Book picks similar to
The Wordsmith by Alan Ayer


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Stung


Bethany Wiggins - 2013
    But when she awakens, her world no longer exists. Her house is abandoned and broken. Her neighborhood is barren and dead. And there is a tattoo on her right hand. A tattoo Fiona doesn’t remember getting…but somehow she must conceal at any cost. Because humanity has been divided.Those bearing the tattoo have turned into mindless, violent beasts that roam the streets and sewers, preying upon the unbranded, while a select few live protected inside a fortresslike wall, their lives devoted to rebuilding society and killing all who bear the mark.And Fiona has awoken branded, on the wrong side of the wall, and…normal.From the author of Shifting comes this remarkable reimagining of Sleeping Beauty, where the sting of a bee, rather than the prick of a needle, can destroy the world.

Ghoster


Jason Arnopp - 2019
    Prepare to never look at your phone the same way again . . .Kate Collins has been ghosted.She was supposed to be moving in with her new boyfriend Scott, but all she finds after relocating to Brighton is an empty apartment. Scott has vanished. His possessions have all disappeared.Except for his mobile phone.Kate knows she shouldn't hack into Scott's phone. She shouldn't look at his Tinder, his calls, his social media. But she can't quite help herself.That's when the trouble starts. Strange, whispering phone calls from numbers she doesn't recognise. Scratch marks on the walls that she can't explain. And the growing feeling that she's being watched.Kate refuses to leave the apartment - she's not going anywhere until she's discovered what happened to Scott. But the deeper she dives into Scott's digital history the more Kate realises just how little she really knows about the man she loves.

Out of Reach


Elizabeth McGregor - 2015
    She has a job as a local newspaper reporter, a flat above an antiques shop in a village by the sea, and a close group of friends. But one day her carefully erected existence collapses when tragedy explodes back into her life. Ten years ago Kate’s eight-week-old baby, Jamie, was stolen. The loss destroyed her marriage and still haunts her dreams with guilt and longing. And now letters have started arriving on her doormat, anonymous letters that read, ‘I know where he is…’ Tragedy strikes again when her colleague and close friend, Maggie, is found, dead. Kate is torn between running once again or finding out who sent the letters so she can finally have some answers. She enlists the help of Johnathon Reeve, a psychiatrist, to help her work through her issues. He seems to be exactly what she needs – someone who listens, understands, and is willing to help. Kate soon comes to the realisation that she must put her fear to one side and find the truth behind her son’s disappearance. Even if the child will always remain just Out of Reach... Praise for Eliazabeth McGregor ‘Compulsive and claustrophobic … the writing embroiled me … and, like a pit-bull terrier, refused to let go. Just when it seemed the suspense had peaked, McGregor turned the ratchet another notch and forced me to read on … made me turn pages with an eagerness that defied sleep’ – Val McDermid, Manchester Evening News ‘Without doubt the most unputdownable psychological thriller I have come across for a long time’ The Lady Elizabeth McGregor is the pen name of Elizabeth Cooke. She also writes under the name Holly Fox and has had over a hundred stories and serials published in the UK and abroad. She has worked for both magazines and radio, and currently writes a weekly column for the Dorchester Guardian. She lives in Dorset with her husband, her daughter and the world’s most laid-back golden retriever.

Derelict: A Novella


Todd Travis - 2016
    But when she and her all-female crew answer a mysterious distress call during a tropical storm, they stumble across an abandoned yacht worth millions. It seems like a dream come true, the Lotto, the Big Ticket to all their dreams... Until they discover what's waiting for them inside the ship... DERELICT A horror novella by Todd Travis

The Three


Sarah Lotz - 2014
    Three child survivors. A religious fanatic who insists the three are harbingers of the apocalypse. What if he's right?The world is stunned when four commuter planes crash within hours of each other on different continents. Facing global panic, officials are under pressure to find the causes. With terrorist attacks and environmental factors ruled out, there doesn't appear to be a correlation between the crashes, except that in three of the four air disasters a child survivor is found in the wreckage. Dubbed 'The Three' by the international press, the children all exhibit disturbing behavioural problems, presumably caused by the horror they lived through and the unrelenting press attention. This attention becomes more than just intrusive when a rapture cult led by a charismatic evangelical minister insists that the survivors are three of the four harbingers of the apocalypse. The Three are forced to go into hiding, but as the children's behaviour becomes increasingly disturbing, even their guardians begin to question their miraculous survival.

The Fearless


Emma Pass - 2014
    An army, powered by an incredible new serum that makes each soldier stronger, sharper, faster than their enemies. Intended as a force for good, the serum has a terrible side-effect - anyone who takes it is stripped of all humanity, empathy, love. And as the Fearless sweep through the country, forcing the serum on anyone in their path, society becomes a living nightmare.Cass remembers the night they passed through her village. Her father was Altered. Her mother died soon after. All Cass has left is her little brother - and when Jori is snatched by the Fearless and taken to their hellish lair, Cass must risk everything to get him back.

Charisma


Jeanne Ryan - 2015
    The effects are instant. She’s charming, vivacious, and popular. But strangely, so are some other kids she knows. The media goes into a frenzy when the disease turns contagious, and then deadly, and the doctor who gave it to them disappears. Aislyn must find a way to stop it, before it's too late.Part medical thriller, part social justice commentary, Charisma will have readers on the edge of their seats.

