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Sad Cypress (Read Christie Challenge, April 2026): Beloved Book in my Collection

30th April 2026 by claireladds Leave a Comment

Image shows Sad Cypress book cover facing outwards on a bookcase filled with Agatha Christie books. Text on the image reads: Agatha Christie Challenge 2026, April. My choice for beloved in my collection, Sad Cypress.

I am still reading my way joyously through the list of books I have chosen for the Read Christie challenge this year. During April, participants were tasked with choosing a book which is beloved in their Agatha Christie collection. Now, there are many that I really like, and some that I absolutely adore. There are also one or two of Christie’s novels which have captivated a part of me and won’t let me go. So, actually, this became a really tricky choice, as I had to decide where to place other books, and in which months, for the challenge. Ultimately, my choice came down to the two novels which captured my heart from the moment I first read them: Sad Cypress or Endless Night. I will certainly be discussing Endless Night later in the year for a different month’s premise. Today, it is Sad Cypress that I have chosen as ‘beloved in my collection’.

I remember more vividly than most of my reading exploits the day that I began reading this novel for the first time. I was a teenager of about fourteen, and one with a huge capacity for imagination. I read this book in our back garden but before long, if you had asked me where I was, I would have described a very different place. So absorbed was I in the world of Sad Cypress that I was reading in the gardens of the ancestral home inside its pages, a rose trellis close to me with the breeze cascading the aroma of red roses all around my head, as I sat at a little table which held a plate of fish paste sandwiches, and indoors, when I went to continue reading out of the sun and sat on the imaginary giant wooden spiral staircase, a black medical bag magically opened, revealing a tube of Morphia. Only something about it did not seem quite right…

Now, I feel, this bizarre description might need putting into some sort of sensible context. Here is a brief summary of the book, in case you have never come across it before (there are no spoilers regarding ‘who did it’, but there are details which appear further into the book, so please skip this part if you want to read it with no preconceptions of the plot):

Elinor Carlisle, heir to to her aunt’s fortune, stands in the dock, accused of murdering Mary Gerrard. An anonymous letter suggests that Elinor and her fiancé, Roddy, (also a relation to old Mrs Welman by marriage) need to watch out for Mary, who is becoming all together too close to Mrs Welman and may make trouble where inheritance is concerned. But, once Elinor and Roddy head to their aunt to see what all the fuss is about, things get much worse. Roddy’s visceral and sudden love for Mary Gerrard causes the engagement to be broken off. Worse still, their aunt dies. Meanwhile, Mary, now with a small provision made to her by the very honourable Elinor, has made a will – so now it seems she has something to leave to its recipient. Elinor, too, has made a will, leaving everything she inherits to Roddy.

While clearing out the house before its sale and also that of the associated lodge where Mary’s father lived, Elinor makes fish paste sandwiches, and invites Mary and nurse Hopkins who has taken a shine to Mary and is helping out, to have lunch with her. An hour later, Elinor and nurse Hopkins find Mary dead.

Did Elinor poison Mary Gerrard by adding Morphine to the sandwiches? The police are so convinced by this theory, and the evidence which backs it up, that she is in the dock for murder. Or could someone malign be framing Elinor to suit their own ends? Doctor Lorde, who attended to old Mrs Welman, is determined to get Elinor off at all costs, and enlists the help of his friend, Hercule Poirot to do so. Poirot, being Poirot, intends to seek out the truth, even if that might mean he discovers that Elinor is actually guilty of murdering Mary Gerrard – and of other atrocities along the way. But sometimes there are things even Poirot does not want to know…

So, why exactly is it so beloved in my collection? The answer is threefold: Christie’s use of structure, her treatment of character, and the thematic undercurrent that pervades every aspect of this book.

Firstly, structure. The story itself is cyclical and I truly love a cyclical story. We begin in the courtroom, where Elinor Carlisle is being accused of the murder of Mary Gerrard. And, to be honest, as readers, we do not know if she did or not. So Christie takes us back to the beginning of the whole event: to the point when Elinor and her fiancé, Roddy, receive an anonymous letter warning them that someone may be trying to get their hands on the inheritance. We follow the whole process to the murder, and then to Elinor’s arrest. And so begins a separate section – the investigation by Poirot, with everything a reader can expect, from the questioning of suspects through to Poirot’s own quirky ways of finally bringing his findings to a conclusion, which he always states will be the truth, regardless of what that is. We are pulled this way and that over who might be guilty throughout the entire middle section of the novel. Finally, we return to the courtroom, where the excitement mounts and justice is delivered – and we, the readers, finally discover whether Elinor is guilty or innocent.

