Best Books From the First Half of 2018

Preface: Alice and her mother, Ella, have been plagued by bad luck for as long as Alice can remember. They have constantly moved about to try to outrun it but somehow it always catches up with them. That all changes with the death of Alice's reclusive author grandmother, finally Ella says it is safe to stay in one place.

Then one morning Ella is gone leaving nothing but a cryptic message telling Alice to Stay Away From The Hazel Wood. Alice knows she that her grandmother's book is the key to her mother's disappearance but hasn't read it herself so she has no choice but to turn to superfan Ellery Finch for help.

Preface: Hendrik Groen is back with a new diary about growing old disgracefully.

Preface: Six year old Zach Taylor is hidden in a cloakroom with his teacher and classmates listening as a gunman roams the halls of his school. By the time he is done he will have claimed 19 victims.

Afterwards Zach's life will be changed forever. His dad will be absent at work more than ever and his mum will become obsessed with her crusade for justice. Will Zach be able to help them find a way through their grief or will the tragedy rip their family apart forever?

Preface: Hunted is the thrilling sequel to Defender.

Everybody is hunting for the girl with a voice that doesn't belong to her. One group is headed by a man who wants to experiment with her to find the secrets. A man named Posy or 'Not Posy' depending on who you ask.

The second is headed by a young man born without a tongue. A man who wants only to complete the work of his sister Ruby.

Who will get to her first?

Preface: Orïsha was once a land full of magic and those who wielded it, known as the Maji. A land where ‘Burners’ had the ability to call forth and control flames, where ‘Tiders’ could manipulate the waves and ‘Reapers’ could summon the souls of those who had died.

For Zélie memories of those times are bitter sweet. On the one hand she can remember her mother whose face was like the sun and myths of the old Gods are woven into her childhood memories along with visions of her mother practicing the magic of a Reaper.

However, Zélie cannot think of her mother without thinking of the night the magic disappeared and they took her mother away.

Now there is a way to bring the magic back and Zélie may be the only one who can do it...but should she?

Preface: Professor Nicholas Malinovsky is contacted by a dying Russian man in 1986 . The man, Dmitri Korshunov tells him a story about the fate of the two youngest Romanov children. The man is very convincing but is his tale true?

Preface: Beyond The Garden is the brilliant second book in the Magnolia Series.

Everything is finally beginning to fall into place for Ellie. She is married to the man of her dreams, the restoration of her house is going well and her nieces are adjusting well to life in Charleston.

Then Ellie receives some unexpected news - her brother in law Ricky has been brutally murdered and her sister Lia is the prime suspect.

The news sets a chain of events in motion that could change Ellie's perfect life forever.

Preface: In 1922 socialite Edith Ballanger is facing a tough decision - life as a trophy wife married to a pompous bore or life with the man she loves, Clyde. The problem is her father disapproves of her feelings for Clyde and to be with him she would have to run away and leave her family and home behind her. On the night she is due to run away with Clyde her betrays her....

A century later Ada Price has just been fired from her job as a teacher when she receives a letter from her uncle informing her he is ill and asking her if she will come and look after him for a salary. Ada is reluctant because she has horrible memories of her childhood in his house. She went to live there after her parents died when she was five but her cousins and aunt and uncle never made her feel welcome.

Reluctantly she decides to return to the house but bad memories aren't the only thing that haunt her....

Preface: Cece Solarin has reluctantly moved from London to Brighton with her three children due to her husband’s new job and a desire to rectify problems in her marriage.

Outside of the home Cece’s biggest fear is that she won’t make any friends among the mums at her twin’s school. When Cece learns that the school was the scene of a violent attack just a few weeks earlier she is less than impressed with her husband Sol for not mentioning it to her.

School mum Yvonne Whitmore was found on the school grounds brutally attacked and is now in a coma and so far, no one has been arrested for the crime.

Cece is pleased when she finally starts to make some friends: Maxie, Hazel and Anaya. Cece finally starts to feel like maybe this could be somewhere she could settle but then she is approached by a policeman wanting her help. He believes one of her new friends was behind the attempted murder and he wants Cece to spy on them to find out which one.

