The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North

My name is Hope Arden. I am the girl the world forgets.

It started when I was sixteen years old. 

A father forgetting to drive me to school. A mother setting the table for three, not four. A friend who looks at me and sees a stranger.

No matter what I do, the words I say, the crimes I commit - you will never remember who I am.

That makes my life tricky. It also makes me dangerous . . .

Interesting story idea, compelling read.  The secondary storyline of a sinister mobile application called “Perfection”, which accumulates millions of minute behavioural, financial, and relationship data points about its users and trains them to modify their behaviour — to the extent of becoming a completely different person — in the pursuit of personal perfection was also very interesting and I could see the possibility.

The Other Mrs Walker by Mary Paulson-Ellis

Fiftyish Margaret Penny returns to cold and secretive Edinburgh after some unspecified failures in London. She camps in the box room of her mother, who is not especially glad to see her. She takes a dead-end job looking for information to identify indigents who die without relatives or documentation. Her first "client," an old woman found frozen to death in an unheated flat, intrigues her, and before long her search has taken her back to London. 

By jumping around in her flashback sections, and suggesting a family history involving madwomen in the attic, a nefarious family business, illegitimate children, crooked lawyers, nude paintings commissioned by a rich patron from a dying artist, and the strange appearance and disappearance of a ruby brooch, Paulson-Ellis keeps her readers guessing.  

There was a bit too much jumping around in the timeline and the end was unsatisfying.  As the reader you worked out how everyone was related, but the main character, who was doing all the investigating, never found out.

The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo

In 1930s colonial Malaya, a dissolute British doctor receives a surprise gift of an eleven-year-old Chinese houseboy. Sent as a bequest from an old friend, young Ren has a mission: to find his dead master's severed finger and reunite it with his body. Ren has forty-nine days, or else his master's soul will roam the earth forever. 

Ji Lin, an apprentice dressmaker, moonlights as a dancehall girl to pay her mother's debts. One night, Ji Lin's dance partner leaves her with a gruesome souvenir that leads her on a crooked, dark trail. 

As time runs out for Ren's mission, a series of unexplained deaths occur amid rumours of tigers who turn into men. In their journey to keep a promise and discover the truth, Ren and Ji Lin's paths will cross in ways they will never forget.

A very interesting story that kept me entertained, but not compelling to pick up if I got distracted by something else.  It was great to see the names of places we went through when travelling and the mention of foods we tried and saw.

Book Love by Debbie Tung

These charming comics capture exactly what it feels like to be head-over-heels for hardcovers. And paperbacks! And ebooks! And bookstores! And libraries!

The perfect book for book lovers. It perfectly captures the way I feel about books and reading.

An Event In Autumn by Henning Mankell

Nearing retirement, Chief Inspector Kurt Wallander is looking for a quiet place in the Swedish countryside. A colleague sends him off to look at a small farm house that seems ideal, but on close inspection turns out be a burial ground of sorts. And so begins an interesting police procedural looking into a 50-year old crime with few clues or living witnesses.

Short but great with an interesting epilogue about how he began writing the Kurt Wallander series.

Vendetta In Death by J D Robb

She calls herself Lady Justice. And once she has chosen a man as her target, she turns herself into a tall blonde or a curvaceous redhead, makes herself as alluring and seductive as possible to them. Once they are in her grasp, they are powerless.

The first victim is wealthy businessman Nigel McEnroy. His company’s human resources department has already paid out settlements to a couple of his young victims―but they don’t know that his crimes go far beyond workplace harassment. Lady Justice knows. And in one shocking night of brutality, she makes him pay a much steeper price.

Now Eve Dallas and her husband, Roarke, are combing through the evidence of McEnroy’s secret life. His compulsive need to record his misdeeds provides them with a wide range of suspects, but the true identity of Lady Justice remains elusive. It’s a challenging case, made even more difficult by McEnroy’s widow, who reacts to the investigation with fury, denial, and threats. Meanwhile, Lady Justice’s criminal crusade is escalating rapidly, and if Eve can’t stop this vigilante, there’s no telling how much blood may be spilled…

You know who the bad girl is from about half way, then it's watching Eve take her down.  Not enough Roarke in this one, but still a good story.

Skin by Ilka Tampke

For the people of Caer Cad, 'skin' is their totem, their greeting, their ancestors, their land

Ailia does not have skin. Abandoned at birth, she serves the Tribequeen of her township. Ailia is not permitted to marry, excluded from tribal ceremonies and, most devastatingly, forbidden to learn. But the Mothers, the tribal ancestors, have chosen her for another path

Lured by the beautiful and enigmatic Taliesin, Ailia embarks on an unsanctioned journey to attain the knowledge that will protect her people from the most terrifying invaders they have ever faced.

This book started out really good, then got really strange. It was ok but I have desire to read anything else by this author.