Monday 26 November 2012

Books to Look Forward to from Hodder and Stoughton


When Rink's father is brutally murdered, Joe has to stop his friend rushing headlong for vengeance.  Because Rink's mother witnessed the crime and Yukiko is not telling everything she knows.  Her silence is governed by the Japanese tradition of giri, or moral obligation.  But when there are more vicious deaths - all of them elderly men known to Yukiko - it becomes a matter of honour to uncover the shameful secret that lies behind the murders.  The killer is not playing by the rules.  But some rules are made to be broken and Joe doesn't care what he breaks to ensure Rink gets his revenge.  Rules of Honour is by Matt Hilton and is due to be published in February 2013.
  
The Kill Room is the tenth novel in the critically acclaimed Lincoln Rhyme series, from author Jeffery Deaver.  Robert Moreno, an American citizen living in South America, is shot in the Bahamas by a sniper.  The killing was commissioned by the U.S. government, who received a tip-off that Moreno was planning a terrorist attack on a U.S. oil company headquarters.  However, this intelligence was fatally incorrect: anti-American Moreno ordered a protest at the oil company, not an attack.  Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are drafted in to investigate.  While Sachs traces Moreno's steps in New York, Rhyme travels to the scene of the crime in Nassau, where he finds himself on a dangerous path trailed by the sniper himself.  As details of the case start to emerge, the pair discover that not all is what it seemed.  Can they achieve justice and escape with their lives intact?  The Kill Room is due to be published in June 2013.

In the history of the United States, there have been over two dozen assassination attempts on the President.  Four have been successful.  Historians have branded the assassins four lone wolves.  But what if they were wrong?  Now there's a killer in Washington DC who's meticulously recreating the crimes of these four men.  And Beecher White has just discovered the truth: over the course of a hundred years, all four assassins were secretly working toward one goal.  How are they connected?  Who do they work for?  And why are they planning to kill the President today?  Beecher's about to find out.  And most terrifying, he's about to come face to face...with the fifth assassin.  The Fifth Assassin is by Brad Meltzer and is due to be published in January 2013.

When her plane is delayed overnight, Gaby Struthers finds herself forced to share a hotel room with a stranger: a terrified young woman named Lauren Cookson - but why is she scared of Gaby in particular?  Lauren will not explain.  Instead, she blurts out something about an innocent man going to prison for a murder he did not commit, and Gaby soon suspects that Lauren's presence on her flight can't be a coincidence.  Because the murder victim is Francine Breary, the wife of the only man Gaby has ever truly loved.  Tim Breary has confessed, and even provided the police with evidence.  The only thing he hasn't given them is a motive.  He claims to have no idea why he murdered his wife ... The Carrier is by Sophie Hannah and is due to be published in August 2013.
  
I have never written down the answers to the deepest mysteries, nor will I ever...The philosopher Plato wrote these words more than two thousand years ago, following a perilous voyage to Italy -- an experience about which he never spoke again, but from which he emerged the greatest thinker in all of human history.  Today, twelve golden tablets sit in museums around the world, each created by unknown hands and buried in ancient times, and each providing the dead with the route to the afterlife.  Archaeologist Lily Barnes, working on a dig in southern Italy, has just found another.  But this tablet names the location to the mouth of hell itself.  And then Lily vanishes.  Has she walked out on her job, her marriage, and her life -- or has something more sinister happened?  Her husband, Jonah, is desperate to find her.  But no one can help him: not the police and not the secretive foundation that sponsored her dig.  All Jonah has is belief, and a determination to do whatever it takes to get Lily back.  But like Plato before him, Jonah will discover the journey ahead is mysterious, dark, and fraught with danger.  And not everyone who travels to the hidden place where Lily has gone can return.  The Orpheus Descent is by Tom Harper and is due to be published in March 2013.

