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I just can't understand how someone like him could do something like that. Amid the worst drought to ravage Australia in a century, it hasn't rained in small country town Kiewarra for two years. Tensions in the community become unbearable when three members of the Hadler family are brutally murdered. Everyone thinks Luke Hadler, who committed suicide after slaughtering his wife and six-year-old son, is guilty.
You want to believe your husband. She wants to destroy him. Gripping psychological drama for fans of Apple Tree Yard, The Good Wife and Notes on a Scandal. Anatomy of a Scandal centres on a high-profile marriage that begins to unravel when the husband is accused of a terrible crime. Sophie is sure her husband, James, is innocent and desperately hopes to protect her precious family from the lies which might ruin them.
Slough House is Jackson Lamb’s kingdom; a dumping ground for members of the intelligence service who’ve screwed up: left a secret file on a train, blown surveillance, or become drunkenly unreliable. They’re the service’s poor relations – the slow horses – and bitterest among them is River Cartwright, whose days are spent transcribing mobile phone conversations.
It's been 10 long months since Anna Fox last left her home. Ten months during which she has haunted the rooms of her old New York house like a ghost, lost in her memories, too terrified to step outside. Anna's lifeline to the real world is her window, where she sits day after day, watching her neighbours. When the Russells move in, Anna is instantly drawn to them. A picture-perfect family of three, they are an echo of the life that was once hers.
The police say it was suicide. Anna says it was murder. They're both wrong. One year ago, Caroline Johnson chose to end her life - a shocking suicide carefully played out to match that of her husband just months before. Their daughter, Anna, has struggled to come to terms with her parents' deaths ever since. Now with a young baby herself, Anna feels her mother's presence keenly and is determined to find out what really happened. But as she looks for answers, someone is trying to stop her.
London, September 1666. The Great Fire rages through the city, consuming everything in its path. Even the impregnable cathedral of St. Paul's is engulfed in flames and reduced to ruins. Among the crowds watching its destruction is James Marwood, son of a disgraced printer and reluctant government informer. In the aftermath of the fire, a semi-mummified body is discovered in the ashes of St. Paul's, in a tomb that should have been empty. The man's body has been mutilated, and his thumbs have been tied behind his back.
I just can't understand how someone like him could do something like that. Amid the worst drought to ravage Australia in a century, it hasn't rained in small country town Kiewarra for two years. Tensions in the community become unbearable when three members of the Hadler family are brutally murdered. Everyone thinks Luke Hadler, who committed suicide after slaughtering his wife and six-year-old son, is guilty.
You want to believe your husband. She wants to destroy him. Gripping psychological drama for fans of Apple Tree Yard, The Good Wife and Notes on a Scandal. Anatomy of a Scandal centres on a high-profile marriage that begins to unravel when the husband is accused of a terrible crime. Sophie is sure her husband, James, is innocent and desperately hopes to protect her precious family from the lies which might ruin them.
Slough House is Jackson Lamb’s kingdom; a dumping ground for members of the intelligence service who’ve screwed up: left a secret file on a train, blown surveillance, or become drunkenly unreliable. They’re the service’s poor relations – the slow horses – and bitterest among them is River Cartwright, whose days are spent transcribing mobile phone conversations.
It's been 10 long months since Anna Fox last left her home. Ten months during which she has haunted the rooms of her old New York house like a ghost, lost in her memories, too terrified to step outside. Anna's lifeline to the real world is her window, where she sits day after day, watching her neighbours. When the Russells move in, Anna is instantly drawn to them. A picture-perfect family of three, they are an echo of the life that was once hers.
The police say it was suicide. Anna says it was murder. They're both wrong. One year ago, Caroline Johnson chose to end her life - a shocking suicide carefully played out to match that of her husband just months before. Their daughter, Anna, has struggled to come to terms with her parents' deaths ever since. Now with a young baby herself, Anna feels her mother's presence keenly and is determined to find out what really happened. But as she looks for answers, someone is trying to stop her.
London, September 1666. The Great Fire rages through the city, consuming everything in its path. Even the impregnable cathedral of St. Paul's is engulfed in flames and reduced to ruins. Among the crowds watching its destruction is James Marwood, son of a disgraced printer and reluctant government informer. In the aftermath of the fire, a semi-mummified body is discovered in the ashes of St. Paul's, in a tomb that should have been empty. The man's body has been mutilated, and his thumbs have been tied behind his back.
Disconnected from his history and careless of his future, Detective Aidan Waits has resigned himself to the night shift. An endless cycle of meaningless emergency calls and lonely dead ends. Until he and his partner, Detective Inspector Peter 'Sutty' Sutcliffe, are summoned to The Palace, a vast disused hotel in the centre of a restless, simmering city. There they find the body of a man. He is dead. And he is smiling.
