Books to Look Forward to From Pan Macmillian

The Mourner is by Susan Wilkins and is due to be published in May 2015.  If she can't get justice, will she settle for vengeance?  Kaz Phelps has escaped her brother and her criminal past to become an anonymous art student in Glasgow.  But can life under the witness protection scheme ever give her the freedom she craves?  Banged up and brooding, Joey Phelps faces thirty years behind bars.  Still, with cash and connections on the outside, can an overstretched prison system really contain him?  Helen Warner, once Kaz's lawyer and lover, is a rising star in Parliament.  But has she made the kind of enemies who have no regard for the democratic process, or even the law?  Ousted from the police and paralysed by tragic personal loss, Nicci Armstrong is in danger of going under.  Can a job she doesn't want with a private security firm help her to put her life back on track?  A murder dressed up as suicide and corruption that goes to the heart of government unite ex-cop and ex-con in a deadly quest to learn the truth.  What they discover proves what both have always known - villainy is rife on both sides of the law.

DI Jessica Daniel is not having a good week.  Her wallet's been nicked, the refurbished incident room is already falling apart, and a new football-mad constable is driving her crazy.  She also has bigger things on her mind.  A student's body has been dumped in a wheelie bin at the back of a university building, with a vague link to an Olympic medallist and a theory that it could have been an induction, which went wrong.  There's the tattooed shop raider who has her team stumped; someone attacking lone women; a chief inspector who seems to have a problem with her; and someone putting letters through her front door insisting that she's caught 'the wrong man'.  Worlds are colliding for Jessica - and, if she's not careful, someone close to her might not make it out in one piece.  Scarred for Life is by Kerry Wilkinson and is due to be published in January 2015.

The Wronged Girl is by David Hewson and is due to be published in May 2015.  Sinterklaas, a beaming, friendly saint with a white beard, was set to mark his arrival in Amsterdam with a parade so celebrated it would be watched live on television throughout the Netherlands.  Today the crowds would run into three hundred thousand or more, and the police presence top four figures.  The city centre was closed to all traffic as a golden barge bore Sinterklaas down the Amstel river, surrounded by a throng of private boats full of families trying to get close.’  Amsterdam is bursting at the seams with children trying to get a glimpse of their hero and families enjoying the occasion.  The police are out in force, struggling to manage the crowds on one of the busiest days of the year.  Brigadier Pieter Vos is on duty with his young assistant, Laura Bakker, when the first grenade hits.  As Sinterklaas prepares to address the crowds a terrorist outrage grips the heart of the city.  In the chaos a young girl wearing a pink jacket is kidnapped.  But the abducted child isn't the daughter of an Amsterdam aristocrat as the terrorists first thought.  She's the daughter of an impoverished Georgian prostitute, friendless and trapped in the web of vice that is Amsterdam's Red Light District.  As the security forces and the police clash over the ensuing investigation the perpetrator's horrifying demands become clear.  Vos, trapped in a turf war with state intelligence, tries to unravel a conspiracy that reaches from the brothels of the city to the hierarchy of the security services.  And at its heart lies an eight-year-old girl, snatched from a loving mother then ferried from one criminal lair to the next, her life in the balance as Vos and Laura Bakker struggle to uncover the shocking truth behind her abduction.  What is the life of one immigrant child worth in the greater political game emerging around them?

From father to daughter.  From sister to brother.  The legacy is passed on.  Drug dealer

Jorge is just out of prison but already bored with his new existence selling lattes and cappuccinos at a cafe.  Who wouldn’t be?  But big money looms, if he can pull off an audacious last heist.  What he doesn’t know is that the police are already closing in: an undercover investigator has wormed his way deep into Stockholm’s criminal circles, close to Jorge.  And also close to JW, the part-time student, part-time cab driver who turned to crime – and got in over his head – in order to keep himself in with a rich party crowd. At the same time, someone is trying to take down the Godfather himself, Radovan Kranjic.  What would Stockholm be like with Radovan gone?  Who would be Stockholm’s new king – or queen – of crime?  As the novel unfurls, answers will be found amid the voracious hunt for money, power, and a carefree life.  The goal is easy – and the life deluxe.  Life Deluxe is by Jens Lapidus and is due to be published in February 2015.

