All Books Considered

A Map to Murder (The Serial Killer Guide to San Francisco #3) by Michelle Chouinard Blurb from Goodreads : Beloved true crime tour guide Capri Sanzio returns in Michelle Chouinard’s A Map to Murder, the next book in the USA Today bestselling Serial Killer Guide to San Francisco Mysteries. True crime tour guide and serial killer aficionado Capri Sanzio knows how central the Summer of Love is to San Francisco’s identity—even if she’s always had conflicted feelings about it. She’s used to weaving feel-good hippie culture and music into her Haight-Ashbury true crime tales, centering her tours around what happens when a revolution looking to lift up the best ideals humanity has to offer clashes with the darkest souls hidden among humanity’s shadows. But what she’s not used to is a guest stepping out from those shadows to drop a murder investigation direc...

 How Can My Manager Be So Stupid?  by Kazumasa Hayami, Translated by Haydn Trowell Blurb from Goodreads : A candid story of one woman's fight to find her way through her working life, while, against all odds, clinging to her passion for reading and for sharing books. Kyoko still loves books. Just about. But life at the Musashino Bookshop is starting to get her down. Above all, there's one question that keeps going round and round her How can my manager be so stupid? From his obsession with self-help books to his insistence on giving inspirational speeches at staff meetings, everything about Takeru Yamamoto seems designed to set Kyoko's teeth on edge. And, as the bookshop lurches from crisis to crisis, facing criticism from customers and authors alike, it's tough for her to keep her love of literature alive. Only the prospect of chang...

The Rayburn Affair by Laurie Petrou Blurb from Goodreads : Art, ambition and desire collide when a struggling academic becomes entangled in the life and marriage of her literary idol. By day, Dr Ruth Morgan lectures on ‘ the new frontier of storytelling’ at East Toronto University. By night, she toils away at a collection of short stories, fantasising about a literary career to rival that of the iconic Shelby Rayburn, internationally renowned and widely hailed as the voice of Ruth’s generation of women. When Shelby and her husband, Oscar, make an appearance at an annual faculty party, Ruth can’t believe her luck. The trio immediately hit it off, and an intoxicating intimacy develops between them, underwritten by a simmering sexual tension. Everything changes when Shelby makes Ruth an offer she can’t refuse—one that she can’t tell anyone about, incl...

In the Same Boat by Portia MacIntosh Blurb from Goodreads : Sammie’s life is all about work, routine and stability. She needs to get back out there and start having fun, but then her mum turns up needing somewhere to live, and it’s seriously harming Sammie’s dating game. So, in a moment of desperation, Sammie takes her to an over-fifties singles night, hoping a little romance might encourage her to move out and move on. There, Chrissy meets Hank. Unfortunately, he also comes with Nico: his sarcastic, frustratingly attractive son, who Sammie clashes with instantly. Sammie assumes she’ll never see either man again. Until her mum surprises her with a luxury holiday to Monaco… aboard Hank’s yacht, with him and Nico. Trapped at sea with two loved-up parents and a man who gets under her skin, Sammie agrees to a ridiculous plan: she and Nico will pretend ...

Kitten by Stacey Yu Blurb from Goodreads : A magnetic novel about a young woman who falls in love with her boyfriend's cat. Katie hasn't spoken to her mother in a year when her boyfriend James introduces her to his cat Silver. A small, vulnerable, incorrigible ball of need, Silver's acceptance of Katie cracks open something inside of her: an unravelling begins. Fresh out of college and far from home, Katie is desperate to skirt the demands of adult life - especially because, as she promised her mother, the plan was to never grow up in the first place. Luckily, she has James: self-assured, generous, and seemingly happy to make decisions for them both. When they go on holiday to James's family's seaside home, Katie's attachment to Silver grows. Silver doesn't mind that Katie can't seem to get a job, hold her own at dinn...

The Night Hunter by Natalie Moss Blurb from Goodreads : In a remote corner of the South African bush, two sisters reunite to bury a family secret once and for all, but when they’re stranded among the wild animals, they find a predator far more dangerous waiting for them in the shadows. . . . When their conservationist mother passes, Danielle and her sister, Grace, reunite to return to their isolated family house nestled within a wild-game reserve. While Grace clings to nostalgia as their mother’s favorite, only Danielle carries the weight of their enigmatic mother’s final “Find the storehouse . . . Burn everything inside.” What begins as a reluctant homecoming disguised as a safari adventure—each sister inviting two friends to ease the journey—turns into a nightmare when a murder rocks their first morning in the bush. In the chaos that follows, the...

Cross My Heart, I Hope You Die by Mallory Arnold Blurb from Goodreads : One isolated cabin. One cheating boyfriend. One plan to get even. When Nora, Ruby, and Cham discover that they've each been dating the same man, what starts as outrage quickly spirals into a plot for revenge. Together they hatch a plan to lure their boyfriend to a romantic getaway in a secluded cabin at the top of a snow-covered mountain. Only what was meant to be harmless payback soon takes a chilling turn when their not-so-adoring boyfriend is found dead in the cabin.  Stranded and snowed in, the women begin to look at each other with increasing suspicion. And as tensions rise, hidden motives come to light. To survive, each woman must confront her own demons as they fight to uncover if one of them is the killer, or if something else lurks in the freezing wilderness, waitin...

The Simp: A Novel Without a Hero by Roshan Sethi Blurb from Goodreads : A novel without a hero. Hellscape with an infinity pool. Raj Ladlani is one of thousands in an unemployable actor. He has reasons to believe he is spectacularly talented (his beloved acting coach Anthony says so), a legend in every way but for the success. His anonymous life working at Yogurtland, obsessively reading Vanity Fair, and fantasizing about stardom, comes to an end when he answers a job ad detailing a relentless, laughable parade of menial responsibilities for a 'Hollywood Family'. So begins the astonishing decline and fall of Raj Ladlani. The Simp tells the story of Raj's momentous employment and the destruction that follows in the wake of his time with the with the H Jim, a macho director determined to prove himself as an artist; and Anna, his much youn...

Helpless by Jessica Knoll Blurb from Goodreads : It’s been twelve years since Faye Heron broke Henry Spalding’s heart. Henry was her college boyfriend, her first intense love, but Faye was in danger of being subsumed by him. Now, Faye is one half of a power-producing duo with her Hollywood husband. Henry is a married father running the family business. Both of their lives have essentially gone to plan. When a former and beloved college professor suddenly passes away, Faye and Henry find themselves back on campus for the funeral, circling something old and dangerous. Something, if Faye is honest with herself, she has been trying to duplicate for years. But Henry is one of a kind. The kind who delivers a hypnotic apology for the way things ended. The kind who suggests they go back to the hotel for a drink. The kind who drugs and kidnaps her. When Faye...