#Orenda Books

[jenmedsbookreviews]

Today on the blog I'm sharing my review of Rod Reynolds' brand new Casey Wray thriller, Shatter Creek. Link in bio. #rodreynolds @orendabooks @annecater14 #bookthreads #books #bookstagram #booksky #teamorenda #bookreview #shattercreek

[rosemariecawkwell]

Review: The Cure, by Eve Smith

PUBLICATION DATE: 10th APRIL 2025PAPERBACK ORIGINAL | £ 9. 99 | ORENDA BOOKS LIVING FOREVER CAN BE LETHAL…Ruth is a law-abiding elder, working out her national service, but she has secrets. Her tireless research into the disease that killed her young daughter had an unexpected outcome: the discovery of a vaccine againstold age. Just one jab a year reverses your biological clock, guaranteeinga…

[clairekreads]

Small Fires by Ronnie Turner #blogtour #bookreview #smallfires

And now for something completely different as I join the blog tour for Ronnie Turner’s forthcoming novel Small Fires which is out a week today! Continue reading Small Fires by Ronnie Turner #blogtour #bookreview #smallfires

[curlygirl79]

Upstairs at the Beresford - Will Carver

Following on from yesterday’s theme of “books that are impossible to describe,” I have another cracker today as I join the blog tour for Upstairs at the Beresford by Will Carver. Many thanks to Will and Orenda Books for providing me with a copy of the book, and to Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part. BLURB: There are worse place than Hell… Hotel Beresford is a grand,…

[miriamvowen]

The Moose Paradox by Antti Tuomainen #Finland #crimefiction

The Moose Paradox, by Antti Tuomainen tr David Hackston – book review

[deadrayg2mf]

The Pixie's Queen (Monsterly Yours #4) by S.J. Sanders

Of course, I always have to immediately go off about how much I love a cover for S.J. Sanders. Absolutely banger cover art 24/7. I will say though, this was not my favorite book of one of my favorite authors. I liked the characters for the most part, and maybe it was just a me thing, but there was a point about 20-30 pages from the end where I sighed and thought, "Really? We're gonna go through it some more right now?" That's when I closed the book and took a seriously long break from reading it. Unfortunately, this wasn't like Punished where I got to sit on it for a second and decide that my initial dislike was simply due to a bad mood.

The basis of the story is this black-sheep-of-the-family witch comes across this ancient talisman that warps her into the fae world, where she is suddenly four inches tall and caught in a downpour. Along comes a hive of four pixies, who conditions unbeknownst to Orenda, perform a delightful mating dance that she graciously accepts. Que bedroom shenanigans and then a wild denial of any mating taking place and some seriously broken hearts for the pixies. The rest of it is the pixies both trying to cope with their emotions, convince Orenda to stay, and conceive ways to get her back to her normal life and maybe follow her into that giant lifestyle as well if they can't accomplish the second task.

Prior to Orenda's appearance we have Shavish, the hive leader, who is headstrong, stubborn, and a little volatile. Orel and Gwin are hopeless and resigned to their fate of being mateless guardians, and Dazi has accepted his fate and hidden himself away in his research and scholarly works to keep busy. They are all good characters, there just felt like a lack of depth to the interactions between them and Orenda.

When it comes to Orenda, in my opinion, she felt like a very skin-deep character at times. I did not care for her attitude and also the way she handled some stuff. Obviously, when consuming media, you're not going to fall in love with every main character you're presented with, so this was going to happen at some point, even with one of my favorite authors.

Overall, it's a 224-page read with the most love interests involved that I've read so far. My humble opinion is; it's mid. It has all the fine writing of S.J. Sanders, but the smut felt lacking and the characters and story didn't keep me chomping at the bit to read more like most of her other works do.

Would I read again? No, I could hardly get through it the first time.

Would I recommend? I wanna say yes because of love and loyalty to the author, but I'm going to say no so I can recommend you her better works

[fictionfromafar]

Son by Johana Gustawsson & Thomas Enger

Orenda Books

Publication Date: 13 March 2025

Son is the first novel in an exciting collaboration between Swedish based French author Johana Gustawsson & Norwegian crime writer Thomas Enger. Expectations would be high as I’ve read and enjoyed books by both novelists before, including those that Enger wrote with Jørn Lier Horst. Of course, with a combined creation, you can never know who wrote what, but certainly the creation of central character Kari Voss gives the book a distinctive feature. Rather than being a police detective or a private investigator, Voss is a memory and body language specialist. Her skills have been recognised by her local police force in Oslo. She is often brought into interviews; particularly when the officers want to gage if someone is lying. While we see those skills in operation in the police station, we also learn of Voss’ impressions when she encounters people in her everyday life.

