Recommendations based on "A Song for the Dark Times"

‘A perfect contradiction, existing in the shades of grey that real life is so often painted in . . . A story that’s as furious as it is tender’ Emily Henry ‘A roar of rage, a pacy page-turner, I loved it with all my broken heart. Read it. You’ll love it’ Marian Keyes ‘A propulsive plot and characters that roar off the page, this is a novel that’s unafraid to take on societal misogyny while being satirical and even funny at the same time’ Guardian‘An addictive, fast-paced crime novel like nothing you’ve ever read before’ Red magazine * * * The The The PunisherWith newfound powers the time has come to take matters into their own hands…Widowed Nessa lives alone in her house near the ocean. In the quiet hours, she hears voices belonging to the dead – who will only speak to her.On the cusp of fifty Harriett’s marriage and career imploded, but her life is far from over – in fact, she’s undergone a stunning metamorphosis.Jo spent years at war with her body. The rage that arrived with menopause felt like the last straw – until she discovers she’s able to channel it.Guided by voices only Nessa can hear, the trio discover the abandoned body of a teenage girl. The police have written off the victim. But the women have not. Their own investigations lead to more bodies, and a world of wealth where the rules don’t apply – and the realisation that laws are designed to protect villains, not the vulnerable.Now three women will avenge the innocent and punish the guilty. IT’S TIME.* * *Readers and authors are GRIPPED by The ‘A proper smash-the-patriarchy read with tension and a compelling plot to boot . . . Loved it’ Harriet Tyce‘An exceptionally well-written, vivid, and powerful piece of work’ Reader review, ‘Powerful and original’ Tammy Cohen‘STUNNING! Feminist writing at its absolute best. 10 stars’ Reader review,

The New York Times No.1 bestseller delivers ‘a scorching read’ (John Grisham). One of the great unsolved mysteries of World War II is – to some people – a secret worth killing for…The greatest remaining mystery of World War II will be solved…West Berlin, 1987: Spandau Prison is being torn down. Amongst the rubble, the diary of enigmatic Nazi Rudolph Hess is found, and the secrets it reveals plunge the world into chaos.The Spandau Diary- what was in it? Why did the secret intelligence agencies of every major power want it? Why was a brave and beautiful woman kidnapped and assaulted to get to it? And why did a chain of deception and violent death lash out across the globe, from survivors of the Nazi past to warriors in the new conflict now about to explode?

Following from Jo Nesbø's electrifying international best-sellers The Snowman and The Leopard, now comes Phantom, which plunges the brilliant, deeply troubled, now former police officer Harry Hole into a full-tilt investigation on which his own tenuous future will come to depend.When Harry left Oslo again for Hong Kong—fleeing the traumas of life as a cop—he thought he was there for good. But then the unthinkable happened. The son of the woman he loved, lost, and still loves is arrested for murder: Oleg, the boy Harry helped raise but couldn't help deserting when he fled. Harry has come back to prove that Oleg is not a killer. Barred from rejoining the police force, he sets out on a solitary, increasingly dangerous investigation that takes him deep into the world of the most virulent drug to ever hit the streets of Oslo (and the careers of some of the city's highest officials), and into the maze of his own past, where he will find the wrenching truth that finally matters to Oleg, and to himself.

Part blistering espionage thriller, part riveting police procedural, and part piercing exposé on social injustice, The Girl Who Played with Fire is a masterful, endlessly satisfying novel.Mikael Blomkvist, crusading publisher of the magazine Millennium, has decided to run a story that will expose an extensive sex trafficking operation. On the eve of its publication, the two reporters responsible for the article are murdered, and the fingerprints found on the murder weapon belong to his friend, the troubled genius hacker Lisbeth Salander. Blomkvist, convinced of Salander’s innocence, plunges into an investigation. Meanwhile, Salander herself is drawn into a murderous game of cat and mouse, which forces her to face her dark past.

'I was hooked from the start and finished this book in 1 day. I couldn't read it fast enough. It was a whirlwind with plenty of suspense, secrets and betrayal.' NetGalley reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐How far would you go to protect your family?Mark Burcham and his wife Amy live the perfect life: they have a happy marriage, a comfortable home in Los Angeles and a beautiful daughter, Tatum. But one night Amy fails to come home from a business trip to Boston, and her office has no record of a client on the east coast.Then Mark gets the worst news of all; Amy has been found dead. But nothing makes sense. Why was Amy still in town, when he’d waved her off at the airport a few days before? Who was the mysterious client she’d been meeting with for months? There’s only one thing Mark knows for certain: his wife was keeping secrets.As he digs deeper into the life Amy tried to keep hidden, Mark realizes that someone is trying to stop him, someone who is watching his every move. And when they threaten Tatum to keep him from discovering the truth, Mark will stop at nothing to keep his family safe…Don't miss this utterly gripping thriller from Steve Frech, perfect for fans of Chad Zunker, Joe Hart and Robert Dugoni.Readers LOVE The Good Husband!'Oh my goodness – what a nail biter! This thriller sucked me in very early on and didn’t let up until the bombshell ending' NetGalley reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'This had me hooked from the start… I absolutely loved every second' NetGalley reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'A dizzying whirlwind with layer after layer of secrecy that I just couldn't read quickly enough!' NetGalley reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'A gripping thriller. Great characters, a fast-moving plot and superb writing make this a great read' NetGalley reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'The characters were really well-drawn and the story is really captivating so you might read the book in one sitting' NetGalley reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

