Mystery Monday

It's Mystery Monday on The Princess and the Pen, where I highlight a few mystery novels on my radar. I come across so many mysteries on Goodreads, from social media and word-of-mouth recommendations and Mystery Monday will feature a small selection of those. Some are debut authors, others well-established. One thing they all have in common, though, is that they might make my to-read mountain topple over!
If you would like to participate in Mystery Monday on your blog, feel free to use the image and please link back to The Princess and the Pen:-)
Happy Reading!

"One hot summer’s afternoon, five-year-old Ava Sawyer went to a party. She never came home… When five-year-old Ava Sawyer goes missing from a birthday party at a local garden centre, the police are bewildered by the lack of leads. That is until two years later, when Ava’s body is found and another little girl, Audrey Briggs, goes missing. Audrey also attended that party … Leading the investigation is Detective Natalie Ward . A mother of two teenagers, this case chills her to the bone, and is a disturbing reminder of the last job she worked on. One that ended very badly. Natalie soon discovers that Ava’s mother has some worrying gaps in her alibi and as she digs deeper, she’s sure Ava’s father is not telling the full story. And what did the owner of the garden centre Elsa see that day? Something that she’s not telling Natalie … Just as Natalie is facing up to the grim possibility that Ava and Audrey were killed by someone close to home, another little girl from the party doesn’t come home from her ballet lesson. Can Natalie find a way to stop this killer before more innocent lives are taken?"

"Angela was just a baby when her mum left her for the last time, and a children's home is no place to grow up. The home's manager Ray takes the girls off to his 'den' in the garden and the littlies come back crying, and Ray's wife Kath has special wooden spoons which she saves for beating any of the children who dare to misbehave. So, when wealthy couple James and Rosemary come to choose a child to adopt, Angela is desperate to escape. But the scars of her childhood remain, and when Angela's search for her birth mother Evelyn is successful, their reunion is no fairy tale. Soon strange and sinister events start to unfold, and Evelyn fears she may not survive her daughter's return... The Home is another devastating psychological thriller from the author of the bestselling The Good Mother. "
