Are you looking for your next great read? Why not try out the books from across the pond? Despite from what governments say, books are essential and are needed now, more than ever. So if you are need of a variety and want to read diverse stories, then I suggest you try out some British and Irish titles!
We may have left 2023 behind, but the pain and struggles of last year are still being faced, especially independent bookstores. Continue to support indie bookstores by shopping on Bookshop.org and Hive.co.uk.
Waterstones currently ships to the United States but there will be an international shipping fee. You can also try with the British bookstore, Blackwell’s, also with Wordery.com. Now on with the recommendations!
Featured Book of the Month
Signed Sealed Dead by Cynthia Murphy
From best-loved YA thriller author, Cynthia Murphy, comes an explosive new mystery! True-Crime obsessed Paige, and her family, move across the Atlantic to her father’s eerie hometown, and it’s not long before she uncovers the town’s dark history – a string of unsolved murders and disappearances in the 90s.
And then notes start appearing at their dilapidated old home, about the secrets the house is keeping. The clues lead Paige to a diary concealed in the walls that belonged to one of the missing girls. Could this be the key to solving a quarter-of-a-century mystery, or will this make Paige the next target?! (Credit: Scholastic UK)
Three Little Birds by Sam Blake
Two decades of secrets. One shocking discovery…
When a skull is found in Lough Coyne, facial reconstruction expert Dr Carla Steele is drawn into a fourteen-year-old case – but not all cases are cold, as Carla discovers when she and DS Jack Maguire find the brutally murdered body of a local woman close to the water’s edge.
Together with Carla’s partner, criminal psychologist Grace Franciosi, Carla and Jack uncover a tragic story with very dangerous and current implications.
Since the disappearance of her best friend, Carla has dedicated her career to bringing the dead home, but this time it’s the living who are counting on her. In a race to save another woman, will they be able to stop the killer in time? (Credit: Atlantic Books)
Breakdown by Cathy Sweeney
Expected Publication Date: January 18
One winter morning on an ordinary day in contemporary Dublin, an ordinary middle-class woman wakes up in her ordinary suburban home. Her husband is next to her in bed, her teenage children sleeping nearby.
Without thinking much about it, she walks out the front door and never comes back.
She travels first by car, then train, then ferry. Along the way, she finds herself in service stations and shopping centres, hotel bars and hairdressers – and in the beds of strange men.
Finally, forty-eight hours later, alone in a cottage in Wales, the woman faces up to what she has been ignoring inside herself, her family, modern society: signs of breakdown.
A Cruel Twist of Fate by H. F. Askwith
Expected Publication Date: January 18
When eighteen-year-old Helena is sent to be a governess at Archfall Manor – a beautiful but crumbling manor house, perched at the edge of a causeway in the North Sea – she feels confident she will know how to deal with the esteemed but eccentric Cauldwell family who own it. But it quickly becomes clear that the Cauldwells are hiding more than Helena could ever have dreamed of.
A series of sinister events come to a head with a gruesome death – swiftly followed by another. Worse still, with the path back to the mainland cut off by a terrible storm, and no way to get help, suspicions and paranoia quickly run rampant.
But the Cauldwells aren’t the only ones keeping secrets. Helena has some very important ones of her own – and soon she begins to wonder whether dark powers beyond her control might be forcing her to twist the fate of the family – and her own destiny – forever. (Credit: Penguin Random House Children’s UK)
The Beholders by Hester Musson
Expected Publication Date: January 18
Some houses are haunted by the living.
June, 1878. The body of a boy is pulled from the depths of the River Thames, suspected to be the beloved missing child of the widely admired Liberal MP Ralph Gethin.
Four months earlier. Harriet is a young maid newly employed at Finton Hall. Fleeing the drudgery of an unwanted engagement in the small village where she grew up, Harriet is entranced by the grand country hall; she is entranced too by her glamorous mistress Clara Gethin, whose unearthly singing voice floats through the house. But Clara, though captivating, is erratic. The master of the house is a much-lauded politician, but he is strangely absent. And some of their beautiful belongings seem to tell terrible stories.
Unable to ignore her growing unease, Harriet sets out to discover their secrets. When she uncovers a shocking truth, a chain of events is set in motion that could cost Harriet everything, even her freedom…(Credit: HarperCollins)
Helle and Death by Oskar Jensen
Expected Publication Date: January 18
A snowstorm. A country house. Old friends reunited It’s going to be murder.
Torben Helle – art historian, Danish expat and owner of several excellent Scandinavian jumpers – has been dragged to a remote snowbound Northumbrian mansion for a ten-year reunion with old university friends.
Things start to go sideways when their host, a reclusive and irritating tech entrepreneur, makes some shocking revelations at the dinner table. And when these are followed by an apparent suicide, the group faces a test of their wits… and their trust.
Snowed in and cut off, surrounded by enigmatic housekeepers and off-duty police inspectors, not to mention a peculiar last will and testament, suspicion and sarcasm quickly turn to panic. As the temperature drops and the tension mounts, Torben decides to draw upon all the tricks of Golden Age detectives past in order to solve the mystery: how much money would it take to turn one of his old friends into a murderer? But he’d better be quick, or someone else might end up dead. (Credit: Profile Books)
The Boy Who Fell From the Sky by Benjamin Dean
Expected Publication Date: January 18
Combining the warmth and heart of Ross Welford’s The 1,000 Year Old Boy with the epic adventure and inseparable friendship of Frank Cottrell Boyce’s Cosmic comes an otherworldly new middle grade adventure from the award-winning Benjamin Dean.
