Tuesday, 22 November 2016

Books to Look Forward to from Penguin and Michael Joseph

January 2017

Good Me Bad Me is by Ali Land.  NEW NAME. NEW FAMILY. SHINY. NEW. ME. Annie's mother is a serial killer. The only way she can make it stop is to hand her in to the police. But out of sight is not out of mind. As her mother's trial looms, the secrets of her past won't let Annie sleep, even with a new foster family and name - Milly. A fresh start. Now, surely, she can be whoever she wants to be. But Milly's mother is a serial killer. And blood is thicker than water. Good me, bad me. She is, after all, her mother's daughter...

He was once called Orphan X. As a boy, Evan Smoak was taken from a children's home, raised and trained as part of a secret government initiative buried so deep that virtually no one knows it exists. But he broke with the programme, choosing instead to vanish off grid and use his formidable skill set to help those unable to protect themselves. One day, though, Evan's luck ran out ...Ambushed, drugged, and spirited away, Evan wakes up in a locked room with no idea where he is or who has captured him. As he tries to piece together what's happened, testing his gilded prison and its highly trained guards for weaknesses, he receives a desperate call for help. With time running out, he will need to out-think, out-manoeuvre, and out-fight an opponent the likes of whom he's never encountered to have any chance of escape. He's got to save himself to protect those whose lives depend on him. Or die trying ...  The Nowhere Man is by Gregg Hurtwiz.

A body is found, victim's head wrapped in cling film, hands tied behind her back. The small island's police force needs help from Amsterdam's Murder Squad - and veteran detective Inspector Jaap Rykel. His investigation swiftly identifies a suspect, who easily hands himself over. But the killer has no history of violence, no motive, and no connection to the victim. On the other side of the country, a similar murder - and confession - is reported and Rykel wonders if these are random senseless acts, or something far darker...? Rykel must walk a thin line between spotting patterns no one wants to see, and a sinister, sprawling case which threatens to consume everything in its path.  Before the Dawn is by Jake Woodhouse.

February 2017

Setagaya ward, Tokyo Inspector Kosuke Iwata, newly transferred to Tokyo's homicide department, is assigned a new partner and a secondhand case. Blunt, hard as nails and shunned by her colleagues, Assistant Inspector Noriko Sakai is a partner Iwata decides it would be unwise to cross. A case that's complicated - a family of four murdered in their own home by a killer who then ate ice cream, surfed the web and painted a hideous black sun on the bedroom ceiling before he left in broad daylight. A case that so haunted the original investigator that he threw himself off the city's famous Rainbow Bridge. Carrying his own secret torment, Iwata is no stranger to pain. He senses the trauma behind the killer's brutal actions. Yet his progress is thwarted in the unlikeliest of places. Fearing corruption among his fellow officers, tracking a killer he's sure is only just beginning and trying to put his own shattered life back together, Iwata knows time is running out before he's taken off the case or there are more killings ...  Blue Light Yokohama is by Nicolás Obregón.
 
Written in Bones is by James Oswald.  The roots of murder run deep...When a body is found in a tree in The Meadows, Edinburgh's scenic parkland, the forensics suggest the corpse has fallen from a great height. Detective Inspector Tony McLean wonders whether it was an accident, or a murder designed to send a chilling message? The dead man had led quite a life: a disgraced ex-cop turned criminal kingpin who reinvented himself as a celebrated philanthropist. As McLean traces the victim's journey, it takes him back to Edinburgh's past, and through its underworld - crossing paths with some of its most dangerous and most vulnerable people. And waiting at the end of it all, is the truth behind a crime that cuts to the very heart of the city...

She came to find her friend. Instead she found a killer. Serial killer expert Darby McCormick gets a call from FBI Agent Jackson Cooper, who has been contacted by a woman who's been in hiding for twenty years. She was one of the only survivors of a murderer who has been carving a dark path across America for decades. Cooper believes he may have tracked this psychopath to the wilds of Montana. Now, he needs Darby's help to bring him in. But when she arrives Cooper has vanished without a trace. Something is very wrong - and as the trail goes cold, Darby is all alone in a strange town, stalked by an unseen predator who wants to add another victim to his collection.  Every Pretty Thing is by Chris Mooney.

