This series is an adaptation of something I saw on Twitter – people were posting 26 books in 26 days, each title beginning with a different letter of the alphabet. However, I’m planning on taking around 26 months to get to Z. Each month I’ll post a newish book I’ve enjoyed, plus a children’s book and an older book.

Like ‘X’, ‘Y’ is slightly tricky. I decided when I started that I wouldn’t read books especially for the series. I wanted it to be my own personal A-Z, and reading books in order to include them here would make the whole thing artificial. So this week, one of the titles begins with ‘Y’ while the other two have a ‘Y’ word somewhere within.

The ‘Y’ books:

Eighteen years ago your baby daughter was snatched. Today, she came back.

Eighteen years ago, Simone Porter’s six-month-old daughter, Helena, was abducted. Simone and husband, Matt, have slowly rebuilt their shattered lives, but the pain at losing their child has never left them.
Then a young woman, Grace, appears out of the blue and tells Simone she has information about her stolen baby. But just who is Grace – and can Simone trust her?
When Grace herself disappears, Simone becomes embroiled in a desperate search for her baby and the woman who has vital clues about her whereabouts.
Simone is inching closer to the truth but it’ll take her into dangerous and disturbing territory.

Simone lost her baby. Will she lose her life trying to find her?

I read this book shortly after it came out, and loved it. It’s one of those books that are REALLY hard to put down once you’ve started. Is there a happy end of Simone? Read it and see…

Published in 1852, when he was just twenty-four, Childhood was Tolstoy’s first published work, and the first of a trilogy of stories that evoke the upbringing and traditional education of a Russian aristocrat in a world that vanished with the revolution.

In this self-portrait, narrated by its protagonist Nikólya, the young Tolstoy captured the textures of adolescence with a psychological insight and subtlety of analysis that look forward to his mature achievements; while his matchless objectivity – summoning the smells, sights and sounds of early childhood – is already fully present in these pages.

This isn’t exactly a children’s book, but I read it at secondary school and was fascinated by the very different world it showed me. I haven’t read it since – maybe I should; it’s still on my shelf.

When Dr. Susan Chandler decides to use her daily radio talk show to explore the phenomenon of women who disappear and are later found to have become victims of killers who prey on the lonely and insecure, she has no idea that she is exposing herself – and those closest to her – to the very terror that she hopes to warn others against.
Susan sets out to determine who is responsible for an attempt on the life of a woman who called in to the show offering information on the mysterious disappearance from a cruise ship, years before, of Regina Clausen, a wealthy investment advisor. Soon Susan finds herself in a race against time, for not only does the killer stalk these lonely women, but he seems intent on eliminating anyone who can possibly further Susan’s investigation. As her search intensifies, Susan finds herself confronted with the realisation that one of the men who have become important figures in her life might actually be the killer. And as she gets closer to uncovering his identity, she realizes almost too late that the hunter has become the hunted, and that she herself is marked for murder.

The cruise ship disappearance makes this book a little different to other ‘disappearing women’ novels – I really enjoyed it, though I wouldn’t advise reading it while you’re on a cruise…

So that was the ‘Y’ books – I’m quite sad this series is coming to an end. One more post to go!