Voss, who was widowed when her husband perished in a house fire, is still lamenting the disappearance of her 9-year-old son, 7 years earlier. When she is contacted by her main contact in the force Chief Constable Ramona Norum, she is shocked to find the brutal murder of two teenagers - these victims were once classmates, indeed friends of her missing son. There is a lot pressing on the result of the investigation, as the victims were the daughters of famous people while their beautiful faces appear on the cover of very newspaper.

Enough about the case not only ensures that Kari Voss assists the police in her usual way, but also having knowledge of the families, she is also determined to carry out some investigations of her own. Yet that lying radar she has appears to suggest that nobody is telling the truth. You would never know that this book has been written by two different authors, in two different languages (sadly the translators are not credited on my promo copy) Gustawsson & Enger weave a tight narrative which leaves plenty of surprises for both the reader and our principal narrator.

Son is a very promising start to a new series and certainly offers plenty of potential for sequels or indeed prequels. It will be fascinating to see where Kari Voss will take them!

The blurb:

Expert on body language and memory, and consultant to the Oslo Police, psychologist Kari Voss sleepwalks through her days, and, by night, continues the devastating search for her young son, who disappeared on his birthday, seven years earlier.

Still grieving for her dead husband and trying to pull together the pieces of her life, she is thrust into a shocking local investigation, when two teenage girls are violently murdered in a family summer home in the nearby village of Son.

When a friend of the victims is charged with the barbaric killings, it seems the case is closed, but Kari is not convinced. Using her skills and working on instinct, she conducts her own enquiries, leading her to multiple suspects, including people who knew the dead girls well…

With the help of Chief Constable Ramona Norum, she discovers that no one – including the victims – are what they seem. And that there is a dark secret at the heart of Son village that could have implications not just for her own son’s disappearance, but Kari's own life, too…

ABOUT JOHANA GUSTAWSSON & THOMAS ENGER

Known as the Queen of French Noir, Johana Gustawsson is one of France's most highly regarded, award-winning crime writers, recipient of the prestigious Cultura Ligue de l`Imaginaire Award for her gothic mystery Yule Island. Number-one bestselling books include Block 46, Keeper, Blood Song and her historical thriller, The Bleeding. Johana lives in Sweden with her family.

A former journalist, Thomas Enger is the number-one bestselling author of the Henning Juul series and, with co-author Jørn Lier Horst, the international bestselling Blix & Ramm series, and one of the biggest proponents of the Nordic Noir genre. He lives in Oslo. Rights to Johana and Thomas’ books have been sold to a combined fifty countries and, for the first time, two crime writers, from two different countries, writing in two different languages, have joined forces to create an original series together.

[justforbooks]

Best crime and thrillers of 2023

Given this year’s headlines, it’s unsurprising that our appetite for cosy crime continues unabated, with the latest title in Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series, The Last Devil to Die (Viking), topping the bestseller lists. Janice Hallett’s novels The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels, which also features a group of amateur crime-solvers, and The Christmas Appeal (both Viper) have proved phenomenally popular, too.

Hallett’s books, which are constructed as dossiers – transcripts, emails, WhatsApp messages and the like – are part of a growing trend of experimentation with form, ranging from Cara Hunter’s intricate Murder in the Family (HarperCollins), which is structured around the making of a cold case documentary, to Gareth Rubin’s tête-bêche The Turnglass (Simon & Schuster). Books that hark back to the golden age of crime, such as Tom Mead’s splendidly tricksy locked-room mystery Death and the Conjuror (Head of Zeus), are also on the rise. The late Christopher Fowler, author of the wonderful Bryant & May detective series, who often lamented the sacrifice of inventiveness and fun on the altar of realism, would surely have approved. Word Monkey (Doubleday), published posthumously, is his funny and moving memoir of a life spent writing popular fiction.

Notable debuts include Callum McSorley’s Glaswegian gangland thriller Squeaky Clean (Pushkin Vertigo); Jo Callaghan’s In the Blink of an Eye (Simon & Schuster), a police procedural with an AI detective; Scorched Grace by Margot Douaihy (Pushkin Vertigo), featuring queer punk nun investigator Sister Holiday; and the caustically funny Thirty Days of Darkness (Orenda) by Jenny Lund Madsen (translated from the Danish by Megan E Turney).

There have been welcome additions to series, including a third book, Case Sensitive (Zaffre), for AK Turner’s forensic investigator Cassie Raven, and a second, The Wheel of Doll (Pushkin Vertigo), for Jonathan Ames’s LA private eye Happy Doll, who is shaping up to be the perfect hardboiled 21st-century hero.

