Hello my bookish friends. It’s Friday, and so nearly the weekend. Today and until the rest of the year, I thought I might do a series of posts rounding up what an incredible year publishers have had with their books and creating a Christmas Gift Guide. Each of these posts will have carefully selected books so there if something for everyone. There is something for everyone!
Today I’m partnering up with Titan Books. I have only joined their mailing list this year and I’ve been so unbelievable grateful for the books they have sent me this year, they have been incredible. This post has it all, mystery, thriller, horror, retellings, and fantasy. You’ll find something for everyone.
So onto the books. Let me know at the end, if you’ve read them and what you would love to read!
I will start off with a seasonal book which I think a lot of you might have seen it around. It’s Christmas at 221B Baker Street.
Sherlock Holmes: The Christmas Demon by James Lovegrove | Mystery with a Fantasy twist –
It is 1890, and in the days before Christmas Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson are visited at Baker Street by a new client. Eve Allerthorpe – eldest daughter of a grand but somewhat eccentric Yorkshire-based dynasty – is greatly distressed, as she believes she is being haunted by a demonic Christmas spirit. Her late mother told her terrifying tales of the sinister Black Thurrick, and Eve is sure that she has seen the creature from her bedroom window. What is more, she has begun to receive mysterious parcels of birch twigs, the Black Thurrick’s calling card…
Eve stands to inherit a fortune if she is sound in mind, but it seems that something – or someone – is threatening her sanity. Holmes and Watson travel to the Allerthorpe family seat at Fellscar Keep to investigate, but soon discover that there is more to the case than at first appeared. There is another spirit haunting the family, and when a member of the household is found dead, the companions realise that no one is beyond suspicion.
Strange Ink & Dark Ink by Gary Kemble (The Harry Hendrick books)| Horror with a Mystery twist
When washed-up journalist Harry Hendrick wakes one morning with a hangover and a strange symbol tattooed on his neck, he shrugs it off as a bad night out. But soon more tattoos appear: grisly, violent images which come accompanied by horrific nightmares – so he begins to dig deeper. Harry’s search leads him to a sinister disappearance, torment from beyond the grave, and a web of corruption and violence tangled with his own past. One way or another, he has to right the wrongs.
Hex Life by various authors including Kelly Armstrong, Rachel Caine and Sherrilyn Kenyan | Fantasy and Magic – Bringing together the fantasy genre’s finest writers to create a collection of wicked tales.
Hex Life: Wicked New Tales of Witchery will take the classic tropes of tales of witchcraft and infuse them with fresh, feminist perspective and present-day concerns–even if they’re set in the past. These witches might be monstrous, or they might be heroes, depending on their own definitions. Even the kind hostess with the candy cottage thought of herself as the hero of her own story. After all, a woman’s gotta eat.
Wonderland by various authors – | Retelling with lots of twists
Within these pages you’ll find myriad approaches to Alice, from horror to historical. There’s even a Wild West tale from Angela Slatter, poetry, and a story by Laura Mauro which presents us with a Japanese folklore-inspired Wonderland.
A Shroud of Leaves by Rebecca Alexander |History meets Mystery
Archaeologist Sage Westfield has her first forensics case: investigating the murder of a teenage girl. Hidden by holly leaves, the girl’s body has been discovered on the grounds of a stately home, where another teenage girl went missing twenty years ago – but her body was never found. With mysterious links between the two disappearances, the police suspect the reclusive owner, Alistair Chorleigh, who was questioned twenty years ago but never charged. But when Sage investigates a nearby burial mound – and uncovers rumours of an ancient curse – she discovers the story of Edwin Masters, his friend Peter Chorleigh, and an excavation over a hundred years ago, that also ended in a mysterious disappearance. Still recovering from the traumatic events of her recent past, Sage will need both her modern forensics skills and her historical archaeological knowledge to unearth the devastating truth.
The Plague Stones by James Brogden | Horror
Fleeing from a traumatic break-in, Londoners Paul and Tricia Feenan sell up to escape to the isolated Holiwell village where Tricia has inherited a property. Scattered throughout the settlement are centuries-old stones used during the Great Plague as boundary markers. No plague-sufferer was permitted to pass them and enter the village. The plague diminished, and the village survived unscathed, but since then each year the village trustees have insisted on an ancient ceremony to renew the village boundaries, until a misguided act by the Feenans’ son then reminds the village that there is a reason traditions have been rigidly stuck to, and that all acts of betrayal, even those committed centuries ago, have consequences…
Hangman’s Gate by R.S. Ford | Fantasy
After uniting the bandit clans, the Iron Tusk has swept into Shengen and taken control of the empire. With an army behind him, he marches along the Skull Road, ready to lay waste to the lands in the west. The mountain fortress of Dunrun and its rag-tag defenders are all that stand in his way.
With their country besieged on all sides, troubling rumours of a priestess amassing power in the north, and unnatural alliances to the south, no help is coming. Alone, they must hold back the inhuman powers of the Iron Tusk, or see life as they know it come to an end.
The old gods have returned…
Wastelands: The New Apocalypse by various authors Including Divergent author – Veronica Roth | Horror
In WASTELANDS: THE NEW APOCALYPSE, veteran anthology editor John Joseph Adams is once again our guide through the wastelands using his genre and editorial expertise to curate his finest collection of post-apocalyptic short fiction yet. Whether the end comes via nuclear war, pandemic, climate change, or cosmological disaster, these stories explore the extraordinary trials and tribulations of those who survive.
Exit Wounds by various author | Mystery – Once again Titan bring together a collection of literature’s finest mystery and crime novelists including Lee Child, Jeffery Deaver and John Connolly
The Retreat by Sherri Smith | Mystery with a twist of thriller
Sherri Smith illuminates the dark side of the self-care and wellness industry in a thrilling ride of revenge perfect for fans of Liane Moriarty’s Nine Perfect Strangers. The Retreat is a twisting, bone-chilling suspense that asks: how well do you really know your friends?
Four women. Four secrets. A weekend that will change them forever…if they survive.
The War in the Dark by Nick Setchfield | Fantasy with a twist of thriller
A genre-defying page turner that fuses thriller and speculative fiction with dark fantasy in a hidden world in the heart of Cold War Europe. Europe. 1963. And the true Cold War is fought on the borders of this world, at the edges of the light. It’s a world of treachery, blood and magic. A world at war in the dark.
Ruin’s Wake by Patrick Edwards | Science-Fiction
A moving and powerful science fiction novel with themes of love, revenge, and identity. A story about humanity, and the universal search to find salvation in the face of insurmountable odds.
The Devouring Gray by Christine Lynn Herman | Fantasy YA
On the edge of town a beast haunts the woods, trapped in the Gray, its bonds loosening…
Uprooted from the city, Violet Saunders doesn’t have much hope of fitting in at her new school in Four Paths, a town almost buried in the woodlands of rural New York. The fact that she’s descended from one of the town’s founders doesn’t help much, either—her new neighbours treat her with distant respect, and something very like fear. When she meets Justin, May, Isaac, and Harper, all children of founder families, and sees the otherworldly destruction they can wreak, she starts to wonder if the townsfolk are right to be afraid.
When bodies start to appear in the woods, the locals become downright hostile. Can the teenagers solve the mystery of Four Paths, and their own part in it, before another calamity strikes?
Let me know at the end, if you’ve read them and what you would love to read!
