Gretchen by Shannon Kirk, Fire on the Fens by Joy Ellis, and The Lost Words by Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris

Strange landlords and tenants with secrets, Gretchen will give you  some nightmarish and sinister moments that will make your skin crawl.

The beginning catches the suspenseful feel of a mother and daughter on the run.  Someone tried to kidnap Lucy when she was two, and after her mother gets her back, the two have been on the move for the last fifteen years, never too long in one place, always taking precautions to keep from being recognized.

At fifteen Lucy is exhausted with the need to keep on the run, and even if she understands her mother's paranoia, Lucy is tired of never having friends or stability.

After failing to maintain all of her mother's rules at their last location, Lucy must abandon another school.  The two end up in a small New Hampshire town, and Lucy falls in love with their prospective rental.  The landlord has a few rules and boundaries that Lucy doesn't mind, but that make her mother reluctant to sign the rental agreement.  

After a bit of a power struggle, Lucy gets her way. She's tired of running, more and frustrated with her mother's refusal to provide information about their circumstances, and eager for a permanence she's never had.  But even though she's able to force her mother into staying, Lucy knows their landlord and his daughter are...weird.

I didn't see the unexpected twist until the author wanted me to.

Gretchen would make a great Halloween read (it's seriously creepy). Or you can go ahead and read it now and use the chills to combat summer heat!   

Read in June.  Blog review scheduled for 

NetGalley/Thomas & Mercer
Thriller.  July 23, 2019.  Print length:  353 pages.
---

Fire on the Fens by Joy Ellis, the latest in Ellis' Nikki Galena series will comfort you with the return of Nikki, Joseph, and their team and unsettle you with their most recent case.  

Retired fire inspector John Carson has been following several small fires that he suspects is an arsonist learning his craft.  Something about these fires makes him suspect that the arsonist has a much bigger plan in mind.  Carson eventually reaches out to his old friend DCI Cameron Walker whith his fears about escalation.

Soon, Nikki and her team find themselves with an arsonist who sets fires after making sure his victims can't escape.  The victims mount, and Nikki and her team are at a loss as to how these victims are related--and they must be, because the arsonist seems to have a list.  

Another great addition to the DI Nikki Galena series.  If you want a new series of good police procedurals be sure to check out Joy Ellis--I look forward to each new addition.

Joffe Books
Police Procedural.  2018.  Print length:  313 pages.
--------

I saw an article about The Lost Words on Brain Pickings and could not resist this marvelous combination of art and poems.  

"In early 2015, when the 10,000-entry Oxford children’s dictionary dropped around fifty words related to nature — words like fern, willow, and starling — in favor of terms like broadband and cut and paste, some of the world’s most prominent authors composed an open letter of protest and alarm at this impoverishment of children’s vocabulary and its consequent diminishment of children’s belonging to and with the natural world."   (Brain Pickings)

It is an over-sized, gorgeous book, and I absolutely love it.