Books to Look Forward to from Bloomsbury

January 2018

This is how it begins. With a near-empty building, the inhabitants forced out of their homes by property developers. With two women: idealistic, impassioned blogger Ella and seasoned campaigner, Molly. With a body hidden in a lift shaft. But how will it end?  This is How it Ends is by Eva Dolan.

February 2018

Gosford Park meets Inception, by way of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express `Somebody's going to be murdered at the ball tonight. It won't appear to be a murder and so the murderer won't be caught. Rectify that injustice and I'll show you the way out.' It is meant to be a celebration but it ends in tragedy. As fireworks explode overhead, Evelyn Hardcastle, the young and beautiful daughter of the house, is killed. But Evelyn will not die just once. Until Aiden - one of the guests summoned to Blackheath for the party - can solve her murder, the day will repeat itself, over and over again. Every time ending with the fateful pistol shot. The only way to break this cycle is to identify the killer. But each time the day begins again, Aiden wakes in the body of a different guest. And someone is determined to prevent him ever escaping Blackheath...  The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is by Stuart Turton.

March 2018

The Night Ferry is by Lotte Hammer and Søren Hammer. Sixteen children and four adults are killed in a devastating boat crash in Copenhagen. Detective Chief Superintendent Konrad Simonsen is called in, only to discover that this was no accident and that one of the passengers has a very personal connection to the homicide team. Reeling from this revelation and not knowing who to trust, Simonsen follows a trail that eventually leads him to Bosnia and a legacy of criminal misconduct. All evidence points towards one shady figure: a high-ranking army specialist with a suspicious past. But the more Simonsen digs, the further the truth slips from his grasp.

May 2018

Everyone has a secret... Only some lead to murder.  Leo Stanhope. Assistant to a London

coroner; in love with Maria; and hiding a very big secret.   For Leo was born Charlotte, but knowing he was meant to be a man – despite the evidence of his body – he fled his family home at just fifteen, and has been living as Leo ever since: his original identity known only to a few trusted people.  But then Maria is found dead and Leo is accused of her murder. Desperate to find her killer and under suspicion from all those around him, he stands to lose not just the woman he loves, but his freedom and, ultimately, his life.  The House on Half Moon Street is by Alex Reeve.

June 2018

A Shot in the Dark is by Lynne Truss.  It’s 1957, and the famed theater critic A.S. Crystal has come to the British seaside resort of Brighton with something other than the local production of A Shilling in the Meter on his mind. Sitting in the Brighton Royal Theater with Sargent Jim Brunswick, Crystal intends to tell the detective the secret he knows about the still-unsolved Aldersgate Stick-Up Case of 1945. And yet, just before Crystal names the criminal mastermind involved, he’s shot dead in his seat.  With a new murder case on his hands and a fatuous, lazy captain at the helm of the police department, Sergeant Jim Brunswick and his colleague — the keen and clever Constable Twitten— set out to solve the decade-old mystery of the Aldersgate Stick-Up. As the partners venture deep into the criminal underworld that lies beneath Brighton’s holiday-happy veneer, they begin to discover a criminal conspiracy that dates back decades. But will Brunswick and Twitten be able to foil the mastermind, or will Crystal’s death become just another unsolved crime in this seemingly-peaceful seaside city?