I will look at character and the thematic undercurrent together, as they are intricately linked. The people in this book have a great deal of hidden depth, which I absolutely love. Christie is excellent at hinting at what is below the surface through events that happen or have happened in the past, or through partially thought-out ideas of her protagonists. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the character of Elinor Carlisle. She can appear as someone rather lacking in passion on the surface, but when we spend time reading between the lines of everything Elinor does, says and in particular thinks, we find a woman who is extremely emotionally aware of herself and of the devastation that love, and betrayal, can cause a person. Her thoughts are powerful, passionate, sometimes dangerous and take her to the brink of murder (whether she goes through with it I will leave you to discover for yourself).

The hidden emotional depth appears to run in the family. One of the most powerful features of this novel, for me, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the murder mystery. I have always been fascinated by the painful undercurrent of the tragedy of love and, indeed, I think this has always appealed to me the most about this book. The emotions, particularly those which are buried from everyone but the reader, and those which have been hidden due to years of societal expectation, are strong and carry the motivations of certain characters throughout (I am being careful to avoid spoilers here). Mrs Welman has a past which she has been holding close to her heart for decades. When we discover what this is, I think it is impossible not to feel anguish for the old lady’s plight, and a distaste for the social, political and legal situations which prevent a deep and enduring love from being fulfilled. Poirot, however, with his astute and sympathetic understanding of the intricacies of the human heart at its most passionate, loving, vulnerable and, indeed, dangerous, shows himself to be so much more than the quirky little Belgian detective who uses order and method and collects facts alone. He shows himself to be human. For me, the ones in which Poirot is sunk into the grey areas of the guilty and the innocent are always the best Poirot stories because it adds a level of complexity to the vehicle for crime-solving. Poirot’s detection is impeccable here. While reading I am both rooting for him all the way, and also hoping against hope that he finds something which will acquit Elinor, as the evidence is stacked ridiculously high against her.

If you have never read Sad Cypress, if you love Agatha Christie books, or if you are trying them out for the first time, if you are a Hercule Poirot fan (as I am, as you will most certainly know if you have read other posts of mine or are in my Readers’ Club), or if you find intrigue in the complexities of love, passion and secrets which society prevents women from revealing while also being embroiled in solving a mystery and all of it flanked by the courtroom drama which plays out over the Accused (and yes, I am aware there was a lot there), then I heartily recommend this novel. You can then read it for yourself and see why it is my Read Christie choice for April.

You might also like:

The ABC Murders (Read Christie Challenge, March 2026): Book that made the biggest impact on me as a young reader

Death on the Nile (Read Christie Challenge, February 2026): My choice for ‘beloved characters’

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The ABC Murders (Read Christie Challenge, March 2026): Book Which Made the Biggest Impact on Me as a Young Reader

28th March 2026 by claireladds 1 Comment

March’s Read Christie 2026 theme has been to choose and read one of Agatha Christie’s books which made the biggest impact on me as a young reader. With a prompt such as this, choices for every single reader are going to be intensely personal and individualised ones. I smiled when I saw the remit for this month because I was able to go straight to my bookcase and pick up a novel without hesitation. My choice for March is The ABC Murders. Let me explain why this has been, and will no doubt be, the easiest reading decision I make for this challenge and probably for the entire year.

So, what is The ABC Murders about? Before I go any further, I’ll give a brief explanation. Hercule Poirot receives a letter, telling him a murder has been committed in Andover – but this is a strange missive, as it comes directly from the murderer, typed, mocking Poirot and daring him to do something about it, and about the murders which threaten to follow. Indeed, the next one will be in Bexhill. The letter is signed ‘A.B.C.’. Poor Mrs Asher who runs a sweet shop in Andover is the first unfortunate corpse. So begins a series of deaths, always with a copy of the ABC railway guide left behind. Poirot, assisted by Hastings, and with Inspector Japp also joining them on the trail, need to capture this murderer as every part of the country begins to wait for it to be its turn and the victims use up all the letters of the alphabet. Meanwhile, the mentally fragile Alexander Bonaparte Cust has just been given a job selling stockings. He has all his equipment for finding his customers all across England: the stockings in a case, a typewriter, and copies of the ABC railway guide…

I was fascinated by this story, the way it built upon itself piece by piece, by the investigation and the clues until they converged in an ingenious solution right at the end, and, of course, by the distinctive characters on both sides of the moral and legal fence. If you’ve read any number of my blog posts and articles, or you follow me on social media (@claireladdsauthor, if you’d like to), you might know that I have an enduring love affair with all things Agatha Christie. This certainly isn’t because I write mysteries myself, or not in the way readers interpret conventional ‘mystery fiction’, certainly. Writers don’t write in every genre that they read. I have an immense respect for mystery fiction authors; the plotting of the crime or mystery has to be intricate and finely woven with breadcrumbs of detection and clues interspersed with red herrings, all while ensuring the characters are wonderfully developed and function as they need to. This respect I have was planted the day my dad came home from town with a copy of The ABC Murders.

