Hello and a very warm welcome to damppebbles. It’s Tuesday which means it’s time for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday post. I’ve decided to take part in That Artsy Reader Girl’s Top Ten Tuesday meme to mix things up a little here at damppebbles. Add a little bit of variety to our bookish weeks.

The meme was originally created by The Broke and the Bookish but has lived with Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl since January 2018. It was created to encompass a love of books, of lists and to bring readers together. If you would also like to take part then you’re very welcome: the more, the merrier. Just make sure you link back to Jana’s post every week. If you don’t have a blog, then no problem, just add your list to the comments below.

This week’s theme is April Showers (interpret this however you’d like: rainy day reads, books that make you cry, books that give you happy tears, books to wash away a bad reading experience, books set in rainy places, books with rain/raindrops/umbrellas on the cover, blue book covers, etc.). But I remember struggling my way through this list back in 2024: April Showers – Books that Have Something – Anything! – To Do With Rain. I’m not keen to repeat the struggle so I’m going completely off-plan this week and delving into the archives with Backlist Books I Own but Still Need to Read. These are the books that every time I see them on my shelf, I kick myself because I haven’t read them yet. I desperately want to read these books. It just seems that the universe is against me!

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1. Let’s Split Up by Bill Wood
A nail-biting and perfectly formed Thriller for the YA BookTok generation. This is Scooby Doo meets Win Lose Kill Die. When hot “it-couple” Brad and Shelley are brutally murdered in a Victorian mansion, a group of teen friends investigate.

Set in a small town where rumour spreads as fast as the fire on the day of the killings, the theory is the old ghoul who haunts the house after his own murder hundreds of years ago has finally taken revenge. As Cam, Jonesy, Amber and new-girl Buffy investigate, the rumour feels closer to the truth than they ever dared think possible, and as they enter the mansion themselves, the idea of splitting up to find evidence will prove to be either the best … or worst decision of all.

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2. Missing Person by Sarah Lotz
Missing-linc.com comprises a group of misfit sleuths scattered across the States. Their macabre passion is giving names to the unidentified dead. When Ellie Caine starts investigating the corpse known as the Boy in the Dress, the Boy’s killer decides to join the group. The closer they get to the truth, the closer he will get to them.

The Boy was Teddy Ryan. He was meant to have been killed in a car crash in the west of Ireland in 1989. Only he wasn’t. There is no grave in Galway and Teddy was writing letters from New York a year after he supposedly died. But one night he met a man in a Minnesota bar and vanished off the face of the earth.

Teddy’s nephew, Shaun, is no hero, but he is determined to solve the thirty-year-old mystery. He joins forces with the disparate members of Missing-linc to hunt down the killer. The only problem: the killer will be with them every step of the way . . .

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3. Mrs March by Virginia Feito
Shirley Jackson meets Ottessa Moshfegh meets My Sister, the Serial Killer in a brilliantly unsettling and darkly funny debut novel full of suspense and paranoia

George March’s latest novel is a smash hit. None could be prouder than Mrs. March, his dutiful wife, who revels in his accolades and relishes the lifestyle and status his success brings.

A creature of routine and decorum, Mrs. March lives an exquisitely controlled existence on the Upper East Side. Every morning begins the same way, with a visit to her favourite patisserie to buy a loaf of
olive bread, but her latest trip proves to be her last when she suffers an indignity from which she may never recover: an assumption by the shopkeeper that the protagonist in George March’s new book – a pathetic sex worker, more a figure of derision than desire – is based on Mrs. March.

One casual remark robs Mrs. March not only of her beloved olive bread but of the belief that she knew everything about her husband – and herself – sending her on an increasingly paranoid journey, one
that starts within the pages of a book but may very well uncover both a killer and the long-buried secrets of Mrs. March’s past.

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4. Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives by Adam Cesare
It’s an all-new horror classic about what happens when the truth is the last thing we want to believe, from Bram Stoker Award–winner and master of thrills and chills, horror legend Adam Cesare.

After barely making it out of the Kettle Springs cornfields alive, Quinn’s first year away at college should be safe and easy. All she wants is to be normal again.

But instead, Quinn finds that her past won’t leave her alone when she becomes the focus of online conspiracy theories that claim the Kettle Springs Massacre never happened. It’s a deranged but relentless fantasy, and there’s nothing Quinn can do to get people to hear the truth—not even on her own campus or in her own dorm room.

So when a murderous clown attacks Quinn at a frat party while another goes after her father in Kettle Springs at the same time, Quinn realizes that the facts alone are never going to save her. Her only option is to go back into the cornfields, back where the nightmare began, to set the record straight the only way she knows how. Because when the truth gets lost in the lies, that’s when people start to die.

