Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
I want to read the book!
All characters reduced
Villager - cover

Villager

Tom Cox

Publisher: Swift Press

  • 0
  • 0
  • 1

Summary

Villages are full of tales: some are forgotten while others become a part of local folklore. But the fortunes of one West Country village are watched over and irreversibly etched into history as an omniscient, somewhat crabby, presence keeps track of village life.
In the late sixties a Californian musician blows through Underhill and writes a set of haunting folk songs that will earn him a cult following. Two decades later, some teenagers disturb a body on the local golf course. In 2019, a pair of lodgers discover a one-eyed rag doll hidden in the walls of their crumbling home. Connections are forged and broken across generations, but only the landscape itself can link them together. A landscape threatened by property development and speckled by the pylons whose feet have been buried across the moor.
Tom Cox's masterful debut novel synthesises his passion for music, nature and folklore into a psychedelic and enthralling exploration of village life and the countryside that sustains it.
Available since: 06/19/2025.
Print length: 352 pages.

Other books that might interest you

  • Shallow - cover

    Shallow

    Randi Cooley Wilson

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    From the bestselling author of IF, Randi Cooley Wilson, comes an intense and epic romance about escaping your past and unexpectedly finding your future. 
 
 
 
Rebel Wade is a successful food and wine freelance writer. At thirty-two, she is just learning how to adult. But when Rebel is given the assignment of her life, interviewing reclusive winemaker Michael Gunner, she has no idea what is in store for her. 
 
 
 
She thought she could handle him. But she was wrong . . .  
 
 
 
Michael Gunner is doing his best to survive. With a history of danger and bad decisions behind him, at thirty-five, he's determined to make a new life for himself at his family's vineyard in the Marlborough region of New Zealand. 
 
 
 
Until Rebel stumbles into his world . . .  
 
 
 
Rebel thought she knew heartbreak before she met the darkly handsome winemaker. And as many times as he pushes her away, deep down, all Michael wants is her. But life has other plans. How deep are you willing to go for love when you live in the shallow? 
 
 
 
Contains mature themes.
    Show book
  • Carmilla - cover

    Carmilla

    Joseph Sheridan La Fanu

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    The moonlight spills like silver across ancient walls, and somewhere in the velvet darkness, a whisper stirs—a name, half-sighed, half-forgotten. Carmilla. A name as soft as a caress, as chilling as a shadow at the edge of the candle's glow. She does not knock at your door; she drifts through it like a dream. She is beauty wrapped in mystery, desire woven with dread.
This is not a story of fangs bared in the night, nor of crude terrors lurking in the crypt. Carmilla is subtler, more intoxicating—a tale that shivers on the border between love and death, fascination and fear. It is the pulse quickened without reason, the gaze held too long, the hush of silken footsteps on cold stone.
Long before Dracula cast his shadow over the genre, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu shaped the vampire legend with an elegance both haunting and hypnotic. He understood that true horror does not always come in the shape of monsters but in the slow unraveling of certainty, the delicate trespass of the unknown into the familiar.
To read Carmilla is to step into a dream—one of moonlit corridors and stolen glances, of fevered devotion and something else, something nameless and ancient, curling at the edges of the night. But beware: dreams have a way of lingering, and shadows… shadows are never empty.
    Show book
  • The House of Footsteps - cover

    The House of Footsteps

    Matthew West

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    If you loved The Haunting of Hill House, welcome to Thistlecrook… 
It’s 1923 and at Thistlecrook House, a forbidding home on the Scottish border, the roaring twenties seem not to have arrived. But Simon Christie has – a young man who can’t believe his luck when he gets a job cataloguing the infamous art collection of the Mordrake family. Yet from the moment he gets off the train at the deserted village station he can’t shift a headache and a sense that there’s more to the House and its gruesome selection of pictures. 
Simon’s host is glad of his company, but he gets the feeling the house is not so welcoming. As his questions about the Mordrakes grow, he finds answers in surprising places. But someone is not pleased that old secrets are stirring. 
As night falls each evening, and a growing sense of unease roils in the shifting shadows around him, Simon must decide what he can trust and ask if he can believe what he sees in the dusk or if his mind is poisoned by what has happened before in this place between lands, between light and dark. 
In the historical and gothic setting of Thistlecrook House, Simon Christie finds himself entangled in a web of supernatural occurrences that challenge his sanity. The best of horror and thrillers, Mathew West's THE HOUSE OF FOOTSTEPS is a chilling exploration of the unseen and the unimaginable. 
For fans of Margery Allingham (The Tiger in the Smoke), Jess Kidd (The Night Ship), Elizabeth Macneal (The Burial Plot), Rebecca Netley (The Black Feathers), and Susan Stokes-Chapman (Pandora). 
HarperCollins 2022
    Show book
  • Human for Hire - Collateral Damage Included - cover

    Human for Hire - Collateral...

    T.R. Harris

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    Human! 
 
 
 
A name that strikes terror in the hearts of the galaxy. 
 
