This year’s challenge is a bit different and as promised each month we’ll give you a list of suggested books for each category. For July I asked the Cwts Discussion Group to recommend their favourite Mystery or Thriller.
The list this produced was endless, here are just a few:
The Woodcutter – Reginald Hill
Wolf Hadda’s life has been a fairytale. From humble origins as a Cumbrian woodcutter’s son, he has risen to become a successful entrepreneur, happily married to the girl of his dreams. A knock on the door one morning ends it all. Universally reviled, thrown into prison, abandoned by friends & family, Wolf retreats into silence.
The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins
The Moonstone, a priceless Indian diamond which had been brought to England as spoils of war, is given to Rachel Verrinder on her eighteenth birthday. That very night, the stone is stolen. Suspicion then falls on a hunchbacked housemaid, on Rachel’s cousin Franklin Blake, on a troupe of mysterious Indian jugglers, and on Rachel herself.
In The Woods – Tana French
When he was twelve years old, Adam Ryan went playing in the woods with his two best friends. He never saw them again. Their bodies were never found, and Adam himself was discovered with his back pressed against an oak tree and his shoes filled with blood. He had no memory of what had happened.
Ripper – Isabel Allende
For Amanda Martín and her friends, Ripper was all just a game. But when security guard Ed Staton is found dead in the middle of a school gym, the murder presents a mystery that baffles the San Francisco police, not least Amanda’s father, Deputy Chief Martín. Amanda goes online, offering ‘The Case of the Misplaced Baseball Bat’ to her fellow sleuths as a challenge to their real-life wits. And so begins a most dangerous obsession.
The Collector – John Fowles
Withdrawn, uneducated and unloved, Frederick collects butterflies and takes photographs. He is obsessed with a beautiful stranger, the art student Miranda. When he wins the pools he buys a remote Sussex house and calmly abducts Miranda, believing she will grow to love him in time.
Black and Blue – Anna Quindlen
For eighteen years Fran Benedetto kept her secret, hid her bruises. She stayed with Bobby because she wanted her son to have a father, and because, in spite of everything, she loved him. Then one night, when she saw the look on her ten-year-old son’s face, Fran finally made a choice – she ran for both their lives.
The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.
A luminous, astonishing novel about life and death, memory and forgetting, and finding light in the darkest places, Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones became an instant classic when it was first published in 2002.
The following links have lots and lots more suggestions too.
10 Best Psychological Thrillers
5 Best Patricia Highsmith Books
Pick a book from our list, from one of the links or pick something that’s already in your TBR pile. What ever you decide, don’t forget to let us know what you’re reading over on Cwts Club Discussion Group.
For Reading Addicts Reading Challenge 2024
For Reading Addicts Reading Challenge 2023 – Read a Rainbow – October