Adding to Your TBR – November 2018

TBR – To Be Read tower/list 

I’m sitting in the warm South African sun surrounded by a pile of ‘already read’ books. Registering each one at Bookcrossing.com so they can be released for other readers to find. #bookswithwings This also makes room for new books!

November 2018 books are waiting for you…

 

The Truth Waits by Susanna Beard

Expected: 1 November 2018

There is very little available about this book, it’s barely mentioned on Goodreads… an undiscovered gem? #thriller

Goodreads   Amazon.com   Amazon(UK)   Book Depository   Worderly   Amazon.com 

 

Anna has everything worked out – a successful company, all the comforts she needs and no ties. But when she stumbles across the body of a young girl on a deserted beach in Lithuania, everything changes. Anna is compelled to uncover the story behind the tragedy, despite concern from her partner, Will. Everything points towards sex trafficking, but as she searches, her own deepest secrets start to surface.– Abstract from Amazon

 

 

 

 

Frost by Sam Neumann

Expected: 1 November 2018

Another book that has received little attention. It was the cover that caught my eye first, but the abstract has me excited to read it. #thriller

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A small town, a wayward woman, and the murderer who won’t leave her alone. 

Amy Frost is getting desperate. When her fledgeling stand-up comedy career falls flat, adding one more failure to a long list, she is forced to move back in with her mother in her hometown in the Colorado mountains. All the things she thought she had left behind have again become her reality, and at thirty-one years old, Amy is terrified of winding up in Ballast, Colorado, forever. 

But she is shaken out of her self-pity when Arnold Dooley, the man who murdered his wife and was later acquitted, walks into her place of work. 

The town of Ballast falls into hysteria upon learning Dooley has taken up residence on its east end, and the residents begin scheming ways to remove him. But Arnold takes an interest in Amy and begins to offer her large sums of money for seemingly innocuous tasks. Sceptical and guarded, Amy spurns the proposition until it becomes too enticing to ignore, and soon finds herself thrust into a twisted world of depravity. The only way out is for Amy to uncover who actually killed Arnold’s wife—and why they’re after her. – Abstract from Goodreads

 

Daughters of the Lake by Wendy Webb

Described by early reviewers as a sinister, gothic, historical fiction/mystery thriller. #thriller

Expected: 1 November 2018

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After the end of her marriage, Kate Granger has retreated to her parents’ home on Lake Superior to pull herself together—only to discover the body of a murdered woman washed into the shallows. Tucked in the folds of the woman’s curiously vintage gown is an infant, as cold and at peace as its mother. No one can identify the woman. Except for Kate. She’s seen her before. In her dreams…

One hundred years ago, a love story ended in tragedy, its mysteries left unsolved. It’s time for the lake to give up its secrets. As each mystery unravels, it pulls Kate deeper into the eddy of a haunting folktale that has been handed down in whispers over generations. Now, it’s Kate’s turn to listen.

As the drowned woman reaches out from the grave, Kate reaches back. They must come together, if only in dreams, to right the sinister wrongs of the past. – Abstract from Goodreads

 

Empress of All Seasons by Emiko Jean

Expected: 6 November 2018

The world building has been described as vivid and gorgeous by early reviewers on Goodreads. #YAfantasy

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In a palace of illusions, nothing is what it seems.
Each generation, a competition is held to find the next  Empress of Honoku. The rules are simple. Survive the palace’s enchanted seasonal rooms. Conquer Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall. Marry the prince. All are eligible to compete—all except yōkai, supernatural monsters and spirits whom the human emperor is determined to enslave and destroy.

Mari has spent a lifetime training to become empress. Winning should be easy. And it would be, if she wEmpresshiding a dangerous secret. Mari is a yōkai with the ability to transform into a terrifying monster. If discovered, her life will be forfeit. As she struggles to keep her true identity hidden, Mari’s fate collides with that of Taro, the prince who has no desire to inherit the imperial throne, and Akira, a half-human, half-yōkai outcast. – Abstract from Goodreads

 

The Wren Hunt by Mary Watson

Expected: 6 November 2018

I love the sound of this book which has had rave reviews on Goodreads. #YAfantasy

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Every Christmas, Wren is chased through the woods near her isolated village by her family’s enemies—the Judges—and there’s nothing that she can do to stop it. Once her people, the Augurs, controlled a powerful magic. But now that power lies with the Judges, who are set on destroying her kind for good. 

