The 15 Most Popular Books of January

January 31 2023
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You no doubt have your hands full with your 2023 to-read list, and perhaps you’re starting to doubt those lofty reading challenges you set just a few weeks ago. If you’re already finding yourself slipping into a slump, swap out a few books for these that have everyone excited.

The Writing Retreat
by Julia Bartz

Writerly ambition (and rejection) has long been a source of literary drama, but Julia Bartz ratchets up the pressure in THE WRITING RETREAT, publishing in February 2023. The story focuses on Alex, an aspiring writer who secures a last-minute spot at a competitive writing retreat hosted by horror-writer luminary Roza Vallo, and explores the lengths artists are willing to go to for their craft. Joining Alex at the remote Victorian house is a group of four fellow writers, all of whom are competing for the same book deal. The only catch: they must write the book within a month, while in residence. But the house doesn’t turn out to be the most welcoming creative environment, and soon Alex realizes that the history of the house, and its owner, hold the key to surviving this writing retreat. A gripping page-turner replete with haunted houses, cutthroat competitors, and all the literary suspense you could hope for. 

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The Writing Retreat
Julia Bartz

The Plot meets Please Join Us in this psychological suspense debut about a young author at an exclusive writer’s retreat that descends into a nightmare.

Alex has all but given up on her dreams of becoming a published author when she receives a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: attend an exclusive, month-long writing retreat at the estate of feminist horror writer Roza Vallo. Even the knowledge that Wren, her former best friend and current rival, is attending doesn’t dampen her excitement.

But when the attendees arrive, Roza drops a bombshell—they must all complete an entire novel from scratch during the next month, and the author of the best one will receive a life-changing seven-figure publishing deal. Determined to win this seemingly impossible contest, Alex buckles down and tries to ignore the strange happenings at the estate, including Roza’s erratic behavior, Wren’s cruel mind games, and the alleged haunting of the mansion itself. But when one of the writers vanishes during a snowstorm, Alex realizes that something very sinister is afoot. With the clock running out, she’s desperate to discover the truth and save herself.

A claustrophobic and propulsive thriller exploring the dark side of female friendships and fame, The Writing Retreat is the unputdownable debut novel from a compelling new talent.

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Small Things Like These
by Claire Keegan

“In SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE, Claire Keegan creates scenes with astonishing clarity and lucidity. This is the story of what happened in Ireland, told with sympathy and emotional accuracy. From winter skies to the tiniest tick of speech to the baking of a Christmas cake, Claire Keegan makes her moments real—and then she makes them matter.” —Colm Tóibín

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Small Things Like These
Claire Keegan

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The House of Eve
by Sadeqa Johnson

Sadeqa Johnson’s historical fiction (remember YELLOW WIFE?) always fills in the gaps of history with much-needed clarity and imbues it with an emotional pull. Her latest, THE HOUSE OF EVE, is especially touching, as it stems from her curiosity about her own grandmother, who became a mother at the age of just fourteen. Driven by questions of what happened to young unwed Black women like her grandmother in the 1950s, Sadeqa created the intertwining narratives of Ruby and Eleanor. Each young women comes from a different walk of life—high school Junior Ruby in urban Philadelphia is set to become the first person in her family to go to college, and Eleanor’s middle-class suburban life in Cleveland doesn’t help her fit in as much as she’d hoped at Howard University—but unexpected pregnancies send them on separate (and then colliding) trajectories that explore class, race, and gender mixed with ambitions in the mid-twentieth century.

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The House of Eve
Sadeqa Johnson

From the award-winning author of Yellow Wife, a daring and redemptive novel set in 1950s Philadelphia and Washington, DC, that explores what it means to be a woman and a mother, and how much one is willing to sacrifice to achieve her greatest goal.

1950s Philadelphia: fifteen-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college, in spite of having a mother more interested in keeping a man than raising a daughter. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed on to her like a birthright.

Eleanor Quarles arrives in Washington, DC, with ambition and secrets. When she meets the handsome William Pride at Howard University, they fall madly in love. But William hails from one of DC’s elite wealthy Black families, and his par­ents don’t let just anyone into their fold. Eleanor hopes that a baby will make her finally feel at home in William’s family and grant her the life she’s been searching for. But having a baby—and fitting in—is easier said than done.

