Books to look forward to from Hodder & Stoughton and Mulholland Books

In London's smoky taverns, a conspiracy is brewing: a group of wealthy young Catholic dissidents plot to assassinate Elizabeth, free Mary Queen of Scots - and open England to Spanish invasion.  But the conspirators have been infiltrated by Sir Francis Walsingham's top intelligencer, John Shakespeare. Shakespeare, however, is torn: the woman he loves stands accused of murder.  In a desperate race against time he must save her from the noose and the realm from treachery.  And then it dawns that both investigations are inextricably linked - by corruption very close to the seat of power ... Holy Spy is by Rory Clements and is due to be published in February 2015.

After moving with her family from London to Devon, Justine Merrison notices that her daughter Ellen is growing increasingly withdrawn.  When probed, Ellen tells Justine that her best friend at her new school, George Donbavand, has been unfairly expelled.  But when Justine investigates, the school’s headmistress tells her that she must be mistaken: George Donbavand has not been expelled, because there has never been a boy with that name at the school.  Ellen insists that George is real, but the teachers suddenly appear very nervous - as if they're hiding something.  And then the phone calls start.  Someone keeps ringing Justine demanding that she stop trying to scare and intimidate them.  But what's even stranger is that the mystery caller addresses Justine as 'Sandie', which is not and has never been her name...  A Game for all the Family is by Sophie Hannah and is due to be published in April 2015.

In the 1970s, a terrifying serial killer stalked the streets of Tynemouth.  The press called him the Joker.  The crimes stopped - but the man was never caught.  And now he's back.  A body has been found in a sleazy motel room, murdered in exactly the same way as the Joker's first victims.  Is it a copycat?  A trick?  Or is the Joker at work once more?  It's only DI Jack Brady's first day back - and this will be his most twisted case yet.  As Brady digs into both the old murders and the new, he must confront revenge, betrayal, love and lies...and a truly ruthless killer.  Dead Man Walking is by Danielle Ramsay and is due to be published in March 2015.

Last Words is by Michael Koryta and is due to be published in June 2015.  Still mourning the death of his wife, private investigator Mark Novak accepts a case that may be his undoing.  On same day his wife died, the body of a teenage girl was pulled from the extensive and perilous cave system beneath Southern Indiana.  Now the man who rescued the girl, who was believed to be her killer, begs Novak uncover what really happened.  The only problem is in small-town Midwest, cold cases stay cold.  Garrison is much like any place in America, proud and fortified against outsiders.  So Mark is forced to delve beneath the town's secrets, and more frighteningly match wits with the man who knows the caverns better than anyone.  A man who seemed to lose his mind.  A man who seems to know Mark Novak all too well.

Solitude Creek is by Jeffery Deaver and is due to be published in May 2015.  As an investigator with the California Bureau of Investigation, Kathryn Dance is used to putting criminals behind bars.  But when she's suspended after a dangerous gang member she interviews - and deems innocent - is proven guilty and escapes in a violent shoot out, she begins to question her judgement.  With her badge removed and forced to act as a consultant, Dance must turn her hand to another pressing case: a terrifying stampede of panicked music fans at a concert venue which left half a dozen people dead.  When her investigations suggest that the stampede was deliberately instigated by assailant Anthony Marsh - a hired criminal renowned for using people's herd mentality as a weapon - Dance must use her skills to aid Chief Detective Michael O'Neil in a race against the clock to find Marsh before he makes his next deadly strike.

Gone is by Rebecca Muddiman and is due to be published in January 2015.  250,000 people go missing in the UK every year.  91% of those reported to police are found within 48 hours.  99% of cases are solved within a year.  And 1% stay gone.  Eleven years ago, troubled teenager Emma Thorley went missing.  The police assumed she was a runaway.  But now a body has been found in woods near Blyth.  DI Michael Gardner knows he didn't take Emma's disappearance seriously enough back then, and is determined to make up for it now.  But when he and DS Nicola Freeman start to reinvestigate, they discover that nothing is as simple as it seems.  As news of the discovery travels, the past will come back to haunt all those involved.  Because there are consequences when good people do bad things, and some secrets cannot stay buried forever...

