Forthcoming books to look forward to from Orion

Asbury Park is a thrilling police procedural with supernatural elements. Ten weeks ago, Homicide Detective Sailor Doyle worked his first solo case, a gruesome double murder in a remote farmhouse in Virginia. And things turned very nasty for him ...Now Sailor is recuperating with his family at a beach house in Belmar, on the New Jersey shore. He's struggling with prescription drug withdrawal while trying to build up his shattered shoulder and leg, and he's also trying to rebuild his shattered relationship with his wife. Jenny, while pleased he's alive, is less enamoured with the idea of reconciliation. Seeking refuge in a century-old beachfront resort hotel, Sailor meets an elderly man, Mark "Moses" Stillman, a former minor league baseball player whose wife and daughter drowned in the ocean off Belmar years earlier. Sailor's having nightmares about his previous case, and when he starts seeing things again, he realises that once again he's being guided to the truth ...even if it's not what he wants to hear. And it's not long before he finds himself investigating those deaths. Asbury Park is by Robb Scott and is due to be published in January. It is the sequel to 15 Miles.


In Stieg and Me, Larsson's lifelong companion talks about her relationship with Steig Larsson. There is only one person who can tell Stieg Larsson's story other than himself - his lifelong companion and muse, Eva Gabrielsson. She tells the story of their 30-year romance, of Stieg's upbringing and early years, and how this shaped his morals and personality. She talks of his life-long struggle to expose Sweden's Neo-Nazis, of his struggle to keep the magazine he founded, EXPO, alive, his difficult relationships with his immediate family, and the joy and relief he discovered writing the Millennium trilogy. Above all, this is a love story, and shows that if there was another secret besides Larsson's own imagination and convictions, it was his absolute love for his companion and her nurturing of their privacy and shared passions. Their story is told as a series of short vignettes, and Eva Gabrielsson speaks with rare candour and dignity, inspired only by the truth as she knows it. This book is poignant in its account of two soulmates and the life they shared, and most importantly is deeply insightful into the man everyone wants to know better, and about whom so little is known. "I would have preferred to have never written this book. It speaks of Stieg, of our life together, and of my life after his death," writes Gabrielsson early in her book. It was written because she alone can tell this story. Steig and Me is due to be published in July.


Dr Ethan Stark has made his living murderers. He wants to know what makes them tick. The answer to this is of particular interest to Ethan. He only became Ethan Stark when his father's murder conviction forced him and his mother to start new lives. Now, at the facility for the criminally insane where his father is incarcerated, he's going to come face to face with him for the first time in 28 years.... Nature of the Beast is by Tami Hoag and is due to be published in January.

New York, January 1896. Arthur Conan Doyle, the renowned creator of Sherlock Holmes, arrives at the Britannic Hotel with his wife, Louisa, ready to begin his first American tour. While he prepares his lectures, Louisa becomes mesmerised by this brash, vibrant, dangerous city, especially when a woman's brutally butchered corpse is found in a Bowery alley and Louisa is convinced from the artist's sketch in the paper that she'd seen the victim at the hotel. Arthur is patronisingly skeptical about her womanly 'fantasies' but when she sprains her ankle and is forced to remain at the hotel while Arthur goes on tour, Louisa cannot resist pursuing her intuitions. And when more bodies start appearing, she's convinced that she holds the key to the killings. With the help of the hotel's hard-bitten detective and an ambitious female news reporter, Louisa starts to piece together a story of madness, murder and depravity - a story that leads inexorably back to the hotel itself, the strange story of its unique construction and a madman who is watching her every move. Winter at Death's Hotel is by Kenneth Cameron and is due to be published in November.

House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz and is due to be published in November. It is the first official new Sherlock Holmes mystery.


Jailbird and former boxer Danny Boy Lorca was not known for his grip on reality, but when he witnessed in the desert one night convinced Sheriff Hackberry Holland that something very bad had made its way from Mexico into South Texas. The killings were as brutal as anythung Danny Boy had seen. Enough to make Holland realise that this was more than just business:this was evil. A Feast Day of Fools is by James Lee Burke and is due to be published in November.