Amos Decker is a former professional football player whose career was ended by a terrible injury.  Now a police detective, Amos is still haunted by a side effect from the accident he can never forget.  One night Decker comes home from a stakeout to find his wife, young daughter and brother-in-law horrifically murdered.  Obviously scarred and nearly broken, Decker has to use his skills as a detective and his unusual brain capacity to try and catch the monster who killed his family.  The untitled David Baldacci novel is due to be published in April 2015

Never Look Back is by Clare Donoghue and is due to be published in March 2015.  DS Jane Bennett takes charge of South London’s Lewisham murder squad following the temporary suspension of her boss, DI Mike Lockyer.  His involvement with a female witness resulted in her murder.  Jane is sent to a site in Elmstead Woods where she stumbles upon a sinister murder scene.  It seems that the body is that of missing university student, Maggie Hungerford.  Her killer recorded her last moments, until the game lost its thrill . . . Two men admit to having had a sexual relationship with Maggie.  Both deny murder.  Someone is lying.  Lockyer returns to work and is shocked into supporting Bennett in a case where it is evident that their hunt is for a killer with a mind so twisted that he, or she, is likely to stop at nothing.

What Doesn’t Kill Her is by Carla Norton and is due to be published in May 2015.  Reeve is moving closer to the normal life she so craves, no longer defined by the kidnapping that changed her life.  But when her abductor, Daryl Wayne Flint, escapes from a hospital for the criminally insane, Reeve’s newfound strength and tranquillity are about to be tested in ways neither she nor Flint could have imagined.

Death in a Rainy Season is by Anna Jaquiery and is due to be published in April 2015.  When a French man is found brutally murdered in the Cambodian city of Phnom Penh, Commandant Serge Morel finds his holiday drawn to an abrupt halt.  The victim - Hugo Quercy - was the dynamic head of a humanitarian organisation, which looked after the area's troubled local teenagers.  But what was Quercy doing in a hotel room under a false name?  What is the significance of his recent investigations into land grabs in the area?  And who broke into his house the night of the murder, leaving behind a trail of bloody footprints? 

A lost cipher.  A race against time to decode it.  Marine archaeologists Kate Wetherall and Lou Bates are diving off Howland Island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, when a torpedo-shaped object hurtles through the water towards them; the fuselage of Amelia Earhart's lost plane.  In the cockpit, they find a corroded metal cylinder the size of a baton.  Landing back on US soil, Kate and Lou are arrested and interrogated by special forces, and the cylinder confiscated.  Behind the arrests is Glena Buckingham, CEO of the powerful energy conglomerate Eurenergy, as she too has discovered that the wrecked plane may have held precious secret cargo.  Meanwhile, an extraordinary piece of footage has come to light - of Einstein talking about a radical new defence technology he had been working on.  Whoever can decrypt the lost cipher, which holds the key to Einstein's secret defence technology, could hold the key to global power.  The Einstein Code is by Tom West and is due to be published in March 2015.

Satellite People is by Hans Olav Lahlum and is due to be published in February 2015.  Oslo, 1969.  When a wealthy man collapses and dies during a dinner party, Norwegian Police Inspector Kolbjorn Kristiansen, known as K2, is left shaken.  For the victim, Magdalon Schelderup, a multimillionaire businessman and former resistance fighter, had contacted him only the day before, fearing for his life.  It soon becomes clear that every one of Schelderup's ten dinner guests is a suspect in the case.  The businessman was disliked, even despised, by many of those close to him; and his recently revised Will may have set events in motion.  But which of the guests - from his current and former wives and three children to his attractive secretary and old cohorts in the resistance - had the greatest motive for murder?  With the inestimable help of Patricia - a brilliant, acerbic young woman who lives an isolated life at home, in her wheelchair - K2 begins to untangle the lies and deceit within each of the guests' testimonies.  But as the investigators receive one mysterious letter after another warning of further deaths, K2 realises he must race to uncover the killer.  Before they strike again ...