The Prophet is by Michael Koryta and is due to be published in September 2013.  Two brothers with a shared tragic past, caused by a two-second decision that haunts them both.  One decides to avenge it.  The other, to forgive.  Both will pay for their choices - more than they could ever imagine.  .When he was a teenager, Adam Austin made a decision that led to the death of his little sister.  His brother Kent learned to forgive her murderer but he never forgave Adam.  Twenty years later, Kent is the coach of the successful high school football team in Chambers, Ohio and Adam is the town's bail bondsman - someone people turn to when they need help.  When the girlfriend of one of Kent's star players asks Adam to track down her father who has just been released from prison, Adam agrees.  Days later, she is murdered at the address he gave her.  Overwhelmed by guilt in this horrifying echo of the past - Adam is determined to atone for his mistakes.  But this is a game outside of the brothers' control.  Moreover, every decision they make is matter of life and death.

In this new Cotton Malone adventure, the former agent travels to England and finds himself caught up in a dark conspiracy born in the time of Henry VIII - a secret with such explosive implications that it has been protected by a shadowy society of scholars and assassins for nearly 500 years.  Now both the CIA and MI5 seem to be competing to uncover the historical mystery, and for Cotton, supposedly on holiday with his son Gary, it is not just the action, which comes thick and fast.  Racing against time - and a hail of bullets - to work out a puzzle, which takes him from the Middle Temple to the chapel at Windsor Castle, from an Oxford college to the sewers beneath Hampton Court, he finds the drama takes him closer and closer to his own past, and a shocking revelation.  The King’s Deception is by Steve Berry and is due to be published in June 2013.

Of course it was love for my children, love for my son, that caused me to act as I did.  It was a lapse of judgement.  If I could have foreseen the rippling aftershocks that followed I would have acted differently, but by the time I realised the extent of the consequences, it was too late.  The MacBrides have always gone to Far Barn in Devon for Bonfire Night, but this year everything is different.  Lydia, the matriarch, is dead; Sophie, the eldest daughter, is desperately trying to repair a crumbling marriage; and Felix, the youngest of the family, has brought a girlfriend with him for the first time.  The girl, Kerry, seems odd in a way nobody can quite put their finger on - but when they leave her looking after Sophie's baby daughter, and return to find both Kerry and the baby gone, they are forced to ask themselves if they have allowed a cuckoo into their nest ...  The Burning Air is by Erin Kelly and is due to be published in January 2013.

Flavia Albia is the adopted daughter of a famous investigating family.  In defiance of tradition, she lives alone on the colourful Aventine Hill, and battles out a solo career in a male-dominated world.  As a woman and an outsider, Albia has special insight into the best, and worst, of life in ancient Rome.  A female client dies in mysterious circumstances.  Albia investigates and discovers there have been many other strange deaths all over the city, yet she is warned off by the authorities.  The vigils are incompetent.  The local magistrate is otherwise engaged, organising the Games of Ceres, notorious for its ancient fox-burning ritual.  Even Albia herself is preoccupied with a new love affair: Andronicus, an attractive archivist, offers all that a love-starved young widow can want, even though she knows better than to take him home to meet the parents...As the festival progresses, her neighbourhood descends into mayhem and becomes the heartless killer's territory.  While Albia and her allies search for him, he stalks them through familiar byways and brings murder ever closer to home.  The Ides of April is vintage Lindsey Davis, offering wit, intrigue, action and a brilliant new heroine who promises to be as celebrated as Marcus Didius Falco and Helena Justina, her fictional predecessors.  The Ides of April is due to be published in April 2013.

Broke is by Mandasue Heller and is due to be published in January 2013.  Amy's marriage to Mark isn't the best - he can't resist the girls, he can't hold down a job.  But she doesn't want to know just how bad things are until his gambling habit brings the debt collector to her door.  He makes it brutally clear how she can pay off Mark's debts ...And Amy's troubles are only beginning.  Someone else wants Mark for herself, and she is ready to steal Amy's man, her self-respect and even her children.  As the stakes rise, Amy will either lose everything, or she'll have to learn how to be as hard and ruthless as her enemies...