None of us ever agreed on the exact beginning. Was it when we started drawing the chalk figures, or when they started to appear on their own? Was it the terrible accident? Or when they found the first body?
East Long Beach. The LAPD is barely keeping up with the high crime rate. Murders go unsolved, OAPs are getting hoodwinked, children are missing. But word has spread: if you've got a case the police can't or won't touch, Isaiah Quintabe will help you out. They call him IQ. He's a loner and a high school dropout, his unassuming nature disguising a relentless determination and a fierce intelligence. He charges his clients whatever they can afford. But now he needs a client who can pay.
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Darkness by Ragnar Jonasson. A young woman, an asylum seeker from Russia, is found murdered on the seaweed-covered rocks of the Vatnsleysuströnd in Iceland. Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdottir of the Reykjavik Police is called to investigate this - the final case in her career before she is forced into retirement. When Hulda starts to ask questions, it isn't long before she realises that no-one can be trusted and that no-one is telling the whole truth.
killer at large in a remote Basque Country valley, a detective to rival Sarah Lund, myth versus reality, masterful storytelling - the Spanish best seller that has taken Europe by storm. The naked body of a teenage girl is found on the banks of the River Baztán. Less than 24 hours after this discovery, a link is made to the murder of another girl the month before. Is this the work of a ritualistic killer or of the Invisible Guardian, the Basajaun, a creature of Basque mythology?
Husband and wife Niamh and Ruairidh Macfarlane co-own Ranish Tweed: a Hebridean company that weaves its own special variety of Harris cloth, which has become a sought-after brand in the world of high fashion. But when Niamh learns of Ruairidh's affair with Russian designer Irina Vetrov, then witnesses the pair killed by a car bomb in Paris, her life is left in ruins. Along with her husband's remains, she returns home to the Isle of Lewis bereft.
'Somebody's going to be murdered at the ball tonight. It won't appear to be a murder, and so the murderer won't be caught. Rectify that injustice and I'll show you the way out.' It is meant to be a celebration, but it ends in tragedy. As fireworks explode overhead, Evelyn Hardcastle, the young and beautiful daughter of the house, is killed. But Evelyn will not die just once. Until Aiden - one of the guests summoned to Blackheath for the party - can solve her murder, the day will repeat itself over and over again.
Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar, read by Juliet Stevenson. This voyage is special. It will change everything.... One September evening in 1785, the merchant Jonah Hancock hears urgent knocking on his front door. One of his captains is waiting eagerly on the step. He has sold Jonah's ship for what appears to be a mermaid.
The late style masterpiece from Peter Carey, twice winner of the Booker Prize. Irene Bobs loves fast driving. Her husband is the best car salesman in rural southeastern Australia. Together with Willie, their lanky navigator, they embark upon the Redex Trial, a brutal race around the continent, over roads no car will ever quite survive. A Long Way from Home is Peter Carey's late style masterpiece - a thrilling high-speed story that starts in one way then takes you to another place altogether.
Profoundly deaf since early childhood, Caleb has always lived on the outside - watching and picking up tell-tale signs people hide in a smile, a cough or a kiss. When a childhood friend is murdered, a sense of guilt and a determination to prove his own innocence sends Caleb on a hunt for the killer. But he can’t do it alone....
Midwinter in the early years of this century. A teenage girl on holiday has gone missing in the hills at the heart of England. The villagers are called up to join the search, fanning out across the moors as the police set up roadblocks and a crowd of news reporters descends on their usually quiet home. Meanwhile, there is work that must still be done: cows milked, fences repaired, stone cut, pints poured, beds made, sermons written, a pantomime rehearsed. The search for the missing girl goes on, but so does everyday life. As it must.
The brilliant new novel from the author of the New York Times best seller Everything I Never Told You. Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down. In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is meticulously planned - from the layout of the winding roads to the colours of the houses to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead.
The gripping new novel from the author of the Sunday Times top 10 best seller, Waterstones Thriller of the Month, Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month, and Simon Mayo Radio 2 Book Club Choice The Dry.
Five went out. Four came back....
Is Alice here? Did she make it? Is she safe? In the chaos, in the night, it was impossible to say which of the four had asked after Alice's welfare. Later, when everything got worse, each would insist it had been them.
Five women reluctantly pick up their backpacks and start walking along the muddy track. Only four come out the other side.
The hike through the rugged landscape is meant to take the office colleagues out of their air-conditioned comfort zone and teach resilience and team building. At least that is what the corporate retreat website advertises.
Federal Police Agent Aaron Falk has a particularly keen interest in the whereabouts of the missing bushwalker. Alice Russell is the whistle-blower in his latest case - and Alice knew secrets. About the company she worked for and the people she worked with.
