Dobson, her son’s martial arts instructor, she believes she’s finally found her happy ending. She’s wrong.
Kristy soon discovers that Lance is a monster. Forced to endure his verbal and physical abuse, Kristy is serving her own life sentence . . . unless she’s willing to take matters into her own hands. Perfectly poised to exploit the criminal justice system she knows so well, Kristy sets out to get rid of Lance – permanently.

The Weight of Lies by Emily Carpenter

In this gripping, atmospheric family drama, a young woman investigates the forty­-year­-old murder that inspired her mother’s bestselling novel, and uncovers devastating truths—and dangerous lies.

Reformed party girl Meg Ashley leads a life of privilege, thanks to a bestselling horror novel her mother wrote decades ago. But Meg knows that the glow of their very public life hides a darker reality of lies, manipulation, and the heartbreak of her own solitary childhood. Desperate to break free of her mother, Meg accepts a proposal to write a scandalous, tell-all memoir.

Digging into the past—and her mother’s cult classic—draws Meg to Bonny Island, Georgia, and an unusual woman said to be the inspiration for the book. At first island life seems idyllic, but as Meg starts to ask tough questions, disturbing revelations come to light…including some about her mother.

Soon Meg’s search leads her to question the facts of a decades-old murder. She’s warned to leave it alone, but as the lies pile up, Meg knows she’s getting close to finding a murderer. When her own life is threatened, Meg realizes the darkness found in her mother’s book is nothing compared to the chilling truth that lurks off the page.

Marked for Life by Emelie Schepp

In Lindö, on the Swedish coast, a man has been found brutally murdered in his own home.

The victim, Hans Juhlén, had no shortage of enemies. But the case stalls when a child’s handprint is found inches from where the dead man fell.

Hans Juhlén had no children.

Public prosecutor Jana Berzelius has perfected the art of maintaining a professional distance from her cases. But when the body of a small boy is found – and with him, the weapon that killed Juhlén – Jana’s impenetrability is tested to its limits.

The small body is a bleak reminder that Jana has her own secrets to hide. And if she is to keep them safe, she must find the perpetrator behind these crimes…before the police do.

The Scandal by Fredrik Backman

‘Late one evening towards the end of March, a teenager picked up a double-barrelled shotgun, walked into the forest, put the gun to someone else’s forehead and pulled the trigger. This is the story of how we got there.’

Beartown is a small town in a large Swedish forest.

For most of the year it is under a thick blanket of snow, experiencing the kind of cold and dark that brings people closer together – or pulls them apart.

Its isolation means that Beartown has been slowly shrinking with each passing year. But now the town is on the verge of an astonishing revival. Everyone can feel the excitement. Change is in the air and a bright new future is just around the corner.

Until the day it is all put in jeopardy by a single, brutal act. It divides the town into those who think it should be hushed up and forgotten, and those who’ll risk the future to see justice done. At last, it falls to one young man to find the courage to speak the truth that it seems no one else wants to hear.

With the town’s future at stake, no one can stand by or stay silent. Everyone is on one side or the other.

Which side would you be on?

** Review copies now total: The fear is real, I refuse to count them!

Book Purchases:

Dead Woman Walking by Sharon Bolton

Just before dawn in the hills near the Scottish border, a man murders a young woman. At the same time, a hot-air balloon crashes out of the sky. There’s just one survivor.
She’s seen the killer’s face – but he’s also seen hers. And he won’t rest until he’s eliminated the only witness to his crime.
Alone, scared, trusting no one, she’s running to where she feels safe – but it could be the most dangerous place of all . . .

See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt

In 1892 Lizzie Borden was tried and acquitted for the brutal axe murders of her father and step-mother in Fall River, Massachusetts. The murder has never been solved.

This unforgettable debut novels tells the story of the murder and its aftermath from a rotating cast of perspectives – Lizzie herself, her older sister, an Irish housemaid, a young boy hired to take care of trouble – which means you are never quite sure where you stand, or who you believe.

With great psychological insight, and a brilliantly atmospheric rendering of a claustrophobic household, rife with sexual tension, jealousy and sibling rivalry, SEE WHAT I HAVE DONE is an original and riveting meditation on one of history’s great unsolved mysteries.

The Third Life of Grange Copeland by Alice Walker

Alice Walker’s first book recounts the lives of three generations growing up in Georgia, where the author herself grew up. Grange Copeland is a black tenant farmer who is forced to leave his land and family in search of a better future. He heads North but discovers that the racism and poverty he experienced in the South are, in fact, everywhere. When he returns to Georgia years later he finds that his son Brownfield has been imprisoned for the murder of his wife. But hope comes in the form of the third generation as the guardian of the couple’s youngest daughter, Grange Copeland, who glimpses a chance of both spiritual and social freedom.

