With the winter travel season approaching, holidaymakers are readying their ski boots, packing their warmest layers and selecting which books to snuggle up in the warm at night with. We’ve given you a helping hand and narrowed the shortlist down to four top winter reads from four brilliant authors.
With bags so tightly packed with warm winter wear these titles can be found as eBooks here.
Top four 2013 winter holiday reads
Never Coming Back – Tim Weaver
Never coming back is a highly-recommended dark thriller, and the fourth in the David Raker series.
Emily Kane arrives at her sister’s house prepared for a big night out, but when she arrives, she finds the front door unlocked, dinner cooking but no-one inside, not her sister, her husband or either of their two daughters. The police are stumped, so Emily asks private missing persons investigator, David Raker, to pick up the case. As David gets deeper into the case it’s clear that the family has someone sinister determined they will not be found. The more he uncovers, he begins to discover evidence of a cover-up which has cost many lives, and he could be the next target.
The Shining Girls – Lauren Beukes
“The girl who wouldn’t die hunts the killer who shouldn’t exist,” reads the tagline to this original, terrifying and gripping murder thriller with a difference.
Harper Curtis is a time-travelling serial killer who, with the use of a time vortex he discovers in an abandoned Chicago home during depression era America, spans decades in search for his victims, his ‘shining girls’. However he has an adversary, one of his victims turned avenger, Kirby, who discovers his nefarious truth.
The Husband’s Secret – Liane Moriarty
From the acclaimed author of What Alice Forgot, comes a riveting read about the secrets husbands and wives keep from each other.
Cecilia Fitzpatrick has it all, she is a successful business woman, a happily married devoted mother and revered in her community, or so she thought. Everything she knows is turned up-side down when she discovers a letter from her husband marked “To be opened in the event of my death”. She opens it and in doing so reveals her husband’s deepest darkest secret, a secret so terrible that her entire world, and the worlds of others, are brought tumbling down.
The Last Runaway – Tracy Chevalier
Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl with a Pearl Earring, a New York Times best-seller, returns with her fictional, moving account of 1850’s America and the injustices of slavery.
Honor Bright is an English Quaker who, seeking a new start, leaves Bristol for the new world, America. Finding herself in a frightening and confusing new environment in Ohio she slips into the midst of a highly religious community. As well as the new world she is also confronted by slavery and the runaways who escaped their masters. Stuck in the middle of a paradoxical situation, she is urged by her conscious and her religious belief to help these runaways but risks breaking the law and being shunned by the hypocritical community. Through her desire to help she is drawn into the clandestine activities of those who run the underground railways and assist escaping slaves. This is a moving story of defiance and one which is spilling over with colour. An extraordinary read.
What are your favourite books to read on holiday?