When her parents die from an illness, 16-year-old Cissie Brodie & her younger siblings are left penniless & homeless & facing the shadow of the workhouse. To prevent them being split up, Cissie searches for somewhere else to live but with no money they cannot afford anywhere, except a cave on the moor. Cold & drafty to start with, the local carpenter helps Cissie turn it into something resembling a dwelling place, if not a home.

Why did the 9th Duke of Rutland, owner of the spacious Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire, die on a couch in a cramped. cold, suite of rooms in the servants' quarters? In 1940, in poor health & fading fast, the Duke refused to be removed to more comfortable surroundings & insisted on being left alone in the rooms, which were then locked up & left untouched for 60 years after his death. But why?

Stephanie 'Stevie' Diaz is happily married to Troy, but has a job as a 911 operator that she hates. One night, Stevie answers a call & hears a woman who is being followed by someone in a truck. Whilst online, the woman is forced off the road in an isolated area & starts running for her life, Stevie hears a gunshot, but the call is ended. The officers sent to the area find the woman's car but there is no sign of her or the other driver. (continued)

Det Lieutenant Eve Dallas is called to the scene of a puzzling murder.. The founder of computer gaming company U-Play, has been found murdered in his locked holo-room. According to the security logs, no-one else entered or left the room during the time of the murder, not even the house droid, so how did Bart Minnock end up literally losing his head?

Archaeology graduate Eoin Ryan leaves his soul-crushing call centre job for a position as a teacher at a remote island commune. Mainly self-sustaining, the group sounds like the perfect solution to his problems, but if something sounds too good to be true.....

First of all, I thought the plot & setting were intriguing & having studied archaeology & history, an MC from that background & the bits about Irish mythology were interesting. (continued)

In the early hours one morning, Joseph Carver finds his teenage son, Max, in the kitchen frantically trying to clean his bloodied hands. Max says there's been an accident - he killed someone with his car, tried to help them but when it was obvious they were dead, he panicked & fled the scene with the body. Joseph promised his late wife that he would always protect Max so he decides to cover it up & helps Max bury the body.

When 90-year-old care home resident, Daphne St Clair, confesses to being a serial killer, everyone wants to be the one to break the story. Why would someone who has gotten away with decades of murders suddenly confess? Podcaster, Ruth King, is the person Daphne chooses to tell her story, but as they get to know each other during the interviews, it becomes clear that neither of them are telling the whole truth.....

The prequel to 'The Final Hunt' & 'The Last Hunt' is set in 1985 & is about the making of a serial killer. Weaving in parts of the story from the real-life Green River Killer, this one has pace & some surprising twists. Like Cameron (the female MC in the main two books), Holly Sparks is a lead character that the reader can't help rooting for & you really want her to find the evidence to uncover her sister's killer. (continued)

Ten lucky winners are on their way to the grand opening of the Hotel Artemis, the first hotel on the moon. Two weeks of luxury & pampering awaits, however, the guests soon discover all is not as it seems. It soon becomes clear that they are the only people there, all the staff have mysteriously left. Detective Penelope Strand is sure that something nefarious is about to happen & sure enough, the next morning one of the group is found dead. (cont)

An account of an expedition to Everest which culminated in the deaths of 8 people including 2 experienced guides. In March 1996 three separate groups were caught out not far from the summit by a severe storm. This is a detailed account of the climb & an examination of the factors which led to the tragedy & leaves the reader wondering if such exploration is really worth the cost in lives.

Violet is attending Comic Con where the actors from her favourite book-turned-into-a-film 'The Gallows Dance' are due to appear, when a freak accident transport Violet, younger brother Nate, & friends Alice & Katie into the story world for real. Now they are right in the midst of the struggle between the perfect 'Gems' & the 'Imps' (Imperfects) but their appearance derails the story & causes the death of 'Imp' heroine, Rose.

Following the death of their 3-year-old son, Anthony, Sondra & husband Travis move to the mountains of Montana for a fresh start. After their house in Seattle, the rustic cabin in Montana is a shock for Sondra especially when she notices the strange footprints on the walls of the cabin which look like they were made by a child. It soon becomes clear that the townspeople are haunted by a spirit which feeds on guilt & lies - can it be defeated?

Keep your friends close & your frenemies closer.....

