January 2019
Cold Bones is by David Mark.
It's the coldest winter in Hull for years. When McAvoy is told by a concerned stranger
that an elderly woman hasn't been seen for a few days, he goes to check on her
- only to find her in the bath, encased in ice: the heating off; the windows
open; the whole house frozen over. It
could be a macabre accident, but McAvoy senses murder. Someone watched her
die. As he starts to uncover the
victim's story and her connections to a lost fishing trawler, his boss Trish is
half a world away, investigating a mysterious death in Iceland. Hull and
Iceland have traditionally been united by fishing - in this case, they are
linked by a secret concealed for half a century, and a series of brutal
killings that have never been connected.
Until now - when the secrets of the dead have returned to prey on the
living.
Battle Sight Zero is by Gerald Seymour. The Kalashnikov AK47. A weapon with a unique
image. A symbol of freedom fighters and terrorists across the globe. Undercover
officer Andy Knight has infiltrated an extremist group intent on bringing the
rifle to Britain - something MI5 have been struggling for years to
prevent. He befriends Zeinab, the young
Muslim student from Yorkshire who is at the centre of the plot. All Zeinab
needs to do is travel to the impoverished high-rise estates of Marseilles and
bring one rifle home on a test run. Then many more will follow - and with them
would come killing on an horrendous scale.
Zeinab is both passionate and attractive, and though Andy knows that the
golden rule of undercover work is not to get emotionally attached to the
target, sometimes rules are impossible to follow.
Last Man Standing is by Stephen Leather. Friendships forged in
the heat of combat can be stronger than anything. So when SAS trooper Matt Standing is told
that the former Navy SEAL who saved his life is in trouble, he doesn't hesitate
to go to his aid - even if that means flying half way around the world to Los
Angeles. Navy SEAL-turned-bodyguard
Bobby-Ray Barnes has been accused of killing the man he was supposed to be
protecting. Three other bodyguards were also killed and now Bobby-Ray is on the
run. The dead client was a Russian
oligarch with connections to the Kremlin. But who wanted him dead? And if
Bobby-Ray wasn't the killer, who carried out the assassination and why is
Bobby-Ray being framed? Standing is the only man who can answer those questions
- providing he can stay alive long enough.
How can you get lost in a city that never sleeps? Nineteen-year-old Titus 'Crisp' Crespo is a
smart kid on his way to a bright future. But on the eve of his high school
graduation, a chance encounter with a cop who can't see beyond the colour of
his skin puts everything in jeopardy.
When he doesn't return home two nights later his mother knows something
is wrong. Seeking answers, she turns to Detective Lex Cole, who starts to
follow his traces: a bad decision, a trip into a dangerous part of the city;
blood... As Crisp heads into trouble and
discovers the New York he's lived alongside for years but never really seen,
Lex, a day later, must find out what happened last night - before it's too
late. Last Night is by Karen Ellis.
February 2019
When a body is found in a church in the far north of Norway,
the trail leads to an offshore oil rig. Searching the rooms of one of the rig
workers, detective Kirsten Nigaard finds a pile of photos taken with a
long-lens camera. The subject of the photos is Martin Servaz. And someone has
been watching him. Signs suggest the
killer is none other than Julian Hirtmann, a serial murderer on the run.
Martin, after all, has a long and painful history with Hirtmann. Now it seems
he has struck again. Their one clue is
in amongst the photos. A picture of a young boy in a beautiful Austrian village,
and on the back of it, the name 'Gustav'. Martin and Kirsten set off on the
trail and soon find themselves in a terrifying cat-and-mouse chase, not knowing
who is chasing whom, and which of them might pay the ultimate price. Night is by Bernard Minier.
The Stranger Inside is by Laura Benedict. There's a stranger in your house. And he
knows your biggest secret. When Kimber
Hannon returns home from a work trip, she's ready to kick back and relax on the
sofa. But on reaching the front door, she is shocked to discover that her key
no longer works and there's a man in the bedroom window. Kimber calls the police, but the intruder
tells them he's renting the house. Her neighbour corroborates his story and it
is Kimber who is forced to leave. But before she does, the stranger whispers 'I
was there. I saw what you did.' These
words reveal a connection to Kimber's distant past, and dark secrets she'd long
ago left buried. Her trespasser isn't after anything as simple as her money or
her home. He wants to move into her carefully orchestrated life - and destroy
it.
Trigger is by David Swinson.
Frank Marr was a good cop, until his burgeoning addictions forced him
into retirement from the Washington D.C. police. Now, he's barely eking out a
living as a private investigator.
Ostracized by his family after a botched case that led to the death of
his cousin, Frank is now clean. He passes the time by robbing the houses of
local dealers, taking their cash and flushing their drugs down the toilet. But
when an old friend from the police needs his help, Frank is drawn back into the
world of dirty cops and suspicious drug busts.
