When
Detective Sime Mackenzie boards a light aircraft at Montreal’s St. Hubert
airfield, he does so without looking back.
For Sime, the 850-mile journey ahead represents an opportunity to escape
the bitter blend of loneliness and regret that has come to characterise his
life in the city. Travelling as part of
an eight-officer investigation team, Sime’s destination lies in the Gulf of St.
Lawrence. Only two kilometres wide and three
long, Entry Island is home to a population of around 130 inhabitants – the
wealthiest of which has just been discovered murdered in his home. The investigation itself appears little more
than a formality. The evidence points to
a crime of passion: the victim’s wife the vengeful culprit. But for Sime the investigation is turned on
its head when he comes face to face with the prime suspect, and is convinced
that he knows her – even though they have never met. Haunted by this certainty his insomnia
becomes punctuated by dreams of a distant past on a Scottish island 3,000 miles
away. Dreams in which the widow plays a
leading role. Sime’s conviction becomes
an obsession. And in spite of mounting
evidence of her guilt, he finds himself convinced of her innocence, leading to
a conflict between the professional duty he must fulfil, and the personal
destiny that awaits him. Entry Island is due to be published in
January 2014 and is a standalone novel by Peter May.
There
is a leak in Wellington’s army, and suspicion is falling on James Keane . . . The
Iberian Peninsula, 1809. French troops
led by one of Napoleon’s best generals are massing on the border. Wellington’s outnumbered force and his unreliable
Spanish allies need to pick off the smaller French units if they are to stand
their ground. For that, they need information:
accurate intelligence on numbers, arms and whereabouts. That’s where Captain Keane and his company of
reformed scouting officers are invaluable tools – despite being unpopular with
the regular soldiers. However, it soon
becomes apparent that someone high up in Wellington’s headquarters is a spy for
the French. Only someone able to travel
widely outside the camp, someone privy to battle plans, could be the double agent
– and Keane’s enemies within the army are quick to point the finger. Keane must defend his crew against their
accusers – or root out the traitor himself.
Keane’s Challenge is by Iain
Gale and is due to be published in May 2014.
Sorrow Bound is the third book in the DS Aector McAvoy series by
David Mark and is due to be published in March 2014. Philippa Longman will do anything for her
family. Roisin McAvoy will do anything
for her friends. DS Aector McAvoy will
do anything for his wife. Yet each has
an unknown enemy - one that will do anything to destroy them. Sorrow
Bound is a powerful police procedural thriller about how those with the
biggest hearts make the easiest targets; and how the corrosive venom of evil
can dissolve the bonds between good people, until all they are bound by is
grief.
An
isolated farm in rural post-apartheid South Africa is the scene of a suspicious
death that brings a fraught community together in search of the truth. De Wildt, North West South Africa. A township is plunged into mourning when its
elderly white doctor falls to her death.
The deceased, Ouma, passed her passion for justice to each one of the
townspeople: every man and woman, black or white. However, the apparent accident leaves two
people with an inexplicable feeling of suspicion: one a 14-year-old girl with prodigious
intuition, the other an ageing police chief.
Life has taught both to trust their instincts, and both have doubt in
their gut. As their fears grow stronger,
and begin to filter through the community, a gradual shift takes place; and
Ouma’s legacy develops from a town-wide commitment to preserve her memory, to a
communal quest to uncover the truth . . .
The Savage Hour is by Elaine
Proctor and is due to be published in June 2014.
Cairo is by Chris Womersley and is due to be published in February 2014. Who wants to be the same as everyone else? You don't want to be ordinary, do you? At 18, Tom escapes ordinariness in small town
Australia for Melbourne and a flat in a strange block named Cairo. There he meets the magnetic Max Cheever, and
is drawn into his circle of bohemian artists and dreamers. Liberating him from the bourgeois aspirations
of university, they fill his world with affection, passion, opinion and a
feeling of belonging he never had before.
But all is not as idyllic as it seems.
Max is prepared to break all the rules to live freely, and soon Tom is
ensnared in his plot to steal a million dollar Picasso masterpiece. Among undependable forgers and violent art
dealers, Tom trusts only in Max - even as he falls hopelessly in love with his
beautiful wife...For in all the lessons he learns this summer, the greatest one
will be to identify what is real - from what is fake.
