BOOK OF THE WEEK with Linda Jennings. The Stranger, Harlan Coben, ISBN 9781409144649 (Hachette) BD7.900 for Gulf Weekly Book Club members
The Stranger appears out of nowhere, perhaps in a bar, or a parking lot, or at the grocery store. His identity is unknown. His motives are unclear. His information is undeniable. Then he whispers a few words in your ear and disappears, leaving you picking up the pieces of your shattered world.
Adam Price has a lot to lose: a comfortable marriage to a beautiful woman, two wonderful sons, and all the trappings of the American Dream - a big house, a good job, a seemingly perfect life.
Then he runs into the Stranger. When he learns a devastating secret about his wife, Corrine, he confronts her, and the mirage of perfection disappears as if it never existed at all.
Soon Adam finds himself tangled in something far darker than even Corrine’s deception, and realises that if he doesn’t make exactly the right moves, the conspiracy he’s stumbled into will not only ruin lives - it will end them.
Read it now in paperback
Wild And Free, Wendy Holden, Isbn 9780755385317 (Hodder) BD4.500 for Gulf Weekly Book Club members
Wild and Free by Sunday Times best-selling author Wendy Holden sees the author of Bad Heir Day and The Wives of Bath at the top of her game. Fun for fans of Jane Costello and Carole Matthews.
Wild & Free is the festival du jour. Everyone piles through its gates – and Cupid lies in wait to sprinkle a little midsummer madness on them all.
Teacher Ginnie is desperate to forget her crush on headmaster Mark. But Mark is also heading for Wild & Free to reform his college band ... desperate not to be seen by anyone he knows.
Mark’s band mate James dreams of a festival blow-out with his son, Guy ... until his wife Victoria’s ambition kills the dream. Now she and Guy are en route to Wild & Free instead but when Guy meets Shanna-Mae and falls for her earthy charms, Victoria is determined to snap Cupid’s arrow.
Will the magic of the festival send them wild? Or set them free to find peace and love?
My favourite read of the week
The Secret Place, Tana French, Isbn 9781444755602 (Hodder) BD4.500for Gulf Weekly Book Club members
This is a gripping read for those still pining for GONE GIRL.
The photo shows a boy who was murdered a year ago.
The caption says: ‘I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM’.
Detective Stephen Moran hasn’t seen Holly Mackey since she was a nine-year-old witness to the events of Faithful Place. Now she’s 16 and she’s shown up outside his squad room, with a photograph and a story.
Even in her exclusive boarding school, in the graceful golden world that Stephen has always longed for, bad things happen and people have secrets. The previous year, Christopher Harper, from the neighbouring boys’ school, was found murdered on the grounds. And today, in the Secret Place - the school noticeboard where girls can pin up their secrets anonymously - Holly found the card.
Solving this case could take Stephen onto the murder squad. But to get it solved, he will have to work with Detective Antoinette Conway - tough, prickly, an outsider, everything Stephen doesn’t want in a partner. And he will have to find a way into the strange, charged, mysterious world that Holly and her three closest friends inhabit and disentangle the truth from their knot of secrets, even as he starts to suspect that the truth might be something he doesn’t want to hear.
From the multi-award-winning author of Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller In the Woods, The Secret Place is a searing novel of psychological suspense.