Twelve-year-old Zed has always been fascinated by the Demons that fall from the sky. His whole life his dad has worked as a Hunter, tasked with eliminating Demons once and for all, and Zed hopes to one day follow in his footsteps.
But then one night Spark appears and disrupts everything Zed thought he knew. Because this Demon is nothing like the myths – he’s a frightened boy, no older than Zed, who wants to go back home.
Can Zed stand up for what’s right, even if it means going against his own family? (Credit: Simon & Schuster)
Confetti by Dean Atta and illustrated by Alea Marley
Expected Publication Date: January 18
One day, Ari discovers a piece of pink confetti under the sofa. She throws is up into the air and watches it helicopter down: a small, bright moment of celebration.
And before long, Ari discovers confetti in other places: at her birthday party; at the Pride parade; in autumn’s falling leaves; in the magical sprinkling of snowflakes. She finds that when you look around, life is full of celebrations, each moment bursting with colour and joy – just like a handful of confetti.
The debut picture book from acclaimed poet Dean Atta, winner of the Stonewall Book Award and shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal Prize, is stunningly brought to life by award-winning Alea Marley. (Credit: Hachette Children’s Group)
You Wouldn’t Catch Me Dead by Tess James-Mackey
Expected Publication Date: January 18
The only thing worse than being lost . . . is being found.
Keely planned to keep her head down at her new school – she isn’t there to make friends or memories, she just wants to be left alone.
In order to get into college, she is roped into a programme that involves camping in the Welsh wilderness with five over-keen try-hards. Her plan is to keep her head down, keep her mouth shut and get through the next few days.
But Keely is running from something. Something that drove her family out of their home and to this quiet town. And when her fellow explorers start disappearing and the bodies begin to pile up, she has to ask herself: did she run far enough? (Credit: Hachette Children’s Group)
Wild Houses by Colin Barrett
Expected Publication Date: January 25
As Ballina prepares for its biggest weekend of the year, the simmering feud between small-time dealer, Cillian English, and County Mayo’s fraternal enforcers, Gabe and Sketch Ferdia, spills over into violence and an ugly ultimatum.
When the reclusive Dev answers his door on Friday night he finds Doll – Cillian’s bruised, sullen, teenage brother – in the clutches of Gabe and Sketch. Jostled by his nefarious cousins, goaded by his dead mother’s dog and struck by spinning lights, Dev is unwillingly drawn headlong into the Ferdias’ revenge fantasy.
Meanwhile, seventeen-year-old Nicky can’t shake the feeling something bad has happened to her boyfriend Doll. Hungover, reeling from a fractious Friday night and plagued by ghosts of her own, Nicky sets out on a feverish mission to save Doll, even as she questions her future in Ballina.(Credit: Vintage Publishing)
Scotland’s Forgotten Past: A History of the Mislaid, Misplaced and Misunderstood by Alistair Moffatt
Expected Publication Date: January 25
A charming, lively and often amusing tour of 36 forgotten episodes and overlooked people and places of Scottish history.
Scotland’s history is full of famous kings, queens, saints and warriors. But what about its lesser-known places, people and events? In this collection of half-forgotten tales, Alistair Moffat brings their stories out of the shadows, from the clashes of proud Picts and ‘pirate kings’ in the early medieval period to the invention of tartan, whisky, Aberdeen Angus and Peter Pan. Each surprising or scandalous twist sheds a new light on the history of Scotland. (Credit: Thames & Hudson)
Death on the Lusitania by R. L. Graham
Expected Publication Date: January 25
The ship was doomed before it ever left port. His fate was sealed before he ever stepped on board. From R. L. Graham, Death on the Lusitania is an immersive WW1 historical novel set aboard the ill-fated ocean liner.
New York, 1915. RMS Lusitania, one of the world’s most luxurious ocean liners, departs for war-torn Europe. Among those on board is Patrick Gallagher, a civil servant in Her Majesty’s government tasked with escorting a British diplomat back to England.
When a fellow passenger is believed to have shot himself in his cabin, Gallagher is asked by the captain to investigate the scene but one crucial detail doesn’t fit. The man’s body was discovered in a locked cabin with the key inside and no gun to be found. Was it really suicide? Or murder?
Gallagher believes one of the passengers is a deadly killer who could strike again to protect their true reasons for being on board. And all the while, the ship sails on towards Europe, where deadly submarines patrol dark waters. (Credit: Pan Macmillan)
Murder in Transit by Edward Marston
Expected Publication Date: January 25
1866. On a train bound for Portsmouth, an elegant woman shares a first-class compartment with a gentleman in a celebratory mood. Giles Blanchard reveals his lecherous side as the journey gets underway, but he will never reach his home on the Isle of Wight alive. This chance encounter is to prove fortuitous for the woman and her partner-in-crime. They find themselves not only the richer for picking the dead man’s pocket, they also now possess the material for an extremely lucrative blackmail.
Detective Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming are swiftly dispatched to sift through the evidence. They are all too aware that with Her Majesty Queen Victoria spending the summer on the island, a speedy resolution to the case is a priority for their superiors. Tracing the pair who lured Blanchard to his death is an endeavour freighted with difficulties, but will the fact that their inquiries lead them to the door of a royal residence be one complication too many? (Credit: Alison & Busby)
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