With their stories colliding in the most unexpected of ways, Ruby and Eleanor will both make decisions that shape the trajectory of their lives.

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Zero Days
by Ruth Ware

If you’re a fan of the Bourne movie franchise, or Mr. and Mrs. Smith, you must read Ruth Ware’s next thriller ZERO DAYS! Our main character Jack (short for Jacinta) is a low-key professional spy who is forced to go on the run after being framed for a vicious crime. The reader follows her on a nail-biting, gut-wrenching quest through London as she searches for clues to prove she’s innocent. ZERO DAYS will delight both this masterful author’s longtime fans and appeal to new readers.

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Zero Days
Ruth Ware

The New York Times bestselling “new Agatha Christie” (Air Mail) Ruth Ware returns with this adrenaline-fueled thriller that combines Mr. and Mrs. Smith with The Fugitive about a woman in a race against time to clear her name and find her husband’s murderer.

Hired by companies to break into buildings and hack security systems, Jack and her husband, Gabe, are the best penetration specialists in the business. But after a routine assignment goes horribly wrong, Jack arrives home to find her husband dead. To add to her horror, the police are closing in on their suspect—her.

Suddenly on the run and quickly running out of options, Jack must decide who she can trust as she circles closer to the real killer in this unputdownable and heart-pounding mystery from an author whose “propulsive prose keeps readers on the hook and refuses to let anyone off until all has been revealed” (Shelf Awareness).

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Pretend I'm Dead
by Jen Beagin

Sometimes, it’s okay to judge a book by its cover. I picked up Jen Beagin’s debut novel, PRETEND I’M DEAD, because the combination of that title and the rubber-gloved hand holding a cigarette on the jacket drew me in. After reading the back cover and learning that the book involved a love interest named Mr. Disgusting, I knew I had to read it. Judging by those things, I figured I was in for a truly unique, offbeat, and probably sharply funny story. It is all of those things and so much more. This novel delves into places that seem hopeless or abject: the flophouse, the dive bar, the trailer park. Jen Beagin populates them with people who are damaged and hurting and strange, but also achingly human, striving for meaning or love or survival. Their collective story is as deeply funny as it is deeply sad; it is heart-wrenching, fresh, and weird in a wonderful way.

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Pretend I'm Dead
Jen Beagin

NAMED A BEST BOOK of the YEAR by O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE, REFINERY 29, and KIRKUS REVIEWS
SHORTLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE

A “wondrous,” (O, The Oprah Magazine) “scathingly funny” (Entertainment Weekly) debut from Whiting Award winner Jen Beagin about a cleaning lady named Mona and her quest for self-acceptance and belonging after her relationship with a loveable junkie goes awry.

Jen Beagin’s funny, moving, fearless debut novel introduces an unforgettable character, Mona—almost twenty-four, emotionally adrift, and cleaning houses to get by. Handing out clean needles to drug addicts, she falls for a recipient she calls Mr. Disgusting, who proceeds to break her heart in unimaginable ways.

Seeking a kind of healing, she decamps to Taos, New Mexico, for a fresh start, where she finds a community of seekers and cast-offs, all of whom have one or two things to teach her—the pajama-wearing, blissed-out New Agers, the slightly creepy client with peculiar tastes in controlled substances, the psychic who might really be psychic. But always lurking just beneath the surface are her memories of growing up in a chaotic, destructive family from which she’s trying to disentangle herself, and the larger legacy of the past she left behind.

The story of Mona’s quest for self-acceptance in this working class American world is at once hilarious and wonderfully strange, true to life and boldly human, and introduces a stunning, one-of-a-kind new voice in American fiction.