Other must-reads for fans of American crime fiction include Ozark Dogs (Headline) by Eli Cranor, a powerful story of feuding Arkansas families; SA Cosby’s Virginia-set police procedural All the Sinners Bleed (Headline); Megan Abbott’s nightmarish Beware the Woman (Virago); and Rebecca Makkai’s foray into very dark academia, I Have Some Questions for You (Fleet). There are shades of James Ellroy in Jordan Harper’s Hollywood-set tour de force Everybody Knows (Faber), while Raymond Chandler’s hero Philip Marlowe gets a timely do-over from Scottish crime doyenne Denise Mina in The Second Murderer (Harvill Secker).

As Mick Herron observed in his Slow Horses origin novel, The Secret Hours (Baskerville), there’s a long list of spy novelists who have been pegged as the heir to John le Carré. Herron must be in pole position for principal legatee, but it’s been a good year for espionage generally: standout novels include Matthew Richardson’s The Scarlet Papers (Michael Joseph), John Lawton’s Moscow Exile (Grove Press) and Harriet Crawley’s The Translator (Bitter Lemon).

Historical crime has also been well served. Highlights include Emma Flint’s excellent Other Women (Picador), based on a real 1924 murder case; Laura Shepherd-Robinson’s story of a fortune teller’s quest for identity in Georgian high society, The Square of Sevens (Mantle); and SG MacLean’s tale of Restoration revenge and retribution, The Winter List (Quercus). There are echoes of Chester Himes in Viper’s Dream (No Exit) by Jake Lamar, which begins in 1930s Harlem, while Palace of Shadows (Mantle) by Ray Celestin, set in the late 19th century, takes the true story of American weapons heiress Sarah Winchester’s San Jose mansion and transports it to Yorkshire, with chillingly gothic results.

The latest novel in Vaseem Khan’s postcolonial India series, Death of a Lesser God (Hodder), is also well worth the read, as are Deepti Kapoor’s present-day organised crime saga Age of Vice (Fleet) and Parini Shroff’s darkly antic feminist revenge drama The Bandit Queens (Atlantic).

While psychological thrillers are thinner on the ground than in previous years, the quality remains high, with Liz Nugent’s complex and heartbreaking tale of abuse, Strange Sally Diamond (Penguin Sandycove), and Sarah Hilary’s disturbing portrait of a family in freefall, Black Thorn (Macmillan), being two of the best.

Penguin Modern Classics has revived its crime series, complete with iconic green livery, with works by Georges Simenon, Dorothy B Hughes and Ross MacDonald. There have been reissues by other publishers, too – forgotten gems including Celia Fremlin’s 1959 holiday‑from-hell novel, Uncle Paul (Faber), and Richard Wright’s The Man Who Lived Underground (Vintage). Finished in 1942 but only now published in its entirety, the latter is an account of an innocent man who takes refuge from racist police officers in the sewers of Chicago – part allegorical, part brutally realistic and, unfortunately, wholly topical.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[vyvesvi]

just started asia super young 😅 funny how a show can seem super popular when you're out of the loop but when you finally start watching it's crickets

this is my first time watching a youku show, i like the pacing BUT I HATE the fact that they cut so much from the free eps (free is 1 hr vip is 2.5+ 🫠). so like the irresponsible working adult i am i committed to monthly subscription (that i WILL remember to cancel the day the finale airs 😁). the other thing that i find really disappointing is that free voting on the youku app doesn't count towards their rank, it's just for extra promo 🫠 apparently you need to pay separately through their site or have a weibo associated with a mainland # (acc to fans based in hk w weibo accounts they can't even vote. when the show is filming in hk. and conducted half in canto.)

but i WILL be tuning in even though im desperately confused about everything. i watched eps 1 - 3 using the free version so im gonna do a quick recap and hopefully start catching up with the extra content tomorrow 🙏

ASY PICKS (based on ep 1 - 3)

ults: gemini (hoàng huệhùng/huang huixiong) & albert (aihe)

these two...how could you not say cunt. gemini is a 99 liner from vietnam, a short king, his nose is pierced, his dancing is clean, and his vocals are great. does he speak chinese? no. but does he serve face? like his life depends on it (because it does). he's already on my list of survival show contestants who will live on in my brain in perpetuity. aihe is the other main slayer from the same audition group (medusa). just look at him. he walked out and i went bitch???? he's like if hu yetao and xue bayi had a baby that was mad as hell. he's an 03 liner from xinjiang, pretty good vocals, and great dance skills. had to use that shitty laptop pic bc it just radiates his whole vibe.

