Saturday 2 June 2012

Books to look forward to from Quercus and MacLehose Press


Baptism is by Max Kinnings and is due to be published in June 2012.  07:45 Am.  A monk lies dead in Snowdonia, a knife protruding from his throat.  A young family is being held at gunpoint in a house in Wimbledon.  The mission has begun.  08:56 Am.  A London Underground train is stationary in a tunnel, four hundred passengers trapped inside.  All efforts to communicate with it have been met with silence.  09:15Am. DCI Ed Mallory has just started his day.  The Met's top hostage negotiator - despite having been blinded thirteen years earlier - Mallory is about to discover that, today, an underground train is not the only thing on the line.
  
Springtime in St Denis.  It's two weeks before Easter, and Satanism has reared its ugly head.  A female body has been found on a boat, bearing the ghastly signs of a black magic ritual.  The victim is unknown and nobody is coming forward.  This is the last thing Bruno needs.  The Chief of Police-come-culinary connoisseur has too much on his plate as it is, mediating both a domestic abuse case and a local development proposal that seems just too good to be true.  Moreover, he has no one to share these stresses with.  His dog, Gigi, is gone, as are his usual roster of ladies.  He's never felt so alone.  But Bruno soon finds himself back at his best; which is just as well if he's to solve the mystery that's threatening to scar his town's reputation. The Devil’s Cave is by Martin Walker and is due to be published in August 2012.

When Sam's last adventure in France ended, he thought it'd be a while before he went back, especially with the charms of Elena Morales to keep him in Los Angeles. But when the immensely wealthy Francis Reboul asks him to take a job in Marseille, it's impossible for Sam and Elena to resist the possibility of further excitement . . . to say nothing of the pleasures of the region. Soon the two are enjoying the coastal sunshine and the delectable wine and bouillabaisse for which Marseille is known. Quelle joie! Yet as a competition over Marseille's valuable waterfront grows more hotly disputed, Sam, representing Reboul, finds himself in the middle of an increasingly intrigue-ridden and dangerous real estate grab. Will Sam survive this caper unscathed? Will he be able to enjoy another bowl of bouillabaisse? The Marseille Caper is by Peter Mayle and is due to be published in November 2012.

Dark Heart is by Tony Park and is due to be published in September 2012. Richard, Carmel and Liesl are an unlikely trio with a complex shared past. They met while working in Rwanda during the genocide. Now the three are back together, united both by a photograph and attempts on their lives. After receiving a summons from the International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda, someone has tried to kill both Carmel and Richard. Could this be connected to the photograph they saw in Rwanda, or to the summons? Embarking on a mission to find the answers, they are drawn into the violent and harrowing world of animal smuggling, a world more frightening then they ever could have predicted. It is not just animals that are being smuggled, but human organs from living donors. Soon, their lives are all on the line and only one person can help them.

2012: London is hosting the Olympics and the East End is at the centre of the world.  Yet surrounding the glamorous Olympic Park are some of the most deprived areas of the city.  PI Lee Arnold and his assistant, Mumtaz Hakim, work in these streets, in a community fraught with tensions.  When Arnold is hired by a controversial stand- up comedian, he already knows that her routine could make her a target.  Arnold and Hakim's new client is being followed.  Are her fears justified?  As they delve deeper, they discover that this investigation is more complex and sinister than a simple, straightforward case of stalking. A Private Business is the first in a new series featuring former policeman and soldier turned PI and his Muslim assistant by Barbara Nadel.  A Private Business is due to be published in July 2012.

The head of Francisco Goya was stolen from his tomb in the wake of his death. No one has ever known what happened to it. Until now. Leon Golding has always been ignored by the art world he loves, but he's finally going to make his name as the man who found the skull of Goya. But he's asked the wrong people to help him prove he's right. Now everyone wants to own the most prized piece of art history ever to come to light ...And they're ready to kill for it. Memory of Bones is by Alex Connor and is due to be published in August 2012.

Let the Old Dreams Die is a collection of short stories by John Ajvide Lindqvist and contains the sequel to Let the Right One In. Whatever happened to Oskar and Eli? And what became of the beleaguered families in Handling the Undead? Find out in Let the Old Dreams Die. In other tales from this collection, a woman finds a dead body and decides to keep it for herself, a customs officer has a mysterious gift, which enables him to see what others hide, and a man believes he knows how to deceive death. These are the stories of John Ajvide Lindqvist's rich imagination. They are about love and death and what we do when the two collide and the monsters emerge. Let the Old Dreams Die is due to be published in September 2012.

A frustrated publisher receives a mysterious angst-ridden manuscript: “a friend” must send it in instalments; its contents would put the author in danger. As he pieces together the story, he learns that the author is the wife of one of the two Martelli brothers – gangsters who dominate a small town in the Brazilian interior.  Surely, her dark outpourings are a cry for help?  One by one, he dispatches his motley collection of friends to Frondosa – a town totally obsessed with five-a-side football – to investigate and bring her to safety.  The Spies is by Luis Fernando Verissimo and is due to be published in November 2012.

Sleepwalkers is the debut novel by Tom Grieves and is due to be published in August 2012.  Ben is your average married man: wife, two kids, and steady job.  Toby is your average schoolboy: fifteen years old, sweet natured and shy.  Two people, two separate, unremarkable lives.  Except for their dreams.  Dreams of violence.  Dreams of rage.  Dreams of torture.  Dreams that are always followed - the next morning - by scratches, scars, pain.  When their dreams and doubts become too powerful to ignore, one fact will become clearer than any other: that the truth they are running towards is the very thing that they should be running away from.

Saed Gadaffi has escaped from Libya with a fistful of dangerous secrets. The British Government want ex-Special Forces operative Steve Range, the go-to man for any Black-Ops missions, to lead an ultra-covert mercenary group to seize him from his near-impregnable desert stronghold. Saed is defended by Tuareg warriors armed to the teeth with stolen NATO hardware. If Range's team can somehow overcome them, then they will earn themselves gold bullion worth $500 million. But as the bullets begin to fly and the body count rises, Range realises that he's been double-crossed. Unwilling to lose the gold, he begins to contemplate cutting a deal with the devil.  Desert Fire is the debut novel by Phil Campion and is due to be published in September 2012.

Harry and Michel live in the basement of a luxury apartment block, guarding the inhabitants. No-one goes outside. The world might be at war - it might even have been plunged into nuclear winter. No-one knows. All Harry and Michel know is that if they are vigilant, 'the Organization' will reward them: promotion to an elite cadre of security officers remains their shining goal. But what if there were no-one left to guard? And if the promised relief shift arrives, how will they fit in to Michel and Harry's studied routine of boredom and paranoia? After months of crippling paranoia, they begin a terrifying ascent to the floors above.  The Guard is by Peter Terrin and is due to be published in September 2012.

Yukio's two best friends are dead. Tormented and blackmailed by the Yakuza - the Japanese mafia - they have taken their own lives. Yukio is a kendo champion and he knows all the stories of the samurai. Heartbroken and furious, he is determined to avenge the deaths of his beloved Hiroshi and Miko. And so begins a deadly struggle between Yukio and the Yakuza, and between Yukio's capacity for love, and his thirst for revenge.  Summertime of the Dead is by Gregory Hughes and is due to be published in August 2012.

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