Zodiac is by Sam Wilson.  In San Celeste, a series of uniquely brutal murders targets victims from totally different walks of life. In a society divided according to Zodiac signs, those differences are cast at birth and binding for life.All eyes are on detective Jerome Burton and astrological profiler Lindi Childs divided in their beliefs over whether the answer is written in the stars, but united in their conviction that there is an ingenious serial killer executing a grand plan Together, they will unravel a dark tale of betrayal, lost love, broken promises and a devastating truth with the power to tear their world apart . . "

ARE YOU BRAVE ENOUGH TO GO BACK?  Kate Rafter is a successful war reporter. She's the strong one. The one who escaped Herne Bay and the memories it holds. Her sister Sally didn't. Instead, she drinks.  But when their mother dies, Kate is forced to return to the old family home. And on her first night she is woken by a terrifying scream.  What secret has Kate stumbled upon?  And is she strong enough to uncover the truth . . . and make it out alive?  My Sister’s Bones is by Nuala Ellwood

March 2017

Follow My Leader is by M J Arlidge.  A desperate young woman runs through the storm. She hares up the path, hammering desperately on the front door, crying for help. The startled owner opens the door, ushers her inside, promising her whatever assistance she needs. This fateful decision will be his last. He should never have opened the door ...A middle aged couple are found brutally murdered in their ransacked suburban house. Helen Grace, now back at Southampton Central following her release from prison, is first on the scene. The crime is baffling, hideous, cruel, but before Helen can process the evidence, another double murder is reported - identical in almost every way to the first. What follows is the darkest, most dangerous night of Helen's life as a sequence of brutal home invasions takes place. By sunrise eight people will be dead and Helen may well be the ninth as she finds herself locked on a collision course with a pair of rampaging spree killers. Is there method in their madness? Or are they selecting their victims at random? It falls to Helen to wrestle with these questions - only by answering them can she end the bloodshed.

The year is 1911. Chief Investigator Isaac Bell of the Van Dorn Detective Agency has had many extraordinary cases before. But none quite like this. Hired to find a young woman named Anna Pape who ran away from home to become an actress, Bell gets a shock when her murdered body turns up instead. Vowing to bring the killer to justice, he begins a manhunt which leads him into increasingly more alarming territory. Anna Pape was not alone in her fate - petite young blonde women like Anna are being murdered in cities across America. And the pattern goes beyond the physical resemblance of the victims - there are disturbing familiarities about the killings themselves that send a chill through even a man as experienced with evil as Bell. If he is right about his fears, then he is on the trail of one of the greatest monsters of his time.  The Cutthroat is by Clive Cussler and Justin Scott.

It all started with the email.  It came through to her boyfriend's iPad in the middle of the night. Rachel didn't even mean to look. She loves Jack, and she's pregnant with their child. She trusts him. But now she's seen it, she can't undo that moment, or the chain of events it has set in motion.  Why has Jack been lying about his past? Just what exactly is he hiding? And doesn't Rachel have a right to know the truth at any cost?  Everything But the Truth is by Gillian McAllister.

April 2017

Frey & McGray are back for their biggest and best case yet...1890. The Scottish Play is coming home. But before the darling couple of London theatre, Henry Irving & Ellen Terry, take their acclaimed Macbeth north of the border, terror treads the boards on closing night in the capital. A supposed banshee leaves a message written in blood, foretelling someone's demise. But whose? With the company's arrival in Scotland, comes another death threat and Edinburgh's own beloved pair - Detective 'Nine-Nails' McGray & Inspector Ian Frey - enter the scene. Frey scoffs, believing it to be a publicity stunt, while McGray is convinced it's a supernatural affair. As they scrutinise the key players, they discover that Terry, Irving, and his peculiar, preoccupied assistant (one Bram Stoker) all have reasons to kill, or be killed...By occult curse or human hand, death will take a bow the night the curtain rises. A Mask of Shadows is by Oscar de Muriel

A hit-and-run on a woodland road near Amsterdam involving an Afghan boy is connected to a powerful international crime syndicate. Journalist Farah Hafez, together with her colleague Paul Chapelle, gets caught up in an investigation that takes them all the way to Moscow and has greater political and personal ramifications than they bargained for. After this perilous journey, their lives will never be the same again.  Butterfly on the Storm is the first book in the Heartland trilogy by Walter Lucius.

