Title: Leave the World Behind

Author: Rumaan Alam

Publisher: Ecco (6 Oct 2020)

Genre: General Fiction (Adult), Contemporary, Thriller, Sci-fi

A magnetic novel about two families, strangers to each other, who are forced together on a long weekend gone terribly wrong

Amanda and Clay head to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a a quiet reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they’ve rented for the week. But with a late-night knock on the door, the spell is broken. Ruth and G. H., an older couple who claim to own the home, have arrived there in a panic. These strangers say that a sudden power outage has swept the city, and – with nowhere else to turn – they have come to the country in search of shelter.

But with the TV and internet down, and no phone service, the facts are unknowable. Should Amanda and Clay trust this couple – and vice versa? What has happened back in New York? Is the holiday home, isolated from civilisation, a truly safe place for their families? And are they safe from one another?

Title: My Darling Dreadful Thing

Author: Johanna Van Veen

Publisher: Poison Pen Press (14 May 2024)

Genre: General Fiction (Adult), Historical Fiction, Horror, Gothic

In a world where the dead can wake and walk among us, what is truly real?

Roos Beckman has a spirit companion only she can see. Ruth—strange, corpse-like, and dead for centuries—is the only good thing in Roos’ life, which is filled with sordid backroom séances organized by her mother. That is, until wealthy young widow Agnes Knoop attends one of these séances and asks Roos to come live with her at the crumbling estate she inherited upon the death of her husband. The manor is unsettling, but the attraction between Roos and Agnes is palpable. So how does someone end up dead?

Roos is caught red-handed, but she claims a spirit is the culprit. Doctor Montague, a psychologist tasked with finding out whether Roos can be considered mentally fit to stand trial, suspects she’s created an elaborate fantasy to protect her from what really happened. But Roos knows spirits are real; she’s loved one of them. She’ll have to prove her innocence and her sanity, or lose everything.

Title: A Northern Light in Provence

Author: Elizabeth Birkelund

Publisher: Ballantine Books (21 May 2024)

Genre: General Fiction (Adult), Women’s Fiction, Romance

A woman leaves her coastal Greenland village to translate the works of an elderly Provençal poet and finds her life irrevocably changed in this tender and romantic novel set in a French village.

Ilse Lund is a translator who lives in a house on stilts along the west coast of Greenland. Isolated in her world by the sea, and restless, she convinces her publisher to pay for a trip to the country she has never visited but whose language she speaks fluently—France. Her to translate the verses of Geoffrey Labaye, an elderly poet known as “the last living troubadour of Provence.”

Upon arrival in the medieval hilltop village of Beau Rivière, Ilse falls under the spell of the Provençal way of life–and the charming French poet. She becomes captive to the air, the sun, the vibrant spring colors, and the dulcet sounds of the Provençal dialect. And soon enough, Ilse is captive to the poet, too, as she and Labaye develop a daily rhythm, about words and much else. Their warm camaraderie is disturbed, however, when the poet’s son Frey shows up. Though he has a fiancée back in Paris, Frey turns his attention on Ilse, and suddenly she is forced to learn another language, one her translation skills have not prepared her to decode. With whom and where does her future lie?

With an eye and ear attuned to the sensibilities of French life, Elizabeth Birkelund has created a love story about a woman forced to choose between the security of her quiet northern home and possibly the life of her dreams.