Books to Look Forward to from Little Brown

January 2019

What she can't see can hurt her.  I have this dream.  In it, I'm in the house and it's dark and I know someone's in there with me.  Even though I can't see them . . .  For Sarah and Patrick, family life has always been easy. But when Sarah's mother dies, it sends Sarah into a downwards spiral. Knowing they need a fresh start, Patrick moves the family to the beachside house he grew up in.  But there is a catch: while their new home carries only happy memories for Patrick, to everyone else it's known as the Murder House - named for the family that was killed there.  Patrick is adamant they can make it perfect again, though with their children plagued by nightmares and a constant sense they're being watched, Sarah's not so sure.  Because the longer they live in their 'dream home', the more different her loving husband becomes . . . The Woman in the Dark is by Vanessa Savage.

Crime always leaves a stain . . .  Lena Szarka, a Hungarian cleaner, dusts off her detective skills when a masterpiece is stolen from a gallery she cleans with her cousin Sarika. But when Sarika goes missing too, accusations start to fly.  Convinced her cousin is innocent, Lena sweeps her way through the secrets of the London art scene. With the evidence mounting against Sarika and the police on her trail, Lena needs to track down the missing painting if she is to clear her cousin.  Embroiling herself in the sketchy world of thwarted talents, unpaid debts and elegant fraudsters, Lena finds that there's more to this gallery than meets the eye.  A Clean Canvas is by Elizabeth Mundy.

February 2019

Homicide cop Eve Dallas and her billionaire husband, Roarke, are building a brand-new school and youth shelter. They know that the hard life can lead kids toward dangerous crossroads - and with this new project, they hope to nudge a few more of them onto the right

path. For expert help, they hire child psychologist Dr. Rochelle Pickering - whose own brother pulled himself out of a spiral of addiction and crime with Rochelle's support.  Lyle is living with Rochelle while he gets his life together, and he's thrilled to hear about his sister's new job offer. But within hours, triumph is followed by tragedy. Returning from a celebratory dinner with her boyfriend, she finds Lyle dead with a syringe in his lap, and Eve's investigation confirms that this wasn't just another OD. After all his work to get clean, Lyle's been pumped full of poison - and a neighbor with a peephole reports seeing a scruffy, pink-haired girl fleeing the scene.  Now Eve and Roarke must venture into the gang territory where Lyle used to run, and the ugly underground world of tattoo parlors and strip joints where everyone has taken a wrong turn somewhere. They both believe in giving people a second chance. Maybe even a third or fourth. But as far as they're concerned, whoever gave the order on Lyle Pickering's murder has run out of chances....  Connections in Death is by J D Robb.

Dead Man’s Lane is by Kate Ellis.  Some paths only lead to the grave . . .  Strangefields Farm is notorious for its sinister history ever since artist Jackson Temples lured young women there to model for disturbing works of art. Some of those girls never left the house alive.  Now, decades later, Strangefields is to be transformed into a holiday village, but the developer's hopes of its dark history being forgotten are dashed when a skull is found on the site. And when a local florist is found murdered in an echo of Temples' crimes, DI Wesley Peterson fears that a copy-cat killer is at large. Especially when another brutal murder in a nearby village appears to be linked.  As Wesley's friend, archaeologist Dr Neil Watson, uncovers the secrets of Strangefields' grisly past, it seems that an ancient tale of the dead returning to torment the living might not be as fantastical as it seems. And Wesley must work fast to discover who's behind the recent murders . . . before someone close to him is put in danger.

He had started to remove his clothes as logic had deserted him, and his skin cracked.  Whatever had been going through Cameron’s mind when he was alive, he didn’t look peaceful in death.  Two brothers meet at the remote border of their vast cattle properties under the unrelenting sun of the outback. In an isolated part of Australia, they are each other's nearest neighbour, their homes hours apart.  They are at the stockman's grave, a landmark so old that no one can remember who is buried there. But today, the scant shadow it casts was the last hope for their middle brother, Cameron. The Bright family's quiet existence is thrown into grief and anguish.  Something had been troubling Cameron. Did he choose to walk to his death? Because if he didn't, the isolation of the outback leaves few suspects.  The Lost Man is by Jane Harper.