Evil Games by Angela Marsons

The greater the Evil, the more deadly the game…
When a rapist is found mutilated in a brutal attack, Detective Kim Stone and her team are called in to bring a swift resolution. But, as more vengeful killings come to light, it soon becomes clear that there is someone far more sinister at work.
With the investigation quickly gathering momentum, Kim finds herself exposed to great danger and in the sights of a lethal individual undertaking their own twisted experiment.
Up against a sociopath who seems to know her every weakness, for Detective Stone, each move she makes could be deadly. As the body count starts to mount, Kim will have to dig deeper than ever before to stop the killing. And this time – it’s personal.

Kindle Purchases:

A Darker Shade Of Magic by V. E. Schwab
[endorsed by Jo @ Jo’s Book Blog ;-)]

Most people only know one London; but what if there were several? Kell is one of the last Travelers—magicians with a rare ability to travel between parallel Londons. There’s Grey London, dirty and crowded and without magic, home to the mad king George III. There’s Red London, where life and magic are revered. Then, White London, ruled by whoever has murdered their way to the throne. But once upon a time, there was Black London…

Vengeance by Roger Price

This book has an exceptionally long synopsis, which you can find on Amazon.

Giveaways:

The Art Of Fear by Pamela Crane

Ari Wilburn’s life ended long ago—the day she watched her little sister die in a tragic accident and did nothing to stop it. Crippled with self-blame and resented by her parents, she stumbles through life … and onto an unexpected clue that casts doubt on whether the death was accidental.
Now a psychological wreck, Ari joins a suicide support group where she meets Tina, a sex-enslaved escapee who finds her long-lost father dead. Suicide, police ruled it. But Tina suspects foul play. As a bond develops between the women in their shared loss, they’re dragged into playing a dangerous game with a killer.
Faced with a murderous wake-up call and two possibly linked deaths, Ari’s investigation puts her next on the killer’s list. But she’s never been one to back down from a fight.
Needing closure, Ari must face her demons and the killer behind them … or lose everything she loves.

Read It Swap It:

Mummy, Come Home by Oxana Kalemi

A brutal kidnapping. A terrified prisoner. A mother desperate to reach her children.: The True Story of a Mother Kidnapped and Torn from Her Children

Waking up bleary-eyed and beaten, Oxana wondered how she had got there. Then she remembered: her abusive husband, the dream of a better life, the ‘job’ that turned into a nightmare….

Tricked into prostitution by her best friend, Oxana was torn from her children in Ukraine and trafficked into the UK, where she was imprisoned in a Birmingham sauna and forced to service up to 15 clients a night. Raped, beaten and abused, she was sickened by what she had become.

Oxana only had one thing left in the world to live for: the thought of being reunited with her children. But even if she escaped she had no idea how she’d get them back…

But where so many women are destroyed forever by such violence and suffering, her unbending love for her children and her unshakeable determination meant that even in her darkest hour, the flame of hope in Oxana’s heart was never extinguished.

Spurred on by this faith, that one day she would be reunited with her children, Oxana found the strength to break free from prostitution and her captors and continue her fight to be a mother once more.

She would hold her children in her arms again.

Instafreebie:

Lies Come True by Emerald O’Brien

Avery Hart narrowly escapes death after being attacked in the woods of Crown River.
Ten years later…
The body of a young woman is discovered along the path of a park in the same town. The killer is cunning and ruthless, but even the best killers make mistakes.
Fiona Wolfe, the second woman to be attacked, survives and reveals a potential link between the current killer and the attack on Avery Hart.
Noah Cotter, an ambitious new inspector, becomes drawn to the case when his curiosity combines with his attraction to Avery.
The dangerous search for truth appears to be muddied with each shocking secret brought to light, as Avery, Fiona, and Noah realize that when someone is deceived for too long, sometimes…
Lies Come True

Instafreebie is a free ebook giveaway site that can be found here, I signed up and I receive emails about ebooks from a range of genres that are free to download, usually in exchange for signing up to the author’s newsletter.

**Well, May was good book hauling month if I do say so myself (and I do say so). According to Goodreads, my owned books to read now total: 230 books!

Never mind eh, this month we’re celebrating, after a two month wait, I was finally approved on Netgalley to read The Marsh King’s Daughter!

How many books did you haul this month?