Orphaned by an act of senseless violence that took their mother from them, half-brothers Clarence Luckman and Elliott Danziger have been raised in state institutions, unaware of any world outside. But their lives take a sudden turn when they are seized as hostages by a convicted killer en route to death row. Earl Sheridan is a psychopath of the worst kind, but he has the potential to change the boys' lives for ever. As the trio set off on a frenetic escape from the law through California and Texas, the two brothers must come to terms with the ever-growing tide of violence that follows in their wake - something that forces them to make a choice about their lives, and their relationship to one another. Set in the 1960s, Bad Signs is a tale of the darkness within all of us, the inherent hope for salvation, and the ultimate consequences of evil. It returns to the haunting ground covered in the award-winning, international bestseller, A Quiet Belief In Angels. Bad Signs is by R.J.Ellory and is due to be published in October.

Michael Connelly and Harry Bosch return in The Drop. Harry Bosch is facing the end of the line. He's been put on the DROP - Deferred Retirement Option Plan - and given three years before his retirement is enforced. Seeing the end of the mission coming, he's anxious for cases. He doesn't have to wait long. First a cold case gets a DNA hit for a rape and murder which points the finger at a 29-year-old convicted rapist who was only eight at the time of the murder. Then a city councilman's son is found dead - fallen or pushed from a hotel window - and he insists on Bosch taking the case despite the two men's history of enmity. The cases are unrelated but they twist around each other like the double helix of a DNA strand. One leads to the discovery of a killer operating in the city for as many as three decades; the other to a deep political conspiracy that reached back into the dark history of the police department. The Drop will be published in October.


With U.S. intelligence agencies wracked by internal power struggles and paralyzed by bureaucracy, the President is forced to establish his own clandestine group - Covert-One - selected from the very best operators America has to offer. It is only activated as a last resort, when the threat is on a global scale and time is running out. In Northern Uganda an American Special Forces team is wiped out by a group of normally peaceful farmers. Video of the attack shows even women and children possessing almost supernatural speed and strength, consumed with a rage that makes them immune to pain, fear, and all but the most devastating injuries. Covert-One's top operative, Army microbiologist Colonel Jon Smith, is sent to investigate the attack and finds evidence of a parasitic infection that for centuries has been causing violent insanity and then going dormant. This time, though, it's different. The infection is purposely being kept alive and the director of Iranian Intelligence is in Uganda trying to make a deal for a biological weapon to unleash on the West. As Smith and his team are cut off from all outside support, they begin to suspect that forces much more powerful than the Iranians are in play - forces that can be traced to Washington itself. Robert Ludlum's The Ares Decision is by Kyle Mills and will be published in October.


The Impossible Dead sees the return of Malcolm Fox in the second novel in Ian Rankin's new series. Malcolm Fox and his team from Internal Affairs are back. They've been sent to Fife to investigate whether fellow cops covered up for a corrupt colleague, Detective Paul Carter. Carter has been found guilty of misconduct with his own uncle, also in the force, having proved to be his nephew's nemesis. But what should be a simple job is soon complicated by intimations of conspiracy and cover-up - and a brutal murder, a murder committed with a weapon that should not even exist. The spiralling investigation takes Fox back in time to 1985, a year of turmoil in British political life. Terrorists intent on a split between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom were becoming more brazen and ruthless, sending letter-bombs and poisonous spores to government offices, plotting kidnaps and murder, and trying to stay one step ahead of the spies sent to flush them out. Fox has a duty to get at the truth, while the body count rises, the clock starts ticking, and he fights for his professional and personal life.

Harlan Coben returns in September with a new Myron Bolitar book entitled Shelter. Mickey Bolitar's year can't get much worse. After witnessing his father's death and sending his mom to rehab, he's forced to live with his estranged uncle Myron and switch high schools. A new school comes with new friends and new enemies, and lucky for Mickey, it also comes with a great new girlfriend, Ashley. For a while, it seems like Mickey's train-wreck of a life is finally improving - until Ashley vanishes without a trace. Unwilling to let another person walk out of his life, Mickey follows Ashley's trail into a seedy underworld that reveals that this seemingly sweet, shy girl isn't who she claimed to be. And neither was Mickey's father. Soon, Mickey learns about a conspiracy so shocking that it makes high school drama seem like a luxury - and leaves him questioning everything about the life he thought he knew.