When disgraced spy Solomon Vine’s friend n rival Gabriel Wilde vanishes without a trace, it’s only Wilde who might be able to discover what has happened to him.  A single missing file holds the key.  That too is gone .  But its contents.  Vine is told, are incendiary.  There were few Wilde can trust. And being one of them appears to have fatal consequences.  But as Vine’s off-the-books investigation begins to reveal the shocking truth, he realises there’s much more at stake than one mans life and the reputation of the Secret Intelligence Service.  My Name is Nobody is by Matthew Richardson.

Let the games begin. A man is found buried in a secluded wood on the outskirts of London. Naked, beaten and bruised; forensics also show that he hasn't eaten in the 24 hours before his murder. To DCI Antonia Hawkins it looks like a vicious, targeted attack. The hunt is on. But as more bodies are unearthed in the same state, Hawkins struggles to find a pattern in the seemingly random killings as the body count continues to climb. But who is the hunter? unique kind of serial killer. One that is playing a twisted game. And so far the killer is one winning ...  The Keeper is by Alistair Gunn.

May 2017

Three little girls set off to school one sunny May morning. Within an hour, one of them is dead.  Fifteen years later, Alison and Kitty are living separate lives. Kitty lives in a care home. She can't speak, and she has no memory of the accident that put her here, or her life before it.  Art teacher Alison looks fine on the surface. But the surface is a lie. When a job in a prison comes up she decides to take it - this is her chance to finally make things right.  But someone is watching Kitty and Alison.  Someone who wants revenge for what happened that day.  And only another life will do...  Blood Sisters is by Jane Corry.

June 2017

An unnamed defendant stands accused of murder.  Just before the Closing Speeches, the young man sacks his lawyer, and decides to give his own defence speech.  He tells us that his barrister told him to leave some things out.  Sometimes the truth can be too difficult to explain, or believe.  But he thinks that if he’s going to go down telling the truth.  There are eight pieces of evidence against him.  As he talks us through them one by one, his life is in out hands.  We the reader – member of the jury -  must keep an open mind till we hear the end of the story.  His defence raises many questions…. But at the end of the speeches, only one matters; Did he do it?  You Don’t Know Me is by Imran Mahmood.

Little Susan Verity went missing during the heatwave of 1976.  An unprecedented amount of police resource went into finding  her, but to no avail. Until now.  Serial killer Adrian Wicklow was always the prime suspect. He's  lied to the police about Susan's whereabouts repeatedly but this time, he says, he'll tell the truth. Because Wicklow is dying.  As the case re-opens DS Ian Bradshaw works with investigative journalists Tom Carney and Helen Norton to find Susan. But this is Wicklow's life's work. Would a killer on death's door give up his last secret so easily...?  To Die For is Howard Linskey.

'The emperor's mistress had been murdered, and the world had been taken hold of and turned upon its head' Prague, 1599. Christian Stern, a young doctor, has just arrived in the city. On his first evening, he finds a young woman's body half-buried in the snow.  The dead woman is none other than the emperor's mistress, and there's no shortage of suspects. Stern is employed by the emperor himself to investigate the murder. In the search to find the culprit, Stern finds himself drawn into the shadowy world of the emperor's court - unspoken affairs, letters written in code, and bitter rivalries. But there's no turning back now.  Prague Nights is by Benjamin Black.

July 2017

A photograph found in the effects of a recently deceased polar explorer reveal evidence of something that should not be there. When his death on Deception Island is revealed to have been more suspicious than the heart attack recorded on his death certificate, London's hand is forced. But then the disappearance of the MI6 officer sent south to investigate raises the stakes . . . A four-man military team from a top-secret unit is dispatched. But the South Atlantic in winter is about the most hostile environment on earth. And before you can fight, first you have to survive . . . Deception Island is by Chris Larsson.


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