I remember vividly Dad presenting it to me, as a ten-year-old. He already knew I was the kind of reader who devoured The Secret Seven (I wanted to be one of them. I’d have volunteered to be Scamper the dog’s next biscuit if it meant I could get in that shed and listen in on the secret conversations). Dad had also bought me some of the Famous Five and Nancy Drew books and had watched me devour them. But this present, on this evening, felt like something else, something special. He told me he had seen it and thought I would like reading it. Why this particular Christie book, I have no idea, but I did know that he’d bought it from our local bookshop, and I also knew that the entire middle section of the shop had multiple bookcases which only housed Agatha Christie books, with roughly ten copies of each one on the shelves. It was a sight to behold, and I used to spend ages staring at it when I went into the shop, no doubt much to the secret irritation of the man who ran the fountain pen section directly opposite. Having me propped incessantly against his glass counter I imagine did his pen sales no good at all. To his absolute credit, he was a very lovely elderly gentleman who never once asked me to move, even a little bit.

As a young reader, this was a pivotal moment in my reading. It was an indelible mark in my mind that I’d gone ‘up in the world’, had become an adult reader. This change in mindset paved the way for, not only my devoted and voracious devouring of Christie books, but also many others. My bookshelves have filled non-stop ever since, not only with Agatha Christie, but with so many kinds of books which have interested me over the years. I did move to either side of the Christie shelves in the shop (eventually, and every so often as curiosity and the need to regain bloodflow in my bookcase-rooted body drove me), to the works of the Bronte sisters, and of Thomas Hardy, and Keats and Daphne du Maurier, and Jean Rhys and Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Aeschylus and so many Ancient Greek and Roman writers, and … the list was endless, because I felt I was allowed to read beyond children’s books. That one igniting incident of being given The ABC Murders had fuelled my fire as a lifelong reader and had given me permission to explore the worlds between the pages, and to expand. It was as if my imagination had been given wings and it flew and flew, never running out of energy because it was constantly being fed.

My imagination had, of course, also been given Hercule Poirot. Dad could not have picked a protagonist more perfect for me. From the moment I began reading about him, I adored him. It led me to spend an inordinate amount of time preventing customers from seeing the full range of fountain pens available in my local bookshop’s beautiful pen section because I spent every spare minute gazing upon the Christie bookshelves, with a voracious need to hunt down every Poirot story I could lay my hands on. To aid me in my Poirot hunt and beyond, I typed up an alphabetical list on my clunky, manual typewriter, so I could tick off every Christie book I bought and read. I still have that original list somewhere. My utter adoration of Poirot from the outset has also led to many hundreds (or likely thousands) of hours watching film and TV adaptations of the Poirot books, too. This has been my solace and comfort blanket on many, many occasions, and my obsession. Even my Masters dissertation was written on Agatha Christie’s books and adaptation! This is the wonderful thing about reading. It can lead you down so many rabbit holes of complete joy and fulfilment, specific to you.

Ultimately, what I can wholeheartedly say is that, while I love the book itself, it has always been much less about the story within The ABC Murders than receiving the novel as a representation of adult fiction which has caused it to be the Agatha Christie book which has made the biggest impact on me as a young reader. I doubt my dad could have guessed at the impact giving me that one Agatha Christie book would have on the rest of my life. But I’m unendingly grateful for it. I often hear people telling me that it was ‘X’ book which hooked them on reading. I’ve been hooked all my life. It’s why, as a young reader, I always hoped for a book as a present, and as an adult I have no hesitation in giving them as gifts. I would urge anyone to give a book to someone; you never know – it could be you who begins their love for literature, and a gift that will last a lifetime.

Flash Fiction: A flaw in the hourglass

13th March 2026 by claireladds Leave a Comment

Image shows an hourglass in blue, surrounded by swirling mist, also in blue, with a dark background. Text reads: A flaw in the hourglass, flash fiction

Images used courtesy of BookBrush.com

It is only mid-March, and Friday 13th has already come around twice, with another one to come in November this year. So, today, I’ve taken it as my cue to share an eery piece of fiction with you, which I very much enjoyed writing. This piece of flash fiction was first published in the Bolts of Fiction anthology in 2024 (Devils Rock Publishing), edited by the wonderful Daniel Willcocks and Sam Frost.