Never one to play by the rules, Frank recruits a young man he nearly
executed years before. Together, detective and criminal charge headfirst into
the D.C. drug wars. Neither may make it out.
Red Strike is by Chris Ryan.
A former Russian spy goes on the run after an attempt to poison
him. Now he’s gone to ground, and M!6
went to get old of him before the Russians do.
When a retired British general learns about this he reports back to his
Russian paymasters. They decide the
former spy must be killed before he is found and spills his guts to Mi6. Series hero John Porter and John Bald must
work together to track down the spy and expose the general before it’s too late
and Russia reconquers the Baltic states.
March 2019
Missing Person is by Sarah Lotz. They are a group of misfits who go online for
fun. Their hobby is giving names to the missing dead. But a killer is online
with them, and his game is in deadly earnest . . . Shaun Ryan's brother, Teddy, died in 1989.
Only he didn't. Looking through his grievously ill mother's personal effects,
Shaun finds a postcard that Teddy posted from New York, dated October 22nd
1990. And in his mother's family Bible is a picture of an adult Teddy. Could
Teddy somehow be alive? And how do you find someone who has never been declared
missing and who vanished nearly thirty years ago? Missing-linc.com are an oddball assortment of
geeks and obsessives whose macabre hobby is matching unidentified bodies with
missing people. Ellie Caines' first and biggest case was The Boy in the Dress,
a corpse found not ten miles from where she lived in Minnesota, two years after
Teddy's postcard. Her obsession nearly broke her marriage and she left the
group - but when the Ryan's enquiry is passed onto her she knows they have
likely matched the missing Teddy with that decades-old corpse. And that she
will be sucked back into the old nightmare, where the dead are more real than
the living.
What if you found out that you'd been married to a
stranger? Nuala and James had the
perfect relationship. They were young
and in love, and so Nuala didn't question why James told her to never contact
his family or to visit the small Somerset town he was from. But now James is dead, and Nuala needs to
know what he was keeping from her all of those years. Nuala is on her way to a town full of her
husband’s secrets. And she is about to discover that sometimes secrets are
better left buried. Never Go There is by
Rebecca Tinnelly.
Joshua is convinced there's a family curse. It's taken his
loved ones, robbed him of his eyesight, and now his father has been killed
chasing down a murderer. His dad's last
wish seems like a blessing: the chance for Joshua to see. But as Joshua
navigates the world of sight, he realises he is seeing things through his
father's eyes. Dark things; things he never knew. His father was living a secret life. And
there are consequences coming for Joshua - along with a killer drawing closer
and closer... A Killer Harvest is by
Paul Cleave.
Hap and Leonard are an unlikely pair - Hap, a self-proclaimed
white trash rebel, and Leonard - a tough-as-nails Black, gay, Vietnam vet and
Republican - but they're the closest friend either of them has in the
world. After years of crime-solving
companionship, something's changed: Hap, recently married to their P.I. boss,
Brett, is now a family man. Amidst the worst flood East Texas has seen in
years, the two run across a woman who's had her tongue nearly cut out, pursued
by a heavily armed pair of goons. Though she can't talk much, on account of the
tongue, it turns out the girl survived a mob hit, and the boss has come to
clean up the mess. On a chase that blows
even the East Texas swampgrass back, Hap and Leonard must save the girl, and
vanquish her foes, before the foes get them first. With a new case to solve,
and a brand-new challenge to their relationship, will Hap and Leonard's
friendship survive? Will Hap and Leonard survive? The Elephant of Surprise is by Joe R
Lansdale.
April 2019
A Capital Death is by Lindsey Davis. A tragic accident . . . or was it? Emperor Domitian has been awarded (or rather,
has demanded) yet another Triumph to celebrate two so-called victories.
Preparations are going smoothly until one of the men overseeing arrangements
for the celebration accidentally falls to his death from a cliff on the
symbolic Capitoline Hill. But Flavia
Albia suspects there's more to the incident than meets the eye, as there are
plenty of people who would have been delighted to be rid of the overseer. He
was an abusive swine who couldn't organise a booze-up in a winery and was
caught up in a number of scams, including one surrounding the supply of
imperial purple dye and a family of shellfish-boilers. As Flavia finds herself drawn into a
theatrical world of carnival floats, musicians, incense and sacrificial beasts,
can she see to the heart of the matter and catch those responsible for the
unpopular man's untimely death?
Life as a private investigator is non-stop for Ravi Chandra
Singh and his gleefully amoral colleagues at the Golden Sentinels Agency. Ravi is getting used to his visions of Hindu
gods, but the cases are as crazy as ever. There's the actress who hires them to
track down the source of a sex tape she never made, the party in a rock star's
mansion that gets way out of control, and the terrorist leader who goes missing
in London before he can hand himself in.
