Hales

This book had so much promise, but it fell short due to trying to do too much - there were too many story arcs, the character development was too shallow, and to be honest, it was difficult to keep track of who was who. I probably will read a sequel, but hope to see more depth to the characters.

I received a free copy of this book via The Niche Reader.

This was extremely hard to read - I like dark thrillers, but this was brutal!
Lots of trigger warnings for sure, this is a very twisted read and not for the faint hearted.

I could not put this down - a super book!

Each one of the author's books are so different, and I am always sad to leave the characters behind.

It felt like this book had promise - but by the end it lost me. I disliked the characters and felt that there wasn't enough of a conclusion

Thoroughly enjoyed this Aussie murder mystery.

This was incredibly predictable, and a bit of a boring read - I should have given up and moved on to something else tbh!

Not one of her best, but still entertaining

This book was so slow, it seemed to have promise, but it seemed to go off on a tangent about time spent on a hotel that I didn't feel added anything to the story - it felt like a bit of an anti climax

A mystery holiday read, not a great deal to it - a bit of suspense. Not sure if this is quite short (I read on a Kindle) as I read it in under a day. Some of the writing was a bit annoying tbh, but regardless, it was still entertaining.

A great heartwarming story about 3 people who are lost and grieving in some way that find purpose and unlikely friendships with each other - had me in the first few pages.

A solid 3* holiday read - centres around a significant event that happened at a barbecue - the event isn't actually revealed until halfway through, each chapter told from
the perspective of different guests - enjoyable, not a lot of depth and not particularly challenging

I read this book as well as listened to the audiobook. It is far too descriptive, not in a flowery way, but solely boring details that add nothing to the story at all. When I was listening to the audio, it struck me as it sounded like I'd accidentally switched on the audio description on a movie - NOTHING left undescribed.

The story itself was a bit ‘meh'. Nothing happened really, which was fine - but the characters weren't particularly appealing.

I enjoyed the first half, but the last half totally lost its way and it felt like a chore to read

Hannah, independent, headstrong, and determined not to follow in the footsteps of her bitterly divorced mother, has always avoided commitment. But one hot New York summer she meets Mark Reilly, a fellow Brit, and is swept up in a love affair that changes all her ideas about what marriage might mean.

Now, living in their elegant, expensive London townhouse and adored by her fantastically successful husband, she knows she was right to let down her guard.

But when Mark does not return from a business trip to the U.S. and when the hours of waiting for him stretch into days, the foundations of Hannah's certainty begin to crack. Why do Mark's colleagues believe he has gone to Paris not America? Why is there no record of him at his hotel? And who is the mysterious woman who has been telephoning him over the last few weeks?

Hannah begins to dig into her husband's life, uncovering revelations that throw into doubt everything she has ever believed about him. As her investigation leads her away from their fairytale romance into a place of violence and fear she must decide whether the secrets Mark has been keeping are designed to protect him or protect her...

**THE NO. 1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY - Book 1
**
**Fans around the world adore the best-selling No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series and its proprietor, Precious Ramotswe, Botswana's premier lady detective. In this charming series, Mma  Ramotswe—with help from her loyal associate, Grace Makutsi—navigates her cases and her personal life with wisdom, good humor, and the occasional cup of tea.
**
This first novel in Alexander McCall Smith's widely acclaimed The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series tells the story of the delightfully cunning and enormously engaging Precious Ramotswe, who is drawn to her profession to “help people with problems in their lives.” Immediately upon setting up shop in a small storefront in Gaborone, she is hired to track down a missing husband, uncover a con man, and follow a wayward daughter. But the case that tugs at her heart, and lands her in danger, is a missing eleven-year-old boy, who may have been snatched by witchdoctors.

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency received two Booker Judges' Special Recommendations and was voted one of the International Books of the Year and the Millennium by the Times Literary Supplement.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

See alternate cover edition [here](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7092748.Black_Notice)

The postmortem is in–Black Notice, the 10th in Patricia Cornwell's Scarpetta series, is a gore-splattered, intensely exciting read. As winter grips Richmond, Virginia, an air of somberness pervades chief medical examiner Kay Scarpetta's world. Her beloved niece Lucy is involved in a dangerous undercover police operation in Miami, and auntie fears for her life. A tyrannical new deputy chief, Diane Bray, wants to get Kay's department under her jurisdiction. Meanwhile, back at the office, someone has tinkered with the e-mail system, stealing Kay's identity, and sending off slanderous and hurtful messages. Emotionally battered, Scarpetta fears she is going insane. Or, could it be that someone is deliberately sowing this harvest of sorrow?

