Looking Ahead – This Month’s TBR List (May 2018)

I’m linking up again with Tina @ Reading between the Pages to look ahead at the books I’d like to read in May. This month I’m hoping to read at last half of the books on my Netgalley shelf; my rating is disturbingly close to falling below the 80% mark, and I just cannot allow it, so I’ve got 9 Netgalley reads planned! I’ve also got some buddy reads and book club reads planned, which I’m looking forward to. So, here’s May’s hopefuls…

Currently Reading…

I’m hosting a 4 week readalong on Instagram for this one

NEEDFUL THINGS by Stephen King

There was a new shop in town. Run by a stranger.

Needful Things, the sign said. The oddest name. A name that caused some gossip and speculation among the good folks of Castle Rock, Maine, while they waited for opening day.

Eleven-year-old Brian Rusk was the first customer and he got just what he wanted, a very rare 1956 Sandy Koufax baseball card. Signed. Cyndi Rose Martin was next. A Lalique vase. A perfect match for her living room decor.

Something for everyone. Something you really had to have. And always at a price you could just about afford. The cash price that is. Because there was another price. There always is when your heart’s most secret, true desire is for sale . . .

AND

DEADLY SECRETS by Robert Bryndza

On an icy morning, a mother wakes to find her daughter’s blood-soaked body frozen to the road. Who would carry out such a killing on the victim’s doorstep?

Straight off her last harrowing case, Detective Erika Foster is feeling fragile but determined to lead the investigation. As she sets to work, she finds reports of assaults in the same quiet South London suburb where the woman was killed. One chilling detail links them to the murder victim – they were all attacked by a figure in black wearing a gas mask.

Erika is on the hunt for a killer with a terrifying calling card. The case gets more complicated when she uncovers a tangled web of secrets surrounding the death of the beautiful young woman.

Yet just as Erika begins to piece the clues together, she is forced to confront painful memories of her past. Erika must dig deep, stay focused and find the killer. Only this time, one of her own is in terrible danger…

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Blog Tours…

INDIGO LOST by S.R. Summers

The First book in the Infinity Squared Series. Don’t think. Just run. When what lies ahead is less fearful than what lies behind, and west-coast unknowns less terrifying than east-side tragedies, there is no choice other than the one through the window at the end of a third-floor police station corridor. Without another thought, the girl runs. Her jump will take her to the street below, to encounters with humanity that will both shock and save her, to the girl she becomes the one who knows how to fight, but also survive, even shine, in the darkest places. She does not go unnoticed. The mob boss, the ruler of Vegas, has seen her. But she is not ready to be seen. And this time there is no corridor, and no window.

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Buddy Reads…

ELEANOR OLIPHANT IS COMPLETELY FINE by Gail Honeyman (with Beth @ Bibliobeth)

Eleanor Oliphant has learned how to survive – but not how to live

Eleanor Oliphant leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend.

Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled life. Except, sometimes, everything.

One simple act of kindness is about to shatter the walls Eleanor has built around herself. Now she must learn how to navigate the world that everyone else seems to take for granted – while searching for the courage to face the dark corners she’s avoided all her life.

Change can be good. Change can be bad. But surely any change is better than… fine?

AND

THE CRAFTSMAN by Sharon Bolton (with Eva @ Novel Deelights)

Devoted father or merciless killer? His secrets are buried with him.

Florence Lovelady’s career was made when she convicted coffin-maker Larry Glassbrook of a series of child murders 30 years ago. Like something from our worst nightmares the victims were buried…ALIVE.

Larry confessed to the crimes; it was an open and shut case. But now he’s dead, and events from the past start to repeat themselves.

Did she get it wrong all those years ago?
Or is there something much darker at play?

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Book Clubs…

The theme for this month’s The BookBum Club is “Around the World” – read a book by an author who’s from a different country

THE GOOD SON by You-jeong Jeong

YOU WAKE UP COVERED IN BLOOD
THERE’S A BODY DOWNSTAIRS
YOUR MOTHER’S BODY

YOU DIDN’T DO IT. DID YOU?
HOW COULD YOU, YOU’VE ALWAYS BEEN THE GOOD SON

THE INTERNATIONAL SENSATION FROM KOREA’S MILLION-COPY BESTSELLING AUTHOR YOU-JEONG JEONG.

When Yu-jin wakes up covered in blood, and finds the body of his mother downstairs, he decides to hide the evidence and pursue the killer himself.

Then young women start disappearing in his South Korean town. Who is he hunting? And why does the answer take him back to his brother and father who lost their lives many years ago. The Good Son is inspired by a true story.

AND

DON’T WAKE UP by Liz Lawler (for @criminallygoodbooklcub)

Alex Taylor wakes up tied to an operating table. The man who stands over her isn’t a doctor.

The choice he forces her to make is utterly unspeakable.

But when Alex re-awakens, she’s unharmed – and no one believes her horrifying story. Ostracised by her colleagues, her family and her partner, she begins to wonder if she really is losing her mind.

And then she meets the next victim.

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Carried over from last month…

This is the third month this book has featured on my TBR so I’m determined to read it this month!

THE WITCHFINDER’S SISTER by Beth Underdown

When Alice Hopkins’ husband dies in a tragic accident, she returns to the small Essex town of Manningtree, where her brother Matthew still lives.

But home is no longer a place of safety. Matthew has changed, and there are rumours spreading through the town: whispers of witchcraft, and of a great book, in which he is gathering women’s names.

To what lengths will Matthew’s obsession drive him?
And what choice will Alice make, when she finds herself at the very heart of his plan?

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The Rest of the Month…

My nonfiction pick:

I’LL BE GONE IN THE DARK by Michelle McNamara

For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. Then he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of the best detectives in the area.

Three decades later, Michelle McNamara, a true crime journalist who created the popular website TrueCrimeDiary.com, was determined to find the violent psychopath she called “the Golden State Killer.” Michelle pored over police reports, interviewed victims, and embedded herself in the online communities that were as obsessed with the case as she was.

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark–the masterpiece McNamara was writing at the time of her sudden death–offers an atmospheric snapshot of a moment in American history and a chilling account of a criminal mastermind and the wreckage he left behind. It is also a portrait of a woman’s obsession and her unflagging pursuit of the truth. Utterly original and compelling, it is destined to become a true crime classic–and may at last unmask the Golden State Killer.

AND

The priorities from my Netgalley Shelf

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I’ve got a few other books I’d love to read this month too, such as:

But we’ll see…

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Are we reading any of the same books this month?