In September, Jeff Lindsay returns with Double Dexter.


Glen Barber isn't the only person in the small town of Milford with things on his mind. The recession has been bad for his construction business, especially after a mysterious fire destroys one of his buildings. But everyone else in Milford seems to have problems too, as the financial pressures begin to pinch. Glen's troubles, however, are about to escalate to a whole new level. His wife Sheila has her own plans for getting them out of their financial jam, but these come to an abrupt halt when her car is found at the scene of a drunk-driving accident that took three lives. Not only is she dead, but it appears she was the cause of the accident. Suddenly Glen has to deal with a potent mixture of emotions: grief at the loss of his wife, along with anger at her reckless behaviour that leaves their young daughter motherless. If only he could convince himself that Sheila wasn't responsible for the tragedy - but as he looks deeper into the circumstances and begins to realise just how many secrets lurk behind Milford's idyllic facade, he may have to face something much, much worse... The Accident is by Linwood Barclay and is due to be published in August.


A Drop of the Hard Stuff is by Lawrence Block and sees the return of Matt Scudder and is due to be published in September. Matt Scudder and Jack Ellery were at school together but never exactly friends. Twenty years later, when Scudder was a detective and Jack was standing the other side of the one-way glass in a police line-up, it was clear their lives had taken very different paths. What they shared, however, was a battle with alcohol. Now Jack is on the ninth step of the AA program and it's time to make amends to the people he's wronged over the years because of his addiction. But when he ends up shot in the head, and it's clear that stirring up the past was maybe not such a good idea, it's up to Scudder to find the killer.

FBI Agent Pendergast returns in Cold Vengeance by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child. A hunting trip for Pendergast and his brother-in-law, Judson Esterhazy, turns into a violent clash, in which Pendergast is left for dead. Cold Vengeance is due to be published in September.

Spero Lucas has a new line of work. Since he returned home after serving in Iraq, he has been doing special investigations for a defence attorney. He's good at it, and he has carved out a niche: recovering stolen property, no questions asked. His cut is forty percent. A high-profile crime boss who has heard of Lucas's speciality hires him to find out who has been stealing from his operation. It's the biggest job Lucas has ever been offered, and he quickly gets a sense of what's going on. But before he can close in on what's been taken, he tangles with a world of men whose amorality and violence leave him reeling. Is any cut worth your family, your lover, your life? Spero Lucas is George Pelecanos's greatest creation, a young man making his place in the world one battle and one mission at a time. The first in a new series of thrillers featuring Spero Lucas,The Cut is due to be published in August.


Love You More is by Lisa Gardner. WHO DO YOU LOVE? One question, a split-second decision, and Brian Darby lies dead on the kitchen floor. His wife, state police trooper Tessa Leoni, claims to have shot him in self-defence, and bears the bruises to back up her tale. For veteran detective D. D. Warren it should be an open-and-shut case. But where is their six-year-old daughter? AND HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO ...As the homicide investigation ratchets into a frantic statewide search for a missing child, D. D. Warren must partner with former lover Bobby Dodge to break through the blue wall of police brotherhood, seeking to understand the inner workings of a trooper's mind while also unearthing family secrets. Would a trained police officer truly shoot her own husband? And would a mother harm her own child? ...TO SAVE HER? For Tessa Leoni, the worst has not yet happened. She is walking a tightrope, with nowhere to turn, no one to trust, as the clock ticks down to a terrifying deadline. She has one goal in sight, and she will use every ounce of her training, every trick at her disposal, to do what must be done. No sacrifice is too great, no action unthinkable. A mother knows who she loves. And all others will be made to pay. Love you more... Love You More is due to be published in July.


