Kindle British Mystery Book Club discussion

My value nomination is


First Night of Summer by Landon Parham

"Thoroughly engaging from start to finish...Overwhelming love, fear, self-doubt, and rage...emotions any parent could relate to. A foe that readers will want to see defeated, abolished, ground to dust."
--Sandra Brown, #1 New York Times bestselling author of LETHAL

"FIRST NIGHT OF SUMMER is a wonderfully written tale of secrets, subterfuge and their effects on one family. Landon Parham's debut thriller is a smooth mix of C.J. Box with Harlan Coben in an angst-riddled novel staged in the murky half-light of moral complexity. The book's simple, ironic title belies its fully realized characterizations and multi-layered plot, serving up a superb cat-and-mouse game where very little is what it first appears to be."
--Jon Land, bestselling author of STRONG RAIN FALLING


WHEN TRAGEDY STRIKES, a father discovers that a journey of misfortune is sometimes the path to deliverance.

The quaint mountain town of Ruidoso, New Mexico, is the perfect place for Isaac Snow to raise his family. But when eight-year-old daughters, Caroline and Josie, commit an innocent act of heroism, media coverage attracts the wrong kind of attention. Soon, their life unravels, leading them to the crossroads of love and hate, forgiveness and retribution.

In the dark hours of a drizzly morning, Isaac, an ex-air force pilot, wakes to find a masked intruder cradling one of the twins in his arms. Before he can react, the man in black leaps through the nearest window, plummeting in a tangle of body parts and glass. Isaac charges in pursuit, but is suddenly faced with a new dilemma. Caroline is unconscious, lying facedown in the lawn, cuts from the shattered window saturating her pajamas. If he gives chase, his little girl will surely bleed to death.

From a secretive loner with a pension for unrestrained violence to the pristine granite peaks of the Rocky Mountains--from laughter filled family dinners to a string of cross-country abductions, LANDON PARHAM'S debut novel relentlessly explores the horrific realities of unnatural lust and obsession. Taken well beyond the investigation and law-enforcement tactics, you'll find yourself steeped in journey of evil and torment, and the power of family that overcomes it all. Suspenseful, bold and meticulously researched; a true psychological thriller that captures the heart.

The meyrick novel is not available on kindle in us. Does it need to be?

I would like to nominate Secrets of the Sea House by Elisabeth Gifford
***Shortlisted For Historical Writers' Association's Debut Crown For Best First Historical Novel***Scotland, 1860. Reverend Alexander Ferguson, naive and newly-ordained, takes up his new parish, a poor, isolated patch on the Hebridean island of Harris. His time on the island will irrevocably change the course of his life, but the white house on the edge of the dunes keeps its silence long after Alexander departs. It will be more than a century before the Sea House reluctantly gives up its secrets. Ruth and Michael buy the grand but dilapidated building and begin to turn it into a home for the family they hope to have. But their dreams are marred by a shocking discovery. The tiny bones of a baby are buried beneath the house; the child's fragile legs are fused together - a mermaid child. Who buried the bones? And why? Ruth needs to solve the mystery of her new home - but the answers to her questions may lie in her own past.Based on a real nineteenth-century letter to "The Times" in which a Scottish clergyman claimed to have seen a mermaid," Secrets of the Sea House" is an epic, sweeping tale of loss and love, hope and redemption, and how we heal ourselves with the stories we tell."

Why do so many books set in Scotland keep popping up? Granted, I was responsible for Evil for Evil - but then I was probably its only reader - & whilst Marjory Fleming is middle-aged, she is female, happily married, & doesn't have a drink problem, so scarcely qualifies as a Scottsh detective :) If the SNP are successful, will that mean we'll not have anything to read anymore?

Value book nom:
Dover One: A Mystery by Joyce Porter

showing on Amazon US FOR $2.99

Main read
The Girl Next Door by Ruth Rendell

Sandra, I looked at them all and far away my top pick is Secrets of the Sea House
The Sea House

Reminds me of a book I worked on last year, Deborah Lawrenson's The Sea Garden,
,
which I really enjoyed.

Hoping it wins, though so far mine's the only vote.

When will we find out the winner? (Pardon my ignorance, it's my first month in the group)