Reader recommendations
Looking for a good read? Below you'll find some of the books our readers have been recommending recently.
Top pick! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Hattie Brings the House Down
A reader says:
Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. Engaging, poignant, hilarious, full of twists and turns, just the perfect mystery novel.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
Buy this bookMysteryLover! says:
I think it’s unlike anything I’ve ever read before. I’m a gamer or at least I was when I was younger so I absolutely loved all the detail about the industry. And it was so beautiful!
Tara says:
Amazing read, thoroughly recommend
The Compassionate Mind
Buy this bookAyla says:
The social human approach
The First Time
Buy this bookjude says:
A failing marriage that mends due to MND.
Perfume
Buy this bookPippa says:
This book is so descriptive it’s as if you are there. Each character has depth and the story is great
Craving, Obsession and Possession
Buy this bookLay25 says:
3 separate books but part of a 30 book collection by Helen Hardt.
3 brothers who each own a ranch have a dark secret. When they set out to tell their sister, the middle brother meets a special someone who changes his outlook on life.
I will eventually get round to reading the whole collection.
Managing Expectations
Buy this bookHelen.T says:
Surprisingly funny & moving .
Normal People
Buy this bookClio says:
Everything.
maddie says:
such an easy smooth read, and really shows how young people struggle with communication
Look Who's Back
Buy this bookMaria says:
It’s amazing how the author creates humour from such a bleak subject matter
Fairy Tale
Buy this bookNicola says:
This is my favourite book of the last couple of years. It’s full of imagination and adventure and True escapism for the reader.
Zombie fallout
Buy this bookBaylie says:
The book is excellently written you will connect the the main character immediately. It’s a band of ordinary people trying to get by in extraordinary times.
Dracula Park
Buy this bookLorna says:
After studying art in Paris, a young Bucharest painter returns to the holiday resort of her childhood on the border of Transylvania. In the small town of B. she spent her summer holidays with her upper-middle-class great-aunt under chandeliers and on Persian carpets. An island where the communist dictatorship was something to be laughed at. "No one can break us," her great-aunt used to say. In the meantime, communism is a thing of the past and B.'s best days are behind her. For the artist, it is a return to a world that has become alien, with which she is only connected by a few close friendships and the threads of her family history. When a desecrated corpse is found on the grave of Vlad the Impaler, known as Dracula, she realises that the past has not yet let go of the place - and that her great-aunt's motto is also Dracula's.
Dana always wanted to write about Dracula Park, a big project in Romania, a kind of Disney-style gothic park, which a tourism minister insisted on building and failed because of the protest of the young Romanian civil society. But did this really banish the vampires in Romania? Is this morbid willingness of some people to hoist yesterday's dark figures into power a thing of the past - or still relevant? And not only in Romania ... The central question in the novel is how do you interrupt the expansion of evil? The book can be read in different ways: as a political novel, as a social novel, as the ultimate Dracula novel, combining Dracula myths and cultural representations in literature and film or as a love story.
The Grief Nurse
Buy this bookLorna says:
This is a gothic fantasy that is part murder mystery, part coming-of-age romance.
Lynx is a grief nurse indentured to the wealthy Aster family to ensure that they're never troubled by sorrow. When the Asters hold a wake for their eldest son on their isolated island, their secrets and fears begin to unravel, while bodies start to pile up.
The idea for the book arose when Angie learnt that Victorian women in a period of mourning, who no longer wanted to wear black, could hire another woman to wear it for her. Angie took this idea one step further, asking the question: what if the wealthy could actually hire someone to grieve for them?
The book looks at the relationship between grief, morality and class; lack of empathy and its consequences; political ambition; emotional vampirism; suppressed grief; and the societal limitations imposed on women.
Circe
Buy this bookLizzi says:
She's abandoned on an island because of what she is. Meets lots of people, Hermes, medea to be cleansed, odyseus and his slimy crew she turns into pigs, but she turns them back. Surprising twist.
Sweetpea
Buy this bookHev_reads says:
The writing in this is superb, very funny at times and verges on ‘should I really be laughing at this?!’ 🫤
Tower of dawn
Buy this bookHev_reads says:
It’s part of an amazing series, and there is such great development of characters in this who had previously not had a massive amount of book time.
Rebecca
Buy this bookJo S says:
Has the intrigue and mystery, colourful characters and through the eyes of a young woman whose name is never mentioned who is expected to live up to the previous mistress. It’s full of sunshine and love but very dark also
Wicked Lovely
Buy this bookShadowhuntress21079 says:
The way it starts as a series is incredible and it leaves you wanting more.
A Suitable Boy
Buy this bookVal says:
An expansive Indian saga, given a fascinating insight into their culture and lives
Loose Ends
Buy this bookDavid says:
It's a great page turner, with many twists and turns and not without humour. The background is corruption in the financial world, involving hedge funds, drug cartels and money laundering with some murders thrown in for good measure.
The Secret History
Buy this bookCiara says:
Dark academia book about a group of classmates that plot to kill their friend
The Jigsaw Man
Buy this bookThrillersuspensereader1997 says:
Suspense
The Power of Now
Buy this bookDebbie L says:
very deep and thought provoking read
The Miniaturist
Buy this bookGeorgia says:
The suspense throughout. It’s beautifully written with a great setting in Amsterdam. It follows the female protagonist and you learn and discover more of the world she’s moved to as she learns herself
The Rose Code
Buy this bookBekah97 says:
Fantastic historical fiction based on true events, left me thinking about it for months afterwards!