Pig Island

Mo Hayder knows a thing or two about creeping people out. Her last thriller, The Devil of Nanking, was heart-racing, violent and had a thing or two to say about our perceptions of history and reality. Her newest thriller-mystery, Pig Island, is also not afraid of the stench of blood. In fact, it’s an abattoir. Really. It opens on a late-night visit to a stand-pipe overflowing with the detritus of pig slaughter, and gets rougher from there. Joe Oakes, an intrepid muckraking journalist, visits a Scottish coastal town to debunk stories of Satanism and murder at an island cult enclave. Prepare to sit up all night in a well-lit room, because this British grandmaster of shock-suspense is back at it—this time, asking her readers to question reality in an entirely new and thoroughly unnerving way.