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Best Reads of 2022
My Favourite Books From This Year
5 Star Reads
For the last two decades, Jane has been trying for a baby. She knows all about surviving the agonising two-week wait between ovulation and test. Increasingly desperate, Jane opens her laptop, clicks, ‘TWW Forum: New Thread’, and types. ‘Anyone else starting their two-week wait? Shall we wait it out together?’
The Library by Bella Osborne
An unlikely friendship forms between a sixteen-year-old boy and a seventy-two-year-old woman as they rally the community to save their local library.
Tom is invisible. He happily blends into the background of life. But Farah Shah changes everything. Farah makes Tom want to stand up and be seen – at least by her. So Tom quickly decides the best way to learn about women is to delve into romance novels, and he finds himself at the village library where he befriends 72-year-old Maggie.
Maggie has been happily alone for ten years, at least this is what she tells herself. When Tom comes to her rescue after a library meeting, never did she imagine a friendship that could change her life. As Maggie helps Tom navigate the best way to ask out Farrah, Tom helps Maggie realize the mistakes of her past won't define her future.
But when the library comes under threat of closure, it's up to Tom and Maggie to rally the community and save the library!
Will these two unlikely friends be able to bring everyone together and save their library?
The Love Note by Kate G. Smith
5 Stars - My Review - Amazon - Goodreads
A wedding dress. A love letter. A secret that will change everything...
When Maggie Burnett discovers her mother's beautiful wedding dress just days after she passes away, she wonders why she'd been told it was missing...
Pinned to the waistband is a note that reads: 'E, je t'aime. LS x' . 'E' must be Elizabeth, her mother, but who is 'LS'? Could he be the father she's never known?
As Maggie's seemingly happy life in London unravels, she decides it's time to go home to Norfolk and figure out the truth once and for all. Even if it means running into Nick Forster, her secret childhood crush. What if this journey to the past is the key to a new beginning?
The Girl from Venice (Girls from the Italian Resistance #1) by Siobhan Daiko
5 Stars - My Review - Amazon - Goodreads
From award-winning author Siobhan Daiko comes an epic novel of love, betrayal, and finding where you truly belong.
Lidia De Angelis has kept a low profile since Mussolini's laws wrenched her from her childhood sweetheart. But when the Germans occupy Venice in 1943, she must flee the city to save her life.
Lidia joins the partisans in the Venetian mountains, where she meets David, an English soldier fighting for the same cause. As she grows closer to him, harsh German reprisals and Lidia’s own ardent patriotic activities threaten to tear them apart.
Decades later in London, while sorting through her grandmother’s belongings after her death, Charlotte discovers a Jewish prayer book, unopened letters written in Italian, and a fading photograph of a group of young people in front of the Doge’s Palace.
Intrigued by her grandmother’s refusal to talk about her life in Italy before and during the war, Charlotte travels to Venice in search of her roots, There, she learns not only the devastating truth about her grandmother’s past, but also some surprising truths about herself.
Eight Perfect Murders (Malcolm Kershaw #1) by Peter Swanson
5 Stars - My Review - Amazon - Goodreads
From the hugely talented author of The Kind Worth Killing comes a chilling tale of psychological suspense and an homage to the thriller genre tailor-made for fans: the story of a bookseller who finds himself at the center of an FBI investigation because a very clever killer has started using his list of fiction’s most ingenious murders.
Years ago, bookseller and mystery aficionado Malcolm Kershaw compiled a list of the genre’s most unsolvable murders, those that are almost impossible to crack—which he titled “Eight Perfect Murders”—chosen from among the best of the best including Agatha Christie’s A. B. C. Murders, Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, Ira Levin’s Deathtrap, A. A. Milne's The Red House Mystery, Anthony Berkeley Cox's Malice Aforethought, James M. Cain's Double Indemnity, John D. MacDonald's The Drowner, and Donna Tartt's The Secret History.
