Little Darlings by Melanie Golding

“Mother knows best” takes on a sinister new meaning in this unsettling thriller perfect for fans of Neil Gaiman and Grimms’ Fairy Tales.

Everyone says Lauren Tranter is exhausted, that she needs rest. And they’re right; with newborn twins, Morgan and Riley, she’s never been more tired in her life. But she knows what she saw: that night, in her hospital room, a woman tried to take her babies and replace them with her own…creatures. Yet when the police arrived, they saw no one. Everyone, from her doctor to her husband, thinks she’s imagining things.

A month passes. And one bright summer morning, the babies disappear from Lauren’s side in a park. But when they’re found, something is different about them. The infants look like Morgan and Riley―to everyone else. But to Lauren, something is off. As everyone around her celebrates their return, Lauren begins to scream, These are not my babies.

Determined to bring her true infant sons home, Lauren will risk the unthinkable. But if she’s wrong about what she saw…she’ll be making the biggest mistake of her life.

Compulsive, creepy, and inspired by some our darkest fairy tales, Little Darlings will have you checking―and rechecking―your own little ones. Just to be sure. Just to be safe.



Lauren has just had a blessed event.. times 2. Beautiful healthy twin boys are born to Lauren Tranter after a very difficult delivery and traumatic after care. When a strange and foul smelling woman appears in her hospital room with a basket of inhuman twins and demands to switch one for one of Lauren's twins it feels like a nightmare from the exhaustion and stress of labor. But when Lauren refuses the woman, she demands both babies instead and forcibly tries to take them. Nobody believed Lauren in the hospital that night, and nobody believed her after her release when she saw the woman again outside her home. Terrified for her babies, Lauren spends her days locked away in the house with them, until her increasingly annoyed and utterly useless husband insists that she take them out for some fresh air. That day as poor sleep deprived Lauren dozed off for a minute, someone snatched her babies. When they are found, they are different.. strange... changed.
"Changeling- a child believed to have been secretly substituted by fairies for the parents' real child in infancy."
Is Lauren suffering some sort of delusion or are these truly not her babies? You will have to read to find out.
I loved this book and the bits of fairy folklore in between chapters.
5 out of 5 stars.
I received an advance copy for review.

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About the author
Melanie Golding is a graduate of the MA in creative writing program at Bath Spa University, with distinction. She has been employed in many occupations including farm hand, factory worker, childminder and music teacher. Throughout all this, because and in spite of it, there was always the writing. In recent years she has won and been shortlisted in several local and national short story competitions. Little Darlings is her first novel, and has been optioned for screen by Free Range Films, the team behind the adaptation of My Cousin Rachel.

The Mother-in-Law by Sally Hepworth

Someone once told me that you have two families in your life - the one you are born into and the one you choose. Yes, you may get to choose your partner, but you don't choose your mother-in-law. The cackling mercenaries of fate determine it all.

From the moment Lucy met Diana, she was kept at arm's length. Diana is exquisitely polite, but Lucy knows, even after marrying Oliver, that they'll never have the closeness she'd been hoping for.

But who could fault Diana? She was a pillar of the community, an advocate for social justice, the matriarch of a loving family. Lucy had wanted so much to please her new mother-in-law.

That was ten years ago. Now, Diana has been found dead, leaving a suicide note. But the autopsy reveals evidence of suffocation. And everyone in the family is hiding something...

From the bestselling author of The Family Next Door comes a new page-turner about that trickiest of relationships.

The first time that Lucy met her future mother-in-law her high hopes of a close bond were dashed. Lucy had lost her own mom to cancer, and longed for a motherly figure to fill that void.
Through a series of missteps, miscommunications and unspoken words, Lucy and Diana built an invisible wall between themselves. Now Diana is dead of an apparent suicide and a delicate spider web of secrets is about to be swept away.
I think anyone who enjoys a good mystery is a perfect fit for this book, but more than that, anyone who has a Mother-in-Law or is one herself may see fragments of themselves in the relationship between Diana and Lucy.