The Truth about the Harry
Quebert Affair by Joël Dicker and it is due to be published in May 2014. August 30, 1975. The day of the disappearance. The day a small New Hampshire town lost its
innocence. That summer Harry Quebert
fell in love with fifteen-year-old Nola Kellergan. Thirty-three years later, her body is dug up
from his yard along with a manuscript copy of his career-defining novel. Quebert is the only suspect. Marcus Goldman - Quebert's most gifted
protégé - throws off his writer's block to save his mentor from the electric
chair. Solving the case and penning a
new bestseller soon blur together. As
his book begins to take on a life of its own, the nation is gripped by the
mystery of 'The Girl Who Touched the Heart of America'. But with Nola, in death as in life, nothing
is ever as it seems.
The
Caravaggio Conspiracy is by Alex Connor and is due to be published in January
2014. 1608. Michelangelo Merisi da
Caravaggio, the greatest Italian painter of his day, is expelled from the Order
of the Knights of Malta. Subject to a
clandestine hearing, his crime remains a closely guarded secret. 2014. Two bodies are found in a London art gallery
- stripped naked, necks bound with wire and legs obscenely contorted. They are twin brothers - successful art
dealers - their brutal murder linked to the mysterious disappearance of two
paintings by the master Caravaggio. Investigators
are confounded, and it falls to art expert Gil Eckhart to identify the killer
before he slays again. But as the search
for clues takes him from the glamorous skyline of New York to the fetid
catacombs of Palermo, Eckhart finds that in the high-stakes world of art, good
and evil are often tarred with the same, blood-soaked, brush.
Hong
Kong, August 2017. On the eve of a
crisis summit for world economic leaders, two Chinese Methodist ministers are
killed in an apparently motiveless execution in Hong Kong's financial district. Luck makes Detective Alex Soong one of the
first officers at the scene. Yet Soong
begins to suspect his involvement to be more than incidental, and the crime
itself more than a senseless assassination: an instinct that is proven correct
when Soong is contacted by a mysterious figure, and more massacres follow. With the eyes of the world's media fixed on
Hong Kong, Soong must race to intercept his tormentor, and thwart a conspiracy
born from one of the bloodiest confrontations of China's past, which now
threatens to destroy a fragile world order.
Emperors Once More is by
Duncan Jepson and is due to be published in March 2014.
Murder is by Sarah Pinborough and is due to be published in May 2014. Dr Bond is back . . . and a trail of gruesome
murders leads to his front door. Dr
Thomas Bond, Police Surgeon, is still recovering from the events of the
previous year when Jack the Ripper haunted the streets of London – and a more
malign enemy hid in his shadow. Bond and
the others who worked on the gruesome case are still stalked by its legacies,
both psychological and tangible. But now
the bodies of children are being pulled from the Thames . . . and Bond is about
to become inextricably linked with an uncanny, undying enemy.
London,
November 1968. Judy Garland is
performing drunk at the Palladium.
Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen is working late at Marylebone CID. Called to a gas explosion in Maida Vale,
Breen finds a shock buried beneath the rubble.
Mind-bending paintings by Bridget Riley and Peter Blakes – and the
garrotted body of one Jacob Lakin: drug user, and boyfriend to ‘Groovy Bob’
Fraser. Fraser – Pop Art Gallery owner
and friend to the Stones – is a god in a world Breen has never understood. He tips Breen off to the squat where Lakin’s
dealer lives, but Breen’s only chance of infiltrating is WPC Helen Tozer. She’s working out her notice, and their brief
love affair seems to have died. But she
can get the hippies to talk, and one woman – a victim of free love – begins to
trust in her. For even the young and
beautiful, have dark secrets. And on the
search for Lakin’s killer, they risk trespassing too far into a new and
treacherous world. House of Flies is by
William Shaw and is due to be published in June 2014.