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5. The Narrows by Ronald Malfi
In the aftermath of a terrible storm, the town of Stillwater, Maryland tries to recover what it has lost. From flooded roads and houses to ruined businesses—the residents of the town begin to clean up and return to normal. 

In the midst of the clean-up, people begin to see things. Matthew Crawly spies his father in the woodlands above the Narrows, but that cannot be possible; Maggie Quedentock nearly hits a child with her car, only to find an empty road lying before her; and in the middle of it all, Sergeant Ben Journell is thrust into an impossible investigation. Animals are being slaughtered, their brains systematically removed from their bodies. Something is happening to the town of Stillwater…something dark and ancient and evil has its grip on everyone.

The saying goes, still waters run deep, but no one in Stillwater is prepared for just how deep they run, and no one can possibly be ready for what they might find waiting for them in the dark.

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6. Close to Home by Cara Hunter
Last night, eight-year-old Daisy Mason disappeared from a family party.

No one in the quiet suburban street saw anything – or at least that’s what they’re saying. DI Adam Fawley is trying to keep an open mind. But he knows the nine times out of ten, it’s someone the victim knew. That means someone is lying…

And that Daisy’s time is running out.

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7. Tall Oaks by Chris Whitaker
Tall Oaks is an idyllic small town, until the disappearance of a young child throws the tight-knit community into crisis.

Jess Monroe, the boy’s distraught mother, is simultaneously leading the search and battling her own grief and self-destructive behaviour. Her neighbours watch on, their sympathy masking a string of dark secrets.

This is a small town where nothing is as it seems, and everyone has something to hide. And as the investigation draws towards a climax, prepare for a devastating final twist . . .

Dark, full of suspense and packed with twists, this brilliant new thriller is like nothing you’ve read before.

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8. Perfect Remains by Helen Fields
On a remote Highland mountain, the body of Elaine Buxton is burning. All that will be left to identify the respected lawyer are her teeth and a fragment of clothing.

In the concealed back room of a house in Edinburgh, the real Elaine Buxton screams into the darkness…

Detective Inspector Luc Callanach has barely set foot in his new office when Elaine’s missing persons case is escalated to a murder investigation. Having left behind a promising career at Interpol, he’s eager to prove himself to his new team. But Edinburgh, he discovers, is a long way from Lyon, and Elaine’s killer has covered his tracks with meticulous care.

It’s not long before another successful woman is abducted from her doorstep, and Callanach finds himself in a race against the clock. Or so he believes … The real fate of the women will prove more twisted than he could have ever imagined.

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9. Bitter Wash Road by Garry Disher
One dead-end posting. One dead body. A tragic accident? That’s what they want you to think…

Constable Paul ‘Hirsch’ Hirschhausen is a whistle-blower. Formerly a promising metropolitan detective, now hated and despised, he’s been exiled to a one-cop station in South Australia’s wheatbelt. So when he heads up Bitter Wash Road to investigate gunfire and finds himself cut off without backup, there are two possibilities. Either he’s found the fugitive killers thought to be in the area. Or his ‘backup’ is about to put a bullet in him.

He’s wrong on both counts. But Tiverton – with its stagnant economy, entrenched racism and rural isolation – has more crime than one constable can handle. And when the next call-out takes him to the body of a sixteen-year-old girl, it’s clear that whether or not Hirsch finds her killer, his past may well catch up with him. 

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10. Killing Jericho by William Hussey
Scott Jericho thought he’d worked his last case. Fresh out of jail, the disgraced former detective is forced to seek refuge with the fairground family he once rejected.

Then a series of bizarre murders comes to light – deaths that echo a century-old fairground legend. The police can’t connect the victims. But Jericho knows how the legend goes; that more murders are certain to follow.

As Jericho unpicks the deadly mystery, a terrifying question haunts him. As a direct descendant of one of the victims in the legend, is Jericho next on the killer’s list?

From the award-winning author of The Outrage comes Killing Jericho, the gothic, helter-skelter thriller debut that introduces crime fiction’s first ever Traveller detective, Scott Jericho.

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This could have turned into a never ending list! So many great looking/sounding books on my shelves and no time to read any of them at the moment! Have you read any of these books? Planning on reading any? Are you taking part in Top Ten Tuesday this week? Let me know in the comments.

So there we have it! If you fancy joining in next week then head on over to That Artsy Reader Girl’s blog to find out what the next theme is!