Method 15/33


Shannon Kirk - 2015
    Kidnapped. Alone. Terrified.Now forget her ...Picture instead a pregnant, 16-year-old, manipulative prodigy. She is shoved into a dirty van and, from the first moment of her kidnapping, feels a calm desire for two things: to save her unborn son and to exact merciless revenge.She is methodical, calculating, scientific in her plotting. A clinical sociopath? Leaving nothing to chance, secure in her timing and practice, she waits for the perfect moment to strike. Method 15/33 is what happens when the victim is just as cold as the captors.The agents trying to find a kidnapped girl have their own frustrations and desires wrapped into this chilling drama. In the twists of intersecting stories, one is left to ponder. Who is the victim? Who is the aggressor?

Salvation Day


Kali Wallace - 2019
    Zahra knew every detail of the plan. House of Wisdom, a massive exploration vessel, had been abandoned by the government of Earth a decade earlier, when a deadly virus broke out and killed everyone on board in a matter of hours. But now it could belong to her people if they were bold enough to take it. All they needed to do was kidnap Jaswinder Bhattacharya—the sole survivor of the tragedy, and the last person whose genetic signature would allow entry to the spaceship. But what Zahra and her crew could not know was what waited for them on the ship—a terrifying secret buried by the government. A threat to all of humanity that lay sleeping alongside the orbiting dead. And then they woke it up.

Dreamland


Robert L. Anderson - 2015
    Her mother taught her the three rules of walking: Never interfere. Never be seen. Never walk the same person’s dream more than once. Dea has never questioned her mother, not about the rules, not about the clocks or the mirrors, not about moving from place to place to be one step ahead of the unseen monsters that Dea’s mother is certain are right behind them.Then a mysterious new boy, Connor, comes to town and Dea finally starts to feel normal. As Connor breaks down the walls that she’s had up for so long, he gets closer to learning her secret. For the first time she wonders if that’s so bad. But when Dea breaks the rules, the boundary between worlds begins to deteriorate. How can she know what’s real and what’s not?

Sleeping Giants


Sylvain Neuvel - 2016
    She wakes up at the bottom of a square-shaped hole, its walls glowing with intricate carvings. But the firemen who come to save her peer down upon something even stranger: a little girl in the palm of a giant metal hand.Seventeen years later, the mystery of the bizarre artifact remains unsolved - the object's origins, architects, and purpose unknown.But some can never stop searching for answers.Rose Franklin is now a highly trained physicist leading a top-secret team to crack the hand's code. And along with her colleagues, she is being interviewed by a nameless interrogator whose power and purview are as enigmatic as the relic they seek. What's clear is that Rose and her compatriots are on the edge of unravelling history's most perplexing discovery-and finally figuring out what it portends for humanity. But once the pieces of the puzzle are in place, will the result be an instrument of lasting peace or a weapon of mass destruction?

Ashley Bell


Dean Koontz - 2015
    Two days later, she’s impossibly cured. Fierce, funny, dauntless, she becomes obsessed with the idea that she was spared because she is meant to save someone else. Someone named Ashley Bell. This proves to be a dangerous idea. Searching for Ashley Bell, ricocheting through a southern California landscape that proves strange and malevolent in the extreme, Bibi is plunged into a world of crime and conspiracy, following a trail of mysteries that become more sinister and tangled with every twisting turn.Unprecedented in scope, infinite in heart, Ashley Bell is a magnificent achievement that will capture lovers of dark psychological suspense, literary thrillers, and modern classics of mystery and adventure. Beautifully written, at once lyrical and as fast as a bullet, here is the most irresistible novel of the decade.

The Thirteenth Guardian


K.M. Lewis - 2019
    Michelangelo concealed an explosive truth in his famous Creation of Man fresco in the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican. Everything we have been taught about Eve is wrong—she didn’t cause the fall of man. Instead, Eve carried a far more devastating secret for millennia; one that will change the world forever. 
As the modern-day world suffers the cataclysmic effects of the “Plagues of Egypt”, Avery Fitzgerald, a statuesque Astrophysics major at Stanford, discovers that she is mysteriously bound to five strangers by an extremely rare condition that foremost medical experts cannot explain. Thrust into extraordinary circumstances, they race against time to stay alive as they are pursued by an age-old adversary and the world around them collapses into annihilation.

 Under sacred oath, The Guardians—a far more archaic and enigmatic secret society than the Freemasons, Templars, and the Priory—protect Avery as she embarks on a daring quest that only legends of old have been on before. Avery must come to terms with the shocking realization that the blood of an ancient queen flows through her veins and that the fate of the world now rests on her shoulders.The Thirteenth Guardian is Book I of a Trilogy.

Marie Antoinette, Serial Killer


Katie Alender - 2013
    She’ll get to soak up the beauty and culture, and maybe even learn something about her family’s French roots.But a series of gruesome murders are taking place across the city, putting everyone on edge. And as she tours museums and palaces, Colette keeps seeing a strange vision: a pale woman in a ball gown and powdered wig, who looks suspiciously like Marie Antoinette.Colette knows her popular, status-obsessed friends won’t believe her, so she seeks out the help of a charming French boy. Together, they uncover a shocking secret involving a dark, hidden history. When Colette realizes she herself may hold the key to the mystery, her own life is suddenly in danger . . .Acclaimed author Katie Alender brings heart-stopping suspense to this story of revenge, betrayal, intrigue — and one killer queen.

My Perfect Sister


Penny Batchelor - 2020
    Does a faded photograph in her sister’s old room hold the key to the past?Desperate for clues, she delves deeper in search of the truth. But is it safer to be kept in the dark? Annie is about to find out…