I hope you’re not ready for sleep right now…

A flaw in the hourglass

Tired, are you? Restless? Wish you could sleep? Let me help you. Let me tell you a bedtime story.

***

You’ve heard of the Dream Catcher, haven’t you? I watch her, every night. She doesn’t know I’m there. I’ve become adept at hiding from her, and darkness holds no fear for me.

The moonlight betrays her prey. With snake-like ease, she empties the dream catcher that hangs outside, swaying in the gentle breeze. The silvery sack slips up and over it, catches it unawares as it tinkles and twinkles, glinting beautiful and benign. The dreams make no sound as they slide into the silken sack. Neither do the nightmares. Not yet. Not even when they’re separated into ‘good’ and ‘bad’. It’s an uncomfortable process. Don’t try it.

Now the once shiny dream catcher is left lifeless, like a dead thing; colourless, soulless, desperate for revival, hoping that people are asleep and that they can hear the wails of pain in the wind, seeping through their walls of safety as they dream. Make me live again, I beg you. But the pleas are worthless because its time is up. It will soon be dawn.

I follow the Dream Catcher to her lair. Here they all are, lined up, row after row after row: hourglasses full of nightmares. You’d think this room would be full by now, wouldn’t you? But it seems to have an everlasting floor, walls that span the centuries, the ether, space and time. Endless. This prison is endless.

I watch as the Dream Catcher pours her night’s takings into the newest hourglass. It takes a whole hour to empty them in. They fight, struggle, claw onto the silky, silvery sack. It happens every time. Would you want to fall into the top of this hourglass if you knew what your fate would be?

The nightmares scream as they slide through the hole, powerless to stop it. Monsters, stalkers, unseen and lurking fears
– each one knows its fate. The screams and the scratching on the glass have already started, the frantic scramble to the top by those who are trying to rebel against the certainty that, when it becomes their turn to fall forever into the glass pit, they will become nothing but tiny grains of sand.

And that’s what this room is full of – rows and rows of nullified nightmares as far as the eye can see, and where it can’t. Of dead, giant timers. Their time is running out. The pain of that knowledge screams through the hole in the top of each hourglass where, once the nightmare is inside, it cannot shrink its own terror to fit back through.

How long does it take for nightmares to turn to dream dust? Who knows? The weight of the unanswered question crushes the nightmares. And it bears down on me, too.

The Dream Catcher nods at her good night’s work and locks the room. I hear the deadbolts thud into place – one; two; three; four; five.

I stand there alone, my only company the screaming and the terror, the scratching of glass which makes my ears bleed. I look down the room at the rows of destroyed imagination. It’s one eternal nightmare.

But what if the sands of time can be reversed? Have you ever thought about that? Has my old adversary, the Dream Catcher? I know how to do it, you see, because I’ve been watching, learning, biding my time.

And so I tap on the glass of this newest timer which is already set in motion. I must give the nightmares hope. They stop screaming for a moment, and I tell them, ‘Watch.’ And I wink.

They become transfixed as I head to a soulless, still hourglass, full at the bottom with nothing but grains of the night’s evil. All I have to do is this. ‘Watch,’ I tell them. ‘Watch,’ I tell you. Are you keeping your eyes open? Is your imagination paying attention? Keep your eyes closely on the hourglass: the sands of time shift as I turn it upside down.

It’s so simple. All it needed was time. Someone would catch her out, eventually. Who’d have thought my old adversary would fail to catch the flaw in the design?

These newest nightmares pour out of their own private hell and onto the floor. The next bit is easy. They only need one of their own kind to give them life. So I blow. The sand swirls across the stone. I blow harder. It gathers momentum, feels the freedom, and fills the air. One more life-giving breath is all it needs. Can you see it? Picture it, circling, seeking its way out. One; two; three; four; five. Out the keyholes and into the night. And you thought keyholes were just for peeking through, didn’t you? Naughty.

Dream dust is precious, especially the darkest dream dust of all. Who deserves a sprinkling of nightmares? Who’s to judge? My learned friend – or fiend – the Sandman, of course. Have you been good recently? Any bad dreams lately? Did you never wonder how the Sandman has so much dream dust to sprinkle on his dreamers? Neither did I, once upon a time. Recycling is good for the environment, they tell us. The world of imagination is no exception. The Sandman recycles the nightmares. Who knows what they might become. That depends – depends on dreamers like you.

***

How do I know all this, you ask. Haven’t you guessed? I’m the nightmare that got away. One moment of carelessness in the pouring was all it took. So now I can tell bedtime stories to those who deserve them.

I’ll be in your dreams later tonight, when the darkness falls over your eyelids and your deepest imagination awakens. Won’t I? You know I will.

