I’ve just returned from sunny Mykonos where I indulged in questionable amounts of feta cheese and devoured several wonderful books. While lounging on the beach I was kept entertained by Germans and their bumbags, people’s faces when they ventured into the unexpectedly cold sea and two great authors, master of the art Gillian Flynn and our very own Emily Winslow.

Having recently finished Gone Girl, I looked up the rest of Flynn’s titles and found Dark Places and Sharp Objects (her debut which won daggers!). I was working my way backwards through her books and each one seemed to get better. I finished with Sharp Objects which is brilliantly creepy and gave me the chills on a very hot beach.

After giving myself the heebie jeebies for three days I moved onto The Whole World by Emily Winslow and suddenly found myself hooked. Winslow’s Cambridge is beautiful yet slightly eerie; people are trying to hide secrets of the past which come trembling into the light. The book is told from the perspective of five characters so the story slowly unravels from each different account. It makes you question, terrifyingly, how well you can really know someone and what they do.

So in the end my holiday reading consisted of crime, crime, and more dark and creepy crime. I’m pretty sure I didn’t start reading crime until I started work at A&B…

Sophie Robinson, Publishing Assistant