The Passage and Lost.  Four days into a five-day singles cruise on the Gulf of Mexico, the ageing ship Beautiful Dreamer stops dead in the water.  With no electricity and no cellular signals, the passengers and crew have no way to call for help.  But everyone is certain that rescue teams will come looking for them soon.  All they have to do is wait.  That is, until the toilets stop working and the food begins to run out.  When the body of a woman is discovered in her cabin the passengers start to panic.  There's a murderer on board the Beautiful Dreamer...and maybe something worse.  Day Four is by Sarah Lotz and is due to be published in April 2015.

Young Willie is on the run, having fled his Texas home when an infamous local landowner murdered his father.  A man named Loving takes him in and trains him in the fine arts of shooting, riding, reading, and gardening.  When Loving dies, Willie renames himself Nat Love in tribute to his mentor and heads west.  In Deadwood, South Dakota Territory, Nat becomes a Buffalo Soldier and is befriended by Wild Bill Hickok.  After winning a famous shooting match, Nat's peerless marksmanship and charm earn him the nickname Deadwood Dick, as well as a beautiful bride.  But the hellhounds are still on his trail, and they brutally attack Nat Love's wife, driving him to a final, deadly showdown that will be one for the history books.  Paradise Sky is by Joe R Lansdale and is due to be published in June 2015.

London,  1728.  A young man is dragged to the Tyburn gallows.  His name is Tom Hawkins and he is innocent.  Somehow he has to prove it, before the noose tightens around his neck.  It’s all Tom’s fault.  He should never been told the most dangerous criminal in London that he was looking for adventure.  He should never have offered to help the king’s mistress with her brutal husband.  And most of all, he should never have trusted the calculating Queen.  She promises a royal pardon if he holds his tongue, but there is nothing more silent than a hanged man.  The currently untitled novel by Antonia Hodgson is due to be  published in February 2015.

When a married couple is found dead in their Jacuzzi and their adopted five year old daughter has vanished, Inspector Malin Fors, the troubled but brilliant star of the Linköping police force, is put in charge of the case.  But this a haunting case where the borders have become blurred: those between the living and the dead, between good and evil.  As the investigation forces Malin to confront his own demons, will she hold out long enough to find the missing girl before it’s too late? Water Angels is by Mons Kallentoft and is due to be published in April 2015.

Afraid is by Mandasue Heller and is due to be published in January 2015.  When fifteen-year-old Skye's mother finally does something so shocking that it can't be hushed up, the police turn her over to the social workers - and that's when the nightmare begins.  No one will let her talk to her father; the woman who is supposed to be helping her dumps her in a terrifying 'home' that's more like a jail.  But she still has one friend to turn to: the sympathetic girl she's met in an internet chat room, the one who seems to have a home life as unhappy as Skye's.  And Jade offers her a safe place to stay ...Alone in Manchester, nearly penniless, Skye is willing to trust Jade.  Even when it isn't Jade who turns up at the rendezvous, but a grown-up man who says he's Jade's brother ...

Deadly Election by Lindsey Davis is due to be published in April 2015.  We first met Flavia Albia, Falco's feisty adopted daughter, in The Ides of April.  Albia is a remarkable woman in what is very much a man's world: young, widowed and fiercely independent, she lives alone on the Aventine Hill in Rome and makes a good living as a hired investigator.  An outsider in more ways than one, Albia has unique insight into life in ancient Rome, and she puts it to good use going places no man could go, and asking questions no man could ask.  When a body is discovered inside a large chest that's about to go under the hammer at the Falco family auction house, Albia throws herself into the investigation.  For one thing, it'd be nice to beat her adoptive father at his own game.  For another, it'll give her yet another chance to work with Manlius Faustus, the man she just can't quite get enough of.  But when Faustus then invites her to get involved in the Roman elections, Albia discovers links between the politician they're working for and the murder she's investigating.  And those links implicate none other than Faustus. 

