Books to Look Forward to from Quercus Books

July 2017

On a wet Monday in January, Jess Mount receives the devastating news that she hasn't got long left to live. She doesn't hear it from a doctor, though. She discovers it when her Facebook timeline skips forward eighteen months and friends and family start posting tributes to her, following her death in a terrible and mysterious accident. At first, Jess thinks this must be a sick joke by a colleague jealous of her handsome new boyfriend. But as the posts continue and it becomes clear that no one else can see what she can, Jess is forced to confront that her impending death might be all too real... After I’ve Gone is by Linda Green

3 Minutes is by Roslund and Hellström. INFILTRATOR One-time Swedish government agent Piet Hoffmann is on the run: both from the life prison sentence he escaped, and from the Polish drug mafia he double-crossed. Only Hoffmann’s handler, Erik Wilson, knows he now hides in Cali, Colombia, living under a false identity with his wife Zofia and sons Rasmus and Hugo. INFORMANT But life on the run is precarious. And so when Hoffmann, in order to survive, accepts employment as a bodyguard and hit man for the Colombian cocaine mafia, and is simultaneously approached by the US DEA to infiltrate the same cartel, he chooses to say yes to both. Hoffmann has a new, lucrative double life. IN TOO DEEP However, Hoffmann’s successful balancing act is short lived. When Timothy D. Crouse, Chairman of the US House of Representatives, is kidnapped while on a trip to Colombia, US forces settle on a new enemy for their next War on Terror. This gives the cartel and the US government the same problem. Piet Hoffmann. Condemned and hung out to dry, Hoffmann is stranded, and marked. Yet Erik Wilson will find him help from the most unlikely of figures – the stubborn, acerbic Swedish detective who has never forgotten Piet Hoffmann’s face. DCI Ewert Grens – the enemy who Hoffmann once tricked – will now become the only ally he can trust.

Three Days and a Life is by Pierre Lemaitre.  Antoine is twelve years old. His parents are divorced and he lives with his mother in Beauval, a small, backwater town surrounded by

forests, where everyone knows everyone's business, and nothing much ever happens. But in the last days of 1999, a series of events unfolds, culminating in the shocking vanishing without trace of a young child. The adults of the town are at a loss to explain the disappearance, but for Antoine, it all begins with the violent death of his neighbour's dog. From that one brutal act, his fate and the fate of his neighbour's six year old son are bound forever. In the years following Remi's disappearance, Antoine wrestles with the role his actions played. As a seemingly inescapable net begins to tighten, breaking free from the suffocating environs of Beauval becomes a gnawing obsession. But how far does he have to run, and how long will it take before his past catches up with him again?

August 2017

A Summer Revenge is by Tom Callaghan.  In the burning heat of the sun, murder is deadly

cold. Having resigned from Bishkek Murder Squad, Akyl Borubaev is a lone wolf with blood on his hands. Then the Minister of State Security promises Akyl his old life back …if Akyl finds his vanished mistress. The beautiful Natasha Sulonbekova has disappeared in Dubai with information that could destroy the Minister’s career. But when Borubaev arrives in Dubai – straight into a scene of horrific carnage – he learns that what Natasha is carrying is worth far more than a damaged reputation. Discovering the truth plunges him into a deadly game that means he might never return to Kyrgyzstan… at least, not alive.

The Secret of Vesalius is by Jordi Llobregat.  Daniel Amat has left Spain and all that happened there behind him. Having just achieved a brilliant role in Ancient Languages at Oxford University and an even more advantageous engagement, the arrival of a letter - a demand - stamped Barcelona comes like a cold hand from behind. He arrives back in that old, labyrinthine and near-mythic city a few days before the great 1888 World Fair, amid dread whispers of murders - the injuries reminiscent of an ancient curse, and bearing signs of the genius 16th century anatomist, Vesalius. Daniel is soon pulled into the depths of the crime, and eventually into the tunnels below Barcelona, where his own dark past and the future of science are joined in a terrible venture - to bring the secret of Vesalius to life. 

September 2017

In a Copenhagen Park the body of an elderly woman is discovered. Though the case bears a striking resemblance to another unsolved homicide from over a decade ago, the police cannot find any connection between the two victims. Across town a group of young women are being hunted down. The attacks seem random, but could these brutal acts of violence be related? Detective Carl Morck of Department Q is charged with solving the mystery. Back at headquarters, Carl and his team are under pressure to deliver results: failure to meet his superiors’ expectations will mean the end of Department Q. Solving the case, however, is not their only concern. After a breakdown, their colleague Rose is struggling to deal with the ghosts of her past – a past seemingly connected to one of the division’s most sinister case-files. It is up to Carl, Assad and Gordon to unearth the dark and violent truth plaguing Rose before it is too late.  The Scarred Woman is by Jussi Adler-Olsen

Sleeping Beauties is by Jo Spain.  The inspector frowned and examined the earth under the trees. As he scanned the glade, his stomach lurched. One, two, three, four. Five, counting the mound of earth disturbed under the tent. Somebody had cleared the earth of its natural layer and sown their own flowers In five places. Five graves. A young woman, Fiona Holland, has gone missing from a small Irish village. A search is mounted, but there are whispers. Fiona had a wild reputation. Was she abducted, or has she run away? A week later, a gruesome discovery is made in the woods at Ireland's most scenic beauty spot - the valley of Glendalough. The bodies are all young women who disappeared in recent years. D.I. Tom Reynolds and his team are faced with the toughest case of their careers - a serial killer, who hunts vulnerable women, and holds his victims captive before he ends their lives. Soon the race is on to find Fiona Holland before it's too late.