But no one is more surprised than Mal, now the owner of the Old Devils Bookstore in Boston, when an FBI agent comes knocking on his door one snowy day in February. She’s looking for information about a series of unsolved murders that look eerily similar to the killings on Mal’s old list. And the FBI agent isn’t the only one interested in this bookseller who spends almost every night at home reading. The killer is out there, watching his every move—a diabolical threat who knows way too much about Mal’s personal history, especially the secrets he’s never told anyone, even his recently deceased wife.
To protect himself, Mal begins looking into possible suspects . . . and sees a killer in everyone around him. But Mal doesn’t count on the investigation leaving a trail of death in its wake. Suddenly, a series of shocking twists leaves more victims dead—and the noose around Mal’s neck grows so tight he might never escape.
Four Ways to Wear a Dress by Gillian Libby
5 Stars - My Review - Amazon - Goodreads
Gillian Libby brings you a bright, sexy, and hopeful story about friendship, self-discovery and acceptance, and fighting for your own happiness, even if it looks a little different than everyone else's.
Millie Ward has been fired. Again. She's tired of feeling like a failure, and she refuses to blame her ADHD the way her parents do every time she hits one of life's speed bumps. This time, she's going to let that speed bump actually slow her down, and jumps at the chance to visit her best friend?and Instagram influencer?Quincy in California. And she wouldn't mind if that invitation also involved getting closer with Quincy's brother, Pete.
Millie's best friends Kate and Bree send her to Peacock Bay with the little black dress they share, giving her the confidence she needs to make the move. But Peacock Bay is full of mega influencers who have perfected the look of the surf lifestyle, and a minor misunderstanding has Millie joining their ranks. Can Millie and her magical dress convince Pete to face the Bay with her, or will Millie's time in California be another misstep on her way to figuring out exactly who she is?
All Aboard the London Bus by Patricia Toht
5 Stars - My Review - Amazon - Goodreads
This delightful rhyming picture book follows a family as they explore London, one of the world's most famous capital cities!
Come! Board the London Bus
and see the London sights with us.
At any time, hop off, explore!
Then climb back on, and ride some more…
As a family of four spend a day exploring London, fun, child-friendly poems introduce readers to our wonderful capital city, and all its secrets. Well-known landmarks like Buckingham Palace, Big Ben and the London Eye, plus inescapable features like rain and taking tea, all get Patty Toht's witty treatment.
Non-fiction facts provide more information about the poetry subjects, while rising star Sam Usher brings them to life with his signature style and humour.
This gorgeous celebration of London will be loved by both tourists and those who call the city home.
All Our Darkest Secrets by Martyn Ford
5 Stars - My Review - Amazon - Goodreads
He’d do anything to protect his wife. But what if that meant making the biggest mistake of all?
James Casper is one of the good guys. A DEA agent. A loyal husband. With his sights set on the man at the top of the city’s opioid crisis, James is about to make the biggest bust of his career.
Then his beloved wife Rosie does something terrible, and James must choose: report it—or help her. He knows how this works, and he tells himself he’s smart enough to get away with murder. But James’s worst enemy knows what they have done—and he won’t hesitate to use it to manipulate him.
James is dragged into a dark and dangerous world. As events spiral and loyalties are tested, he realizes there’s only one way out. And that is to be even more ruthless than the people he’s working for.
Whatever happens, no matter how far he falls, at least he’ll still have Rosie.
Won’t he?
Six Ways to Write a Love Letter by Jackson Pearce
5 Stars - My Review - Amazon - Goodreads
Beloved author Jackson Pearce brings her trademark humor and emotion to a compelling and hopelessly romantic story about how impossible fame and love can be on their own, much less together.
Maybe everything they say about Vivi Swan is true.
Maybe America's Sweetheart is all fluff and no substance.
And maybe every guy she dates is fodder for her next breakup song.
But session drummer Remy Young doesn't care. Touring with Vivi Swan means more money than he and his brother could ever earn on their own. And he's smart enough to keep himself away from drama.