 
 
Well, maybe not terror. More like caution, actually. 
 
 
 
Since you know how hot-headed Humans can be. 
 
 
 
After the galaxy was attacked by invaders, the Milky Way was left but a shadow of its former self. In its wake, a savage, almost Wild West existence emerged, ruled by gun and muscle. And for anyone needing help in either the gun or muscle category—or both—everyone knows you . . . Hire a Human. 
 
 
 
As the quasi-supermen of the galaxy, Humans have a reputation for being the baddest of the badasses. Now, only a few hardy Humans still wander the space lanes in search of work. If you can find a Human for Hire, you can't go wrong. The only thing: Be prepared for a lot of collateral damage. 
 
 
 
Adam Cain wanted to stay anonymous, hiding from his famous name while eking out a living as a bounty hunter, enforcer, bodyguard or mercenary . . . anything that would pay credits for his particular set of skills. And when Adam accepts a contract to recover a fugitive on a stinking cesspool of a world, he finds more than he bargained for. But on his next "simple" assignment, things go really bad and turns into DIE HARD in Space. Yippie-ki-ay . . . !
    Show book
  • Next Time (A Meg Thorne Suspense Thriller—Book Three) - Digitally narrated using a synthesized voice - cover

    Next Time (A Meg Thorne Suspense...

    Kate Bold

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    This recording has been digitally produced by Kate Bold, using a synthesized version of an audiobook narrator’s voice under license. “This is an excellent book… When you start reading, be sure you don’t have to wake up early!”
—Reader review for The Killing Game
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Detective Meg Thorne, haunted by the years of cold cases she could not solve, retires early, in her 50s, feeling stifled by the limits of the law and determined to do whatever she has to to solve them on her own, stop these killers, and rescue any victims. Outside of the red tape, she will be free to cross all lines, and do whatever must be done—as long as she doesn’t find herself, alone, in a killer's sights…

When a string of art-inspired murders resurfaces, Meg Thorne is drawn back into the shadows of her unresolved past. As she struggles to confront a potentially innocent man's fate, it's a race against the brushstrokes of a killer she may have set free.

NEXT TIME is BOOK #3 in a new series by #1 bestselling mystery and suspense author Kate Bold, whose bestseller NOT ME (a free download) has received over 3,000 five star ratings and reviews. The series begins with NEXT GIRL (BOOK #1).

The Meg Thorne series delivers an exhilarating rush with non-stop action, gripping suspense, and enigmatic puzzles that will keep you captivated well past bedtime, featuring a compelling protagonist eager to decipher the mystery. Fans of Lisa Gardner, Kendra Elliot, and Teresa Driscoll are sure to fall in love.

Future books in the series are also available!

“This book moved very fast and every page was exciting. Plenty of dialogue, you absolutely love the characters, and you were rooting for the good guy throughout the whole story… I look forward to reading the next in the series.”
—Reader review for The Killing Game
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“Kate did an amazing job on this book and I was hooked from the first chapter!”
—Reader review for The Killing Game
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“I really enjoyed this book. The characters were authentic, and I see the bad guys as something we hear about daily on the news... Looking forward to book 2.”
—Reader review for The Killing Game
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“This was a really good book. The main characters were real, flawed and human. The story went along quickly and wasn't mired in too many unnecessary details. I really enjoyed it.”
—Reader review for The Killing Game
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“Alexa Chase is headstrong, impatient, but most of all brave with a capital B. She never, repeat never, backs down until the bad guys are put where they belong. Clearly five stars!”
—Reader review for The Killing Game
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“Captivating and riveting serial murder with a twist of the macabre… Very well done.”
—Reader review for The Killing Game
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“WOW what a great read! Talk about a diabolical killer! Really enjoyed this book. Looking forward to reading others by this author as well.”
—Reader review for The Killing Game
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“Page turner for sure. Great characters and relationships. I got into the middle of this story and couldn’t put it down. Looking forward to more from Kate Bold.”
—Reader review for The Killing Game
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“Hard to put down. It has an excellent plot and has the right amount of suspense. I really enjoyed this book.”
—Reader review for The Killing Game
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“Extremely well written, and well worth buying and reading. I can't wait to read book two!”
—Reader review for The Killing Game
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
    Show book
  • Whispers of the Silent Shadows: The Cosmic Saga - Part One - The Cosmic Saga - cover

    Whispers of the Silent Shadows:...

    Derick Chibilu

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    In "Whispers of the Silent Shadows," a mysterious disappearance sets the stage for an intricate web of secrets and enigmas. As detective Sarah Reynolds delves into the case, she discovers a series of cryptic messages, hidden rooms, and long-buried family secrets. The story weaves through midnight intrigues, forgotten diaries, and illusions of innocence, keeping readers on the edge of their seats. Can Sarah unravel the tangled threads of deceit before the shadows reveal their haunting truths? Prepare for a suspenseful journey into the heart of a captivating mystery.
    Show book