Milla receives an invite to a reunion at a ski resort in the French Alps. She doesn't really want to go but the invite is from Curtis, the man she has held a torch for all these years. She's surprised to hear from him after 10 years especially around the anniversary of his sister's disappearance at the same resort, but she can't pass up the chance to see if he has any feelings for her too.

I vaguely remember the repeats of 'Happy Days' but I was much more interested in spin-off 'Mork & Mindy' (shazbot!) in which the much-missed Robin Williams was absolutely hilarious. I digress, so anyway this is the autobiography of Henry Winkler, best known as 'The Fonz' (Ayyy) in Happy Days.

Winkler has been in a lot more than just 'Happy Days', not things that I have tended to watch in the main but I remember him in 'Scream'. (Continued)

Ten years ago Claire Moore narrowly escaped being the eighth victim of the Black-Out Killer, a serial killer who gained entry by cutting all power to the victims' homes & then killing couples by burning down their homes with them locked inside. Claire's husband, Owen, was killed & Claire has been struggling with grief, survivor's guilt & PTSD ever since, (continued)

How do you steal an archive? One file at a time.

This is the story of a quiet, introverted archivist who had access to the most heavily guarded files in the world. Vasili Mitrokhin had started out as a communist party believer until he was transferred into the archives of the KGB. What he read there angered him to such an extent that he decided to copy the files, one by one, in his own shorthand code to be rewritten in his own time at home.

I skipped ahead to check if anything happens to the dog & I'm glad I did. There's way too much graphic animal cruelty for me to continue. DNF

Emily was in a coma for 4 months following an accident & to aid her recovery somewhere quiet, she agrees to move from London to 'Larkin Lodge', a house on the Devon moors. She hopes that this will give her marriage to husband Freddie a fresh start, but when they arrive, far from the pretty country home on the website, the house is shrouded in mist & inside the house is either unbearably hot or achingly cold.

A group of friends decide to have a secret party weekend in a remote castle owned by the parents of one of the teens. Undergoing development, the castle has limited electricity & heating & no-one will know they are there. Soon after they arrive a storm rages & only 10 of them manage to make it to the site. The weather traps them inside & their mobiles go missing on the first evening so they can't call for help, (continued)

Theories about the identity of Jack the Ripper are legion & a plethora of suspects have been proposed over the decades, but is there a suspect who has been overlooked all this time? Charles Lechmere (aka Cross) was a carman who was on the way to work in the early hours when he discovered the body of the first canonical Ripper victim, Mary Ann Nichols. (continued)

The Zodiac Killer, who committed his serial killings in the late 1960s in the San Francisco area, has never been caught. Over the decades, many suspects have been posited but in June 1999, Mike Rodelli followed a hunch & found evidence that suggested a suspect that had never been fully considered before. This book sets out Rodelli's 20-year quest to prove that this man was the Zodiac Killer. (continued)

My June list for #ReadYourKindle

I managed 1 from my list for May, but had a very heavy ARC month. Bit lighter load in June so aiming for 2.

@CBee

In a futuristic Chicago (Shytown), its human inhabitants have upgraded themselves with various bits of technology & cybernetic hardware. Cam Sexton traded his eyes for cyberoptics & works as a Looker - where followers subscribe to literally see through his upgraded eyes. (continued)

I was absolutely glued to the start of this book & the premise was intriguing, unfortunately it suffered from the tendency to prioritise romantic relationships over the Trials which made the middle section drag a bit. The ending almost made up for it though, I was surprised by that extra twist, & that doesn't happen often. I was 50-50 on carrying on but the ending caught my attention again, so I probably will read the next one. 3.75🌟

In a dystopian USA, children start dying from a new illness which has a high mortality rate. Those that do survive develop alarming new abilities, making the adults afraid of them. From the age of 10 all surviving children are taken into federal custody & placed into camps run by guards. The children are sorted into colours according to their abilities: green is the least dangerous, then blue, yellow, & orange, with red being the most dangerous.

