Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye. This week, all three were spotted on Best of 2023 lists.

Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov

Summary: A ‘clinic for the past’ is opened, offering treatment for Alzheimer’s sufferers: each floor reproduces a decade in minute detail, transporting patients back in time. But as the rooms become more convincing, an increasing number of healthy people seek out the clinic as a ‘time shelter’, and the present begins to invade the past.

I’m thinking: Yes.

The Stars Are Not Yet Bells by Hannah Lillith Assadi

Summary: Off the coast of Georgia, generations have been tempted by strange lights in the sky near the island of Lyra. Elle and Simon Ranier come to the island to find the source of the lights and the elusive minerals rumored to lurk offshore. Years later, as Simon’s business folds, Elle looks back at her life on the mysterious island, and at a secret she herself has guarded for decades.

I’m thinking: No.

Amy & Lan by Sadie Jones

Summary: Three couples, best friends, bring their families to Frith, a 78-acre farm in the South West of England, where they learn how to farm the land. Two of the children, Amy Connell and Lan Honey, have the best childhood ever – free and unsupervised – unaware of the dangers at Frith.

I’m thinking: Yes.