In a desperate bid to save her family, Wren takes a dangerous undercover assignment—as an intern to an influential Judge named Cassa Harkness. Cassa has spent her life researching a transformative spell, which could bring the war between the factions to its absolute end. Caught in a web of deceit, Wren must decide whether or not to gamble on the spell and seal the Augurs’ fate. – Abstract from Goodreads

 

 

 

Athena’s Champion by David Hair & Cath Mayo

Expected: 8 November 2018

Based on Greek mythology this book, the first in the Olympus Trilogy features young Odysseus as the hero. I am looking forward to getting lost in Ancient Greece. #YAfantasy

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Prince Odysseus of Ithaca is about to have his world torn apart. He’s travelled to the oracle at Pytho to be anointed as heir to his island kingdom; but instead, the Pythia reveals a terrible secret, one that tears down every pillar of his life, and marks him out for death.

Outcast by his family, hunted by the vengeful gods, Odysseus is offered sanctuary by Athena, goddess of wisdom, and thrust into the secret war between the Olympians for domination and survival. Only his wits, and his skill as a warrior can keep him ahead of their power games – and alive. – Abstract from Goodreads

 

 

 

The Lying Woods by Ashley Elston

Expected: 13 November 2018

I loved Ashley Elston’s This Is Our Story so The Lying Woods has been on my TBR forever. This is the one I need now! #YA #Thriller

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Owen Foster has never wanted for anything. Then his mother shows up at his elite New Orleans boarding school cradling a bombshell: his privileged life has been funded by stolen money. After using the family business, the single largest employer in his small Louisiana town, to embezzle millions and drain the employees’ retirement accounts, Owen’s father vanished without a trace, leaving Owen and his mother to deal with the fallout.

Owen returns to Lake Cane to finish his senior year, where people he can barely remember despise him for his father’s crimes. It’s bad enough dealing with muttered insults and glares, but when Owen and his mother receive increasingly frightening threats from someone out for revenge, he knows he must get to the bottom of what really happened at Louisiana Frac–and the cryptic note his father sent him at his boarding school days before disappearing.

Owen’s only refuge is the sprawling, isolated pecan orchard he works at after school, owned by a man named Gus who has his own secrets–and in some ways seems to know Owen better than he knows himself. As Owen uncovers a terrible injustice that looms over the same Preacher Woods he’s claimed as his own, he must face a shocking truth about his own past–and write a better future. – Abstract from Goodreads

 

How She Died, How I Lived by Mary Crockett

Expected: 13 November 2018

An intriguing abstract caught my attention. It’s had mixed reviews so I will have to find out for myself. #YA #Mystery

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I was one of five. The five girls Kyle texted that day. The girls it could have been. Only Jamie–beautiful, saintly Jamie–was kind enough to respond. And it got her killed.

On the eve of Kyle’s sentencing a year after Jamie’s death, all the other “chosen ones” are coping in various ways. But our tenacious narrator is full of anger, stuck somewhere between the horrifying past and the unknown future as she tries to piece together why she gets to live, while Jamie is dead.

Now she finds herself drawn to Charlie, Jamie’s boyfriend–knowing all the while that their relationship will always be haunted by what-ifs and why-nots. Is hope possible in the face of such violence? Is forgiveness? How do you go on living when you know it could have been you instead? – Abstract from Goodreads

 

 

Love You Gone by Rona Halsall 

Expected: 15 November 2018

I know this psychological thriller is going to break me but I can’t wait to read it anyway! #Thriller

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When Mel arrives at the holiday cottage in the Lake District, she expects to find the heating on and her husband Luke and the two children waiting for her. Maybe a bottle of wine open… 

Instead, there is just a note on the side, saying they’ve gone out for a walk. 

But they aren’t back several hours later, and Mel knows something is wrong. Really wrong. When a search doesn’t find them, she has to confess to the police that her marriage isn’t all that it seems. 

Even if that risks her own secrets being revealed… – Abstract from Goodreads

 

 

 

 

Any Second by Kevin Emerson

Expected: 20 November 2018

Not as sure I will like this one, but it’s excellent early reviews promise a book worth a second look. #YA #thriller

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Five years after being kidnapped, Elian’s captor sends him into the mall–with a bomb strapped to his chest.

Across the mall is Maya, a girl whose crippling anxiety holds her prisoner in its own way. 

Whether it’s chance or fate, Maya keeps Eli from ending them all. And now nothing is the same. Drawn together by their dark pasts, Maya and Eli know it takes only seconds for their entire worlds to change. But time will tell if meeting each other will change them for better or worse. – Abstract from Goodreads