Then a bus mix-up forces Remy and Vivi to spend hours together, and he's surprised to discover that she's nothing like the rumors said. When she asks for his help writing her next song, he's immediately on board―for professional reasons, of course.
Soon, it's clear that every variation of their song is just a different way to write a love letter, even as Remy wonders if he's setting himself up to be the next guy on her list of exes. And when Vivi's private life and public facade finally clash, a celebrity gossip blog threatens everything they've created together…
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USA TODAY BESTSELLER * 2022 BOOKPAGE BEST MYSTERIES AND SUSPENSE * LIBRARY READS TOP 10 BOOKS OF 2022 * CRIME READS BEST NEW CRIME FICTION
"Investigations are launched, fingers are pointed, potentially dangerous liaisons unfold and I was turning those pages like there was cake at the finish line." ―Moira Macdonald, Seattle Times must-read books for summer 2022
Ned Kelly award winning author Sulari Gentill sets this mystery-within-a-mystery in motion with a deceptively simple, Dear Hannah, What are you writing? pulling us into theornate reading room at the Boston Public Library.
In every person's story, there is something to hide...
The tranquility is shattered by a woman's terrified scream. Security guards take charge immediately, instructing everyone inside to stay put until the threat is identified and contained. While they wait for the all-clear, four strangers, who'd happened to sit at the same table, pass the time in conversation and friendships are struck. Each has his or her own reasons for being in the reading room that morning―it just happens that one is a murderer.
Sulari Gentill delivers a sharply thrilling read with The Woman in the Library, an unexpectedly twisty literary adventure that examines the complicated nature of friendship and shows us that words can be the most treacherous weapons of all.
****
In real life she's meant to be planning a wedding to adorable billionaire Daniel Bradley, but Evie is seriously snarled in the sixteenth book of her successful crime series. In fact, her protagonists are becoming almost impossible to wrangle: NYPD detective Carolyn Harding is volatile after a messy divorce, and Detective Jay Ryan has that heated look in his blue eyes again. They're both sick of being written. And frankly they're getting a little...physical. Evie is beginning to wonder if she's ever going to finish Book Sixteen and get them back into fiction where they belong.
But when a disturbingly familiar homicide surfaces in the city papers, it seems as if other, darker characters might have crossed the fiction-frontier too. In which case, Evie is in a lot of real-life trouble.
If she's going to survive it, Evie must face her own worst fears, and learn that real love can be the best way of writing her own story.
But can she change the ending?
The child you never knew
knows all your secrets . . .
Out of the blue, Susie Jukes is contacted on social media by Anna, the girl she gave up for adoption fifteen years ago.
But when they meet, Anna's home life sounds distinctly strange to Susie and her husband Gabe. And when Anna's adoptive parents seem to overreact to the fact she contacted them at all, Susie becomes convinced that Anna needs her help.
But is Anna's own behaviour simply what you'd expect from someone recovering from a traumatic childhood? Or are there other secrets at play here - secrets Susie has also been hiding for the last fifteen years?
Count the days until Christmas with Santa and his elves!
Help little ones be patient until Christmas with this storytelling twist on the timeless Advent tradition. Each day, starting December 1st and counting down to Christmas Eve, children can read a story that recounts how Santa and Mrs. Claus, the elves and the reindeer get ready for the big night ahead, from Santa’s initial fitness test (will he make it through the chimney this year?) to a behind-the-scenes look at Santa’s toy factory. A book that captures all the excitement and the magic of the holiday season.
Some kids are scared of the dark, others of monsters living under their beds. Some are even afraid of clowns.
None of those things scare Sara. But she is terrified of one man, who comes to her house every year, in the middle of the night.
Santa.
Curl up with some frightening Christmas horror from the Queen of Scream, Willow Rose. Warning: you might not feel like putting out cookies for Santa ever again after reading this short story.
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