Talking to Ghosts is by Herve Le Corre and is due to be published in
February 2014. Police Inspector Vilar is
a broken man. His son was snatched away
at the school gate and his marriage collapsed soon after. Now he keeps watch outside the school every
morning, his 9mm pistol resting on the passenger seat. A case comes his way - Victor, a troubled
teenager, returns home from school to find his mother's lifeless body, savagely
beaten, almost unrecognisable. As Victor
is sent first to a care home, then to a foster family, Vilar hits a familiar
brick wall: nothing stolen, no fingerprints, no D.N.A. Finally the case begins to develop, but in an
altogether more sinister direction. A
stalker is watching Victor from the shadows, while Vilar receives increasingly
threatening phone calls about his son. The
hunter has become the hunted, and Vilar begins to realise that this
investigation will strike very close to home.
When
nightfall’s, fear spreads...The Lake District: a wild landscape, rife with stories. Detectives Zoe Barnes and Sam Taylor are
called to investigate the disappearance of two children. But they quickly realise they have been drawn
into a complex and unnerving case that hides a much darker intent: as they dig
deeper, whispers grow of a community hiding a deadly secret - and talk of
witches, the like of which hasn't been heard since the seventeenth century, is
spreading. Zoe and Sam will have to work
fast to save lives; but in this atmosphere of fear and mistrust, can they even
rely on each other? A Cry in the Night is by Tom Grieves and is due to be published in
January 2014.
The Last Patient is the first in a crime series about the new, disillusioned
Robin Hood of Skid Row, Los Angeles. Dr
Adam Knox returns from the war in Afghanistan a little rougher, a little wiser
and a lot more inclined to kick it to the ones at the top. He sets up a clinic in Los Angeles’ most
notorious district, tending to the vagrant and the vulnerable. A Romanian woman and her son are on the run from
traffickers; but their freedom comes at a price – too high, or too deadly – to
pay. Knox thinks he can help. But he’s also got a private commission from a
richer patient – a dubious businessman willing to spend extra for his
discretion. Playing one team against
another, gangsters and traffickers, Knox must keep his wits scalpel–sharp. The
Last Patient is by Peter Spiegelman and is due to be published in May 2014.
The Outcast Dead is by Elly Griffiths and is due to be published in
January 2014. Forensic
archaeologist
Ruth Galloway has excavated a body from the grounds of Norwich Castle, a
forbidding edifice that was once a prison.
She believes the body may be that of infamous Victorian murderess Jemima
Green. Called Mother Hook for her
claw-like hand, Jemima was hanged in 1867 for the murder of five children in
her care. DCI Harry Nelson has no time
for long-dead killers. Immersed in the
case of three infants found dead, one after the other, in their King's Lynn
home, he's convinced that a family member is responsible, though others on his
team think differently. Then a child
goes missing. Could the abduction be
linked to the long-dead Mother Hook? Ruth
is pulled into the case, and back towards Nelson.
Two
months after the suspicious and much-publicized death of his father on the
island of Martha's Vineyard, it is taking all of Adam Blaine's character to
suture the deep wounds - both within his family and himself - torn open by the
tragedy. Moreover, as the court inquest
into Benjamin Blaine's death continues, it is taking all of Adam's cunning to
protect
those closest to him from figures who still suspect that Adam's father
was murdered by one of his kin. But the
sternest test of all is Adam's proximity to Carla Pacelli - his late father's mistress;
and a woman who, despite being pivotal to his family's plight, Adam finds
himself increasingly drawn to. The
closer he gets to this beautiful, mysterious woman, the further Adam feels from
his troubles. Yet the closer he also
comes to revealing the secrets he's strived to conceal, and condemning the
people he's so hard fought to protect. Eden in Winter is by Richard North
Patterson and is due to be published in March 2014.
Into A Raging Blaze is the debut novel by Andreas Norman and is due to be
published in February 2014. Carina Dymek
is on a fast track for promotion at the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
when she is approached by a stranger and given a USB stick containing a report
to circulate in her department. Unwittingly,
she delivers a time bomb of classified information that destroys her career and
puts her on the radar of the security service, SAPO. Tasked with discovering how Dymek gained
access to the confidential report, the formidable Bente Jensen of SAPO begins
investigating her background and finds that Dymek's boyfriend Jamal is an
Egyptian Swedish national. But British
MI6 have a vested interest in the leak, and they're quick to muscle in. When they uncover evidence that links Jamal's
family to an extreme faction within the Muslim Brotherhood, SAPO is forced to
bow to their command to track him down. As
Bente liaises with the ruthless MI6, she becomes closer to the secretive plans
contained in that leaked report: plans for a Europe-wide Intelligence Service. She begins to understand that Dymek is a red
herring in a far more complex plot: one of surveillance corruption, national
security and global anti-terrorism.
