Hello everyone! Can you believe it's already October?! I'm enjoying the cooler temperatures here and I'm looking forward to reading a few ghost stories this month among other things.
First on the list is my "Pick it for me" book for this month-
The Vanishing by Wendy Webb
Recently widowed and rendered penniless by her
Ponzi-scheming husband, Julia Bishop is eager to start anew. So when a
stranger appears on her doorstep with a job offer, she finds herself
accepting the mysterious yet unique position: caretaker to his mother,
Amaris Sinclair, the famous and rather eccentric horror novelist whom
Julia has always admired…and who the world believes is dead.
When
she arrives at the Sinclairs' enormous estate on Lake Superior, Julia
begins to suspect that there may be sinister undercurrents to her
"too-good-to-be-true" position. As Julia delves into the reasons of why
Amaris chose to abandon her successful writing career and withdraw from
the public eye, her search leads to unsettling connections to her own
family tree, making her wonder why she really was invited to Havenwood
in the first place, and what monstrous secrets are still held prisoner
within its walls.
Over at the Mystery Book Club I'll be reading these two books-
Station Eternity (The Midsolar Murders #1) by Mur Lafferty
From idyllic small towns to claustrophobic urban
landscapes, Mallory Viridian is constantly embroiled in murder cases
that only she has the insight to solve. But outside of a classic mystery
novel, being surrounded by death doesn’t make you a charming amateur
detective, it makes you a suspect and a social pariah. So when Mallory
gets the opportunity to take refuge on a sentient space station, she
thinks she has the solution. Surely the murders will stop if her only
company is alien beings. At first her new existence is peacefully
quiet…and markedly devoid of homicide.
But when the station
agrees to allow additional human guests, Mallory knows the break from
her peculiar reality is over. After the first Earth shuttle arrives, and
aliens and humans alike begin to die, the station is thrown into peril.
Stuck smack-dab in the middle of an extraterrestrial whodunit, and
wondering how in the world this keeps happening to her anyway, Mallory
has to solve the crime—and fast—or the list of victims could grow to
include everyone on board….
One Last Kill (Tracy Crosswhite #10) by Robert Dugoni
Detective Tracy Crosswhite draws a long-dormant
serial killer out of hiding in a nerve-shattering novel by New York
Times bestselling author Robert Dugoni.
Tracy Crosswhite is
reopening the investigation into Seattle’s Route 99 serial killer. After
thirteen victims, he stopped hunting and the trail went cold, stirring
public outrage. Now, nearly three decades after his first kill, Tracy is
expected to finally bring closure to the victims’ families and redeem
the Seattle PD’s reputation. Even if it means working with her nemesis,
Captain Johnny Nolasco.
Lead detective of the original task
force, Nolasco dares Tracy to do what he failed to: close the case.
Forming an uneasy alliance, Tracy and Nolasco revisit old leads and
pursue new evidence only to unearth high-level corruption and cover-ups
as dangerous as the elusive killer himself. At the risk of being
exposed, such deadly and powerful forces will go to extremes to stay in
the shadows.
That’s just where Tracy and Nolasco are headed—to
find the twisted truth behind a killer’s motives, his disappearance, and
his chilling comeback.
For NetGalley I'll be reading-
System Collapse (Murderbot Diaries#7) by Martha Wells
Following the events in Network Effect,
the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a
newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if
there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it,
and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not
leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize.
But
there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal
operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are
doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with
Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have
to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast!
Yeah, this plan is... not going to work.
For my book club we are reading-
Dawn by Octavia E. Butler
Lilith Iyapo has just lost her husband and son
when atomic fire consumes Earth—the last stage of the planet’s final
war. Hundreds of years later Lilith awakes, deep in the hold of a
massive alien spacecraft piloted by the Oankali—who arrived just in time
to save humanity from extinction. They have kept Lilith and other
survivors asleep for centuries, as they learned whatever they could
about Earth. Now it is time for Lilith to lead them back to her home
world, but life among the Oankali on the newly resettled planet will be
nothing like it was before.
The Oankali survive by genetically
merging with primitive civilizations—whether their new hosts like it or
not. For the first time since the nuclear holocaust, Earth will be
inhabited. Grass will grow, animals will run, and people will learn to
survive the planet’s untamed wilderness. But their children will not be
human. Not exactly.
The Hercule Poirot book for October-
Hallowe'en Party (Hercule Poirot #41) by Agatha Christie
At a Halloween party, Joyce—a hostile
thirteen-year-old—boasts that she once witnessed a murder. When no one
believes her, she storms off home. But within hours her body is found,
still in the house, drowned in an apple-bobbing tub.
That night,
Hercule Poirot is called in to find the `evil presence'. But first he
must establish whether he is looking for a murderer or a
double-murderer...
Other books I plan to read-
The Stroke of Winter by Wendy Webb
In the tourist town of Wharton, on the coast of
Lake Superior, Tess Bell is renovating her old family home into a
bed-and-breakfast during the icy dead of winter…
As the house’s
restoration commences, a shuttered art studio is revealed. Inside are
paintings Tess’s late grandfather, beloved and celebrated artist
Sebastian Bell, hid away for generations. But these appear to be the
works of a twisted mind, almost unrecognizable as paintings she and
others familiar with his art would expect. The sinister canvases raise
disturbing questions for Tess, sparking nightmares and igniting in her
an obsession to unearth the truth around their origins.
What evil
has been locked away for so many years? The ominous brushstrokes,
scratching at the door, and moving shadows begin to pull Tess further
and further into the darkness.
The Lost Ones by Anita Frank
Some houses are never at peace.
England, 1917
Reeling from the death of her fiancé, Stella Marcham
welcomes the opportunity to stay with her pregnant sister, Madeleine, at
her imposing country mansion, Greyswick – but she arrives to discover a
house of unease and her sister gripped by fear and suspicion.
Before
long, strange incidents begin to trouble Stella – sobbing in the night,
little footsteps on the stairs – and as events escalate, she finds
herself drawn to the tragic history of the house.
Aided by a
wounded war veteran, Stella sets about uncovering Greyswick’s dark and
terrible secrets – secrets the dead whisper from the other side…
And a holdover from last month-
Farilane (The Rise and the Fall #2) by Michael J. Sullivan
Some truths are dangerous, certain secrets best concealed, and one story never should have been written at all.
Being
an unwanted twin in the imperial line of succession, Farilane becomes a
scholar, an adventurer, and—in a time when reading is forbidden—a
hunter of books. Her singular obsession is finding the mythical Book of
Brin, a tome not just lost but intentionally buried. Although she is
respected and beloved by the Teshlor Knights, not even their legendary
skills can protect her, for what she finds is more dangerous than what
she sought.