England, 1942 & American & Canadian soldiers were billeted in the Surrey countryside awaiting details of their next posting. One soldier was Private August Sangret who struck up a relationship with local girl, Joan Wolfe, one that Joan thought would be leading to marriage. For weeks witnesses usually saw them together, including living in a hastily constructed 'wigwam' or tipi in the woods until one day Joan disappeared. (continued)

The fifth outing for the team of Detective Sergeant Washington Poe & civilian analyst, Tilly Bradshaw sees them tackle two puzzling cases. A poisoner is running amok, seemingly able to get to his victims even if they are under police protection, & for his fourth victim he uses the might of social media to get the public to vote on who he kills next. (continued)

n earlier times, life was a lot more communal than it is today, & the concept of a private life didn't really exist in a balanced way. This is an examination of the concept', those who helped shape it, & how it came into being from its initial start in the Reformation, through the 17th & 18th centuries & Sir Edward Coke (who was responsible for the saying 'An Englishman's home is his castle') through to supporters of women's rights (continued)

London, 1873 & Madeleine Brewster's marriage to Dr Lucius Everley is hastily arranged to assuage the tide of rejection & ill-feeling from their neighbours. Ever since Maddie's older sister left home under a cloud of suspicion, the Brewsters have been ostracised & Maddie's marriage is their passport back to respectability but it means Maddie moving to London far from her family to where she knows no-one. (continued)

The third case for criminologist Lincoln Rhyme & partner Amelia Sachs sees them heading to North Carolina for Rhyme's upcoming pioneering surgery. Before the surgery takes place, the two are asked to consult on a case where two young women have been abducted by a 16-year-old local boy, Garrett Hanlon, known as the Insect Boy for his fascination with bugs. (continued)

Tabbi is a privileged rich girl who is heading, under protest, to an exclusive rehab centre in Switzerland. She meets Ruby on the train there & although they don't look that much alike, there's enough of a similarity for Tabbi to hatch a plan. She decides to befriend Ruby & persuade her to swap lives for 6 weeks - Ruby gets an all expenses paid break & Tabbi gets 6 weeks of freedom, but will Ruby be gullible enough to fall for it? (continued)

Fiona & her sister Amy were always close but when Amy moves away for university they drift apart until Amy suddenly goes missing one day & hasn't been seen or heard of since. Several years later, Fiona rents a room in the same house where Amy had been living & pretends to be a new student all so she can find out what happened to Amy.

The house is shabby & in bad repair & her landlady acts oddly at times. (continued)

King Richard III was killed on 22 August 1485 at Bosworth Field, the last English king to die in battle. His remains were thought lost after the Reformation & closing down of Greyfriars Priory. His reputation has been maligned through the centuries starting with those in the Tudor era who had a lot to gain from muddying the waters. (continued)

Jodi Dillon has been friends with Zack Thrasher since second grade, meaning she was pulled into his friend group in high school almost by accident. Julian, Lucy, Paige, & of course Zack Thrasher, they're rich, sophisticated, & gorgeous - everything Jodi isn't. The group occasionally let an outsider in for a short while for kicks but it isn't long before they are iced out, rejected, 'thrashed'. (continued)

Ellena Reed's life is now in tatters: her ex-husband is in prison, her home is in foreclosure, & she is awaiting confirmation that her career as an EMT is also done. At her wits end, she reluctantly agrees to accompany stepsister, Button (aka Elizabeth), on a camping trip. The night they arrive nuclear warheads hit multiple targets in the US.

Their fellow survivors are a mum & son, & a man who claims to be ex-SEAL. (continued)

Born into enslavement in Tennessee, Lucy Higgs Nichols' early life was one of constant work & living with the threat of being torn away from her family & sold to another owner. As a young woman, Lucy managed to escape at the outset of the US Civil War & joined the Indiana 23rd Regiment of the Union Army as a nurse. Lucy cared for the men for 4 years before returning with them to Indiana to make a new life for herself. (continued)

Mabel Rose Dixon is in New York to become a Ziegfeld girl, but things haven't gone to plan & she is currently reduced to picking the pockets of the wealthy. When she chooses the wrong mark, Mabel makes a deal to save her life & ends up trapped in the Grand Hotel, a luxury hotel run by demons. Mabel agrees to procure souls for the hotel owner, Frank, in exchange for being his headline act every night in the crowded theatre, (continued)

A look at the lives of J.M. Barrie & neighbours, the Llewelyn Davies family, whose five boys were instrumental in the development of the story of Peter Pan - especially Michael, their fourth son, on whom the main character was based. At first the friendships were thought to be of little concern but eventually Arthur Llewelyn Davies moved his family out of London to get away from Barrie's influence. (continued)