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A Death at the Party
by Amy Stuart

I completely devoured bestselling author Amy Stuart's A DEATH AT THE PARTY. I know it has been said many times over by thriller readers but this book truly had me guessing whodunit until the very end, and I have been raving about it to everyone I know since. It’s set over the course of a single day during an elaborate garden party and shows how a family drama devolves and rumors twist until they result in doting wife, mother, and daughter Nadine standing over a dead body in the cellar. If you love books by authors Lisa Jewell, Ashley Audrain, and Lucy Foley, you'll definitely want to pick this one up. A DEATH AT THE PARTY is a tense, literary thriller filled with secrets, haunting memories, and an exquisite twist ending. 

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A Death at the Party
Amy Stuart

In this tense, spellbinding thriller set over the course of a single day, a woman prepares for a party that goes dreadfully wrong—for fans of Ashley Audrain and Lisa Jewell.

Nadine Walsh’s summer garden party is in full swing. The neighbors all have cocktails, the catered food is exquisite—everything’s going according to plan.

But Nadine—devoted wife, loving mother, and doting daughter—finds herself standing over a dead body in her basement while her guests clink glasses upstairs. What happened? How did it come to this?

Rewind to that morning, when Nadine is in her kitchen, making last-minute preparations before she welcomes more than a hundred guests to her home to celebrate her mother’s birthday. But her husband is of little help to her, her two grown children are consumed with their own concerns, and her mother—only her mother knows that today isn’t just a birthday party. It marks another anniversary as well.

Still, Nadine will focus just on tonight. Everyone deserves a celebration after the year they’ve had. A chance for fun. A chance to forget. But it’s hard to forget when Nadine’s head is swirling with secrets, haunting memories, and concerns about what might happen when her guests unite.

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The Marriage of Opposites
by Alice Hoffman

This book tells the extraordinary story of Rachel, the mother of the famous painter Camille Pissarro. As she grows up in a Jewish refugee community in St. Thomas in the early 1800s, Rachel’s life has never been her own. To save her father’s business, Rachel is forced to marry an old widower with three children, even though she doesn’t love him. But when her husband suddenly dies and Rachel meets the young and handsome Frédérick, Rachel seizes her own life and begins a defiant and passionate love affair that sparks a scandal affecting her whole family—even her favorite son, who will become one of the greatest artists in France.

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The Marriage of Opposites
Alice Hoffman

Wendy’s Fictional Dinner Party Guest: Rachel Pomié Petit Pizzarro

Rachel Pomié Petit Pizzarro is a woman full of fire and life. A businesswoman, a romantic, a renegade, she’s quite the nineteenth-century badass, not taking anyone else’s advice on how to live her life. I respect and admire her passion, vulnerability, and fearlessness in the face of the judgment of her insular St. Thomas community. She followed her heart, suffered for it, and lived the life she wanted—with a great love and many children, one of whom was the artist Camille Pissarro, father of Impressionism. No doubt, she would command the room.

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The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane
by Lisa See

China is such a large country that one book couldn’t possibly encompass all of its different peoples and cultures. What THE TEA GIRL OF HUMMINGBIRD LANE does is give readers a peek into a way of life that they might not have known about. The book follows Li-yan, a young girl growing up among the Akha people, who are known for growing pu-erh tea. However, as the rest of the world changes, Li-yan also finds herself bucking the old ways, getting pregnant out of wedlock and running away to have the child in secret. Rather than letting her be killed, Li-yan gives her daughter up for adoption, and years later, mother and child seek answers about each other, finding their way through the tea that has been a cornerstone of their lives.

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The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane
Lisa See

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa See, “one of those special writers capable of delivering both poetry and plot” (The New York Times Book Review), a moving novel about tradition, tea farming, and the bonds between mothers and daughters.

In their remote mountain village, Li-yan and her family align their lives around the seasons and the farming of tea. For the Akha people, ensconced in ritual and routine, life goes on as it has for generations—until a stranger appears at the village gate in a jeep, the first automobile any of the villagers has ever seen.

The stranger’s arrival marks the first entrance of the modern world in the lives of the Akha people. Slowly, Li-yan, one of the few educated girls on her mountain, begins to reject the customs that shaped her early life. When she has a baby out of wedlock—conceived with a man her parents consider a poor choice—she rejects the tradition that would compel her to give the child over to be killed, and instead leaves her, wrapped in a blanket with a tea cake tucked in its folds, near an orphanage in a nearby city.