Despite her personal problems, Scarpetta is still the reigning diva at the department of death. She is sent to investigate the putrefied remains of a man found inside a container ship, “eyes bulged froglike, and the scalp and beard were sloughing off with the outer layer of darkening skin.” Kay finds strange, animal-like hairs on the man's clothing–the same hairs that she discovers on a murdered store clerk a few days later. In actuality, the bizarre killings extend well beyond Virginia; whoever killed the Richmond victims also butchered people in France. Kay and police captain Pete Marino are whisked off to Paris where they must collect top-secret information from a Paris morgue, and avoid becoming victims themselves.

This macabre tome is the stuff that classic Scarpetta tales are made of: creepy but compulsive autopsy scenes, plentiful plot twists, and the compelling, if slightly more vulnerable chief medical examiner herself. –Naomi Gesinger

Here are the confessions of a vampire. Hypnotic, shocking, and chillingly erotic, this is a novel of mesmerizing beauty and astonishing force-a story of danger and flight, of love and loss, of suspense and resolution, and of the extraordinary power of the senses. It is a novel only Anne Rice could write.

SUMMARY:
Benjamin Button was a not-so-ordinary man who began his life under unusual circumstances. Born in his eighties, and unable to stop time, he continued to age backwards. His life story is detailed from the end of World War I in 1918 and into the 21st century, when he discovered a love that lasted beyond time.

In this breathtaking and beautiful novel, the #1 New York Times bestselling author Anna Quindlen creates an unforgettable portrait of a mother, a father, a family, and the explosive, violent consequences of what seem like inconsequential actions.

Mary Beth Latham is first and foremost a mother, whose three teenaged children come first, before her career as a landscape gardener, or even her life as the wife of a doctor.  Caring for her family and preserving their everyday life is paramount.  And so, when one of her sons, Max, becomes depressed, Mary Beth becomes focused on him, and is blindsided by a shocking act of violence. What happens afterwards is a testament to the power of a woman's love and determination, and to the invisible line of hope and healing that connects one human being with another.

Ultimately, in the hands of Anna Quindlen's mesmerizing prose, Every Last One is a novel about facing every last one of the the things we fear most, about finding ways to navigate a road we never intended to travel, to live a life we never dreamed we'd have to live but must be brave enough to try.

Couldn't get on with this book at all. I didn't realise that this was a biography and not my cup of tea at all. If you enjoy listening to someone repeatedly describing risking drunken/drug fuelled behaviour, then this is for you, but not for me

This felt like a Lucy Foley crossed with Hot Fuzz. The plot was so farfetched that it verged on ridiculous

Another thrilling novel from the bestselling author of Postmortem and Black Notice

After months of menacing phone calls and feeling that her every move is being watched, successful writer Beryl Madison flees Key West when a terrifying message is scratched on her car. But the very night she returns to Richmond, she deactivates her burglar alarm and opens her door to someone who nearly decapitates her. Why did she let him in, wonders Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta? And, why is Beryl's latest manuscript missing? Persuing the answers involves Scarpetta in the murder of another writer - Beryl's jealous mentor. While she copes with a variety of personal and professional problems, Scarpetta's high-tech forensic skills enable her to collect a body of evidence - clues that would mean little without her intelligence, compassion, and imagination - that leads her directly into a nightmare all her own.

A vicious fifteen-year-old “droog” is the central character of this 1963 classic, whose stark terror was captured in Stanley Kubrick's magnificent film of the same title.

In Anthony Burgess's nightmare vision of the future, where criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, who talks in a brutal invented slang that brilliantly renders his and his friends' social pathology. A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom. When the state undertakes to reform Alex—to “redeem” him—the novel asks, “At what cost?”

This edition includes the controversial last chapter not published in the first edition and Burgess's introduction “A Clockwork Orange Resucked”.