May Book Options | Chapters & Chai Book Club

Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall
Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Readers' Favourite Historical Fiction (2025), Nominee for Readers' Favourite Audiobook (2025)

“The farmer is dead. He is dead, and all anyone wants to know is who killed him.”

Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realise that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager—the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident.

As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel’s life, tensions around the village rise and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences. Beth is forced to make a choice between the woman she once was, and the woman she has become.

A sweeping love story with the pace and twists of a thriller, Broken Country is a novel of simmering passion, impossible choices, and explosive consequences that toggles between the past and present to explore the far-reaching legacy of first love.

Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Historical Fiction, Romance
Average Rating (Goodreads): 4.29
Pages: 319

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
Goodreads Choice Award Winner for Readers' Favourite Mystery & Thriller (2024)

When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.

Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Historical Fiction
Average Rating (Goodreads): 4.10
Pages: 490

Strange Pictures by Uketsu
The spine-tingling bestseller that has taken Japan by storm—an eerie fresh take on horror for fans of Hidden Pictures and Junji Ito, in which a series of seemingly innocent pictures draws you into a disturbing web of unsolved mysteries and shattered psyches.

An exploration of the macabre, where the seemingly mundane takes on a terrifying significance. . . .

A pregnant woman's sketches on a seemingly innocuous blog conceal a chilling warning.

A child's picture of his home contains a dark secret message.

A sketch made by a murder victim in his final moments leads an amateur sleuth down a rabbithole that will reveal a horrifying reality.

Structured around these nine childlike drawings, each holding a disturbing clue, Uketsu invites readers to piece together the mystery behind each and the over-arching backstory that connects them all. Strange Pictures is the internationally bestselling debut from mystery horror YouTube sensation Uketsu—an enigmatic masked figure who has become one of Japan's most talked about contemporary authors.

Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Horror, Japanese Literature, Translated
Average Rating (Goodreads): 3.93
Pages: 236

Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito
Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect Victorian governess. She’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But the longer Winifred spends within the estate’s dreary confines and the more she learns of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family, the more trouble she has sticking to her plan.

Whether creeping across the moonlit lawns in her undergarments or gently tormenting the house staff, Winifred struggles at every turn to stifle the horrid compulsions of her past until her chillingly dark imagination breaches the feeble boundary of reality on Christmas morning.

Wielding her signature sardonic wit and a penchant for the gorgeously macabre, Virginia Feito returns with a vengeance in Victorian Psycho.

Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Horror, Gothic
Average Rating (Goodreads): 3.54
Pages: 208