The Terribly Clever Book Club
I'm launching a book club for lovers of ingenious mysteries and thrillers!
Hi all,
Sorry, it’s been a while. I’ve mostly been hard at work on final edits and other pre-publication essentials for The Confessions (out July 2025!) and trying to crack the opening chapters of the next novel (Summer 2026, I think!)
Then of course there’s the bookstore, which is packed with festive tourists as well as hundreds of other readers who have decided to hide from the next four years of madness behind a defensive wall of books.
Agatha Christie, John Grisham and other mystery and thriller writers are flying off the shelves, as we all crave fictional worlds in which good folks win, bad guys are punished and everything makes sense in the end. If those solutions also happen to be brilliantly clever and entertaining, then so much the better.
SPEAKING OF WHICH.
I’ve decided to start a mystery and thriller book club for 2025, and I’d love for you to be a part of it.
Specifically it’s a club for unspeakably clever mysteries and thrillers: Novels with devious plots, ingenious twists, impossible crimes, smart use of real technology, and all manner of other things that make you go “ooooh, that’s good!”
These are the kind of stories I LOVE, no matter whether it’s the impossible golden age murders of John Dixon Carr, Christianna Brand, or Seishi Yokomizo; the 80s and 90s techno-twists of Michael Crichton or Christopher Priest; or the bang up-to-date brilliance of Janice Hallett or Sarah Pinborough or Stuart Turton or Sophie Hannah or… you get the idea.
Fittingly, I’m calling it… The Terribly Clever Book Club.
At the start of the month I’ll send members a mystery or thriller in the mail, along with a short letter explaining why I chose it. I’ll likely throw in some fun facts about the author, and a couple of suggestions for further reading.
Then you’ll have the rest of the month to read the book before we all meet for a Zoom to talk about it. (The Zoom will be recorded in case you can’t make it “live”.) A few days later the next title will arrive, and the fun continues!
(Some months there will be bonuses like signed copies, or advance readers of upcoming releases. I also like the idea of some kind of community discussion forum where we can also discuss mystery/thriller movies, games, etc - but let’s not run before we can walk, eh?)
Membership is priced at $30 a month, which includes the cost of the book and shipping to anywhere in the US, plus the meetings and all the extras. For newer titles, the books will generally be hardcovers, with occasional trade paperbacks if hardcovers are no longer available. Basically, I’ll find the nicest edition I can for each book.
There’s also the option to choose an audiobook (which will be sent to you via Libro.fm and is accessible via their free app on iOS and Android). You’ll still receive an envelope in the mail containing the letter and the extras, though.
I’m working on adding UK and Canadian shipping options very, very soon. Worldwide will take a bit longer.
You can choose to pay quarterly or annually with a slight discount for the latter. And of course, if life gets in the way, you can cancel your auto-renewal any time with no hard feelings. Billing is handled by the bookstore, so Best Bookstore will appear on your statement.
The first title is a brand new release, so I promise you won’t have read it yet. It will be shipped the first week of January to everyone who signs up between now and then.
Sound like fun? Ok! Here are the sign-up links…
Join Quarterly ($90)
Join Annually ($340)
I’m really excited to discuss so many brilliant and thrilling stories with you over the coming year!
Happy Holidays,
Paul
…
PS Want to gift membership of the club to someone this holiday? No problem! Just buy a membership via the above link(s) and include the recipient’s info in the shipping field. Then drop me a note at paul@paulbradleycarr.com so I can send them a gift notification and welcome on Christmas day/whenever you like!
PPS Bonus points for anyone who can identify the source of the image at the top of this email - one of my favorite impossible crime novels, if perhaps not the author’s cleverest.