Recommendations from our site
***Shortlisted for the 2021 Edgar Allan Poe Awards***
The author of Before She Was Helen, Caroline Cooney, is an incredibly successful writer of books for teenagers. But, as she explains in a Q&A at the back of the book, having written more than 75 of them, she wanted to do something aimed at adults. This is such a lovely book, set in a retirement village, with an aged 70+ heroine. One nice aspect of it is the reflections on how attitudes have changed since the 1950s. “I grew up in the 1950s,” Cooney writes, “Those days seem as remote now as ancient Egypt or Greece. I wanted to include details that people younger than I have trouble believing.”
Our most recommended books
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The Big Sleep
by Raymond Chandler -
The Tokyo Zodiac Murders
by Ross and Shika Mackenzie (translators) & Soji Shimada -
The Detective Stories of Edgar Allan Poe: Three Tales Featuring C. Auguste Dupin
by Edgar Allan Poe -
The Murder Wheel
by Tom Mead -
A Murder is Announced
by Agatha Christie -
All the Sinners Bleed
by S.A. Cosby