i like you!: vic (zhang shengxi), orenda (shuhao), walker (wang kun), kong sonhei (jiang xinxi), & karl (ting tzelong)

vic is a 2000 liner & and member of enone. his rank is so oddly low bc he gets pretty good screentime and is very talented?

shuhao is a 2000 liner. he wasnt a pick until he did his solo rap but he's the best rapper, undisputed, on this show. plus he composed & produced & wrote & arranged their group's whole audition song? kingie.

walker is an 05 liner with a musical theatre background. to me he has a very broadcaster type face - kind and open. i noticed him mostly for how he was taking care of his younger audition partner, it was very very cute 🙄(🥹).

xinxi is an 02 liner & a member of the yuehua brigade. member of the bg boyhood (all of whom are competing) and i believe the theme song center. but more importantly, he's my birthday buddy!😁🥳 i'll admit to noticing him first bc of the bday thing - i was actually pretty unimpressed by boyhood's audition. still, he's a very good/solid boy group member to have.

karl (ting tzelong) is a 97 liner with roots in canada & hong kong. he's a Fantastic singer and was the runner up in the mr. hong kong contest? don't think he can dance but that voice, singing or speaking...

i know you & ur fun: ollie

ollie (06, under yuehua) was on boys planet so im very familiar with him (side note but this show has so many former iqiyi show contestants but none from tencent 😭). honestly he's not a pick for me but i like his energy, he's a great variety member. also i don't want to see him lose so 😭 that said i've always thought he raps like he's reading a children's book but he's graduated to slam poetry🎉

hmmm: sky (zhao tianyi)

so. sky's audition was iconic. this 14 y/o kid sang, rapped, played the piano, synths, talkbox, did streetdance, and jumped into a split. he clearly loves music & is very intense about follow this passion. but 1) he's 14. 2) he clearly wants to be a soloist, thus far i can't see a single team player bone in his body. these things combined have put him lower on my list (i especially didn't really care for how he interacted with gemini during the team selection but we'll see if that continues in ep 4). but he's here currently for his talent.

keeping an eye out: archie (sin ching fung), hugo (wong singcheuk) & service (sun xiaowei)

archie (98) is a singer, he sings! but honestly so many ppl on this show are good & he can't really dance so...we'll see

hugo (03, apex member) ...in his audition he looked like a member of my token bg POW lol. he has a lot of potential i just need to see more

service (03) i saw some star potential in his audition, we'll see

[vdlkmj]

She rots deception.

Never once did the young lady named Seraphine Orenda also known as Seo lack affection. Her life is an open book to the public that looks like a perfect dream of many. The heir can easily get whatever she wants in a single snap of her fingers but she was humble enough to share it, humble enough not to cause anyone some dis-stress over small matter such as money, but behind all these conveniences and comforts, there is one thing that she doesn't get often enough. There was sense of feeling, a longing inside her that she could never explain until one day she saw a letter that was solely address her, slowly tracing the letter that says Vandeleur with her finger tips and just like that memories of the past starts to creep inside her vines. Her origin and death all at once.

As memories find their way back onto her the Camp Vandeleur was a fragment of stories Seo's parents told her about, it was said that only peculiar ones around the said city are cognizant of it. It was confidential with norms, prolly because of the fact that the mortals would spit on them. Half of the society already hate the things they can't simply explain with science or their beliefs.

Old visions of Seo standing still with the paramount of magic that came out of the left-field was enigmatic and somehow uncanny, nevertheless the cynical probabilities, the people chose to stay faithful for what they believe. The drought of obliterating hell their enemies trying to upheave in their town for decades made them pay no heed for the consequences of the eccentric encounters Seo had shown with her magic, that even if it means launching an enormous fire, they would prefer adding fuel into it. Whatever it might take to behold— the heir.

So, here she is packing her stuff last minute just to finally have a grip of what's really happening and right on cue a messge flashed on her phone that made her smile reached her eyes. Seo slowly took her bags and handed it to her driver before saying goodbye to her parents, hugging them tight as if it she's not coming home to them and just like that they turned onto dust, they were just an illusion. Them being alive was all in her head and she's off to know if she can do anything to bring them to life. Would the camp help her to find answers or would it be a home she can finally heal to?