Millennium V by David Lagercrantz.

October 2017

Shortly after Christmas, a message arrives at Sophie's house, scrawled across her own round robin newsletter: HE'S GOING TO LEAVE YOU. LET'S SEE HOW SMUG YOU ARE THEN, YOU STUPID BITCH. Perhaps she should ignore it, but she ignored the last one. And the one before that. Now it's time to take action. But when a simple plan to identify and confront the other woman goes drastically and violently wrong, Sophie must go to extreme lengths to keep her life and her family together - while never letting on her devastating secret.  The Other Woman is by Laura Wilson.

The Hit is by Anna Smith.  When respectable accountant Alan Lewis disappears in Romania, Rosie Gilmour, like most others, thinks little of it. He's done a runner, or committed suicide. But when a known gangster turns up dead in the flat of his grieving widow Helen, Rosie's attention is grabbed completely. Soon she is sucked into the world of Lewis's shady adoption charity - offering Romanian orphans for sale to the highest bidder, and trafficking slave workers into Glasgow through empty aid lorries. Bringing those involved to justice will take all her cunning and all her grit, and a good dose of luck to make sure they don't catch her first. But there is also danger at home for Rosie - just how did that body end up in Helen Lewis's flat? How much did she know about her husband's disappearance? And how far would she go to protect her secrets?

Lillian had phoned telling her to get Skype up and running. 'I have so much to tell you.' Then, the knock on the door. 'Sorry Orla, I'd better see who it is' she said. Orla waited. Seconds became minutes. She didn't know how long she waited before she realised that something terrible had happened. For more than a decade, Lillian's disappearance has remained unsolved, and Orla has found it impossible to move on. Then she receives an unexpected visit from Ned Moynihan, the detective who led the original investigation into her friend's vanishing. Moynihan has been receiving anonymous notes accusing him of having failed to investigate the case properly. He assumes the notes are coming from Orla, yet Orla knows nothing of these letters. Is somebody trying to tell them the truth about what really happened to Lillian that night?  Without A Word is by Kate McQuaile.

The Book of Forgotten Authors is by Christopher Fowler. Absence doesn't make the heart grow fonder. It makes people think you're dead. So begins Christopher Fowler's foray into the back catalogues and backstories of 99 authors who, once hugely popular, have all but disappeared from shelves. We are fondly introduced to each potential rediscovery: from lost Victorian voices to the twentieth century writers who could well become the next John Williams, Hans Fallada or Lionel Davidson. Whether male or female, flash-in-the-pan or prolific, mega-seller or prize-winner - no author, it seems, can ever be fully immune from the fate of being forgotten. These 99 journeys are punctuated by 12 short essays about faded once-favourites: including the now-vanished novels Walt Disney brought to the screen, the contemporary rivals of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie who did not stand the test of time, and the women who introduced psychological suspense many decades before it conquered the world. This is a book about books and their authors. It is for book lovers, and is written by one who could not be a more enthusiastic, enlightening and entertaining guide.

Jeremiah Salinger blames himself. The crash was his fault. He was the only survivor. Now only his daughter Clara can put a smile on his face. The depression and the nightmares are closing in. But when he takes Clara to the Bletterbach - a canyon in the Dolomites rich in fossil remains - he overhears by chance a conversation that gives his life renewed focus. In 1985 three students were murdered there, their bodies savaged, limbs severed and strewn by a killer who was never found. Salinger, a New Yorker, is far from home, and these Italian mountains, where his wife was born, harbour a close-knit, tight-lipped community whose mistrust of outsiders can turn ugly. All the same, solving this mystery might be the only thing that can keep him sane.  The Mountain is by Luca D’Andrea.

November 2017

What do a murdered Brighton flowerseller; the death of Cleopatra and a nude tableau show have in common? One thing's for sure - it could be the most dangerous case yet for Stephens and Mephisto.  Max Mephisto and his daughter Ruby are headlining Brighton Hippodrome, an achievement only slightly marred by the less-than-savoury support act: a tableau show of naked 'living statues'. This might appear to have nothing in common with DI Edgar Stephens' investigation into the death of a quiet flowerseller, but if there's one thing the old comrades have learned it's that, in Brighton, the line between art and life - and death - is all too easily blurred...  The Vanishing Box is by Elly Griffiths.

The fifth case synaesthetic detective, DCI Mark Lapslie.  Whilst investigating the murder of a teenage boy, the DCI’s unconventional methods of investigation come under fire, resulting in his prime suspect, Alastair Tulley, walking free.  Meanwhile the body of another boy is discovered.  Though DNA evidence links the crimes to a different man, Lapslie remains convinces of Tulley’s guilt.  Tulley may be the real culprit but can Lapslie prove it.  Flesh and Blood is by Nigel McCrery.