Books to look forward to from Hodder and Stoughton and Mulholland Books

What’s the worst thing you have ever done? Randall Haight has a secret: when he was a teenager, he and his friend killed a 14-year-old girl. Randall did his time and built a new life, but somebody is threatening to reveal the truth about Randall. And he wants private detective Charlie Parker to make it stop. But another 14-year-old girl has gone missing. Now Parker must unravel a web of deceit involving the police, the FBI, a doomed mobster named Tommy Morris, and Randall Haight himself. Because Randall Haight is telling lies…. The Burning Soul is the latest Charlie Parker novel by John Connolly and is due to be published in September 2011.

Killing for the Company is the latest book by Chris Ryan. 2003. Invalided out of the SAS Chet Freeman makes his living in high-end security, on a temporary contract for an American corporation called the Grosvenor Group. He catches a young woman, a peace campaigner, eavesdropping on a meeting the Group is holding with the British Prime Minister. The Group's interests include arms manufacture, and what Chet and the young woman overhear seems to imply that it is bribing the Prime Minister to take his country into an illegal war. Could this possibly be true? Somebody believes that this is a secret that needs covering up, because Chet and the girl are attacked. Hunted down, they go into hiding, and a deadly game of cat and mouse begins. Nearly ten years later tension is reaching breaking point in Jerusalem. The now ex-Prime Minister is working as a Middle East peace envoy. As the city descends into anarchy and rival armies are poised to turn it into a battlefield, Chet's best buddy, Luke, is part of a team tasked by the Regiment with extracting the ex-Prime Minister. At the height of the battle Luke discovers a conspiracy far more devastating than any arms deal. Killing for the Company is due to be published in September 2011.

I see everything now. Everything the dead people see. This is where they live. It's beautiful and terrifying and all the answers I ever looked for are hovering right here in front of me in a million shadowy riddles. If you have a supernatural problem that won't go away, you need Buck Carlsbad: private eye, exorcist, and last resort. Buck's got a way with spirits that no one else can match. He was normal, once. Until he saw his parents killed by something old, and dark, and evil. Buck has spent years looking deep into the black light on the other side of death, trying to trace his family. It's dangerous, but it's his only hope of finding out what happened to them - and what made him the way he is. But now the voices on the other side are fading to a whisper, and all they'll say is that something big is coming. Then Buck takes a call from a billionnaire and finds himself plunged into the most harrowing case of his career. One that will either reveal the secrets of his life, or end it. Black Light is by Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan and Stephen Romano and is due to be published by Mulholland Books in October 2011.

The Revisionists is by Thomas Mullen and is due to be published by Mulholland Books in September 2011. The future will be perfect. No hate, no hunger, no war. Zed knows because he's seen it. He's from there. His mission is to ensure that history happens exactly as it's meant to. Even the terrible events. Even the one that's about to happen, the one that will destroy our civilisation for good. In present-day Washington, Zed watches as people go about their daily lives. People like Leo, a disgraced former spy; Tasha, a lawyer grieving for a brother killed in action in Iraq; Sari, the downtrodden employee of a foreign diplomat. Unlike Zed, they have no idea what difference their choices will make. The clock is ticking. But Zed has doubts. What are his superiors not telling him? What truths has he hidden from himself? And, as he becomes more entangled in the lives of those around him, will he be able to sacrifice their present for his future?

Charlie Hardie has been sent to a facility hidden in a blank spot on the map. A place where the world sends people who are too dangerous to kill. Here, they can be contained – and studied. Hardie is there as punishment for scuttling a billion-dollar deal. He’s not an inmate, though – he’s in charge. He can leave if he wants, but that means everyone in the prison dies. Including innocent guards. When Hardie realises he’s unwittingly endangered the lives of his wife and son, he vows to protect them at any cost. Even if it means blasting his way out, one inmate at a time. Hell & Gone is by Duane Swierczynski and will be published by Mulholland books in October 2011. It is the second in the Charlie Hardie trilogy.

Deployed worldwide on countless missions, Jonathan Chase, the United States' top operative, is sworn to protect and serve his country at all costs. His new target is the Zero Directorate, who have amassed a wealth of state secrets from captured, brain-washed spies - their confessions videotaped just before their execution, prepared for sale to the highest bidder. To pursue them, he must risk the most valuable asset of all: the knowledge contained in his own memories, the sum total of a life of endless, covert action. Chase is on the hunt. But the Directorate lies in wait, and the closer he gets to stopping his enemies, the closer his enemies get to their target. Assassin of Secrets is the first in the Jonathan Chase series by QR Markham due to be published by Mulholland Books in November 2011.

Matt Hilton’s Joe Hunter return’s in Dead Men’s Harvest. When Rink is ambushed by a team of highly skilled killers, Joe is pretty sure that his friend is being used as bait and the intended prey is Hunter himself. Forced to operate without official sanction, Joe penetrates the kidnappers’ lair and finds his ultimate quarry is back from beyond the grave and with a bone to pick. Dead Men’s Harvest is the sixth in the Joe Hunter series and is due to be published in August 2011.

For 140 years , Nathaniel Cade has been the President’s vampire, sworn by a blood oath to protect the President and America from their supernatural enemies. Helped by his partner, political liaison officer Zach Barrows, Cade is looking for the sources of a deadly new virus that is being used to attack armies across the world – a virus that transforms its victims into vicious animals in seconds and spreads in minutes. To ‘protect and serve’ often means settling old scores and confronting new betrayals … as only a century old predator can. The President’s Vampire is by Christopher Farnsworth and is due to be published in July 2011.