The 16th Amendment to the Constitution legalized federal income tax, but what if there were problems with the 1913 ratification of that amendment?  Problems that call into question decades of tax collecting, and could even bring down the US economy. Cotton Malone, once a member of an elite intelligence division within the Justice Department known as the Magellan Billet, is now retired.  But when his former-boss, Stephanie Nelle, asks him to track a rogue North Korean who may have acquired some top secret Treasury Department files-the kind that could bring the United States to its knees-Malone is vaulted into a harrowing twenty-four-hour chase that begins on the water in Venice and ends in the remote highlands of Croatia. The Patriot Threat is by Steve Berry and is due to be published in May 2015.

Swedish Lapland: 1717; a group of disparate settlers struggles to forge a new life in the

shadow of the grim mountain Blackasen whose dark mythology lies at odds with the repressive, almost feudal control exerted by the church.  Into this setting, Maija, her husband, and two daughters arrive, yearning to forget the traumas that caused them to abandon their native Finland and start anew.  Not long after their arrival, their teenage daughter Frederika stumbles across the savagely mutilated body of a fellow settler, Eriksson, in a picturesque glade.  The locals are quick to dismiss the culprit as wolf or bear.  Maija, however, is unconvinced and compelled by the ghosts of her past she determines to investigate a murder.  As the seasons change and a harsh winter known as a 'Wolf Winter' descends, Maija begins a dangerous quest to unearth the secrets that both her neighbours and the church have conspired to bury. Now as the snow begins to fall, she will come to know the full cost of survival demanded from those who would live in the shadow of Blackasen - and the terrible truth about those who have paid the price. Wolf Winter is by Cecilia Ekbäck and is due to be published in January 2015.

Ten ears after the peace deal between Britain and Germany, international tensions are rearing their heads.  Especially in Africa, where the British, Portuguese and expanding German colonies rub against each other.  Burton Cole is back in England, desperate to find his lover, Madeleine.  When he discovers that her husband has had her deported to Madagaskar, the African island converted by the Nazis into a vast prison camp for the Jews, he jumps at the chance to join a secret mission to go there and make contact with Jewish nuclear scientists.  But Burton is heading into more danger than he could possibly imagine.  The Madagaskar Plan is by Guy Saville and is due to be published in July 2015.

Beecher White, a humble archivist at the U.S. National Archives by day, has a secret: he belongs to the Culper Ring, a network of spies founded by George Washington during the American Revolution.  Over the course of his time working for the Culper Ring, White has discovered countless secrets and saved more lives than he knows - including the President's.  And then, one day, White makes an alarming discovery on the White House grounds: a severed arm buried in the Rose Garden.  As he investigates, he realizes it's a message...one that may have dire repercussions for the President.  But that's not all - the message also turns Beecher's personal life upside-down, pointing him towards the dark truth about his father's death.  The President’s Shadow is by Brad Meltzer and is due to be published in June 2015.

Every student needs a part-time job.  Hers is hunting criminals.  Sarie Holland is a good kid.  An Honours student.  She doesn't even drink.  So when a narcotics cop busts her while she's doing a favour for a friend, she has a lot to lose.  Desperate to avoid destroying her future, Sarie agrees to become a CI - a confidential informant.  Armed only with a notebook, she turns out to be as good at catching criminals as she is at passing tests.  But it's going to take more than one nineteen-year-old to clean up Philadelphia.  Soon Sarie is caught in the middle of a power struggle between corrupt cops and warring gangs, with nothing on her side but stubbornness and smarts.  Which is bad news for both the police and the underworld.  Because when it comes to payback, CI #137 turns out to be a very fast learner...  Canary is by Duane Swierczynski and is due to be published in February 2015.

