Monday, August 5, 2019

Tuesday Tomorrow

The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware
Published by: Gallery/Scout Press
Publication Date: August 6th, 2019
Format: Hardcover, 352 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"When she stumbles across the ad, she’s looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss - a live-in nannying post, with a staggeringly generous salary. And when Rowan Caine arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is smitten - by the luxurious “smart” home fitted out with all modern conveniences, by the beautiful Scottish Highlands, and by this picture-perfect family.

What she doesn’t know is that she’s stepping into a nightmare - one that will end with a child dead and herself in prison awaiting trial for murder.

Writing to her lawyer from prison, she struggles to explain the unravelling events that led to her incarceration. It wasn’t just the constant surveillance from the cameras installed around the house, or the malfunctioning technology that woke the household with booming music, or turned the lights off at the worst possible time. It wasn’t just the girls, who turned out to be a far cry from the immaculately behaved model children she met at her interview. It wasn’t even the way she was left alone for weeks at a time, with no adults around apart from the enigmatic handyman, Jack Grant.

It was everything.

She knows she’s made mistakes. She admits that she lied to obtain the post, and that her behavior toward the children wasn’t always ideal. She’s not innocent, by any means. But, she maintains, she’s not guilty - at least not of murder. Which means someone else is.

Full of spellbinding menace and told in Ruth Ware’s signature suspenseful style, The Turn of the Key is an unputdownable thriller from the Agatha Christie of our time."

Reinterpretations of The Turn of the Screw fascinate me, mainly because that story has so much wasted potential. So while I'm wary of Ware I'm still highly anticipating this book. 

Wild Fire by Ann Cleeves
Published by: Minotaur Books
Publication Date: August 6th, 2019
Format: Paperback, 432 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"The betrayal of those closest burns most of all...

Hoping for a fresh start, an English family moves to the remote Shetland islands, eager to give their autistic son a better life.

But when a young nanny's body is found hanging in the barn beside their home, rumors of her affair with the husband spread like wildfire. As suspicion and resentment of the family blazes in the community, Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez is called in to investigate. He knows it will mean his boss, Willow Reeves, returning to run the investigation, and confronting their complex relationship.

With families fracturing and long-hidden lies emerging, Jimmy faces the most disturbing case of his career."

Brace yourselves, not many more stories set in Shetland...

The Third Mrs. Durst by Ann Aguirre
Published by: Midnight Ink
Publication Date: August 6th, 2019
Format: Hardcover, 312 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Some people just need killing.

Marlena Altizer Durst lives in her husband's shadow. He controls her every move - what she wears, the food she eats, and the friends she's allowed to make. If she disobeys, there are...consequences. And he has all the power.

To outsiders, it seems that she leads a fairy-tale life. But nobody ever wonders if Cinderella was happy after she married the prince. Marlena has traded freedom and safety for luxurious imprisonment, and most days, that seems like a bad bargain. Death may be the only exit she's allowed. Just like his first wife. And his second. Unless she flips the script.

Some people just need killing."

Ann Aguirre writing in a new suspenseful genre? YAS! 

Love and Death Among the Cheetahs by Rhys Bowen
Published by: Berkley
Publication Date: August 6th, 2019
Format: Hardcover, 304 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Georgie and Darcy are finally on their honeymoon in Kenya's Happy Valley, but murder crashes the party in this all-new installment in the New York Times bestselling series.

I was so excited when Darcy announced out of the blue that we were flying to Kenya for our extended honeymoon. Now that we are here, I suspect he has actually been sent to fulfill another secret mission. I am trying very hard not to pick a fight about it, because after all, we are in paradise! Darcy finally confides that there have been robberies in London and Paris. It seems the thief was a member of the aristocracy and may have fled to Kenya. Since we are staying in the Happy Valley - the center of upper-class English life - we are well positioned to hunt for clues and ferret out possible suspects.

Now that I am a sophisticated married woman, I am doing my best to sound like one. But crikey! These aristocrats are a thoroughly loathsome sort enjoying a completely decadent lifestyle filled with wild parties and rampant infidelity. And one of the leading lights in the community, Lord Cheriton, has the nerve to make a play for me. While I am on my honeymoon! Of course, I put an end to that right off.

When he is found bloodied and lifeless along a lonely stretch of road, it appears he fell victim to a lion. But it seems that the Happy Valley community wants to close the case a bit too quickly. Darcy and I soon discover that there is much more than a simple robbery and an animal attack to contend with here in Kenya. Nearly everyone has a motive to want Lord Cheriton dead and some will go to great lengths to silence anyone who asks too many questions. The hunt is on! I just hope I can survive my honeymoon long enough to catch a killer...."

If I could only have books set in one location forevermore, it would be Kenya's Happy Valley.

Singapore Sapphire by A.M. Stuart
Published by: Berkley
Publication Date: August 6th, 2019
Format: Paperback, 384 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Early twentieth-century Singapore is a place where a person can disappear, and Harriet Gordon hopes to make a new life for herself there, leaving her tragic memories behind her - but murder gets in the way.

Singapore, 1910 - Desperate for a fresh start, Harriet Gordon finds herself living with her brother, a reverend and headmaster of a school for boys, in Singapore at the height of colonial rule. Hoping to gain some financial independence, she advertises her services as a personal secretary. It is unfortunate that she should discover her first client, Sir Oswald Newbold - explorer, mine magnate and president of the exclusive Explorers and Geographers Club - dead with a knife in his throat.

When Inspector Robert Curran is put on the case, he realizes that he has an unusual witness in Harriet. Harriet's keen eye for detail and strong sense of duty interests him, as does her distrust of the police and her traumatic past, which she is at pains to keep secret from the gossips of Singapore society.

When another body is dragged from the canal, Harriet feels compelled to help with the case. She and Curran are soon drawn into a murderous web of treachery and deceit and find themselves face-to-face with a ruthless cabal that has no qualms about killing again to protect its secrets."

A country under colonial rule? A murder? This is the book for me. 

House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig
Published by: Delacorte Press
Publication Date: August 6th, 2019
Format: Hardcover, 416 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Get swept away in Erin A. Craig's mesmerizing House of Salt and Sorrows. As one by one her beautiful sisters mysteriously die on their isolated island estate, Annaleigh must unravel the curse that haunts her family. Be careful who you dance with....

In a manor by the sea, twelve sisters are cursed.

Annaleigh lives a sheltered life at Highmoor with her sisters and their father and stepmother. Once there were twelve, but loneliness fills the grand halls now that four of the girls' lives have been cut short. Each death was more tragic than the last - the plague, a plummeting fall, a drowning, a slippery plunge - and there are whispers throughout the surrounding villages that the family is cursed by the gods.

Disturbed by a series of ghostly visions, Annaleigh becomes increasingly suspicious that her sister's deaths were no accidents. The girls have been sneaking out every night to attend glittering balls, dancing until dawn in silk gowns and shimmering slippers, and Annaleigh isn't sure whether to try to stop them or to join their forbidden trysts. Because who - or what - are they really dancing with?

When Annaleigh's involvement with a mysterious stranger who has secrets of his own intensifies, it's a race to unravel the darkness that has fallen over her family - before it claims her next. House of Salt and Sorrows is a spellbinding novel filled with magic and the rustle of gossamer skirts down long, dark hallways. Get ready to be swept away."

A dark and disturbing take on The Twelve Dancing Princesses.

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