Spider Shepherd is up against the most violent enemies he’s ever encountered. Somali pirates have kidnapped the crew of a yacht in a brutal attack, and are demanding a huge ransom in return for the hostages. The pirates have chilling terrorist ambitions in the UK, and are making terrible plans to change the London skyline forever. Thousands of lives are on the line. Spider is sent to sea on an undercover mission to stop the pirates. But time is running out. Fair Game is by Stephen Leather and is due to be published in July 2011.

Here, the criminal is king. The streets are filled with the screeching of fish hags, the cries of swindled merchants, the inviting murmurs of working girls. Here, people can disappear, and the lacklustre efforts of the guard ensure they are never found. Warden is an ex-soldier who has seen the worst men have to offer; now a narcotics dealer with a rich, bloody past and a way of inviting danger. You'd struggle to find someone with a soul as dark and troubled as his. But then a missing child, murdered and horribly mutilated, is discovered in an alley. And then another. With a mind as sharp as a blade and an old but powerful friend in the city, he's the only man with a hope of finding the killer. If the killer doesn't find him first. Low Town: The Straight Razor Cure is by Daniel Polansky and is due to be published in August 2011.

Agent of Rome: The Seige is the debut historical novel by Nick Brown. 270 AD Rome has ruled Syria for over three centuries. But now the weakened empire faces a desperate threat: Queen Zenobia of Palmyra has turned her Roman-trained army against her former masters and the once invincible legions have been crushed. Arabia, Palestine and Egypt have fallen and now Antioch, Syria's capital, stands exposed. Cassius Corbulo is a young intelligence agent fresh from officer training. He has been assigned the menial task of rounding up wounded legionaries but then urgent new orders arrive. He is the only ranking Roman officer left in the line of the Palmyran advance. He must take command of the fort of Alauran, the last stronghold still in Roman hands, and hold it against the enemy until reinforcements arrive. What Cassius finds at Alauran would daunt the most seasoned veteran, let alone a nineteen year old with no experience of war. A mere scattering of divided and demoralised legionaries remain, backed up by some fractious Syrian auxiliaries and a drunken Praetorian Guardsman. With the Palmyrans just days away, Cassius must somehow find the discipline, resourcefulness and courage to organise the garrison, save Alauran and secure Rome's eastern frontier... Agent of Rome: The Seige is due to be published in July 2011.

Brodmaw Bay is by F G Cottam and is due to be published in November 2011. It's the perfect seaside village - no crime, no Londoners ...When things start to go badly wrong for James Greer in London, Brodmaw Bay seems to be calling him and his family. There's a perfect house, excellent schools - and welcoming neighbours who assure the Greers that they'd be delighted to have some new blood in the Bay. But perhaps the village isn't so much welcoming them as luring them. To something ancient and evil…

When all contact is lost with two Icelanders working in a harsh and sparsely populated area on the northeast coast of Greenland, Thora is hired to investigate. Is there any connection with the disappearance of a woman from the site some months earlier? And why are the locals so hostile? The Day is Dark is the fourth book by Yrsa Sigurdardottir to feature Thóra Gudmundsdóttir and is due to be published in July 2011.

Peter Robinson returns with a standalone novel Before the Poison. Through the years of success in Hollywood composing film scores, Chris always promised his wife they’d return to the Yorkshire Dales one day. Now a widower, Chris feels he must not forget his promised. Back in the Dales, he rents an isolated house that will allow him the space to grieve and the peace to compose his piano sonata. But when he finds that the house was the scene of a murder in the 1950s, and the convicted murderer was one of the last women hanged in England, he fins himself increasingly distracted by the events of sixty years before. Before the Poison is due to be published in August 2011.

Cotton Malone has been called on to defend his country’s safety in many exotic locations around the world, often using his knowledge of history to get to the heart of mysteries and conspiracies stretching back for centuries. But never has danger been so close to home. In The Jefferson Key, Malone finds himself battling an extraordinary group of families whose unseen influence dates back to the pages of the US Constitution – and whose thirst for power is about to be satisfied by the cracking of a code devised by Thomas Jefferson himself. The Jefferson Key is by Steve Berry and is due to be published in November 2011.

It is the coldest February in recent memory. In the early hours of a particularly freezing night, the body of a man is found hanging from a lone oak tree in the middle of the withered, windswept plains outside Linkoping, Sweden. Young superintendent Malin Fors, a single mother plagued by person tragedies is assigned to the case. She and her colleagues must track down the identity of the man hanging from the tree and the reason he ended up there. And at the same time they must follow in the frigid wake of a killer – a manhunt that takes Malin Fors into the darkest corners of the human heart. Midwinter Sacrifice is by Mons Kallentoft and is due to be published in October 2011.

A Deniable Death is the twenty-eight novel by Gerald Seymour Covert Rural Observation Posts are places where men like Danny ‘Badger’ Baxter hide for endless, motionless hours, secretly recording criminal or terrorist activity. Improvised Explosive Devices are the roadside bombs, which account for 80% of British casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. MI6 have a plan to assassinate the leading maker of these weapons as soon as he leaves Iran. But first they need to know when he is leaving, and where he is going. Thus Badger finds himself on the wrong side of the border, lumbered with a partner that he loathes, lying under a merciless sun in a mosquito-invested marsh observing the man’s house. Knowing that if they are caught, H.M.G will deny all knowledge of them. A Deniable Death is due to be published in August 2011.