They found the boy by the swimming pool, dolls floating on its surface.  Inside the house, his professor lay dead.  But Hugo claims to remember nothing...and his mother is one of Commandant Servaz's oldest friends.  When Servaz receives Marianne's desperate phone call, he is drawn back to Marsac - the town where he studied, and where his daughter is now at university too.  It brings back memories...and as more people die in strange and unsettling circumstances, it becomes clear that if he is to close the case, Servaz must reopen old and terrible wounds.  It will be his most dangerous - and his most personal - investigation yet. A Song for Drowned Souls is by Bernard Minier and is due to be published in June 2015.

Black River is by Tom Harper and is due to be published in May 2015.  When Kel MacDonald joins an expedition looking for a legendary lost city in the Peruvian Amazon, he's expecting the adventure of a lifetime.  But things are not what they seem.  Paramilitaries, drug cartels, and wildcat prospectors all want what the jungle has to offer - while untamed local tribes will fight desperately to protect their way of life.  Maps of the region have been doctored.  And what exactly happened to the previous expedition, a government vaccination program that went upriver and never returned?  Soon finding the lost city is the least of their troubles.  The jungle hides deadly secrets that must be hidden at all costs.  And someone in the group wants to make sure they never get out.

In the midst of post-war Boston two old friends are trying to scrape a living.  WWII veteran

Cal is getting by: heroin addict Dante is trying – and mostly failing –to kick the habit.  But when the girl they fought over in their hardscrabble youth is found murdered, they take it upon themselves to track down her killer.  Their investigation leads them from the drug-ravaged neighbourhood they know to gangsters and corrupt politicians.  And as their quest gets ever more dangerous, it seems clear that even if they can find answers, they may end up losing themselves.  Serpents in the Cold is by Thomas O’Malley & Douglas Graham Purdy and is due to be published in January 2015.

Having survived his assignment in Arabia, imperial agent Cassius Corbulo now spends most of his time on women and wine.  But, after narrowly escaping an assassination attempt, Cassius is called back into action and sent north, tasked with smashing a counterfeiting gang.  After tracking the criminals to the city of Berytus, Cassius’s investigations are hampered by civil unrest and uncooperative officials.  Under pressure from his superiors, Cassius closes in on the counterfeiters.  But the gang will stop at nothing to protect their profits, leading Cassius and his companions in a deadly pursuit across the slopes of Mount Lebanon.  Agent of Rome: The Emperor’s Silver is by Nick Brown and is due to be published in June 2015.

At the Ruin of the World is by John Henry Clay and is due to be published in May 2015.  The Roman Empire is on the brink of extinction.  This is felt most keenly in Gaul, which is besieged on all sides by barbarians: the Huns and the Goths.  As the Empire starts to crumble, enemies to approach and battles begin to be fought, the lives of four people are drawn into this conflict: the poet and courtier Sidonius, soldier Ecdicius, low-born but crafty Arvandus, and the beautiful but enigmatic Attica.

It's Ella's senior year of high school and she and her best friend Linds plan to make it the best year ever.  At Brock Cochran's end of summer pool party, the girls vow to have as much fun as possible before they head off to different colleges in the fall.  But when Ella is mysteriously attacked on her way home from the party, everything changes.  Ella's carefree senior year plans disintegrate as she finds herself at the centre of an attempted murder investigation.  Ella is determined to move on; to get her life back to normal, but she can't seem to shake the feeling that she's still being watched.  Suddenly, the people closest to her seem the most suspicious, like the elusive Jensen Carver.  In her seemingly safe West Virginia town, Ella starts to wonder who she can actually trust.  The Dead List is by Jennifer L Armentrout and is due to be published in April 2015.

Lizzie Snow was first introduced in the final book of Sarah Graves's previous series, Bat in the Belfry, in which she helped Jake Tiptree find who killed a girl and left her body in a church steeple.  Now Lizzie has taken over as Eastport's police chief, and is quickly finding the job - and her life - more complicated than she expected.  Then she learns that someone seems to be killing retired detectives in the state... and that she has been followed from Boston to Maine by a mysterious stalker whose chilling intentions will drive her to the edge.  Winter at the Door is due to be published in January 2015.