Lucy & her parents move to a remote town in Alaska for her mum's new job, where the local school, White Pine Secondary, runs online classes during the bad weather. Now in-person classes are due to start & Lucy is looking forward to meeting her 12 classmates, including Mara, Peter, Henry, & Josephine, in real life. They've been friendly, if a little strange at times with the questions they asked & how they dress.
(Continued)

Aphrodite is born from the sea, literally washed onto the shore. Wandering with no clue where she is or who she is, Aphrodite can sense when humans mean her harm, but she eventually meets a kind man who tends an orchard & who gives her a place to stay & food without asking anything in return. When the orchard is destroyed by giants, Aphrodite meets Ares, god of war, & they travel to Olympus together. (continued)

Rhode Island, 1846 & writer Merritt Fernsby inherits a remote estate in Narragansett Bay. When he arrives he expects the property to be rundown as it has not been inhabited for over a century, but surprisingly, it looks good enough to live in. That's extremely fortunate as once he enters the house, it won't let him leave.

Hulda Larkin is sent from BIKER (the Boston Institute for the Keeping of Enchanted Rooms) to help Merritt with the house.

1545 sees England at war with France again in the last years of King Henry VIII's life. Shardlake is summoned to see Queen Catherine Parr & asked to undertake an investigation into a case under the jurisdiction of the Court of Wards.

Shardlake & Jack Barak travel to Hoyland Priory & then Portsmouth where the English fleet is gathering, & Shardlake also tries to find out what really happened to Ellen Fettiplace who is still incarcerated in Bedlam.

This book tells the true story of 5 Munich university students, who set up an underground resistance movement against the Nazis, & their tragic fate.

This was all new to me as although I've read quite a bit about WWII, I'd never heard of the 'White Rose'. The story of their tragically short-lived efforts to establish a resistance movement against the Nazis is an important one, but I felt a bit short-changed with regards to the people themselves.

TLDR: Not a bad book per se, but the MC spoiled it for me.

This could have been a really dark, almost gothic, mystery thriller - all the ingredients were there, but it was a bit of a miss for me. I think the issue is that the main character, Alex Kelly, is difficult to like. She does all the clichéd things: drinks too much making her unreliable, rushes into situations without thinking, thinks she's the only one who can solve a cold case, (cont)

My May #ReadYourKindle book list.

I've almost finished 'Sophie Scholl & the White Rose' which was my RYK read for April.

@CBee

On Wednesday afternoon, wealthy businesswoman Ilaria Cavendish checks into a luxury London hotel as usual. Shortly afterwards, her lover discovers her dead & submerged in a bath of scalding hot water. Accident or murder? The CCTV shows that no-one went in the room or came out during the time she was killed, so if she was murdered how did they do it?

DS Maeve Kerrigan is working on the case which is being run by DI Josh Derwent. (continued)

Philadelphia, 2011 & a young woman named Ellen Greenberg was found dead in the apartment she shared with her fiancée. Ellen had received over 20 stab wounds, many to the back of the neck & head, & at least one has been assessed to have been received post-mortem - and yet, her death has been judged a suicide. Examining what evidence there is, this case seems to have been either disastrously bungled or there is something darker at the root of this.

Sixteen years ago, nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall vanished from her bed one summer night & was never seen again. Her disappearance tore her family apart & now her parents have been found dead, in what seems to be a murder-suicide, but DS Maeve Kerrigan & DI Josh Derwent aren't convinced.

Meanwhile since the events of last summer when Maeve & Josh went undercover as a couple on Jellicoe Close, Josh has been keeping his distance. (Continued)

“If a pill could free you of guilt … would you take it?“

This was not the usual kind of topic that I choose to read but it turned out to be rather good. Even women who aren't parents can identify with the many demands on our time & being expected to multitask, so being a mother must be a whole other level. It's also about the fact that women are held to much higher standards in business & also (continued)

This is a fast-paced, high-octane thriller with an interesting plot & an excellent premise. The use of how 'mob mentality' makes people do things they wouldn't usually do is well-played. I really enjoyed it - right up until the author introduced a cute dog only for it to be killed a few moments later. That is one of my pet hates (no pun intended), but it's a good read up until then so I rate this one 4🌟