Book Box Unboxing: The Abominable Book Club (March box) #abominablebookclub

“The Abominable Book Club contains all the dark magic of a haunted bookshop, summoned directly to your doorstep!”

It’s time to unbox the fifth Abominable Book Club Box. I’m extremely fussy, so believe it’s a big deal when I say, I love this box, and have been very impressed with each and every one I’ve received.

The cost of this box is £19.99, and they ship internationally. Each month you’ll receive a featured book, a locally sourced luxury snack, a handful of hot drinks and a second-hand paperback.

So what was inside:

A bookmark spookmark, featuring some micro-fiction from one of the owners, Owen. I quite like my collection of spookmarks.

• 

• 

The locally sourced snack were Traditional Welsh Cakes by Tan-Y-Castell. March is the month of the Welsh Patron Saint, St. David, so an appropriate snack. And as usual, some hot chocolate to enjoy.

• 

• 

Before we get to the ebook, I also got a little extra that wasn’t in everyones box – a librarian pin – this was because I was a rep for them in their prelaunch phase and first few months of existence. I received the very first box for free and have purchased every box since then. Now for the ebook…

The Harvestmen & Other Unnatural Creatures by Split Lip Comics

An apartment building infested with a never-before-seen kind of bug. Corn fields swollen with otherworldly crops. Subterranean colleges where unusual students learn a fearsome craft. A child learning a terrible lesson from a strange friend. 

These stories, and more, come to disturbing life in the pages of The Harvestmen and Other Unnatural Creatures, a collection that proves that strange thoughts beget strange deeds.

***

Also included in this month’s box was a print card, featuring one of the most famous welsh folklore tales: The Legend of Gelert the Dog.

The feature book:

Foe by Iain Reid

You think you know everything about your life.

Long-married couple Junior and Henrietta live a quiet, solitary life on their farm, where they work at the local feed mill and raise chickens. Their lives are simple, straightforward, uncomplicated.

Until everything you think you know collapses.

Until the day a stranger arrives at their door with alarming news: Junior has been chosen to take an extraordinary journey, a journey across both time and distance, while Hen remains at home. Junior will be gone for years. But Hen won’t be left alone.

Who can you trust if you can’t even trust yourself?

As the time for his departure draws nearer, Junior finds himself questioning everything about his life – even whether it’s really his life at all.

 An eerily entrancing page-turner, Foe churns with unease and suspense from the first words to its shocking finale. Perfect for fans of Humans, Westworld and Black Mirror, Foe is a book you will never forget.

***

I love when the feature book is a hardback! I may have squealed with delight when I saw this book, I’ve had my eye on it for a while, ever since a fellow bookworm brought it to my attention!

The second-hand book:

This month, my second-hand book was….

The Fortune Teller by Donald James

The Arctic city of Murmansk, capital of the Kola region of north Russia, early in the new century. Inspector Constantin Vadim is back in his home town after a short and nearly catastrophic appointment in Moscow. But now he is faced with a frightening personal challenge: one night his young wife, Natalya, a doctor, answers an emergency medical call -twelve hours later she still hasn’t come back. An accident seems the first possibility. Or even a lover. Yet soon a more terrifying answer begins to emerge as Vadim’s desperate investigation reveals that a second missing woman, an American consular official, was abducted on the same night. Frustrated by the strange twists and contradictions in the case, Vadim surrenders to the dark power of Russian myth and prophecy. But he is linked in uneasy parnership with a black FBI woman, seconded from Moscow. Locked in a clash of cultures, the ill-balanced pair must confront an abductor who is at once deviously clever and bafflingly deranged.

***

Oooo, I do like the sound of this one! My only issue is, the condition of the book is slightly more worn than I’d have like.

---

The Complete Box

Another month, another happy customer! If you like what you see, head over to the The Abominable Book Club website and subscribe now.

Find out more about The Abominable Book Club:

Website

Instagram

Twitter