A historical novel of suspense, seasoned with recipes and remedies for broken hearts, The Penny Heart draws on age-old themes of cooking, trickery and revenge.  Manchester 1809.  Would-be industrialist Michael Croxon chases young street hawker Mary Jebb into a wretched warren after she cons his brother out of his money.  In an unguarded moment he develops a suppressed attraction to the girl.  After he bears witness in court against her, Mary sends him a Penny Heart token from the prison hulks bearing a strange verse, the reverse announcing that she will be transported for 7 years.  Two years later, in order to build a manufactory, Michael has married awkward Jane Moore, who is overjoyed at her luck, but soon disappointed to learn it was only to gain her land.  Meanwhile, Mary escapes from Botany Bay to be shipwrecked on the wild coast of New Zealand, where she loses her lover and the last of her scruples.  Using her conning skills, Mary returns home and adopts the identity of 'Peg', the Croxon's cook at their lonely Hall.  After Mary helps Jane compile a book of husband-pleasing recipes, Jane's new womanly wiles seem to earn Michael's affection.  But when Jane discovers two matching Penny Heart love tokens that tell of banishment to the ends of the earth, she enters a world of deceit and double-crossing, and uncovers a tale of revenge that culminates in murder.  The Penny Heart is by Martine Bailey and is due to be published in May 2015.

Every life is uncertain.  Every choice is a danger.  Set on the dark side of Los Angeles, this is a masterful collection of edge-of-your-seat tales: a prison guard must protect an inmate being tried for heinous crimes.  A father and son set out to rescue a young couple trapped during a wildfire after they cross the border.  An ex-con trying to make good as a security guard stumbles onto a burglary plot.  A young father must submit to blackmail to protect the fragile life he's built.  Sweet Nothing is by Richard Lange and is an intense and gripping journey through real lives with big problems.  It is due to be published in February 2015.

Lives Lost is by Britta Bolt and is due to be published in June 2015.  A minute can make all the difference...Pieter Posthumus is enjoying a quiet drink in his favourite bar when the screaming starts.  A minute later, the owner of the guesthouse next-door rushes in: one of her tenants has been murdered.  Marloes, the guesthouse owner, is an odd but kind soul.  Posthumus cannot believe it when she is arrested - for both her tenant Zig's murder and another death years before.  He knows there are questions unanswered: what is the link between the two cases?  Why are people so keen to think Marloes is guilty?  And why did Zig paint just one picture every year - a copy of a Dutch master, but with one peculiar twist?  As his investigation progresses, he comes to see that a few minutes can mean all the difference in the world: between saving a life and taking one; between innocence and guilt.  And that sometimes asking questions leads to a truth that's hard to bear.

Northern Ireland, 1993.  For high-flying MI5 officer Avery Chance the real war has only just

begun.  When Chance is abducted by the IRA's notorious Nutting Squad, her hopes lie in the hands of a young SAS recruit who must risk everything to bring her home.  Twenty years after his act of self-sacrifice in Belfast ex-SAS legend John Bald is a scarred shadow of his former self.  But when a face from the past appears and rescues him from deep trouble, Bald is offered one last shot at redemption.  His target is Kurt Pretorius, a ruthless mercenary operating deep in the wilds of war-ravaged Somali.  In a world where rogue mercenaries operate beyond the reach of the law, Kurt Pretorius has transformed himself into a god.  It is up to Bald to stop Pretorius before he turns Somalia into a terrorist haven.  But Bald quickly finds himself sucked into a twisted game of survival, where the stakes could not be higher - and the price of failure is his life...With time running out, Bald must kill Pretorius before he brings down everyone around him.  It's a mission Bald was born to do.  Because sometimes, the only way to beat your deadliest enemy...is to be like your deadliest enemy. Silent Kill is by Chris Ryan and is due to be published in January 2015.