What’s that? What do you mean, you’re not ready for bedtime now? We’ll see. Everyone seeks the comfort of sleep – eventually.

Image shows a photo of Claire Ladds, author, and a bookl cover of the Bolts of Fiction flash fiction anthology. Text says: Featuring 'A flaw in the hourglass' by Claire Ladds.

Bolts of Fiction promotional image courtesy of Daniel Willcocks.

Have you read any of my other short fiction? I write emotion-driven psychological literary fiction, exploring the most secret, often painful and self-sacrificing moments of my characters’ existence. Sometimes they make an unnerving peace with their turmoil, and sometimes they find other ways to deal with their relentless agony – which just may lead to desperate measures…

Image shows short story collection, The Reason for Everything, in paperback, on a tablet and on a phone. the Books cover is black with read wooden hearts and red lilies.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THIS SHORT STORY COLLECTION

If you enjoy novels which are dark, as unpredictable as the nightmare in the hourglass here, or tinged with something other-worldly, then you may especially enjoy two of my Darker Minds books. Click the images to learn more:

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What’s at the Heart of my Psychological Suspense Fiction?

15th February 2026 by claireladds

Ever since I was a small child, I have been a reader and a writer in equal measure (most of the time). Without even realising it for a long time, I would delve the depths of a book I enjoyed for whatever I felt was at its core: the reasons behind whatever was its central theme or moment. It has always been that I have wanted to get under the skin of a story, right to its very heart. The same has always applied to my writing. To make me interested, then obsessed by, a story enough to pursue it to its ending (however dark, tragic, twisty or heartfelt) there needs to be this same kind of heart, one which makes me love to be at my desk with the story, the characters, and the very words themselves. The elements of this beating heart are rarely the same for two stories running, yet they make up all the parts of writing my books that I absolutely adore. In this post, I’ll give you a run-down of several of my psychological suspense books, to show you what I mean when I say that each of my stories has a heart. And, for me at least, this heart often beats on well after typing the last sentence.

I’m going to begin with Show Me Dead, as it holds a very special place in my emotions. There was so much I fell in love with, the deeper I went into this novel. This was the first book in a brand new series linked by theme – and I had the opportunity to write as if no one was watching (which they weren’t)! I wanted a book full of Gothic-inspired atmosphere, which is why I set it almost exclusively in the catacombs of a dilapidated theatre. As I was writing, I had in mind a visual image of the entire book, scene by scene, almost as if I was watching an entire theatre performance myself (although, thankfully, I’ve never sat through performances that this one had to offer!). I imagined lights flickering, the dust in the air, the old and battered seats – and the terror on the stage. This book has been described as “claustrophobic”, and that’s exactly the atmosphere I was aiming for. Who wouldn’t want to escape from there – especially when the actors, themselves already captive, begin to go missing…?

I’ll refer to setting again later. But, as all readers know, characters are an endless source of fascination, and there are always some characters you love writing most as an author. As much as the tension and almost living dread in the walls of the setting of the catacombs of the theatre, I loved creating the characters. They felt very close, very special, to me, especially Angel, my main character, and the young girl, Pierette, who has also been held captive and terrified by the Puppet Master, for as long as she can remember. It was the vulnerability I found within them that made me care so much (and I genuinely, at times, cried for them; I can be a very emotional writer). And, ultimately, this drove me to dig deep and find what was at the heart of the strength they never knew they had. The journey from disempowerment to their own very particular kind of emancipation captivated me, and the characters of Show Me Dead continue to live on in my writer’s brain. I may even write more in their strange, terrifying world. If I do, then their emotions will play a huge part in finding the heart of the reason for the story, both theirs and mine.

Something similar happened with regard to character when I began writing That Killer Image, I knew almost instantly that I was going to love writing about Anthony, the completely obsessive photographer with only one objective: to capture what, to him, is the perfect image. Maybe, in a writerly way, I wanted to capture my own ‘perfect’ image of him as a dangerous man – more dangerous, as we discover, than anyone had realised before. But, as with all villains, he has his own motivations which, to him, make complete and logical sense, which is always what makes villains and antagonist characters so fascinating. His backstory is of immense importance here, as his present is haunted by his past, driven by the events which took place in his young life, and most importantly, how he felt and reacted emotionally and viscerally to them. There are times when he makes me feel incredibly emotional and sorry for him, yet these same incidents leave me completely terrified of this man. No surprise there – he’s a serial killer! And, the more I wrote his chapters, the more I realised he was an even darker character than even I expected him to be. That’s one of the challenges and the fun parts: the more you write about a character, the more you find out about them (even when you’re the one who invented them in the first place!).