I received an advance copy for review.
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About the author
Sally Hepworth is the bestselling author of The Secrets of Midwives (2015), The Things We Keep (2016) and The Mother's Promise (2017), and The Family Next Door (Feb 2018). Sally's books have been labelled “enchanting” by The Herald Sun, “smart and engaging” by Publisher’s Weekly, and New York Times bestselling authors Liane Moriarty and Emily Giffin have praised Sally’s novels as “women’s fiction at its finest” and “totally absorbing”.

Sally's novels are available worldwide in English and have been translated into 15 languages.
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Sally lives in Melbourne, Australia with her husband and three children.

The Dark Game by Jonathan Janz

Ten writers are selected for a summer-long writing retreat with the most celebrated and reclusive author in the world. Their host is the legendary Roderick Wells. Handsome, enigmatic, and fiendishly talented, Wells promises to teach his pupils about writing, about magic, about the untapped potential that each of them possesses. Most of all, he plans to teach them about the darkness in their hearts. The writers think they are signing up for a chance at riches and literary prestige. But they are really entering the twisted imagination of a deranged genius, a lethal contest pitting them against one another in a struggle for their sanity and their lives. They have entered into Roderick Wells's most brilliant and horrible creation. The Dark Game.



A few years ago I may have said Jonathan who? These days I need only see the name Jonathan Janz to know that I need to grab the book without even reading the description. Jonathan Janz knows horror, More than that he is an amazing story teller who doesn't need to go for the cheap scares or the gore only route. Every character has a purpose and I am not going to go into the plot much except to say each character has their own twisted little back story and the way in which it all played out was deliciously creepy. I also loved the way it mentioned The Siren and The Spector, which is another book by this author that you really need to read if you haven't yet.
5 out of 5 stars.
I received an advance copy for review.


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About the author

Jonathan Janz is the author of more than a dozen novels and numerous short stories. His work has been championed by authors like Joe R. Lansdale, Jack Ketchum, and Brian Keene; he has also been lauded by Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and School Library Journal. His ghost story The Siren and the Specter was selected as a Goodreads Choice nominee for Best Horror. Additionally, his novel Children of the Dark was chosen by Booklist as a Top Ten Horror Book of the Year. Jonathan’s main interests are his wonderful wife and his three amazing children. You can sign up for his newsletter (http://jonathanjanz.us12.list-manage....), and you can follow him on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Amazon, and Goodreads.

Deadly Reality TV Series (Book #1 Easy Money) by Sea Caummisar

What would you do to earn 'Easy Money'?
There's a new reality TV game show that pays contestants to hurt themselves. How much pain would you endure to make some quick cash? Would you shoot yourself with a nail gun for $10,000? There are plenty of contestants willing to go on live TV to make a quick buck. Would you watch the show? The ratings are looking good. 'Easy Money' becomes the most talked about show on television.
Follow Damon Dahmer, the executive producer, as he creates such a bizarre television show. Damon is not only making good television, he is also struggling with his own inner needs to watch people in pain. Slowly, Damon pushes boundaries to find what is acceptable and what is not. Throw in his own revenge vendetta, and Damon's personal pain show viewings, and you get the first book in the series of 'Deadly Reality TV'.
Is the real horror what people are doing to themselves? Or is it the man that Damon reveals himself to be? Maybe it's just scary that people are actually watching the show.
Viewer (reading) discretion is advised. Not for the faint of heart. Recommended for 18+ due to some violent content. Warning: There are some bloody scenes.

I am old enough to remember when the only "reality show" was the nightly news, and maybe The People's Court, Cops, and a slew of talk shows where people mostly complained about their spouses. These days, there are a ton of naked dating shows, surviving the wilderness, and willingness to marry a stranger for a chance to be on TV. So is it really that far fetched to think there could ever be a show where people willingly injure and maim themselves for cash? Probably not, and the author imagines just such a future where people will do anything for cash while a live audience enjoys their pain. "Easy Money" is the brain child of a twisted sadist who may have once been something close to normal but since the death of his only child and dissolution of his marriage, has embraced his darkest desires to see human suffering up close and personal.
This was a quick and gruesome read.

I received a complimentary copy for review.