As Li-yan comes into herself, leaving her insular village for an education, a business, and city life, her daughter, Haley, is raised in California by loving adoptive parents. Despite her privileged childhood, Haley wonders about her origins. Across the ocean Li-yan longs for her lost daughter. Over the course of years, each searches for meaning in the study of Pu’er, the tea that has shaped their family’s destiny for centuries.

A powerful story about circumstances, culture, and distance, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane paints an unforgettable portrait of a little known region and its people and celebrates the bond of family.

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The Blackhouse
by Carole Johnstone

Is moving to Scotland one of your 2023 resolutions? Maybe reconsider that one. When Robert moves his whole life, family included, to an island in the Outer Hebrides, he hopes he can leave the past behind and find a community he can rely on. But, well, let’s just say that his plan goes south quickly. When a young journalist named Maggie MacKay enters the picture some 20 years later, claiming to be the reincarnation of a murdered man from the same community, things go from bad to worse. Is Maggie crazy or is the long-presumed dead man looking to settle some scores? As full of twists and turns as the whipping winds of the island’s storms, THE BLACKHOUSE is sure to have you shivering from its atmospheric thrills and chills. 

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The Blackhouse
Carole Johnstone

From the author of the “dark and devious...beautifully written” (Stephen King) Mirrorland comes a richly atmospheric thriller set on an isolated Scottish island where nothing is as it seems and shocking twists lie around every corner.

A remote village. A deadly secret. An outsider who knows the truth.

Robert Reid moved his family to Scotland’s Outer Hebrides in the 1990s, driven by hope, craving safety and community, and hiding a terrible secret. But despite his best efforts to fit in, Robert is always seen as an outsider. And as the legendary and violent Hebridean storms rage around him, he begins to unravel, believing his fate on the remote island of Kilmeray cannot be escaped.

For her entire life, Maggie MacKay has sensed something was wrong with her. When Maggie was five years old, she announced that a man on Kilmeray—a place she’d never visited—had been murdered. Her unfounded claim drew media attention and turned the locals against each other, creating rifts that never mended.

Nearly twenty years later, Maggie is determined to find out what really happened, and what the islanders are hiding. But when she begins to receive ominous threats, Maggie is forced to consider how much she is willing to risk to discover the horrifying truth.

Unnerving, enthralling, and filled with gothic suspense, The Blackhouse is a spectacularly sinister tale readers won’t soon forget.

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The Night Travelers
by Armando Lucas Correa

Calling all historical fiction fans! Bestselling author Armando Lucas Correa’s THE NIGHT TRAVELERS has everything I love: multi-generational stories, complex characters, and a tale that will tug on your heartstrings. One generation’s story begins in 1931 Berlin with Ally, who must send her mixed-race daughter, Lilith, on a dangerous path to Havana in order to save her from Hitler’s deadly ideology of Aryan purity. Next we follow an adult Lilith, who must save her daughter, Nadine, from the upcoming Communist war by sending her to live in America. Decades later in 1988, Nadine finds herself back in her grandmother’s country of heritage, Germany, as a scientist, but one who has spent her entire lifetime avoiding the truth about her own family’s history. It is Nadine’s daughter, Luna, in turn, who begins to unravel the past and discovers a shocking betrayal that changes everything she thought she knew. This unforgettable story of mothers and daughters, sacrifice, and self-discovery will have you hastily turning the pages to discover what happens next. Over four generations, strong women captivatingly take center stage.

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The Night Travelers
Armando Lucas Correa

Four generations of women experience love, loss, war, and hope from the rise of Nazism to the Cuban Revolution and finally, the fall of the Berlin Wall in this sweeping novel from the bestselling author of the “timely must-read” (People) The German Girl.

Berlin, 1931: Ally Keller, a talented young poet, is alone and scared when she gives birth to a mixed-race daughter she names Lilith. As the Nazis rise to power, Ally knows she must keep her baby in the shadows to protect her against Hitler’s deadly ideology of Aryan purity. But as she grows, it becomes more and more difficult to keep Lilith hidden so Ally sets in motion a dangerous and desperate plan to send her daughter across the ocean to safety.