Far from the hike encouraging teamwork, the women tell Falk a tale of suspicion, violence and disintegrating trust. And as he delves into the disappearance, it seems some dangers may run far deeper than anyone knew.
After the extremely highly rated The Dry Jane Harper's follow-up is more of a gentle push of nature than a genuine force. Harper does write well but this is a tried and trusted plot albeit with some neat contemporary twists. It does develop slowly though and this slow pace is not improved by the narration. Stephen Shanahan's accent does of course add authenticity and he actually carries the narrative very well. However a voice actor he is not and it wasn't even always possible to tell a female character from a male. Given that the majority of the characters are indeed women this is a serious disadvantage. It's not often I say this but I might have enjoyed this a little more as a physical rather than audio book. So a decent enough story coupled with narration that could have been improved on.
16 of 20 people found this review helpful
This is Jane Harpers's follow-up to her very successful novel The Dry (reviewed here by me last year).
Five female colleagues are on a break from the office on a bonding team-and-resilience-building hike in the wilds of the Guralong Ranges near Melbourne. But it has all gone terrifyingly wrong: they're lost. There's no signal on the mobile and the single torch has a fading battery. We know only four of the women will return.
Harper is excellent on the mounting vitriol between the women the reasons for which are explored in the alternating chapters as the narrative flips between present and past, notching up tension and suspense as well as explaining the resentment concerning Lauren and Alice's children, and Beth's past as an addict. After an explosion of violence, Alice goes missing just where a hiker had been murdered years before...
It's a great listen - Harper creates the forbidding and dangerous Australian terrain brilliantly and suspense is taut. There's another strand to the story involving Alice as the whistle-blower in the business the women work for. It is not very convincing and merely distracts. The whole would have been more powerful without it.
The great narration accentuates the rough toughness of the story.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
Another superb novel from Jane Harper, even better than the previous one ‘The Dry’. Great plot, lots of twists, lots of intrigue, well written and well read. Again, her use of setting is key to the story and so well evoked. All the characters are well drawn and the dialogue spot on. I hope there will be more.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
What did you like most about Force of Nature?
Fabulous setting, fabulous characters, and I could listen to the reader's voice forever.
What did you like best about this story?
Australia.
What does Stephen Shanahan bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?
Perfect voice and subtle acting. Wonderful.
Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
It's tense, perhaps not tense enough, but tense.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
Almost as good as The Dry. Good to see some well rounded and diverse female characters. Excellent narration. More please.
its a good sequel to the Dry but a little slow in the storyline and a bit disappointing in the ending.
I had immensely enjoyed reading The Dry by Jane Harper, so I was delighted when I saw that Force of Nature was available as an audio book. It’s an interesting story, told from multiple points of view, and a time line that jumps about gradually revealing the plot and motivation of the different characters. While this could work very well as text I’m not sure it works so well when listening. I got confused many times between the voices of the different characters, and where we were in the time line, which resulted in me having to rewind the audio multiple times to try and make sense of it. The narrator has a delightful voice, very laconic and easy to listen to, but with multiple female lead characters the lack of nuance in his voice made it very difficult to discern who was speaking. I do think that in this case it would have been better to have a female narrator. In saying all that, it’s a great story, and Harper’s description of theAustralian bush is just as vivid and brooding as it was in The Dry. Almost as if the bush is a character itself. I just wish I had chosen to read this book rather than listen.
Enjoyed the story, but was far to simple and felt rushed to conclude. Characters were not deep enough. A bit to cursory.
As a fan of Jane Harper's debut novel The Dry, this definitely felt like a sub-par sequel. Detective Aaron Falks returns with another case in the Australian wilderness, this time following the disappearance of a woman who went on a work retreat in the outback but never came back.
Four of the women who went with her all have motives to want to see her gone, so Falks attempts to understand what secrets she may have had about them.
The story, as described, felt underwhelming even though I appreciate the straightforward simplicity of Harper's writing. There is no massive conspiracy similar to the first but it may have lacked too much in this instance.
I loved The Dry but found this disappointing. My mind kept wandering and I struggled to get back into the story. It was a bit predictable that the story was woven around women bitching once put together in a complex situation. Sorry - can't recommend it.
The Dry was one of my favorite books when it came out. I was really looking forward to Jane Harper's latest book, but it was a real disappointment.
The bickering among the female characters was not only irritating, but it made each of them so unlikeable, you really didn't care what happened to any of them.
Not enough about Aaron Falk and Carmen, who at least have an interesting dynamic with each other.
I also found the whole hiking narrative b-o-r-i-n-g. (Yawn!) If I had been reading this instead of listening to it, I would not have made it to the end.
Loved the first book and this is also very good. Creepy, great characters that seem so real, various and interesting story lines. Can't wait to hear from this author.