Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by The Purple Booker. If you want to join in grab your current read, flick to a random page, select two sentences (without spoilers) and share them in a blog post or in the comments of The Purple Booker.

This week my teaser comes from The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea, a book I received from the publisher via NetGalley and which I read last week. It’s a wonderfully creepy mystery set in Iceland in 1686 and makes for a fantastic wintry read.

My Teaser

But life has taught me that darkness resides in every human heart, a tiny smudge of sooty smut on even the whitest of souls. And I must admit that the same stain marks my humanity, as it does the soul of every man and woman.

44% The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea

Blurb

1686, ICELAND. AN ISOLATED, WINDSWEPT LAND HAUNTED BY WITCH TRIALS AND STEEPED IN THE ANCIENT SAGAS.

Betrothed unexpectedly to Jón Eiríksson, Rósa is sent to join her new husband in the remote village of Stykkishólmur. Here, the villagers are wary of outsiders.

But Rósa harbours her own suspicions. Her husband buried his first wife alone in the dead of night. He will not talk of it. Instead he gives her a small glass figurine. She does not know what it signifies.
The villagers mistrust them both. Dark threats are whispered. There is an evil here – Rósa can feel it. Is it her husband, the villagers – or the land itself?

Alone and far from home, Rósa sees the darkness coming. She fears she will be its next victim . . .

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by The Purple Booker. If you want to join in grab your current read, flick to a random page, select two sentences (without spoilers) and share them in a blog post or in the comments of The Purple Booker.

It’s only a week till Christmas so for this weeks teaser I’ve gone for historical horror The Devil Aspect by Craig Russell. This was a NetGalley pick which I actually finished over the weekend and very much enjoyed. It’s set in and around Prague in the 1930’s so there’s lots of historical detail, a little bit of psychology and a few gory murders so, you know, nice and festive 🙂

My Teaser

Novotny knew only too well that suspicion was a stain to darken one man’s career, lighten another’s. These were times of uncertainty, where the future constantly changed shape; times such as these tended to bring out cold opportunism in the ambitious and the young.

39% The Devil Aspect

Blurb

A terrifying novel set in Czechoslovakia in 1935, in which a brilliant young psychiatrist takes his new post at an asylum for the criminally insane that houses only six inmates–the country’s most depraved murderers–while, in Prague, a detective struggles to understand a brutal serial killer who has spread fear through the city, and who may have ties to the asylum 

In 1935, Viktor Kosarek, a psychiatrist newly trained by Carl Jung, arrives at the infamous Hrad Orlu Asylum for the Criminally Insane. The state-of-the-art facility is located in a medieval mountaintop castle outside of Prague, though the site is infamous for concealing dark secrets going back many generations. The asylum houses the country’s six most treacherous killers–known to the staff as The Woodcutter, The Clown, The Glass Collector, The Vegetarian, The Sciomancer, and The Demon–and Viktor hopes to use a new medical technique to prove that these patients share a common archetype of evil, a phenomenon known as The Devil Aspect. As he begins to learn the stunning secrets of these patients, five men and one woman, Viktor must face the disturbing possibility that these six may share another dark truth.

Meanwhile, in Prague, fear grips the city as a phantom serial killer emerges in the dark alleys. Police investigator Lukas Smolak, desperate to locate the culprit (dubbed Leather Apron in the newspapers), realizes that the killer is imitating the most notorious serial killer from a century earlier–London’s Jack the Ripper. Smolak turns to the doctors at Hrad Orlu for their expertise with the psychotic criminal mind, though he worries that Leather Apron might have some connection to the six inmates in the asylum.
Steeped in the folklore of Eastern Europe, and set in the shadow of Nazi darkness erupting just beyond the Czech border, this stylishly written, tightly coiled, richly imagined novel is propulsively entertaining, and impossible to put down.

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by The Purple Booker. If you want to join in grab your current read, flick to a random page, select two sentences (without spoilers) and share them in a blog post or in the comments of The Purple Booker.

This week my teaser comes from The Lost Man by Jane Harper, a book I’d received from the publisher via NetGalley. I actually finished this book on Sunday but wanted to post a teaser from it as I really like the author’s writing style. She has a knack for creating an atmospheric and tense story that really draws you in.

My Teaser

He had felt himself, for the first time, simply giving up. Not all at once, and not entirely willingly, but a little at a time, slipping away, day after day.

74% The Lost Man by Jane Harper

Blurb

He had started to remove his clothes as logic had deserted him and his skin was cracked. Whatever had been going through Cameron’s mind when he was alive, he didn’t look peaceful in death.

Two brothers meet at the remote fence line separating their cattle farms under the relenting sun of the remote outback. In an isolated part of Western Australia, they are each other’s nearest neighbour, their homes three hours’ drive apart.

They are at the stockman’s grave, a landmark so old that no one can remember who is buried there. But today, the scant shadow it casts was the last hope for their middle brother, Cameron, who lies dead at their feet.

Something had been on Cam’s mind. Did he choose to walk to his death? Because if he didn’t, the isolation of the outback leaves few suspects…

The Lost Man is the highly anticipated new book from the bestselling and award-winning Jane Harper, author of The Dry and Force of Nature.

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by The Purple Booker. If you want to join in grab your current read, flick to a random page, select two sentences (without spoilers) and share them in a blog post or in the comments of The Purple Booker.

This week my teaser comes from The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, which I’d received from the publisher via NetGalley. I know I totally used this for my teaser last week but there are just so many great quotes I couldn’t resist picking something from it again.

My Teaser

Some marriages aren’t really that great. Some loves aren’t all encompassing. Sometimes you separate because you weren’t that good together to begin with. Sometimes divorce isn’t an earth shattering loss. Sometimes it’s just two people waking up out of a fog.

74% The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Blurb

Reclusive Hollywood icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant to write her story, no one is more astounded than Monique herself.

Determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career, Monique listens in fascination. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the ‘80s – and, of course, the seven husbands along the way – Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. But as Evelyn’s story near its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.

Written with Reid’s signature talent for creating “complex, likeable characters” (Real Simple), this is a mesmerizing journey through the splendour of Old Hollywood into the sobering realities of the present day as two women struggle with what it means – and what it costs – to face the truth.

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by The Purple Booker. If you want to join in grab your current read, flick to a random page, select two sentences (without spoilers) and share them in a blog post or in the comments of The Purple Booker.

This week my teaser comes from The Twisted Tree by Rachel Burge, which I’d received from the publisher via NetGalley. I finished this at the end of last week and absolutely loved it. It’s a great mix of ghost story and thriller set in a remote and isolated cabin in snowy Norway. It’s quite creepy, so perfect for Halloween.

My Teaser

Brian takes out a book and cracks open the spine. Anyone who does that is not a good person as far as I’m concerned. It’s up there with cruelty to kittens and nose-picking in public.

4% The Twisted Tree by Rachel Burge

Blurb

Part ghost story, part Nordic thriller – this is a twisty, tense and spooky YA debut, perfect for fans of CORALINE and Michelle Paver.

Martha can tell things about a person just by touching their clothes, as if their emotions and memories have been absorbed into the material. It started the day she fell from the tree at her grandma’s cabin and became blind in one eye.

Determined to understand her strange ability, Martha sets off to visit her grandmother, Mormor – only to discover Mormor is dead, a peculiar boy is in her cabin and a terrifying creature is on the loose.

Then the spinning wheel starts creaking, books move around and terror creeps in . . .

Set in the remote snows of contemporary Norway, THE TWISTED TREE is a ghost story that twists and turns – and never takes you quite where you’d expect.