First Line Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Reading is my Superpower. Like the title suggests, you share the first line of the book you’re currently reading.

Click HERE to see all my ‘First Line Friday‘ posts.

First line: Shadows in the Hyancinth Estate often seemed to move on even the stillest of nights, so a casual observer could be forgiven for thinking the dark figure moving stealthily across the lawn was another part of the house’s long and eerie history.

Title: What Walks These Halls

Author: Amy Clarkin

Genre: Horror, Fantasy

A prickling sensation grew on the back of her neck, spreading up her scalp. It was the feeling of being watched. She whirled to face the doorway but it was empty.

Raven O’Sullivan doesn’t remember what happened in Hyacinth House five years ago. When her father died during a paranormal investigation there, everyone said it was an accident, but she’s pretty certain it’s her fault.

Her brother, Archer, wasn’t there that night. When asked to investigate the supposed ghost of Hyacinth House, he can’t resist saying yes. Even if his sister wants nothing to do with it.

Éabha McLoughlin has grown up seeing and hearing things no one else does. Now that she’s starting college, she finally has the freedom to find out why. The daring Archer and his eclectic team seem like a good place to start.

But everyone has their secrets, and they all lead back to Hyacinth House …

First Line Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Reading is my Superpower. Like the title suggests, you share the first line of the book you’re currently reading.

Click HERE to see all my ‘First Line Friday‘ posts.

First line: “Police emergency, this is Ella.”

“Yes, hi…hi… Um, my…son is missing. My little boy, he’s missing.”

I chose two lines this time because I thought the first one didn’t have much sway until the second line was added in too.

Title: The Foster Family

Author: Nicole Trope

Genre: Mystery, Thriller

In their holiday home, a stone’s throw from the beach, Elizabeth dials the police with trembling hands. ‘My little boy, he’s missing.’

Elizabeth is Joe’s foster mother, but she loves him like her own. The five-year-old, who adores superheroes and watching the birds outside, is the child she has dreamed of. As she looks into the garden, where he was playing just moments ago, her heart feels like it has been ripped from her chest.

She was meant to save Joe from his birth mother who almost harmed his chances at life. The woman who has been trying to desperately get him back.

She was meant to protect Joe from her husband. The man who, right now, lies to the police, saying he was making breakfast when Joe disappeared. Who squeezes her shoulder, ordering her to be quiet.

She was meant to look after Joe. They are just footsteps from the ocean, and little Joe can’t swim.

Then Joe’s tiny blue sandal is found in the water. If the worst has happened – the unimaginable – Elizabeth will never forgive herself. Because what if the secret she has been keeping for years, the guilt eating her alive, has somehow hurt her little boy?

It’s time to tell the truth – even if it means losing the child who is her whole world. Even if it could be the death of her.

First Line Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Reading is my Superpower. Like the title suggests, you share the first line of the book you’re currently reading.

Click HERE to see all my ‘First Line Friday‘ posts.

First line: “Why don’t you go out there and introduce yourself?” he asks me with a charm I had forgotten he possessed – a grin so cloying that a magician might redden.

Title: The Trees Grew Because I Bled There

Author: Eric LaRocca

Genre: Horror, Anthology

A beautifully crafted, devastating short fiction collection from the Bram-Stoker finalist and author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes.

Eight stories of literary dark fiction from a master storyteller. Exploring the shadow side of love, these are tales of grief, obsession, control. Intricate examinations of trauma and tragedy in raw, poetic prose. In these narratives, a woman imagines horrific scenarios whilst caring for her infant niece; on-line posts chronicle a cancer diagnosis; a couple in the park with their small child encounter a stranger with horrific consequences; a toxic relationship reaches a terrifying resolution…

Originally published under the title The Strange Thing We Become and Other Dark Tales, this is a much-praised collection of deeply unsettling, painfully dark tales.

First Line Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Reading is my Superpower. Like the title suggests, you share the first line of the book you’re currently reading.

Click HERE to see all my ‘First Line Friday‘ posts.

First line: “Trick -or-treat! So, what’s it like living in the Victorian murder house?”

Title: The Suffering

Author: M.J. Mars

Genre: Horror, Ghosts

“It was a suffering like no other. And, oh, how they suffered.”

Recreating the séance that led to the infamous Victorian Suffering massacre seems like a good idea at the time. But Kyle Birbeck soon discovers that the ghosts his distant ancestor banished into the walls of Brackenby House in 1876 have been lurking, waiting for a chance to come out.

One by one the 5 terrifying ghosts latch onto each of the students who reside at Brackenby, preying on their deepest fears: A 3-eyed Incan giant. A member of the Hellfire Club who struck a deal with the devil to keep his fortune in the afterlife. A thieving factory hand who fell to his death, torturing them with endless footsteps. An oracle with a horde of dead sailors to do her bidding, and a 17th century axe-wielding executioner with a murderous hobby.

It’s up to Kyle and his friends to uncover the real secrets of the séance and banish the ghosts for good. But they soon come to realise it isn’t Brackenby House that’s haunted. They are. And the ghosts will stop at nothing to continue The Suffering…

First Line Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Reading is my Superpower. Like the title suggests, you share the first line of the book you’re currently reading.

Click HERE to see all my ‘First Line Friday‘ posts.

First line: Revenge. I didn’t know how or when I’d be able to, but I would. No one deserved to have their life stripped from them to server the greater good for man.