One of The New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of 2015 and a New York Times bestseller, and now the basis for the Netflix film 22 July, from acclaimed filmmaker Paul GreengrassWidely acclaimed as a masterpiece, Åsne Seierstad’s One of Us is essential reading for a time when mass killings are so grimly frequent.On July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik detonated a bomb outside the Norwegian prime minister's office in central Oslo, killing eight people. He then proceeded to a youth camp on the wooded island of Utøya, where he killed sixty-nine more, most of them teenage members of the country's governing Labour Party. In One of Us, the journalist Åsne Seierstad tells the story of this terrible day and its reverberations. How did Breivik, a gifted child from an affluent neighborhood in Oslo, become Europe's most reviled terrorist? How did he accomplish an astonishing one-man murder spree? And how did a famously peaceful and prosperous country cope with the slaughter of so many of its young?As in her international bestseller The Bookseller of Kabul, Seierstad excels at the vivid portraiture of lives under stress. She delves deep into Breivik's childhood, showing how a hip-hop and graffiti aficionado became a right-wing activist, a successful entrepreneur, and then an Internet game addict and self-styled master warrior who believed he could save Europe from the threat of Islam and multiculturalism. She writes with equal intimacy about Breivik's victims, tracing their political awakenings, teenage flirtations and hopes, and ill-fated journeys to the island. By the time Seierstad reaches Utøya and relates what happened there, we know both the killer and those he will kill. In the book's final act, Seierstad describes Breivik's tumultuous public trial. As Breivik took the stand and articulated his ideas, an entire country debated whether he should be deemed insane, and asked why a devastating sequence of police errors allowed one man to do so much harm.One of Us is at once a psychological study of violent extremism, a dramatic true crime procedural, and a compassionate inquiry into how a privileged society copes with homegrown evil. Lauded in Scandinavia for its literary merit and moral poise, One of Us is the true story of one of our age's most tragic events.

You Thought You Were Alone. Think Again. The Groundbreaking Fifth Thriller In Lars Kepler’s Bestselling Series Featuring Joona Linna. Perfect For Fans Of Stieg Larsson And Jo Nesbo.

A Wall Street Journal "Best Mystery of 2024" “If The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair read like Gatsby by way of David Lynch, then The Alaska Sanders Affair recalls True Detective: there's something both classic and daring about it. One of the world's most original voices in crime fiction.” —A. J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window and End of Story “The Alaska Sanders Affair ... transcends pigeonholing with its abundance of plot, subplots and melodramatic U-turns ... everything seems to be connected ... [and] Mr. Dicker casts an undeniable spell.” —Wall Street Journal The thrilling new whodunit from Joël Dicker, master of the plot twist and the author of The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair and The Enigma of Room 622. April 1999. The body of Alaska Sanders is found on the shore of a lake near the quiet town of Mount Pleasant, New Hampshire. The young woman’s death rocks the small community, but the murder is quickly solved. Within days, a suspect is identified and soon convicted. Case closed. Or so it seemed. . . . Eleven years later, Marcus Goldman, celebrity author and amateur sleuth, picks up a thread that will unravel not only the “open and shut” case of Alaska Sanders, but the very fabric of his best friend,–Sergeant Perry Gahalowood–’s life. Gahalowood, who led the original Alaska Sanders investigation, is hell-bent on finding the truth and setting the record straight. Teaming up with Marcus, he hopes to find redemption by solving the most intricate and trying case of his career. Set both before and after the events of his phenomenal worldwide bestseller The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair, Dicker’s latest delivers the last word in slow-burn police procedurals. Clue by clue, witness by witness, question by question, his characters painstakingly piece together an unguessable puzzle that could only have been set by this acclaimed master of the plot twist. And as they uncover who Alaska Sanders truly was, other ghosts from the past emerge . . . Translated from the French by Robert Bononno

The gripping eighth installment in the internationally bestselling series, available to pre-order now.“A superlative piece of crime fiction.” —Sunday Times (UK)“The work of a master storyteller.” —Daily Telegraph (UK)“A scrupulous plotter and master of misdirection, Galbraith keeps the pages turning . . . Strike and Ellacott remain one of crime’s most engaging duos.” —Guardian (UK)“No one can deny [Robert Galbraith, pseudonym of ] J. K. Rowling’s formidable talents as a crime writer.” —Daily Mail (UK)“Strike is a compelling creation . . . This is terrifically entertaining stuff.” —Irish Times (UK)

New York Times bestselling author Ian Rankin returns to his legendary detective--it's not the first time Rebus has taken the law into his own hands, though it may be the last. John Rebus stands accused: on trial for a crime that could put him behind bars for the rest of his life. But what drove a good man to cross the line? Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke may well find out. Clarke is tasked with the city's most explosive case in years, an infamous cop, at the center of decades of misconduct, has gone missing. Finding him will expose not only her superiors, but her mentor John Rebus. And Rebus himself may not have her own interests at heart, as the repayment of a past debt places him in the crosshairs of both crime lords and his police brethren. One way or another, a reckoning is coming - and John Rebus may be hearing the call for last orders...