Sometimes it is a theme combined with a sense of atmosphere which pulls me to a story, and it was the Gothic-inspired nature of everything about No Deadlier Time which held me captivated with this story from start to finish. At the heart of the book, it questions where reality ends and where fantasy born of a destructive mental state begins. It also questions something which is fundamental for me in my suspense literature: who or what is truly guilty and morally, as well as physically, culpable?

The book actually began life as a short horror story, which I weave into the book in monologue conversations my main character, Harry, has with his father. Harry blames his father for the dark past lurking in the house (and for something which happens there when he returns with his pregnant wife) which pull him into a terrible and deadly chain of events. I said I would return to setting, and in this book the house itself is at the very centre, and acts as a character in its own right, which I found fascinating. All the way through, I could picture the ancient, crumbling family home which sits on the edge of a cliff, isolated from the village full of deviants and criminals. Ravens live there and become integral to Harry’s declining mental state, infiltrating the landscape, his dreams – and the curse which the family, the house, and its grounds will not let die. There is a feeling of dark foreboding felt by the guilty and the innocent in this house – right to the terribly dark conclusion. I wonder who (or what) you would feel is the most guilty if you read this novel?

I’ll leave my Darker Minds novels now, and move onto a couple of standalone psychological suspense/thrillers. It may not come as a surprise, given what you’ve read so far, that I’ve always loved books with twists, and particularly with characters who have emotional-driven, dark and deep-rooted motivations. When I began writing Hers or Mine and delved further into the characters of paranoid and desperate wife, Lucy, and the enigmatic Charlotte, owner of a creative retreat where Lucy decides to spend time, I realised this was the kind of book I was going to write. It was clear immediately that there was so much more to these two women than met the eye. And there really is! This psychological suspense is a slow-burn by necessity. We have to get to know these characters (or at least think we know them), because each twist revolves around the characters themselves – their pasts which won’t stay buried, their actions, and in particular the deep-rooted, agonising and obsessively dark emotions which live within them and drive them to do… ah, no spoilers here!

Hers or Mine is also very much about relationships. Broken ones, betrayed ones, and ones that grow from a love tied to loyalty, gratitude and something much deeper than we could expect. So love in its many forms features heavily in this book, although there’s nothing straightforward about that, either. At its most pure, it brought tears to my eyes as the writer; at its worst it’s love which destroys people from the inside. Everything that happens to the characters in this story stems from their individual personal experiences, circumstances and feelings for someone else. It makes it as much of a psychological drama as it does a psychological suspense novel, and I truly loved writing it.

Indeed, during the two decades since my very first short story was published, I’ve been exploring the theme of love in my novels and short stories. What interests me most is the way different types of love are formed, and changed based on experience. And how sometimes it doesn’t change but becomes deeper, even darker, more obsessive and – potentially – dangerous. This danger could be to the one who holds such love in their heart, or to the object of this love. So I find it intriguing to explore the grey areas between innocence and guilt, and between heartfelt love and something that morphs into the (self-) destructive kind. I took this to the limits in my psychological suspense thriller, You Know You Shouldn’t.

Love with the darkest heart pervades this entire book from start to finish. A passionate (and, unknown to my protagonist, Eva, at the time, manipulative) relationship from the past leaves a shared history with a dark secret between her and the villain which affects the entire story. Obsessive love plays its part, too: it’s this obsession which is lethal, and which dictates the villain’s behaviour, leading Eva down a path which she realises too late that is affecting everyone she loves. Her emotions drive her, consume her, and undermine her, until she has no choice but to make (or struggle to make) some impossible decisions to try and keep her loved ones alive. Different forms of love become entangled, from the romantic to the co-dependent, to the familial, to the need to love oneself. Only this can stop a love that has gone so bad, so dangerous, that no one is safe. Such an intense, unpredictable and terrifying love was quite an experience to write.

What I hope is evident, then, is that the very heart of my psychological suspense, even the darkest ones, have at the very core feelings. My characters are very much driven by their emotions, whether, for example, because of a romantic relationship gone bad, or obsessions, desperation to get out of a situation, or loyalty and pure love. Feelings are by their very human nature, complex, and this complexity is what creates the twists and turns in the plots, as the characters themselves drive various actions due to how they feel. In a similar way, a reader’s feelings are extremely powerful, and for their own feelings to run amok as they become invested in the characters’ emotions, and in the psychological and emotional pull of settings which breathe life and darkness into a story is everything I sincerely hope for in a reading experience of one of my books. Reading itself is a feeling: one of being transported to the world of someone else and experiencing the events with them at a deep level (even if, in the case of my books, these events can get pretty dark, dangerous, and deadly). This is what I love about reading. And it’s what I ultimately love about writing,