[rosemariecawkwell]

Blog Tour Calendar: The Cure, by Eve Smith

[calturnerreviews]

#BlogTour – #BookReview of #HappyIsTheOne by Katie Allen @KtAllenWriting @OrendaBooks @RandomTTours #RandomThingsTours #HalleysComet #MeetRobin

I’m thrilled to welcome you today to my stop on the blog tour for Happy Is The One, the beautiful and moving new novel by Katie Allen. Thank you to Anne Cater and Orenda Books for giving me the opportunity to read and review this gorgeous book. About the book: The carefully ordered life of a middle-aged man falls apart when he is forced to return to his hometown to care for his elderly father,…

[bookliteratibookreviews]

The Betrayal of Thomas True by A.J. West

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Orenda Books; 1st edition (4 July 2024)Language ‏ : ‎ EnglishHardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pagesISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1916788157ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1916788152 Book Blurb The only sin is betrayal… It is the year 1715, and Thomas True has arrived on old London Bridge with a dangerous secret. One night, lost amongst the squalor of London’s hidden back streets, he finds himself drawn into the outrageous…

[marypicken]

Shatter Creek (Det. Casey Wray #2) by Rod Reynolds @Rod_WR @OrendaBooks

Source: Review copyPublication: 22 May from Orenda BooksPP: 300ISBN-13: 978-1916788091 My very grateful thanks to Orenda Books for an advance copy for review Hampstead County Police Department is embroiled in scandal after corruption at the top of the force was exposed. Cleared of involvement and returned to active duty, Detective Sergeant Casey Wray nonetheless finds herself at a crossroads…

[miriamvowen]

The Petrona Award long list reported in The Bookseller magazine

Orenda Books has secured three entries on the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year longlist amidst a “significant” rise in submissions. Twelve crime novels from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland have been featured. Sweden has the highest number of longlisted titles with five on the list while Denmark and Norway both have two. Finland, Iceland and…

[fictionfromafar]

You Can’t See Me

By Eva Björg Ægisdóttir

Translated by Victoria Cribb

Orenda Books

Publication Date: 6 July 2023

Even by the high standards set by previous Icelandic crime fiction writers, Eva Björg Ægisdóttir’s debut, A Creak On The Stairs was very much a stand out novel. Focussing on police detective Elma who has returned to her hometown of Akranes, she and her colleagues investigate a murder with long hidden and mysterious historical connections. The book won the CWA New Blood Dagger and since then two further novels in the series have followed. While these were also strongly impressive, there could perhaps become a temptation that Ægisdóttir might decide to rest on her laurels and continue to produce stories in a similar vein, however with this novel, it’s is very clear that this is an author keen to develop further as a novelist and present a rather different type of story. Thankfully the results are very satisfying and it could be said that she has surpassed her own high watermark with You Can’t See Me.

When I first heard that this book would be a prequel to her Forbidden Dark Iceland series, I assumed that the book would be based upon Elma’s earlier life as a police officer in Reykjavik. I was happy to be proven wrong on both counts. In fact this is a story where the firm focus of the story is on other characters with only a peripheral role for the investigating officers. Instead this is the story of an Icelandic clan. The rich and powerful Snaebergs have taken over a remote hotel for a weekend family reunion. Rarely due the family members meet on mass and with grudges and jealousies that can be present in any large family, many of the guests arrive in trepidation, wary of conflict. Although unique to rural Iceland and its ever changing climate, a snow storm means that it is too treacherous for anyone to get to or leave the hotel, setting the scene for a locked door mystery where a murder could only have been committed by one of the hotel’s temporary residents.

Yet one aspect of Ægisdóttir’s writing that existing readers will be familiar with is that she steers very much away from formulaic retreads. There are some modern and very unique components to this story. Furthermore it is is told to us through multiple voices, some long established within the centre of the Snaeberg family, some who appear more as outsiders and even the perspective of a hotel staff member is given as the family attempt to reacquaint with each other, free from watching eyes (or so they think) and with copious amounts of alcohol available to them. Family secrets and suspicions are sure to emerge leading to fascinating subplots but when a member of the party mysteriously disappears, the autosphere begins to turn as chilling as the outside weather. Despite reading this book in the late June sunshine, there were aspects to the story that made me shiver. It is one of those books that you’re torn between wanting to rush through it and also savour the emotions and sensations of the characters that we are following.

Existing readers may have come to expect that Ægisdóttir’s books will be compulsive reading yet I firmly believe that this is her finest title so far. What’s more, with it being set in an earlier time period than her other novels, it also serves as a perfect introduction to those yet to read her work. One of the best books I’ve read this year.

Many thanks to Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for inclusion on the blog tour and to Orenda Books for an advance copy of You Can’t See Me. Please look out for the other reviews of this novel on the blog tour, as shown below.