Preface: Nahri is a con artist and a thief with some unnusual skills. She can understand any language when she first hears it and she can recognise illness in others and she uses these skills to survive on the streets of Cairo.

One night she decides to perform a ceremony in her native language and in doing so she summons a creature she thought only existed in myths. This one action changes her life forever.

Preface: Paper Ghosts is a compelling read about a young girl’s struggle to be brave in the wake of her older sisters being missing and presumed dead.

The unnamed protagonist believes her sister was killed by Carl Feldman a fine art photographer and suspected serial killer living out his days in a halfway house. Does he really have early onset dementia and no memory of the supposed killings he was once accused of or is he pretending? Was he wrongly accused of those murders or is she putting her life in danger by driving around remote Texas with a serial killer?

Preface: Butterfly is the incredibly powerful memoir of young Syrian refugee Yusra Mardini.

Yusra has always dreamed of being an Olympic champion swimmer and trains hard trying to make that dream come true but when war came to Syria she had to push that dream to one side.

Together with her sister she fled to Germany on a perilous journey in search of a life where bombs and the death of friends are not the norm. Along the way she and her sister became heroes and met some of the worse and best of humankind.

This amazing book reminds us that nobody chooses to be a refugee and that refugees are human too.

Preface: Brighton Beach, 1993

Nell and Jude are just teenagers when they find a body on the beach. When nobody comes forward to claim the young woman's body she becomes known as 'The Brighton Mermaid.' Three weeks later Nell is finding it difficult to move on when Jude goes missing.

Twenty five years later Nell quits her job to looking into the events of that summer - who was The Brighton Mermaid and why did Jude disappear? As Nell edges closer to the truth she begins to suspect someone is watching her and to wonder who in her life she can really trust.

Preface: A murder. A legend. A family haunted.

In 1990 three girls devote themselves to an ominous figure.

In 2000 a mother inexplicably disappears leaving behind her baby and husband.

and in 2018 a young girl is charged with murder.

Through each of the events The Tall Man is there.

Preface: Schoch lives on the streets of Zurich, he drinks and hallucinates, in particular he sees a pink elephant. What if the elephant is still there when he is sober?

Preface: 'Thirteen' isn't about a serial killer on trial....he's on the jury.

Robert Soloman and his beautiful wife were Hollywood superstars but now she is dead and he is on trial for her murder.

Eddie Flynn, former conman turned lawyer is new to the defence team and begins to suspect that his client is innocent and there is more to this case than meets the eye.

Preface: Every other weekend since their parents divorce Hope and Eden wait for their dad to pick them up. Only this weekend, he’s forgotten, and their world changes when a stranger lures them into his truck.

More than twenty years later, Hope is that classic New York failure: a playwright with only one play produced long ago, newly evicted from an illegal sublet, working a humiliating temp job. Eden has long since distanced herself from her family, and no one seems to know where she is. When the man who abducted them is up for parole, the sisters might be able to offer testimony to keep him jailed. Hope sets out to find her sister—and to find herself—and it becomes the journey of a lifetime, taking her from hippie communes to cities across the country. Suspenseful and moving, Eden asks: how much do our pasts define us, and what price do we pay if we break free?

Preface: It is the summer of 1969 and Frances has been hired to write a report on the follies in the garden of a grand country house but becomes distracted when she discovers a peephole in the floor that allows her to spy on her neighbours.

Frances is entranced by Cara and Peter and soon begins to spend all her free time with them but as she does the boundaries between truth and lies, right and wrong begin to fade. By the end of the summer all their lives will be changed forever.

Preface: Susanna has a secret. Fourteen years ago she changed her identity and reinvented herself as a counsellor in order to keep her daughter safe.

Then Adam walks into her office. She's never met him before but she feel like she knows him.

Adam tells her about a girl. A girl he wants to hurt. And Susanna realises she was wrong.

She doesn't know him.

He knows her.

And the girl he plans to hurt is her daughter.