Thriller

And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie

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First, there were ten. An odd assortment of characters, all invited as guests to a small private island off the coast of Devon. Their mysterious host is nowhere to be found and everything seems a little strange. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they are unwilling to reveal. By the morning of the second day on the island, two of the party are dead. Signs point to foul play, but with the island cut off from the mainland by a storm, the murderer must be one of them. Only the dead are above suspicion. And when the guests realize that the murders are happening in sequence, following a famous nursery rhyme which is hung in every bedroom, tensions run high. By the end of the weekend, there will be none. Read More »

The Sanatorium, by Sarah Pearse

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Although on compassionate leave from her job as a police detective, Elin Warner has no desire to travel. But, when an invitation to her estranged brother’s engagement party arrives, she cannot refuse. So she finds herself in an ultra-modern and very isolated hotel in the Swiss Alps. The new hotel might be the height of luxury, but Elin senses a strange feeling about the place. Maybe it is only the hotel’s history as a sanatorium?
However, they wake up the next morning to find her brother Isaac’s fiancée is missing. With the hotel cut off from the outside world by a major snowstorm, Elin is tasked by the Swiss police to investigate the disappearance. As time passes and they are no nearer to finding her, the remaining hotel guests begin to panic. But nobody has realised that another woman is also missing. Read More »

The Ice, by Laline Paull

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A frozen corpse emerges from a glacier under the startled eye of a cruise ship full of tourists. The body is quickly identified as Tom Harding, who was lost in an accident over three years ago. Tom’s friend Sean survived the accident but has lived with the uncertainties and guilt ever since. But what other secrets lie hidden in this cold and unpredictable place? Read More »

The Boy in the Suitcase, by Lene Kaaberbøl & Agnete Friis

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Nina Borg is a Red Cross nurse living in Copenhagen with her family. She is dedicated to her work and to helping people in need. So, when her old friend Karin calls her in a panic and asks for her help, she cannot say no. Karin gives Nina the key to a storage locker at the station and asks her to retrieve the contents. Nina was in no way expecting what she finds. Inside the locker is a suitcase, and inside the suitcase is a three-year-old boy, drugged and naked. Read More »

The Dying Game, by Asa Avdic

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The year is 2037 and the world is very different from today. There has been a second Cold War and Europe is divided into Protectorates, presumably controlled by the USSR. In the Protectorate of Sweden, seven people have been selected as applicants for a top-secret intelligence position. They are gathered on the remote island of Isola for a 48-hour test as the first step in the recruitment process. Among them is Anna Francis, deeply troubled by her experiences in the warzone at the border of Turkmenistan. Her role in the test is simple: she is to play dead. The plan is to stage her own murder and then retreat to a secret underground room and observe the other participants as they deal with this crisis. But something is not quite right on the island and, as a storm blows in, cutting off the electricity and contact with the mainland, things start to get out of hand. Read More »

The Guest List, by Lucy Foley

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A remote island. An invitation to die for…
Guests are gathering on a small island off the Irish coast to celebrate the wedding of the year. As a storm sweeps in, bringing rough waves and strong winds, the highly-organised wedding planner is hard pushed to keep everything running smoothly. As the skies darken, the drinks are flowing freely, emotions are running high and secrets are coming out. By the end of the night, one of the guests will be found dead. But who? And who amongst them is the killer? Read More »

The Hunting Party, by Lucy Foley

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All of them are friends. One of them is a killer.
A group of old university friends gather at a remote lodge in the Scottish Highlands to celebrate New Year. Three days into their stay, one of them is dead. The lodge has been cut off from the outside world by a snowstorm, meaning that the police cannot access the area to conduct an investigation. This also means that the killer was one of them. Read More »

The Light of the Fireflies, by Paul Pen

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The boy lives in a basement with his family: father, mother, grandmother, brother and sister. They live in the basement because they cannot go outside. Apart from the boy, the whole family was horribly scarred during a fire. The sister was so disfigured that she has to wear a mask all the time. The boy is perfectly content with his life, as he has never known anything else. But after his sister has a baby, things begin to change. Everyone is acting oddly and the boy begins to wonder about the outside world. Read More »

The Blackhouse, by Peter May

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A murder. A secret. A trap.
A brutal murder is committed on the remote Isle of Lewis, in Scotland, and Detective Fin Macleod from Edinburgh is called in to investigate, as this case is similar to another he worked on in the past. Detective Macleod is also a native of Lewis and once knew the victim very well.
To solve the case, Detective Macleod must come face to face with people he has not seen for many years and confront his dark past on the island. Read More »