Florence, October 1966.  The rain is never-ending.  When a young boy vanishes on his way home from school the police fear the worst, and Inspector Bordelli begins an increasingly desperate investigation.  Then the flood hits.  During the night of 4th November the swollen River Arno, already lapping the arches of the Ponte Vecchio, breaks its banks and overwhelms the city.  Streets become rushing torrents, the force of the water sweeping away cars and trees, doors, shutters and anything else in its wake.  In the aftermath of this unimaginable tragedy, the mystery of the child's disappearance seems destined to go unsolved.  But obstinate as ever, Bordelli is not prepared to give up.  Death in Florence is by Marco Vichi and is due to be published in February 2013.


The Swedish town of Linkoping is bathed in Spring sunshine and its inhabitants are enjoying the weather as they sit outside the cafes in the town square.  Then, suddenly, a deafening explosion rocks the square, and life in Linkoping will never be the same again.  Inspector Malin Fors is standing by her mother's coffin at the Chapel of Resurrection.  A muffled rumble shatters the silence, and Malin is immediately on her way to Filbyter Square, and the scene that greets her will stay with her forever: shards of glass; crushed flowers and scattered vegetables; a child's shoe; a dove pecking at something red in the deafening silence.  Savage Spring is by Mons Kallentoft and is due to be published in April 2013.


Someone to Watch Over Me is the fifth Thora Gudmundsdottir novel from Yrsa Sigurdardottir.  Berglind hurried to her son and pulled him forcefully from the window.  She held him close and tried at the same time to wipe the windowpane.  But the haze couldn't be wiped away.  It was on the outside of the glass.  Pesi looked up at her.  'Magga's outside.  She can't get in.  She wants to look after me.’  He pointed at the window and frowned.  'She's a little bit angry.’  A young man with Down's Syndrome has been convicted of burning down his care home and killing five people, but a fellow inmate at his secure psychiatric unit has hired Thora to prove Jakob is innocent.  If he didn't do it, who did?  And how is the multiple murder connected to the death of Magga, killed in a hit and run on her way to babysit?  Someone to Watch Over Me is due to be published in May 2013.

Extreme: Night Strike is the second book in the Chris Ryan Extreme series.  Former SAS hero John Bald is a man at war with himself and fighting a losing battle with the bottle.  But then he is reluctantly thrust back into battle...In the race to develop ever more powerful weapons, technology has become the new frontline in global terrorism.  And when one of America's most cutting-edge defence contractors suspects a sleeper cell operating in its midst, the Firm reaches out to its most cold-blooded son.  Bald's mission: kill the sleeper before they can smuggle top-secret weaponry into the hands of the West's deadliest enemies.  But the mission goes sideways, and Bald is the fall guy.  Now he must pursue the sleeper from the ghettos of Florida to the war-torn streets of Tripoli, in a relentless hunt for the technology and the truth.  Shadowed every step of the way by a ruthless CIA hit man, Bald soon finds that the lines between friend and enemy are blurred, and he'll have to call on all his warrior instincts to stay alive...The Chris Ryan Extreme books take you even further into the heart of the mission with even more extreme action, more extreme language and more extreme pace.  Like Call of Duty or Medal of Honor, you'll feel part of the team.  Chris Ryan Extreme: Night Strike has already been published as four separate shorter missions on eBook.  Night Strike is due to be published in January 2013.

The Extremist is by Robert Pearce and is due to be published in June 2013.  In a race down the Thames, Detective Chief Inspector John Kerr is caught in a fight to the death with two gold smugglers.  The American wife of the British Defence Secretary is brutally murdered while walking her dog.  A senior judge is executed in Middle Temple Lane.  Blocked by 'affirmative inaction' at New Scotland Yard and threats from MI6, Kerr deploys a talented female operative undercover to force the truth.  A dirty bomb attack proves the motive is hatred of the United States and the special relationship.  But is this domestic extremism or the work of foreign spies?  As attacks escalate, Kerr confronts treachery and corruption from his own side and resorts to action as extreme as the dark forces turned against him.

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