Havana, 1958: Now an adult, Lilith has few memories of her mother or her childhood in Germany. Besides, she’s too excited for her future with her beloved Martin, a Cuban pilot with strong ties to the Batista government. But as the flames of revolution ignite, Lilith and her newborn daughter, Nadine, find themselves at a terrifying crossroads.

Berlin, 1988: As a scientist in Berlin, Nadine is dedicated to ensuring the dignity of the remains of all those who were murdered by the Nazis. Yet she has spent her entire lifetime avoiding the truth about her own family’s history. It takes her daughter, Luna, to encourage Nadine to uncover the truth about the choices her mother and grandmother made to ensure the survival of their children. And it will fall to Luna to come to terms with a shocking betrayal that changes everything she thought she knew about her family’s past.

Separated by time but united by sacrifice, four women embark on journeys of self-discovery and find themselves to be living testaments to the power of motherly love.

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Watching You
by Lisa Jewell

I’m always in the mood for a thriller, whether it be onstage or on the page. In WATCHING YOU, certain characters’ actions and conversations are just creepy enough to remind you of an underlying darkness, one that can even be found on the quietest streets in the most idyllic of neighborhoods. Much like Sweeney Todd, the setting doesn’t quite seem to fit the crime, the players cunning and masters of disguise. Emotions run high, secrets boiling beneath decades-old obsessions. Joey can’t stop coming up with ways to chat with the popular headmaster next door; his son can’t help himself from spying on Joey’s and his father’s interactions; Jenna, a neighbor and student at the headmaster’s school, worries there’s something more sinister behind the guy’s captivating exterior. I especially loved the multiple perspectives and seeing how the character’s stories intertwined.

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Watching You
Lisa Jewell

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Memory Wall
by Anthony Doerr

Well, yeah, you know Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling phenomenon ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE. But do yourself a favor and read his amazing short stories. I thoroughly enjoyed both his story collections (the other being THE SHELL COLLECTOR), but particularly loved MEMORY WALL. The stories span the globe and genres—there is a touch of science fiction mixed with the literary—and leave you feeling utterly transformed. The meditations on time, memory, and loss are spectacular and provide a glimpse into the many dimensions of this complex and skillful writer.

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Memory Wall
Anthony Doerr

In the wise and beautiful second collection from the acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize-winning #1 New York Times bestselling author of All the Light We Cannot See, and Cloud Cuckoo Land, "Doerr writes about the big questions, the imponderables, the major metaphysical dreads, and he does it fearlessly" (The New York Times Book Review).

Set on four continents, Anthony Doerr's new stories are about memory, the source of meaning and coherence in our lives, the fragile thread that connects us to ourselves and to others. Every hour, says Doerr, all over the globe, an infinite number of memories disappear. Yet at the same time children, surveying territory that is entirely new to them, push back the darkness, form fresh memories, and remake the world.

In the luminous and beautiful title story, a young boy in South Africa comes to possess an old woman's secret, a piece of the past with the power to redeem a life. In "The River Nemunas," a teenage orphan moves from Kansas to Lithuania to live with her grandfather, and discovers a world in which myth becomes real. "Village 113," winner of an O'Henry Prize, is about the building of the Three Gorges Dam and the seed keeper who guards the history of a village soon to be submerged. And in "Afterworld," the radiant, cathartic final story, a woman who escaped the Holocaust is haunted by visions of her childhood friends in Germany, yet finds solace in the tender ministrations of her grandson.

Every story in Memory Wall is a reminder of the grandeur of life--of the mysterious beauty of seeds, of fossils, of sturgeon, of clouds, of radios, of leaves, of the breathtaking fortune of living in this universe. Doerr's language, his witness, his imagination, and his humanity are unparalleled in fiction today.