But soon Ravi finds himself in worse trouble than he could ever have
imagined when his boss' secret plan to make himself a player on the world stage
blows up in everyone's face. The future
of Golden Sentinels hangs in the balance in the madcap, exhilarating conclusion
to the Ravi PI series. Her Fugitive
Heart is by Adi Tantimedhl.
You can't keep the secret. You can't tell the truth. You can't escape the past... Marianne was seventeen when she fled her
home, her family, her boyfriend Jesse and the body they buried. Now, forced to return, she can feel the past
closing around her. And Jesse, who never forgave her for leaving, is finally
threatening to expose the truth.
Marianne will do anything to protect the life she's built; the husband
and daughter who must never know. Even if it means turning to her worst
enemy... But Marianne may not know the
whole story - and she isn't the only one with secrets they'd kill to keep. Stone Mothers is by Erin Kelly
A Book of Bones is by John Connolly. He is our best hope. He is our last hope. On a lonely moor in the northeast of England,
the body of a young woman is discovered near the site of a vanished church. In
the south, a girl lies buried beneath a Saxon mound. To the southeast, the
ruins of a priory hide a human skull.
Each is a sacrifice, a summons.
And something in the darkness has heard the call. But another is coming: Parker the hunter, the
avenger. From the forests of Maine to the deserts of the Mexican border, from
the canals of Amsterdam to the streets of London, he will track those who would
cast this world into darkness. Parker fears no evil. But evil fears him . .
The police find out about the crime the way everyone does: on
Snapchat. The video shows the terrified victim begging for forgiveness. When
her body is found, it is marked with a number 2... Detective Huldar joins the investigation,
bringing child psychologist Freyja on board to help question the murdered
teenager's friends. Soon, they uncover that Stella was far from the angel
people claim - but even so, who could have hated her enough to kill? Then another teenager goes missing, and more
clips are sent. Freyja and Huldar can agree on two things at least: the truth
is far from simple. And the killer is not done yet. A brilliantly suspenseful story about the dark
side of social media, The Absolution is by Yrsa Sigurdardottir and
will make you wonder what you should have said sorry for...
June 2019
The Fifth Doctrine is by Karen Robards. With her back against the wall, everything's
on the line for Bianca St. Ives. She's either going to save the world-or die
trying. It took one hell of an effort
for the authorities to finally get the jump on master manipulator Bianca St.
Ives, but now that they have, it's far from the capture she expected. Instead of taking her in, there's an offer on
the table, a one-shot deal that would allow Bianca to walk away scot-free as if
they'd never found her. And all she has to do is run one last mission-the kind
she might never return from. But if Bianca wants to go back to her normal life
in Savannah, it's not like she has a choice . . .
Tara Beckley is a college senior assigned to chaperone a
visiting engineer to a conference. On the road, she is the victim of a brutal
accident that kills the engineer but leaves Tara in a vegetative state - or, at
least, so her doctors think. Really,
Tara is the prisoner of locked-in syndrome, fully alert, but unable to move a
muscle. Trapped in her body, she discovers that someone powerful wants her
dead. But why? And what can she do, lying in a hospital bed, to stop them? Meanwhile, Abby Kaplan, an insurance
investigator, is assigned to Tara's case. A former stunt driver, Abby has
returned to Maine after a disaster in Hollywood left a beloved actor dead and
her own reputation - and nerves - shattered. She has nothing left to give to the
case, but she can tell there's more to the accident than meets the eye. When Abby starts asking questions, things
spin out of control fast, leaving her boss murdered, Abby on the run, and an
enigmatic young hit man on her heels. If
She Wakes is by Michael Koryta.
July 2019
This is Gomorrah is by Tom Chatfield. The Dark Web is everywhere - and those
who know where to look, and who to ask, can find anything. Drugs, guns, porn,
ideologies, lives and deaths are all up for sale . . . and everything must go. Set in the technological underbelly of the
21st century, this conspiracy thriller follows elite hacker Azi Bello on a
journey of
discovery into the dark marketplace known as Gomorrah, within which
the world's worst people trade lives and influence. Taking the reader between
London, Berlin, Athens and Los Angeles, as well as into terrorist-controlled
Syrian cities, THIS IS GOMORRAH explores what it means to win, and to lose, at
the global game of ideology and power. A
loner, charmer, idealist and connoisseur of other people's mistakes, Azi's life
is spun around by a mysterious approach from a young Muslim woman called
Munira, and before long his carefully crafted privacy comes crashing down.
Munira is at her wits' end, a fellow hacker whose cousin has been recruited by
terrorists, and who has unearthed a terrible conspiracy in her struggle to
bring him home. She needs Azi's help and connections to track him down. But can she be trusted? Can Azi trust anyone
when identities can be changed with just a few clicks. . ?
