Wednesday 23 October 2013

Books to Look Forward to from Faber and Faber

Blood Whispers is by John Gordon Sinclair and is due to be published in May 2014.  'Truth is, it's all lies.' Teresa Gow is under arrest for a string of offences ranging from prostitution to attempted murder. Lawyer Keira Lynch wants the charges dropped and her client taken into protective custody. The CIA and a Serbian drug trafficker by the name of Fisnik Abazi, want Teresa dead. Keira's cool head and laid-back approach has earned her the respect of most of the big-time players on the Glasgow crime scene. She doesn't tell lies, she 'stylises the truth', and they trust her with their darkest secrets. In a room full of murder suspects, Keira will finger the culprit every time. They put her uncanny ability down to luck, but there's a more sinister explanation. Keira has a dark secret of her own - when she was eight years old she killed a man. It takes one to know one. In a deadly game where nothing is what it seems and no one is who they say they are, Keira Lynch finds herself facing the biggest challenge of her life. The question is not will she kill again, but when...

Introducing Jefferson Winter - A serial criminal. An ex-FBI profiler with a past. A missing woman. Not everyone who's broken can be fixed. Death is easy - Four victims, all young women, all tortured and then lobotomised. None of them able to tell the police the name of their attacker. None of them able to live normal lives again. Just broken dolls, played with then discarded. Living is hard - Ex-FBI profiler Jefferson Winter is no ordinary investigator. The son of one of America's most renowned serial killers, Winter has spent his life trying to distance himself from his father's legacy. But are they more similar than he can admit? Failure is worse - When another young woman goes missing, Winter has to race against the clock to identify the attacker and find the latest victim before it's too late.  Broken Dolls is by James Carol and is due to be published in January 2014.

The Girl with a Clock for a Heart is the debut novel  by Peter Swanson and is due to be published in February 2014.  George Foss never thought he'd see her again, but on a late-August night in Boston, there she is, in his local bar, Jack's Tavern. When George first met her, she was an eighteen-year-old college freshman from Sweetgum, Florida. She and George became inseparable in their first fall semester, so George was devastated when he got the news that she had committed suicide over Christmas break. But, as he stood in the living room of the girl's grieving parents, he realized the girl in the photo on their mantelpiece - the one who had committed suicide - was not his girlfriend. Later, he discovered the true identity of the girl he had loved - and of the things she may have done to escape her past. Now, twenty years later, she's back, and she's telling George that he's the only one who can help her.
                                                                                                                         
1949. Lance Curran is set to prosecute a young man for a brutal murder, in the 'Robert the Painter' case, one which threatens to tear society apart. In the searing July heat, corruption and justice vie as Harry Ferguson, Judge Curran's fixer, contemplates the souls of men adrift, and his own fall from grace with the beautiful and wilful Patricia. Within three years, Curran will be a judge, his nineteen year old daughter dead, at the hands of a still unknown murderer, and his wife Doris condemned to an asylum for the rest of her days. In "Blue Is the Night", it is Doris who finally emerges from the fog of deceit and blame to cast new light into the murder of her daughter.  Blue is the Night is by Eoin McNamee and is due to be published in March 2014.

The Beast in the Red Forest is the latest book in the Inspector Pekkala series by Sam Eastland and is due to be published in January 2014.   A soldier returns from the frontline of battle to report that Pekkala's charred body has been found at the site of an ambush. But Stalin refuses to believe that the indomitable Pekkala is dead. On Stallin's orders, Pekkala's assistant Kirov travels deep into the forests of Western Russia, following a trail of clues to a wilderness where partisans wage a brutal campaign against the Nazi invaders. Unknown to Kirov, he is being led into a trap. A new enemy has emerged from the fog of war, more deadly than any Kirov or Pekkala have ever faced before. Pursuing the legend of a half-human creature, said to roam the landscape of this war within a war, each step brings Kirov closer to the truth about Pekkala's disappearance. Meanwhile, Pekkala's nemesis is also closing in for the kill.

