Other books that might interest you

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  The Girl in the Mud: A Story of...

  Elena Vance

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  Description：
  Born on the fifteenth of July, the day her mother died, Grace is branded a curse by her village. When her father brings home a new wife, Grace's world shrinks further. While her stepbrothers, Ethan and Leo, are cherished, Grace is the unwanted daughter—burdened with chores, denied an education, and fed on scraps of affection. In the shadow of her stepmother's cruelty and her father's indifference, Grace clings to one fragile hope: her brother Ethan's promise to help her escape. But when her stepmother hides Grace's high school acceptance letter, shattering her dreams, Grace must find the strength to fight for her future. Can she rise from the mud of her circumstances and bloom, or will the weight of her family's disdain crush her spirit forever? A poignant and powerful coming-of-age story about survival, the bonds that save us, and the unbreakable will of a girl determined to write her own destiny.

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  The Dead Hand - A man is offered...

  Wilkie Collins

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  Wilkie Collins was born on 8th January 1824 in Marylebone, London.  
   
  The family moved several times in his early years before, at 12, they travelled to France and Italy for 2 years where the sights and atmosphere made a deep and lasting impression on him. 
   
  He resumed his education at Mr Cole’s private boarding school in Highbury, Islington.  Here, he began his literary career under unusual circumstances: the school bully would give him no peace until he had been told a bedtime story.  This ‘little brute’ helped create one of England’s greatest writers.  
   
  On leaving school, in 1841, he became a clerk at a tea merchant before, 2 years later, publishing his first short story.  However, his first novel was rejected and remained so during his lifetime.  
   
  A brief stint at Lincoln’s Inn to please his father and to acquire a steady income was halted by his father’s death.  Collins then wrote and published his fathers’ memoirs.  He then completed his legal education though he would never practice.  
   
  In March 1851, he was introduced to Charles Dickens and there now started a period of sustained literary output and a remarkable lifelong friendship.  His stories were published in Dicken’s magazines, and he toured with Dicken’s theatrical before the two of them travelled to the Continent. 
   
  By the early 1860’s worrying signs of ill-health appeared with rheumatic gout.  As it worsened, he sought respite and cures in German spa towns and gave up writing to help his recuperation. 
   
  His personal life had become very complicated.  He was living with the widowed Caroline Graves and conducting an affair with a much younger Martha Rudd.  With the serialised release of ‘The Moonstone’ and vicious attacks of gout Caroline left him and married another.  Collins was now prescribed opium and was soon its lifelong dependent.  Martha bore him two children and with the return of a now divorced Caroline Graves he now divided his time between the two women. 
   
  In 1874 he set aside writing to tour North America on a reading tour. 
   
  Throughout his later years he continued to write and publish.  In all 30 novels, 14 plays, 60 short stories and over a 100 non-fiction essays as well as many more collaborations with Dickens. 
   
  In 1884 the Society of Authors elected him as it’s Vice-President. 
   
  Wilkie Collins died from a paralytic stroke on September 23rd, 1889, in London. He was 65.

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  Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure...

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

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  "The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet", one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is the eleventh of the twelve stories collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The story was first published in Strand Magazine in May 1892. 
  A banker asks Holmes to investigate after a "Beryl Coronet" entrusted to him is damaged at his home. Awakened by noise, he had found his son, Arthur, holding the damaged coronet. Arthur refuses to speak, neither admitting guilt nor explaining himself. 
  Footprints in the snow outside the house tell Holmes that the banker's niece had conspired with a blackguard to steal the coronet; Arthur had discovered the crime in progress and the coronet had been damaged during his struggle to prevent it. He had refused to tell his father the truth of the crime because of his love for his cousin.

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  The Night We Burned - A Novel

  S.F. Kosa

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  A new psychological thriller from suspense powerhouse S. F. Kosa featuring a decades-old secret, a mysterious cult fire, and a woman looking to outrun the ashes of her past . . . until they come roaring back once more. 
   
   
   
  Dora is always aware of the line between fact and fiction. As a fact checker at an online magazine, her job depends on it. And as a woman outrunning her secrets, so does her life. But when a colleague decides to pursue a story about a murder in her hometown, one linked to a deadly fire at a cult compound twenty years prior, suddenly all of Dora's carefully spun deceptions are at risk. 
   
   
   
  And if she can't stop the story, her entire life is on the line. 
   
   
   
  As Dora works with her colleague, altering facts to hide her past along the way, she's thrown back into a world she tried desperately to leave behind. One of ritual and belonging, of danger and darkness. A world where two girls promised to help each other through . . . until it all went up in flames. 
   
   
   
  As her lies pile up, so do the murders. Until Dora realizes she won't be lucky enough to escape twice.

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  The Protégé

  Jody Gehrman

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  Dr. Hannah Bryers, anthropology professor and forensics expert at the prestigious Mad River University, takes pleasure in examining corpses, but small talk and living people fill her with dread. When she’s not teaching, she analyzes the decomposing flesh of murder victims around the globe. Winter Jones is Hannah’s most promising graduate student. She’s smart, cunning, and dedicated, but she’s got her own agenda for coming to Mad River: to bring Hannah Bryers down. She’ll stop at nothing to make her life implode. In alternating narratives, Winter systematically robs Hannah of the things she values most: her reputation, her job, and—ultimately—her safety. When dangerous mistakes are made in her lab, Hannah has no idea who would have it out for her and would be willing to risk students’ lives. As the incidents become deadly, many suspects come to light. Hannah won’t go down without a fight. She has to figure out who is sabotaging her career and killing people—her life depends on finding answers.

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  Cast a Long Shadow - Welsh Women...

  Katherine Stansfield, Caroline...

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  All original collection of the best of Welsh women's crime short fiction from new and established voices… A striking collection of the widest range of crime short stories from contemporary urban thriller to historical rural mystery and the speculative and uncanny. Includes stories from Tiffany Murray – winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize and an inaugural Hay Festival International Fellow; Eluned Gramich – winner of New Welsh Writing Award and shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year; Alison Layland – whose first thriller was a LoveReading Debut of the Month and Kittie Belltree – poet and Disability Arts Cymru Creative Word Award 2020 Winner. Plus a host of previously unpublished talent ripe for discovering.

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