Activity for the week ending 1st March, 2024 a week in which we sat waiting to see if the bushfire situation would finally get us. Apologies if you're waiting for anything from me.
Reviews Posted
I Am Behind You, John Ajvide Lindqvist
Added to the Piles
Death of a Countess, Jenny Harrison (#yeahnoir)
Going Zero, Anthony McCarten (#yeahnoir)
Bunny, S.E. Tolsen (#yeahnoir)
Ritual of Fire, D.V. Bishop (#yeahnoir)
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The next up lists to work out what's due / where the hell I'm up to.
The Kelly family has always been trouble. When a fire in a remote caravan community kills nine people, including 17-year-old Sabine Kelly's mother and sister, Sabine confesses to the murders. Shortly after, she escapes custody and disappears. Recently made redundant from marriage, motherhood and her career, journalist Rachel Weirdermann has long suspected Sabine made her way back to the river-now, twelve years after the 'Caravan Murders', she has the time and the tenacity to corner a fugitive and land the story of the year.
Rachel's ambition lights the fuse leading to a brutal chain of events, and the web Sabine weaves will force Rachel to question everything she believes. Vikki Wakefield's compelling story is about class, corruption, love, loyalty, and the vindication of truth and justice. And a brave dog called Blue.
Jack Harris, the disgraced son of Australia’s most powerful business tycoon, has just been exiled to Byron Bay as a junior journalist at his father’s smallest regional newspaper, The Beacon. His arrival coincides with the disappearance of the newspaper’s editor, Patrick O’Shaughnessy, while out on his morning surf. When Patrick’s body is discovered in the ocean, with a severed leg, it appears certain that he’s fallen victim to a shark attack.
But when rumours emerge that Patrick was about to publish an explosive article – its subject unknown – Jack begins to suspect his death is not what it seems.
Although police aren’t buying his murder theory, Jack joins forces with Patrick’s daughter and investigates anyway, taking a sometimes less than lawful dive into the newspaperman’s past. Together they discover plenty of Byron locals with a motive to kill, including a bioholistic dentist with a secret, a naturist with an undisguised grudge, and even the mayor of Northern Rivers Shire. But has Jack bitten off more than he can chew?
Four caravans, four families inside waking up to a horrifying new reality. They, their cars and caravans, even their pets, are no longer where they were located when everyone went to bed the night before. It seems that their world has somehow moved on, taking them away from their Swedish holiday camping ground to a new place that only superficially resembles where it is that they came from. Acres and acres of grass that is yet not grass. An endless sky, and the frustration of having no landmarks in a sterile and unpopulated landscape. But is it truly empty?
Rather than banding together for the common goal, it seems at first that the families are in denial. Not everyone, but then there are small children to consider. Life of a form will go on. Escape seems impossible from an environment where not even their navigation systems can detect their true location. When the dead begin to seek them out and someone in their own group seems set on sabotage, it is hard for the holiday makers to decide who or what might be the bigger threat.
It is May 1957. In London eight friends gather for a party. They are all displaced persons who have survived the worst World War II could throw at them. This gathering will be a time to share the fragile joy of liberty. But before the night is out, one of them will be dead. Who would commit such a crime? And why? Detective Andrew Perry, together with his naive sidekick, James Cook, is assigned the unenviable task of searching through the horrific memories of the survivors, looking for the beginning of the thread that will lead him to a solution.
TWO HOURS TO VANISH
Ten people have been carefully selected to Beta test a ground-breaking piece of spyware. Pioneered by tech-wunderkind Cy Baxter, FUSION can track anyone wherever they are on earth. But does it work?
ONE CHANCE TO ESCAPE
Each participant is given two hours to 'Go Zero' – to go off-grid and disappear - and then thirty days to elude the highly sophisticated Capture Teams sent to find them. Any Zero that beats FUSION will receive $3million in cash. If Cy's system prevails, he wins a $90 billion-dollar contract with the CIA to develop FUSION and revolutionize surveillance forever.
ZERO ALTERNATIVES
For contestant Kaitlyn Day, the stakes are far higher than money, and her reasons for entering the test more personal than Cy could have ever imagined. Kaitlyn needs to win to get what she wants, and Cy will stop at nothing to realize his ambitions. They have no choice but to finish the game and when the timer hits zero, there will only be one winner…
For fans of Stephen King and Stranger Things.
Two eyes bore into him from across the room. They're not her eyes. They're the same colour and shape, but they're not her eyes. 'I see you.'
Silas didn't have a happy childhood. Aunt Bunny made sure of that. But out of money and almost out of time, Silas and his girlfriend Rose are forced to return to his childhood home. Back to the darkness, back to the woods, where addiction and hedonism are disguising something much more sinister ...Plagued by strange, unnerving events, Silas is drawn back into the family by an ancient presence deep in the woods. It will not let him go, and neither will Bunny.
A haunting psychological-supernatural thriller that delves into the role that addiction plays in family dysfunction, and how it inevitably changes everyone around it. A chilling, page-turning tale about love conquering most ... but not all.
Florence. Summer, 1538.
A night patrol finds a rich merchant hanged and set ablaze in the city’s main piazza. More than mere murder, this killing is intended to put the fear of God into Florence. Forty years earlier on this date, puritanical monk Girolamo Savonarola was executed the same way in the same place. Does this new killing mean Savonarola’s vengeful spirit has risen again?
Or are his fanatical disciples plotting to revive the monk’s regime of holy terror? Cesare Aldo has his suspicions but is hunting thieves and fugitives in the Tuscan countryside, leaving Constable Carlo Strocchi to investigate the ritual killing. When another important merchant is slain even more publicly than the first, those rich enough to escape the summer heat are fleeing to their country estates. But the Tuscan hills can also be dangerous places.
Soon growing religious fervor combines with a scorching heatwave to drive the city ever closer to madness, while someone is stalking powerful men that forged lifelong alliances during the dark days of Savonarola and his brutal followers. Unless Aldo and Strocchi can work together to stop the killer, Florence could become a bonfire of the vanities once more . . .