Bruno,
chef de police in the French town of St Denis, receives a call from an
undercover cop only hours before his body is discovered. But Bruno’s sometime boss and rival, the Brigadier,
doesn’t see this as a priority – there are bigger issues at stake. Meanwhile, a Muslim youth named Sami turns up
at a French army base in Afghanistan hoping to get to St Denis, and an American
woman appears in the town with a warrant for Sami’s extradition. Bruno must unravel these mysteries and find
his own way to protect his town and its people.
Children of War is by Peter
Walker and is due to be published in June 2014.
The Second Deadly Sin is by Åsa Larsson and is due to be published in
January 2014. At the end of a deadly
bear hunt across the wilderness of Northern Sweden, the successful hunters are
shaken by a horrifying discovery. Across
in Kurravaara, a woman is murdered with horrific brutality: crude abuse
scrawled above her bloodied bed, her young grandson nowhere to be found. Only Rebecka Martinsson sees a connection. Dropped from the case thanks to a jealous
rival, she now stands alone against a killer who brings death to young and old,
spawned by a horrifying crime that festers after one hundred years on ice.
For
Commandant Verhoeven life is beautiful: he is happily married, expecting his
first child with the lovely Irene. However,
his blissful existence is punctured by a murder of unprecedented savagery. Worse still, the press seem to have it in for
him - his every move is headline news. When
he discovers that the killer has killed before - that each murder is a homage
to a classic crime novel - the fourth estate are quick to coin a nickname...The
Novelist...With both men in the public eye, the case develops into a personal
duel, each hell-bent on outsmarting the other.
There can only be one winner - whoever has the least to lose... Irène is by Pierre Lemaitre and is due
to be published in February 2014.
Judges is three crime stories by Italy’s most renowned crime
writers Camilleri, best known for the Inspector Montalbano series, weaves a
tale of a Turin judge who moves to a small Sicilian town, and tackles both
entrenched mafia corruption and a string of culinary delicacies. Lucarelli brings us a far darker tale. “La
Bambina” is a beautiful young judge, whose attempts to expose the complicity
of the secret service in money laundering lead to multiple attempts on her
life, and a desperate struggle for justice.
De Cataldo, a judge himself, tells a tale of an unending feud between a
prosecutor and a mayor, set against the background of murder, sleaze and
impenetrable bureaucracy. Judges is due to be published in May
2014.
In
Killing Well by Marco Malvaldi Italy’s
first celebrity chef turns detective to save the life of a Tuscan
aristocrat. The nineteenth century is
drawing to a close. Pellegrino Artusi
has travelled the length and breadth of Italy compiling his masterpiece, The Science of Cooking and The Art of Eating
Well. When Baron Romualdo Bonaiuti
invites him to his Tuscan home to compare notes with his kitchen staff, he’s quite
looking forward to a break. On arrival,
he finds everything one might expect: a dramatic Tuscan castle, eccentric
aristocrats, spinster aunts and a mysterious guest. Not to mention a murdered butler. Faced with a menagerie of suspects, the local
constabulary are baffled. But when the
Baron himself is the target of a second murder attempt, Pellegrino realises he
may need to put his celebrated culinary skills to use to find the killer. Killing
Well is due to be published in June
2014.
Dodger of the Dials is by James Benmore and is due to be published in May
2014. Two years on from the events of
Dodger, Jack Dawkins is back as top-sawyer with his own gang of petty thieves
from Seven Dials. But crime in London has
become a serious business – and when Jack needs protection, he soon finds
himself out of his depth and facing the gallows for murder. The evidence against him seems
insurmountable, until a young reporter by the name of Oliver Twist takes up his
cause. After freeing Jack from gaol, the
pair must bury their past differences and join forces to hunt down the men who
framed Jack and stole that which he treasures most.