Dangerous is by Jessie Keane and is due to be published in April 2015.  Whatever the Cost, she would pay it....  Coronation year: 1953.  Fifteen-year-old Clara Dolan's world is turned upside down following the shock death of her mother.  Battling to keep what remains of her family together, Clara vows to keep her younger siblings, Bernadette and Harry, safe whatever the cost.  With the arrival of the swinging sixties, Clara finds herself swept up in London's dark underworld where the glamour of Soho's dazzling nightclubs sit in stark contrast to the terrifying gangland violence that threatens the new life she has worked so hard to build.  Sinking further into an existence defined by murder and betrayal, Clara soon realises that success often comes at a very high price ...

Where Evil Lies is by Jørgen Brekke and is due to be published in April 2015.  1528. A young

Franciscan monk travels to Norway to collect a set of scalpels from a barber surgeon with whom he shares a dark and mysterious obsession with the dissection of human corpses.  He travels north and settles in a remote village.  His deadly legacy is a mysterious manuscript, the Book of John, bound in human skin.  Nearly five hundred years later, it seems that the ancient practice is experiencing a revival.  2010. Trondheim, Norway.  Inspector Odd Singsaker leads the investigation into the flaying of the University librarian, Gunn Brita Dahle, and the theft of the priceless Book of John.  The prime suspect is a security guard at the library who was once an academic high-flier, and now lives an isolated, almost twilight, existence following the unexplained disappearance of his wife and son some years back.  2010. Richmond, Virginia.  When the curator of the Edgar Allan Poe museum suffers the same fate as Dahle, US Detective Felicia Stone flies to Norway to join Singsaker in the hunt for a serial killer.  The more they delve into the past, the more sinister their discoveries become.  The key to the psychopath's next move is held in the manuscript.  Can they work out the clue before another person has to die.

The Last Post is by M R Hall and is due to be published in May 2015.  The garrison town of Highcliff is on tenterhooks waiting for the return of the last British soldiers from war-torn Helmand.  Meanwhile, as one of the last remaining platoons prepare to leave its isolated post for the final time, 19-year-old Private Pete Lyons is taken hostage during the night. A patrol sent to rescue him finds itself in a bloody and disastrous firefight.  How was Private Lyons abducted from a heavily fortified command post?  And why does the Army close ranks to disguise what happened during the mission to save him?  The bewildered wives and families of the dead are left craving answers.  Their fight for justice is every bit as ugly as the one fought by their loved ones in the poppy fields of Afghanistan. Their hopes lie with Coroner Jenny Cooper, who takes on the full might of the military to stop the truth being buried with the boy soldiers.  But in a town filled with secrets and rumours, it's not only the Army that has something to hide.

NASA is building a probe to be splashed down in the Kraken Mare, the largest sea on Saturn's great moon, Titan.  It is one of the most promising habitats for extra-terrestrial life in the solar system, but the surface is unstable and dangerous, requiring the probe to be outfitted with artificial intelligence software.  Melissa Shepherd, a brilliant programmer, has developed 'Dorothy', a powerful, self-modifying AI whose potential is both revolutionary and terrifying.  When miscalculations lead to a catastrophe during testing, Dorothy flees into the internet.  Former CIA agent Wyman Ford is tapped to help track down the rogue AI.  As Ford and Shepherd search for Dorothy, they realize that her horrific experiences in the wasteland of the Internet have changed her in ways they can barely imagine.  And they're not the only ones looking for the wayward program: the AI is also being pursued by a pair of Wall Street traders who want to capture her code and turn her into a high-speed trading bot. Traumatized, angry, and relentlessly hunted, Dorothy devises a plan.  As the pursuit of Dorothy converges on a deserted house on the coast of Northern California, Ford faces the question: is rescuing Dorothy the right thing?  Is the AI bent on saving the world ...or on wiping out the cancer that is humankind?  The Kracken Project is by Douglas Preston and is due to be published in April 2015.