You can find all the books listed above, and the stores where they are available for purchase, using the links below:

Show Me Dead

That Killer Image

No Deadlier Time

Hers or Mine

You Know You Shouldn’t

The Sittaford Mystery (Read Christie Challenge, January 2026): Book with the Best Opening

30th January 2026 by claireladds 2 Comments

I am absolutely thrilled to be joining in with the Read Christie challenge for 2026. Agatha Christie has been my inspiration since I was ten years old, when my dad first gave me a copy of The ABC Murders. Little did he realise what kind of literary obsession he had started; Christie has been my constant source of reading, and remains my deep-rooted inspiration as a writer. So, how could I be even remotely reluctant to get involved with Read Christie for 2026?

So, let’s start with January’s prompt for reading. The Agatha Christie team chose ‘best opening’ for eager participants’ monthly enjoyment. What does, or could this mean? The best opening line? Best murder from the outset? Most creepy start? Something else entirely? Whichever way you interpret it, there are some great options here. Right at the top of my list would be Appointment with Death, for its first line (which I will not spoil here for you – please do go and read it! I love this book, and the TV Poirot adaptation). The Christie team chose to read The Body in the Library, a great choice in which a random female corpse is found in the library of the Bantrys, friends of Miss Marple, and sets up a marvellous plot for this book.

But, I confess, I had a more visceral reaction to the prompt and ‘best’, while left open to subjectiveness, for me became an indulgence. I’m an unashamed lover of the snow. I love everything about it – the way it looks as it falls, the stunning beauty of its undisturbed settlement on the ground and house roofs, the way you can track footprints through it, from a pigeon to the postman. And there is a Christie book which opens with, for me, an idyllic wintry landscape: The Sittaford Mystery.

The novel begins with the sparsely numbered residents of Sittaford, cut off from everywhere by the vast amount of snow which has recently fallen, being invited to Sittaford House by Mrs and Miss Willett who have blown in from abroad and rented the large house from Captain Trevelyan for the winter months. The Captain has, himself, rented a small house in Exhampton six miles’ walk away and is oblivious that, at 5.25p.m. that evening, in his house, what begins as a fun game of table turning (getting ghosts to spell words by knocking against the table while the participants link hands via thumbs and little fingers) turns into something much more deadly. At 5.25p.m., Captain Trevelyan’s own table raps out the letters to inform the guests at Sittaford House that he is dead. And that he has been murdered.

There has been a fall of several feet of snow in a village which is so insular and tiny that it only consists of the big house belonging to Captain Trevelyan and the six cottages he has had built. All told, you would barely run out of fingers if you counted the residents of Sittaford at the beginning of this novel. This snowfall in such a place doesn’t merely satisfy my aesthetic nuances, it excites me because it provides the perfect backdrop for a mystery. But why?

Firstly, it provides a wonderful atmosphere for a novel which focuses intensely on the way everywhere is isolated from the its neighbour. The unsullied snow stops being a thing of beauty and becomes a means of a kind of imprisonment for the residents, or creates complications and difficulties for movement. This then forces a ring around the people who ‘could not possibly have committed the murder’, as they were holed up together, while the snow ravished the countryside beyond. Imagine looking out of the window of a large old house into the darkness while the snow batters against the windows and believing that you have just been sent a message from beyond to inform you of the murder of the man who owns the house you are standing in. The atmosphere of a perfect wintry village changes exponentially, doesn’t it?

Indeed, the snow sets up the entire landscape of the book, both physically and structurally. It acts as an inhibitor, just as the witnesses and suspects sometimes do. The picturesque snow could also, potentially, give the game away for the culprit, should any footprints be discovered around the house in Exhampton where Captain Trevelyan’s body is discovered, and again, one look at the beautiful, snowy hillside from Sittaford village all the way downhill to Exhampton makes us wonder how anyone could have managed to get to the house to murder the Captain. Cars cannot pass, and trains are disrupted. Travelling into Exhampton from other areas has been somewhat possible, so other suspects can be ruled in as they are proven to have reason to want the Captain dead. Does this, therefore, mean categorically that no one at Sittaford could possibly have committed murder? Suddenly, everything starts to feel impossible, unsolvable as with every great mystery at some point in the story.

Perhaps most importantly of all, without the snow established to great effect at the very outset of The Sittaford Mystery, this book simply would not work. Everything relies on it. The depiction of the village is not merely picturesque and establishing a wintry atmosphere. It’s not only hinting that the snow can be dangerous and cause problems for people (both with and without the intention to murder). It is absolutely essential to the plot, the clues which Christie plants so expertly from the very beginning, and is among the most vital pieces of evidence in piecing together the means and opportunity of the guilty.

