Books to look forward to from Duckworth Overlook

Death Wish is by Brian Garfield and is due to be published in March 2013.  Successful New York accountant Paul Benjamin is enjoying a three-martini lunch when a gang of drug addicts breaks into his home.  After finding very little in the way of money, they brutally attack Paul's family, killing his wife and leaving his daughter comatose.  Grief-stricken and aware that the police are unable to bring the criminals to justice, he decides to take matters into his own hands.  Armed with a revolver and a self-destructive compulsion, he sets out to rid the city of its villains and exact revenge on those who destroyed his life.  First published in 1972 and later adapted into five films starring the late Charles Bronson, Death Wish is an unflinching, powerful thriller about just how far a man can be pushed before he loses control.

On VE night, 1945, the then teenage princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret, were allowed to leave the palace incognito and join the parties and festivities with their subjects - pretending to be ordinary people for the first and only time in their lives.  Peter Bradshaw takes this nugget of history as the basis for this brilliantly comic crime thriller.  Princess Margaret steals a policeman's hat, and Elizabeth encounters London's criminal underworld.  The future Queen must use all her wit and courage to get out of a very sticky situation - With sharp but affectionate humour, this is an enjoyable fictional crime caper and is sure to attract comment.  Night of Triumph is by Peter Bradshaw and is due to be published in January 2013.

Duckworth Overlook are due to have a major re-launch for Charles McCarry.  The books that are due to be re-issued include The Secret Lovers, which is due to be published in January 2013.  Early one morning in West Berlin, a nervous courier delivers the handwritten manuscript of a dissident Russian novel to agent Paul Christopher; minutes later, the courier's spine is snapped by an impact with a passing limousine.  Meanwhile in Rome, Christopher's wife Cathy takes a lover in an attempt to stir her husband's stoicism.  These two seemingly discrete events set in motion a spiral of operational and personal intrigue that leads Christopher from Europe to Africa, as he secretly arranges the publication of a book that could bring the Soviet Union to its knees and races to identify the leak that compromised his messenger - and possibly the entire mission.

In The Tears of Autumn Paul Christopher, at the height of his powers as a secret agent, believes he knows who arranged JFK's assassination.  But his theory is so destructive of the legend of Kennedy and so dangerous to the survival of foreign policy that he is ordered to drop his investigation.  But Christopher is a man who lives by and for the truth, and his internal compunctions force him to the heart of the matter.  The Tears of Autumn is due to be published in March 2013.

Second Sight is due to be published in May 2013.  Spy Paul Christopher, now retired and living a normal life in Washington, is brought back into 'the Outfit' when his old friend comes to him with a worrying development: someone is kidnapping U.S. agents and pumping them full of a new mind-control drug.  It is up to Christopher to work out who is behind this insidious form of warfare and what the enemy is doing with the extracted information.

Already available now is Old Boys.  When Horace Hubbard's cousin, Paul Christopher, goes missing and is presumed dead, the CIA 'old boys' come out of retirement to help find one of their former colleagues, one of their own.  Hunting, and being hunted, from Xinjiang to Brazil, Rome, Tel Aviv, Budapest and Moscow, the old pros, along with Christopher's beautiful daughter Zarah, search for their comrade and the answers to his disappearance.  "Old Boys" is, at heart, a lament for a dying generation of American spies.  With its almost indescribable plot of Chinese forced-labour camps, sundry ex-Nazis, ex-KGB men and double-crossers galore, it is a great tribute to McCarry's skill and excellent writing that he manages to carry the action-filled plot, and have the reader carried willingly with him.

In autumn 2013 Christopher’s Ghosts, Shelley’s Heart and The Better Angels are due to be published.