Title: Housed by Haunts (Cursed in Secrets #1)

Author: Ashley Amy

Genre: Reverse Harem, Paranormal Romance

The gods abandoned us.
Life was not like we once knew.
They grew envious of our reliance on technology rather than prayer. In their haste to depart and forsake this world, they left us a parting preset, one that would surely end the human race.
Now at the bottom of the barrel, women were scraping to get by. A disease had come. It wiped out majority of fertility in females, placing those who could bear children back to being the low man on the totem pole.
Only seen as broodmares, we were reserved solely for the right to breed. Sold to more than one man, we were to become endowed to a house. Inside, we were subject to the demands of our men’s desires to keep the population rising.
Once I hit puberty, I tested to be a prime specimen for their ruthless requirements.
All of this because those with power wanted to prove how much control they still had.
I spent several years in the academy, learning to be a docile female for their use. For no more worth than the uterus in my body, I had come of age to be marketed off to a house.
The daft idea might not fare on my behalf, but it also offered a freedom from being treated like a porcelain doll in the school I was forced to attend.
Filled with dread, I was about to find out what it was that made porcelain so fragile.

First Line Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Reading is my Superpower. Like the title suggests, you share the first line of the book you’re currently reading.

Click HERE to see all my ‘First Line Friday‘ posts.

First line: Kelly didn’t kill herself.

Title: Dead Girls Can’t Lie

Author: Carys Jones

Genre: Mystery, Thriller

Best friends tell each other the truth – don’t they?

When North Stone’s best friend Kelly Orton is found hanging lifeless in a tree, North knows for certain it wasn’t suicide. Kelly had everything to live for – a loving boyfriend, a happy life, and most importantly of all, Kelly would never leave North all by herself.

The girls have been friends since childhood, devoted to each other, soul sisters, or at least that’s what North has always believed. But did Kelly feel the same way, or was she keeping secrets from her ‘best friend’ – deadly secrets…

When the police refuse to take North’s suspicions seriously, she sets out to investigate for herself. But her search soon takes her to a glamorous world with a seedy underbelly, and before long North is out of her depth and getting ever closer to danger. Determined to find the truth, she soon wishes that dead girls could lie, because the truth is too painful to believe…

First Line Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Reading is my Superpower. Like the title suggests, you share the first line of the book you’re currently reading.

Click HERE to see all my ‘First Line Friday‘ posts.

First line: She can hear him calling her name, but the last thing she wants is another argument.

Title: Ghosts of the River Thames

Author: Amy Cross

Genre: Horror, Ghosts

When she travels to London in search of her sister, Katie quickly finds herself drawn into the city’s dark underbelly. Soon she’s living in a strange, derelict old house, where a strange man keeps watch over a group of undead girls.

Meanwhile, her sister Rachel is trapped in a nightmare of her own. Relentlessly reliving her own murder over and over again, Rachel sets out to discover the truth about how she really died. Before long, however, she realizes that she’s caught up in a much greater, much more dangerous plot that threatens not only London, but the whole world.

Originally published as The Ghosts of London, Ghosts of the River Thames is the first book in the Robinson Chronicles series, about a dark forces awakening beneath the streets of one of the world’s oldest cities.

First Line Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Reading is my Superpower. Like the title suggests, you share the first line of the book you’re currently reading.

Click HERE to see all my ‘First Line Friday‘ posts.

First line: Three weeks after my family flew home from their Chirstmas visit to Paris – three weeks spent slothfully reading in bed or randomly walking around the city – I stood on the Pyrénees Metro platform, returning from a trek around Parc des Brutte Chaumont, daydreaming about, of all things, Moken Island, a remote dot of land in the vast Adaman Sea where my family and I had been stranded and almost died.

Title: Daisy and the Missing Mona Lisa

Author: J.T. Allen

Genre: Mystery, Middle Grade

Miss Daisy Tannenbaum, almost thirteen, and homeschooling in Paris with her Aunt Millicent, takes a break from the City of Light and her dreaded math homework, and heads to a rambling chateau in the Loire Valley to help her Aunt Mill’s friend, former-spy Felix, catalog his art collection.

But when Daisy receives a copy of the Mona Lisa as a thank you, strange things start to happen. This Mona is not just any copy, it’s one of two perfect forgeries created to fool the Nazis during their hunt for the real Mona Lisa during WWII.

Daisy’s best friend from the states, Lucia, a newly minted teen model, and in Paris to audition for the spring runway shows, thinks Daisy’s Mona is the real one. Real or not, it’s worth a fortune, and when Felix suddenly dies, his family accuses Daisy of stealing it.

Our plucky heroine must navigate a world of crazy, scheming, often criminal adults, not to mention traveling ghosts, ginormous pigs, testy lawyers, former spies, and obnoxious fashionistas, as she finds herself in a harrowing chase in and around Paris while trying to outwit them all to keep her beloved Mona.

First Line Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Reading is my Superpower. Like the title suggests, you share the first line of the book you’re currently reading.

Click HERE to see all my ‘First Line Friday‘ posts.

First line: The morning sun, filtered through a veil of dust and smoke, fell feebly upon the intersection where Broadway crossed Seventh Avenue.

Title: The Cabinet of Dr. Leng

Author: Preston & Child

Genre: Mystery, Thriller

Preston & Child continue their #1 bestselling series featuring FBI Special Agent Pendergast and Constance Greene, as they cross paths with New York’s deadliest serial killer: Pendergast’s own ancestor…and now his greatest foe.

AN INCREDIBLE JOURNEY

Astoundingly, Constance has found a way back to the place of her origins, New York City in the late 1800s, leaping at the chance, although it means leaving the present forever.

A DESPERATE OPPORTUNITY

Constance sets off on a quest to prevent the events that lead to the deaths of her sister and brother. But along the road to redemption, Manhattan’s most infamous serial killer, Dr. Enoch Leng, lies in wait, ready to strike at the slightest provocation.

UNIMAGINABLE ODDS

Meanwhile, in contemporary New York, Pendergast feverishly searches for a way to reunite with Constance—but will he discover a way back to her before it’s too late?