Famine Ships, a Missing Schoolgirl, and a Flood of Poems: This Week's Free Reads

by Graham Wilson

A family buys an old weatherboard house in Balmain, Sydney, and finds a photo of a girl hidden in the fireplace with a tiny perfume bottle. That girl is Sophie, who vanished at eight years old with her best friend Matty. Readers say Wilson re-imagines the lives of the house's past occupants, so it reads part mystery and part local history. It sits at 3.99 with nearly 900 ratings, which feels fair for a quiet, curious read.

“Sophie was eight years old when she vanished with her best friend Matty. They were seen walking in the opposite direction from home as they left school in the afternoon, but no one saw them after that. It would be one hundred years before the mystery of Sophie and Matty’s disappearance was solved....”

by Betta Ferrendelli

A young prosecutor walks away from a promising career to fight forced sterilization on behalf of a mentally challenged woman. She has her own demons to face along the way. It's a courtroom-and-conscience book more than a thriller, but at 4.16 with over 400 ratings, plenty of readers clearly connected with it. Pick this up if you like your fights moral rather than physical.

by Wes Snowden

This is the closest thing to a classic adventure on the list. It follows people from the Great Irish famine across the ocean to the New World, with love, ambition and revenge along the way. The blurb brags about 15,000 downloads, which I'll take with a grain of salt, but a 4.55 across 205 ratings is the best score this week. Great for anyone who likes sprawling historical sagas.

by Jefferson R. Blackburn-Smith

Ed Gideon lost his wife to a drunk driver and wants nothing to do with that family. Then he meets the driver's fifteen-year-old daughter, abandoned and desperate. It's a tough premise and I suspect it will split readers, but the 4.31 from 29 ratings suggests the early ones who tried it were won over. Best for readers who like grief stories that don't take the easy way out.

by Daniel Clausen

A dying girl challenges a writer in Japan to put together seven fragments of a statue, and each fragment unlocks a story, from deep history to the distant future. Genre-wise it's a mix of science fiction and mystery, with a lot of heart. It has 24 ratings at 4.17, so it's still under the radar. I'd grab it for the structure alone, since linked stories across time are hard to pull off.

by Dana Lockhart

Yes, this is a poetry collection, and no, it isn't action. But the storm imagery of rain, thunderstorms, hail and hurricanes gives it real momentum, and it's organized around big seas of emotion like sorrow, wrath and fear. Reviewers pick out favorite poems and say several carry real wisdom. It's at 3.79 with 33 ratings, so not a universal hit, but a free poetry book is worth a look on a rainy night.

“So many good poems in this collection. So many with deep or powerful meanings. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the different poems. My top 2 faves were "Friend" and "Undead" but I enjoyed so many of them I can't list them all. I won this from a Goodreads giveaway. All of the statements above are my...”