The Accident is a riveting time-bomb of a thriller. In New York City, Isabel Reed, one of the most respected and powerful literary agents in the city, frantically turns the pages of a manuscript into the early dawn hours. This manuscript - printed out, hand-delivered, totally anonymous - is full of shocking revelations and disturbing truths, things which could compromise national security. Is this what she's been waiting for her entire career: a book that will help her move on from a painful past, a book that could save her beloved industry ...a book that will change the world? In Copenhagen, Hayden Gray, a veteran station chief, wary of the CIA's obsession with the Middle East, has been steadfastly monitoring the dangers that abound in Europe. Even if his bosses aren't paying attention, he's determined to stay vigilant. And he's also on the trail of this manuscript - and the secrets that lie at its heart. For him, quite simply, it must never see the light of day. As Isabel and Hayden try to outwit each other, the nameless author watches on from afar. With no-one quite sure who holds all the cards, the stakes couldn't be higher: in just twenty-four hours careers could be ruined, devastating secrets could be unearthed, and innocent people could die. The Accident is by Chris Pavone and is due to be published in March 2014.

New York Times bestseller Laura Lippman returns with a classic story of murder and mystery, in which one man's disappearance echoes through the lives of his wife, daughters - and mistress. When Felix Brewer meets nineteen-year-old Bernadette 'Bambi' Gottschalk at a Valentine's Dance in 1959, he charms her with wild promises, some of which he actually keeps. Thanks to his lucrative if not always legal businesses, she and their three -little girls live in luxury. But on the Fourth of July, 1976, Bambi's world implodes when Felix, newly convicted and facing prison, mysteriously vanishes. Though Bambi has no idea where her husband - or his money - might be, she suspects one woman does: his devoted young mistress, Julie. When Julie herself disappears ten years to the day that Felix went on the lam, everyone assumes she's left to join her -old lover - until her remains are found in a secluded wooded park. Now, twenty-six years after Julie went missing, Roberto 'Sandy' Sanchez, a retired Baltimore detective working cold cases for some extra cash, is investigating her murder. What he discovers is a tangled web of bitterness, jealously, resentment and greed stretching over the three decades and three generations that connect these five very different women. And at the center of every woman's story is the man who, though long gone, has never been forgotten: the enigmatic Felix Brewer. Somewhere between the secrets and lies connecting past and present, Sandy could find the explosive truth...  After I’m Gone is due to be published in April 2014.

Scarred by Thomas Enger is a thrilling novel of murder and political scandal in Oslo. An elderly woman is found dead in a nursing home. Bjarne Brogeland, who heads up the investigation, soon realises that they are on the trail of a meticulous killer who has developed a keen taste for revenge. A killer who has only just begun...Trine Juul-Osmundsen, Norway's Secretary of State and Henning Juul's sister, is accused of sexually harassing a young male politician. As the allegations cause a media frenzy, Trine receives an anonymous threat telling her to resign. If she doesn't, the truth about what she really did that night will be revealed. Scarred reporter Henning Juul, finds himself torn between the two high profile cases. He wants to help his estranged sister, but as he digs into their past, he discovers memories that haunt them both. Memories of a broken home. Memories of a dead father. As the two cases collide, both their worlds threaten to fall apart.  Scarred is due to be published in February 2014.

The Dead Beat is by Doug Johnstone and is due to be published in June 2014.  If you're so special, why aren't you dead? Meet Martha. It's the first day of her new job as intern at Edinburgh's The Standard. But all's not well at the ailing newspaper, and Martha is carrying some serious baggage of her own. Put straight onto the obituary page, she takes a call from a former employee who seems to commit suicide while on the phone, something which echoes with her own troubled past. Setting in motion a frantic race around modern-day Edinburgh, The Dead Beat traces Martha's desperate search for answers to the dark mystery of her parents' past and is soundtracked by and interspersed with a series of gigs from the alternative music scene of her parents' generation in the early '90s.

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