In the depths of the ocean, no one will hear you scream 1941.  German submarine U-471 patrols the stormy in hospitable waters of the north Atlantic.  It is commanded by Siegfried Lorenz, a maverick SS officer who does not believe in the war he is bound by duty and honour to fight in.  U-471 receives a triple-encoded message with instructions to collect two prisoners from a vessel located off the Icelandic coast and transport them to the base at Brest, and British submarine commander, Sutherland, and an Austrian academic, Klein, are taken on board.  Contact between the prisoners and Lorenz has been forbidden, and it transpires that this special mission has been ordered by an unknown source, high up in the SS.  It is rumoured that Klein is working on a secret weapon that could change the course of the war . . . Then, Sutherland goes rogue, and a series of shocking, brutal events occur.  In the aftermath, disturbing things start happening on the boat.  It seems that a lethal, supernatural force is stalking the crew, wrestling with Lorenz for control.  A thousand feet under the dark, icy waves, it doesn’t matter how loud you scream . . .  The Silence is by F R Tallis and is due to be published in May 2015.

The last words Nick Walton hears from his fiancée, Logan Somervile, are in a terrified mobile phone call from her.  She has just driven into the underground car park beneath the block of flats where they live in Brighton.  Then she screams and the phone goes dead.  The police are on the scene within minutes, but Logan has vanished, leaving behind her neatly parked car and telephone.  That same afternoon, workmen digging up an old asphalt pat in a park in another part of the city, unearth the remains of a young woman in her early twenties, who has been dead for 30 years.  At first, to Roy Grace and his team, these two events seem totally unconnected.  But then another young woman in Brighton goes missing and another body from the past surfaces.  Meanwhile, an eminent London psychiatrist meets with a man who claims to know a piece of information about Logan.  Later Roy Grace makes the chilling realization that this one thing is the key to both the past and the present ...Brighton has its first serial killer in over eighty years.  You Are Dead is by Peter James and is due to be published in June 2015.

The Liar’s Chair is by Rebecca Whitney and is due to be published in January 2014.  Rachel Teller and her husband David appear happy, prosperous, and fulfilled.  The big house, the successful business ...They have everything.  However, control, not love, fuels their relationship and David has no idea his wife indulges in drunken indiscretions.  When Rachel kills a man in a hit and run, the meticulously maintained veneer over their life begins to crack.  Destroying all evidence of the accident, David insists they continue as normal.  Rachel though is racked with guilt and as her behaviour becomes increasingly self-destructive she not only inflames David's darker side, but also uncovers her own long-suppressed memories of shame.  Can Rachel confront her past and atone for her terrible crime?  Not if her husband has anything to do with it ..

Game of Mirrors is by Andrea Camilleri and is due to be published in May 2015.  While Inspector Montalbano is assisting his beautiful new neighbour, Liliana Lombardo, after her car breaks down, a bomb explodes in Vigata.  While no one is hurt, it is likely the explosion was perpetrated by one of the local mafia families as some kind of warning ...As Montalbano investigates, he finds himself drawn ever closer to Liliana.  But is she trying to seduce the Inspector simply because she is attracted to him or are her motives more sinister?

There is nobody in the world who knows that we are here ...A woman arrives in the village of Winsford on Exmoor.  She has travelled a long way and chosen her secluded cottage carefully.  Her sole intention is to outlive her beloved dog Castor.  And to survive the torrent of memories that threaten to overwhelm her.  Weeks before, Maria, and her husband Martin fled Stockholm under a cloud.  The couple were bound for Morocco, where Martin planned to write an explosive novel; one that would reveal the truth behind dark events within his commune of writers decades before.  But the couple never made it to their destination.  As Maria settles into her lonely new life, walking the wild, desolate moors, it becomes clear that Winsford isn't quite the sanctuary she thought it would be.  While the long, dark evenings close in and the weather worsens, strange things begin to happen around her.  But what terrible secrets is Maria guarding?  And who now is trying to find her?  A haunting, masterly unravelling of a dreadful crime, in The Living and the Dead in Winsford Håkan Nesser, the bestselling, award-winning author of the Van Veeteren series, tightens the tension like a noose ....  The Living and the Dead in Winsford is due to be published in April 2015.