I hope you can see why, despite so many incredible choices for ‘best opening’ that I could have chosen to kick off Read Christie 2026, I have sunk straight into the snowy Sittaford. There is so much more to this deceptively picturesque beginning than meets the eye. And this is just one of the many things I absolutely adore about Agatha Christie’s books.

Claire Ladds Readers’ Club News: August 2025

30th August 2025 by claireladds Leave a Comment

Image shows black strip on brown background and stack of books. Text says Claire Ladds Readers' Club news.

Welcome to my August writing update. It feels like an awfully long time since I gave you an update on my work, and I can only think that this is because I’ve been so focused on my writing that time feels like it’s gone a bit awry. There are three major project areas that I’ve been working on this month, each one very different, and each for a very different purpose. So what have I been doing?

Loving every moment spent with my work-in-progress

I mentioned in a previous month’s update that I am privileged to have been accepted by Faber Academy onto the Writing a Novel (online) course. This is genuinely one of the most fulfilling ventures that I’ve ever participated in as a writer. Not only am I working on a brand-new literary fiction novel, but I am part of a community of author peers who are wonderful writers. Everyone is very generous with their time and feedback which is of invaluable use as I find my way through the themes and the character arcs in my work-in-progress.

Anyone who has followed my work for a while will know that I tend to start at the end of a project, knowing where my characters are going and then figuring out how to get them there. This project is no different. I have been working hard on the last quarter of the novel (this may seem like a bizarre way of working to some, but it seems to work for me). Additionally, I also have the majority of the first quarter organised and written, and also all of those chapters I tend to call my ‘marker’ chapters, which are the main event or twist points in the story. I absolutely adore this book, and I’m excited to sit down and work on it every single writing session. For me, the best part of being an author is creating and working with an idea that I love, and I really hope that, when this book is finally published, it will find those readers who connect with it and love it as much as I do.

Other project: different lengths, for different places, and for different reasons

Although I’m working on a new novel, I have also been working on a number of shorter projects, namely short stories, and also flash fiction, the latter of which is a relatively new fiction adventure for me. These stories are all highly emotive in nature and I have submitted several pieces for consideration in various magazines and competitions. When I first began my writing career almost 20 years ago, this was where I began. It feels very exciting to be spending time in this arena once again. I have always had an enduring love for short stories and now have a huge appreciation for flash fiction and the writers of it. To be able to fulfil all the requirements of this specific kind of story arc within an exceptionally tight space of 1000 words or under, and sometimes much, much less than that, requires very special skills. I look forward to developing mine further.

I find short fiction extremely satisfying to work on. I love working with story prompts, which is how the stories I wrote for and contributed towards the charity Bolts of Fiction anthology, produced by the amazingly talented Daniel Willcocks and Sam Frost, came about. I’m also a big advocate for using visual prompts, and have used a myriad of photos and paintings previously, as well as songs, as inspiration for stories. If you write stories and I’ve never tried this as a way of sparking ideas for your work, I thoroughly recommend it.

Coming soon: a new gift for my Readers’ Club VIPs

As you will be aware if you’re reading this post, elements of my Readers’ Club news and stories are now available here on my website for anyone to read. There is, also, an extra part to my Readers’ Club, a VIP section made up of readers of my books and stories. That has always been a way to sign up to this VIP section until quite recently, when I put it on pause. The reason for this is twofold: firstly, it was sparked by my return to psychological literary fiction. To my mind, those interested enough to sign up for extra communications should therefore be receiving a welcome gift in line with the kind of fiction I will be writing and talking about, going forward. This brings me to the second reason: I am in the process of creating a new signup offering which consists of psychological literary short stories, and am hoping to have this ready sometime during the autumn.

If you’re interested in signing up for my VIP section of the Readers’ Club and also receiving this welcome gift, then keep an eye on my future monthly updates and on my blog where I will share more news when it becomes available. I will also share this on social media, if you happen to follow me there.

So, really, I feel a bit like I’ve spent time as a hibernating hedgehog during this month, but as I’m really not keen on hot summer weather, hibernating with all my writing ideas has been the best fun I could have in August! It’s been a very productive month and I’m really hoping September is as enjoyable. There will be more news next month. In the meantime, if you’d like to try my more emotive and literary fiction (which can, and does, sometimes go to dark places), you could try my short story collection, The Reason for Everything, or my novel, The Secrets that Haunt Us. If you’d like to keep up with me and my writing on Instagram, or other social media, you’ll find me at @claireladdsauthor.

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