Bill Moore is a man with a plan. He's got a lucrative job selling condos in the Florida keys, a great marriage, and a beautiful house. He had a five year plan for world domination, too, but it's already creeping into year six...so now he's decided to mix it up - just a little. This means getting in tight with the people in power, the players who run the area like their personal kingdom. It's all going to plan until the day Bill gets to work to find a card left on his desk. It's black on both sides, just one word printed in white: MODIFIED. From that moment, Bill's life begins to change. At first barely noticeably, then in more and more disturbing ways. Bill soon finds out, in the most terrifying fashion, that he has become the subject of a dark and deadly game...and that he has no choice but to fight back. Packed with relentless twists and sinister thrills, Killer Move is the latest psychological thriller from bestselling, award-winning author Michael Marshall. Killer Move is due to be published in July.


An elite public school. An outsider. Rumours of a haunting Fleeing expulsion and the death of a close friend, Andrew Taylor is sent by his father to spend his final year at the prestigious public school Harrow. It is an eccentric place, a rambling ancient building filled with the sons of the rich and famous. Shortly after he arrives, the other pupils notice Andrew's striking resemblance to Lord Byron, a former pupil of Harrow, and Andrew is persuaded to play Byron in the forthcoming school play. This is where his troubles begin. Before long Andrew senses a malevolent presence. His fellow Harrovians joke about 'The Lot Ghost' but when a classmate dies, the haunting becomes all too real. Soon another classmate falls ill and Andrew discovers old letters hidden in a bricked-up basement. Aided by his housemaster Piers Fawkes - a once famous poet turned alcoholic - Andrew realises he must discover the secret history behind the letters to prevent further deaths. The White Devil is by Justin Evans and is due to be published in October.


The Diamond Chariot is by Boris Akunin and is due to be published in September. The first of the interlinked plotlines is set in Russia during the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. Fandorin is charged with protecting the Trans-Siberian Railway from Japanese sabotage in a pacy adventure filled with double agents and ticking bombs. Then we travel back to the Japan of the late 1870s. This is the story of Fandorin's arrival and life in Yokohama, his first meeting with Masa and the martial arts education that came in so handy later. He investigates the death of a Russian ship-captain, fights for a woman, exposes double-agents in the Japanese police, fights against, and then with the ninjas, and becomes embroiled in a shocking finale that interweaves the two stories and ties up the series as a whole.

Defending Jacob is by William Landay and is due to be published in January. When a teenaged boy is discovered stabbed to death in the woods adjoining the local high school, a wave of shock ripples through the suburban community of Newton, outside of Boston. Assistant district attorney Andy Barber is used to dealing with murder and its after-efffects, but with his own son, Jacob, also a student at the school, he too is anxious for a swift arrest and conviction. But as the kids appear to be stonewalling the cops and the investigation stalls, evidence emerges that ties Jacob to the crime - and suddenly Andy faces a very different challenge: preventing his son from being convicted of murder. Together with his wife, Laurie, the family closes ranks in the midst of an increasingly hostile community as Andy prepares for the trial of his life, the one trial he cannot afford to lose. Especially when the emergence of his own dark family secrets threatens to undermine Jacob's defence. And as the drama reaches its climax, Andy and Laurie have to face every parent's toughest questions: how well do you really know your own child, and how far would you go to save them?


In Spartan, Dunn's explosive debut, he draws on his unique background to breathe dynamic new life into the contemporary spy novel. Featuring super-spy Will Cochrane, Dunn paints a nerve-shredding, stunningly suthentic picture of today's secret world. It's a place where trust is precious and betrayal is cheap. And where a violent death is the reward for being outplayed by your enemy. Will Cochrane, the Service's most prized asset and deadliest weapon, has known little else since childhood. And he's never been outplayed. So far... Spartan is due to be published in August.

The Devil Colony is by James Rollins and is due to be published in December. In the Rocky Mountains, a horrible massacre ensues. Bodies are found purposefully positioned to form two symbols. One man recognises the warning behind the gruesome murders: Painter Crowe, director of SIGMA, has seen these symbols before and knows the deaths were a personal threat. One of the victims was his beloved cousin. Crowe joins forces with Commander Grayson Pierce to penetrate the shadowy heart of a dark cabal that has been manipulating American history. But can he discover the truth before it destroys all he holds dear? The truth lies hidden within the ruins of a cursed lost colony - a place known only as THE DEVIL COLONY