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The Paris Daughter
by Kristin Harmel

As a huge fan of historical dramas, including those of Kristin Harmel, this was a must-read for me! Set in 1939, Paris, the story begins with a pair of young women—one, Juliette, a mother of two sons with a third child on the way, and the other, named Elise, pregnant with her first child. Soon after becoming fast friends, while bonding in a bookstore that Juliette’s family owns, Elise becomes a target of the German occupation and makes the hasty decision to leave her daughter with Juliette and her family, which now includes a daughter, the same age as Elise’s. A year later, with the war winding down, Elise returns to find the world she left behind destroyed by a bomb, and Juliette and both of their daughters have disappeared. The only thing Elise concretely has is confirmation from a neighbor that her friend and one of the girls got out alive. Now, against all odds, she’s on a mission to find out what happened to her child. THE PARIS DAUGHTER will take you on a heartrending journey of friendship, tragic loss, and finding your way back to the people you love. Don’t miss out on what I believe is Kristin Harmel’s best book yet!

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The Paris Daughter
Kristin Harmel

From the bestselling author of the “heart-stopping tale of survival and heroism” (People) The Book of Lost Names comes a gripping historical novel about two mothers who must make unthinkable choices in the face of the Nazi occupation.

Paris, 1939: Young mothers Elise and Juliette become fast friends the day they meet in the beautiful Bois de Boulogne. Though there is a shadow of war creeping across Europe, neither woman suspects that their lives are about to irrevocably change.

When Elise becomes a target of the German occupation, she entrusts Juliette with the most precious thing in her life—her young daughter, playmate to Juliette’s own little girl. But nowhere is safe in war, not even a quiet little bookshop like Juliette’s Librairie des Rêves, and, when a bomb falls on their neighborhood, Juliette’s world is destroyed along with it.

More than a year later, with the war finally ending, Elise returns to reunite with her daughter, only to find her friend’s bookstore reduced to rubble. Surviving neighbors tell her that Juliette and a little girl survived. But which little girl—and what happened in the bookstore’s final moments? Juliette has seemingly vanished without a trace, taking all the answers with her. Elise’s desperate quest to find out what happened to her daughter ultimately leads her to New York—and to Juliette—one final, fateful time.

An “exquisite and gut-wrenching novel” (Lisa Barr, New York Times bestselling author) you won’t soon forget, The Paris Daughter is also a sweeping celebration of resilience, motherhood, and love.

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The Twyford Code
by Janice Hallett

I didn’t fit enough jigsaw puzzling into my holiday break, so I’m trying to make up for it with mystery novels where scenes resemble puzzle pieces that I have to scramble to put together. THE TWYFORD CODE by Janice Hallett sounds perfect! When a young Steven Smith found a copy of a famous children’s book by Edith Twyford filled with bizarre markings inside, he enlisted the help of his English teacher to figure them out. Together they realized the markings relate to a secret code in all of Twyford’s novels. Forty years later and the mystery still haunts Steven. Freshly released from prison, he recounts his past and tries to unlock the decades-old mystery while also reflecting on what landed him in prison in the first place—and what happened to his English teacher from so long ago. 

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The Twyford Code
Janice Hallett

The mysterious connection between a teacher’s disappearance and an unsolved code in a children’s book is explored in this fresh novel from the author of the “clever and often wryly funny” (PopSugar) novel The Appeal.

Forty years ago, Steven “Smithy” Smith found a copy of a famous children’s book by disgraced author Edith Twyford, its margins full of strange markings and annotations. When he showed it to his remedial English teacher Miss Iles, she believed that it was part of a secret code that ran through all of Twyford’s novels. And when she disappeared on a class field trip, Smithy became convinced that she had been right.

Now, out of prison after a long stretch, Smithy decides to investigate the mystery that has haunted him for decades. In a series of voice recordings on an old iPhone from his estranged son, Smithy alternates between visiting the people of his childhood and looking back on the events that later landed him in prison.

But it soon becomes clear that Edith Twyford wasn’t just a writer of forgotten children’s stories. The Twyford Code holds a great secret, and Smithy may just have the key.

“A modern Agatha Christie” (The Sunday Times, London), Janice Hallett has constructed a fiendishly clever, maddeningly original crime novel for lovers of word games, puzzles, and stories of redemption.

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