Books to Look Forward to from Orenda Books

January 2018

One cold November night in 2014, in a small town in the north west of England, 26-year-old Arla Macleod bludgeoned her mother, father and younger sister to death with a hammer, in an unprovoked attack known as the 'Macleod Massacre'. Now incarcerated at a medium-security mental-health institution, Arla will speak to no one but Scott King, an investigative journalist, whose `Six Stories' podcasts have become an internet sensation. King finds himself immersed in an increasingly complex case, interviewing five witnesses and Arla herself, as he questions whether Arla's responsibility for the massacre was a diminished as her legal team made out. As he unpicks the stories, he finds himself thrust into a world of deadly forbidden `games', online trolls, and the mysterious Black-eyed Children, whose presence extends far beyond the delusions of a murderess... Hydra is by Matt Wesolowski.

February 2018

Blue Night is by Simone Buchholz.  After convicting a superior for corruption and shooting off a gangster's crown jewels, the career of Hamburg's most hard-bitten state prosecutor, Chastity Riley, has taken a nose dive: she has been transferred to the tedium of witness protection to prevent her making any more trouble. However, when she is assigned to the case of an anonymous man lying under police guard in hospital - almost every bone in his body broken, a finger cut off, and refusing to speak in anything other than riddles - Chastity's instinct for the big, exciting case kicks in. Using all her powers of persuasion, she soon gains her charge's confidence, and finds herself on the trail to Leipzig, a new ally, and a whole heap of lethal synthetic drugs. When she discovers that a friend and former colleague is trying to bring down Hamburg's Albanian mafia kingpin single-handedly, it looks like Chas Riley's dull life on witness protection really has been short-lived... 

March 2018

As Montrealer Catherine Day sets foot in a remote fishing village and starts asking around about her birth mother, the body of a woman dredges up in a fisherman's nets. Not just any woman, though: Marie Garant, an elusive, nomadic sailor and unbridled beauty who once tied many a man's heart in knots. Detective Sergeant Joaquin Morales, newly drafted to the area from the suburbs of Montreal, barely has time to unpack his suitcase before he's thrown into the deep end of the investigation. On Quebec's outlying Gaspe Peninsula, the truth can be slippery, especially down on the fishermen's wharves. Interviews drift into idle chit-chat, evidence floats off with the tide and the truth lingers in murky waters. It's enough to make DS Morales reach straight for a large whisky... We are the Salt of the Sea is by Roxanne Bouchard

Robert Finlay seems to have finally left his SAS past behind him and is settled into his new career as a detective. But when the girlfriend of his former SAS colleague and close friend Kevin Jones is murdered, it's clear that Finlay's troubles are far from over. Jones is arrested for the killing, but soon escapes from jail, and Finlay is held responsible for the breakout. Suspended from duty and sure he's being framed too, our hero teams up with MI5 agent Toni Fellowes to find out who's behind the conspiracy. Their quest soon reveals a plot that goes to the very heart of the UK's security services.  End Game is by Matt Johnson.

April 2018

The Ice Swimmer is by Kjell Ola Dahl. When a dead man is lifted from the freezing waters of Oslo Harbour just before Christmas, Detective Lena Stigersand's stressful life suddenly becomes even more complicated. Not only is she dealing with a cancer scare, a stalker and and an untrustworthy boyfriend, but it seems both a politician and Norway's security services might be involved in the murder. With her trusted colleagues, Gunnarstranda and Frolich, at her side, Lena digs deep into the case and finds that it not only goes to the heart of the Norwegian establishment, but it might be rather to close to her personal life for comfort.

Keeper is by Johana Gustawsson. Whitechapel, 1888: London is bowed under Jack the Ripper's reign of terror. London 2015: actress Julianne Bell is abducted in a case similar to the terrible Tower Hamlets murders of some ten years earlier, and harking back to the Ripper killings of a century before. Falkenberg, Sweden, 2015: a woman's body is found mutilated in a forest, her wounds identical to those of the Tower Hamlets victims. With the man arrested for the Tower Hamlets crimes already locked up, do the new killings mean he has a dangerous accomplice, or is a copy-cat serial killer on the loose? Profiler Emily Roy and true-crime writer Alexis Castells again find themselves drawn into an intriguing case, with personal links that turn their world upside down. 

May 2018

Absolution is by Paul E Hardisty.  It is 1997, eight months since vigilante justice-seeker Claymore Straker fled South Africa after his explosive testimony to Desmond Tutu's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In Paris, Rania LaTour, journalist, comes home to find that her son and her husband, a celebrated human rights lawyer, have disappeared. On an isolated island off the coast of East Africa, the family that Clay has befriended is murdered as he watches. So begins the fourth instalment in the Claymore Straker series, a breakneck journey through the darkest reaches of the human soul, as Clay and Rania fight to uncover the mystery behind the disappearances and murders, and find those responsible. Events lead them both inexorably to Egypt, where an act of the most shocking terrorist brutality will reveal not only why those they loved were sacrificed, but how they were both, indirectly, responsible. Relentlessly pursued by those who want them dead, they must work together to uncover the truth, and to find a way to survive in a world gone crazy.

 

Lynn Waites gave up the job she loved when she married Ed, the love of her life, but it was worth it for the happy years they enjoyed together. Now, ten years on, Ed has been diagnosed with early-onset dementia, and things start to happen; things more sinister than missing keys and lost words. As some memories are forgotten, other, long buried, begin to surface ... and Lynn's perfect world begins to crumble. But is it Ed's mind playing tricks, or hers...?  The Old You is by Louise Voss

Fault Lines is by Doug Johnstone. A little lie ... a seismic secret ... and the cracks are beginning to show... In a reimagined contemporary Edinburgh, in which a tectonic fault has opened up to produce a new volcano in the Firth of Forth, and where tremors are an everyday occurrence, volcanologist Surtsey makes a shocking discovery. On a clandestine trip to The Inch - the new volcanic island - to meet Tom, her lover and her boss, she finds his lifeless body, and makes the fatal decision to keep their affair, and her discovery of his corpse secret. Desperate to know how he died, but also terrified she'll be exposed, Surtsey's life quickly spirals into a nightmare when someone makes contact - someone who claims to know what she's done..

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June 2018

Big Sister is by Gunnar Staalesen Varg Veum receives a surprise visit in his office. A woman introduces herself as his half-sister, and she has a job for him. Her god-daughter, a 19-year-old trainee nurse from Haugesund, moved from her bedsit in Bergen two weeks ago. Since then no one has heard anything from her. She didn't leave an address. She doesn't answer her phone. And the police refuse to take her case seriously. Veum's investigation uncovers a series of carefully covered-up crimes and pent-up hatreds, and the trail leads to a gang of extreme bikers on the hunt for a group of people whose dark deeds are hidden by the anonymity of the Internet. And then things get personal... 

Helen is a wealthy, forty-year-old mother of three: six-month-old twins and a three-year-old boy who hasn't spoken since they were born. She is struggling to cope with the demands of two new babies and her husband Max suggests they employ a live-in nanny to help. Annie is eighteen, impoverished and desperate. Her mother is missing and Annie has been evicted for not paying the rent. She needs a job that will provide a roof over her head and, once she has it, she is determined to make herself indispensable. As she slowly transforms Helen's domestic life, Annie confides to Helen the truth about her childhood, and a deep friendship develops between the two women. Then someone is injured and it's discovered that Annie is hiding a secret ... a terrible, terrible secret that will shatter everything...  The Visit is by Sarah Stovell.