When New York psychologist Will Hardy's wife is killed, he and his teenage daughter Bernadette move into Godwin Hall, a dusty, shut-up mansion in the small town of Abbeville, Ohio.  Meanwhile, Abbeville Chief of Police Ivy Holgrave is investigating the death of a local girl, convinced this may only be the latest in a long line of murders dating back decades - including her own long-missing sister.  But what place does Will's new home have in the story of the missing girls? And what links the killings to the diary of a young woman written over a century earlier?  The Buried Girl is by Richard Montanari.

March 2019

The Department of Sensitive crime is by Alexander McCall Smith.  Mister Varg is a Sandinavian Blanc novel. Scandinavian Blanc is different from Scandinavian Noir: there is nothing noir about the world of Ulf Varg, a detective in the Sensitive Crimes Department in the Swedish city of Malmo. Ulf is concerned with very odd, but not too threatening crimes - injuries to the back of the knee caused by an unknown hand, young women who allow their desperation for a boyfriend to get the better of them, and peculiar goings-on in a spa on Sweden's south coast.  Of course, Ulf is a Swedish detective, and Swedish detectives, by convention, lead lives beset with problems of one sort or another. For a start, there is his name: Ulf derives from the Old Norse word for wolf and Varg means wolf in modern Swedish. But his character is far from vulpine: Ulf is a sympathetic, well-educated, and likeable man, with a knowledge of and interest in Nordic art. He has a dog called Marten, the only dog in Sweden who is capable of lip-reading (but only in Swedish). Martin becomes depressed and needs treatment. Dogs in Sweden are, apparently, particularly prone to Seasonal Affective Disorder. But this is summer - and there must be something else going on.  Ulf has a number of colleagues into whose lives we gain an insight. There is Anna, married to an anaesthetist, but very fond of Ulf; there is Erik, whose sole interest is fishing; Carl, whose father has written a book on the Danish philosopher, Kierkegaard; and there is poor Blomquist, from the uniformed branch, who goes on and on about health issues but who seems to have extraordinary luck in investigations. There is also Ulf's psychotherapist, Dr Svensson, whose observations on Ulf's life - and many other topics - enlightens - or possibly confuses.

Blood Oath is by Linda Fairstein.  Alex Cooper takes on the case of a young woman who testified years earlier at a landmark Federal trial - and now reveals that she was sexually assaulted by a prominent law enforcement official during that time. As the case grows more complex, Alex, along with NYPD detectives Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace, find themselves in uncharted territory within Manhattan's Rockefeller University, a research institute born of tragedy that has evolved into a premier scientific facility, hospital, and cornerstone of higher learning.  But when dark secrets of the century-old institution intersect with life-threatening events, the experience may just help determine whether Alex will keep her job, or throw her hat in the ring to become the next district attorney of New York County . . . if she can survive that long.

A murder on their doorstep.  A case that's too close to home . . . The body of a young woman has been discovered in Bellahouston park, the second in a matter of months. It's clear to Detective Superintendent William Lorimer of Police Scotland that they have a repeat killer on their hands, who is sure to strike again.  Lucky for DSI Lorimer that his wife, Maggie, is miles away from potential danger, touring Scotland to promote her first book. Faced with strangers at every event, Maggie doesn't notice the quiet, non-descript man sitting in the back row.  But he has noticed Maggie Lorimer. And soon his will be a face she never forgets.  The Stalker is by Alex Gray.

Six confined psychopaths. A killer on the loose.  1935. As Europe prepares itself for a calamitous war, six homicidal lunatics - the so-called 'Devil's Six' - are confined in a remote castle asylum in rural Czechoslovakia. Each patient has their own dark story to tell and Dr Viktor Kosarek, a young psychiatrist using revolutionary techniques, is tasked with unlocking their murderous secrets.  At the same time, a terrifying killer known as 'Leather Apron' is butchering victims across Prague. Successfully eluding capture, it would seem his depraved crimes are committed by the Devil himself.  Maybe they are... and what links him with the insane inmates of the Castle of the Eagles?  Only the Devil knows. And it is up to Viktor to find out.  The Devil Aspect is by Craig Russell.

What is the secret which grips Corvus Hall?  Visiting the Great Exhibition to view the wax anatomical models of the famous but reclusive Dr Merlin Strangeway, Jem Flockhart and Will Quartermain find a severed arm, perfectly dissected and laid out amongst the exhibits. Assuming it to be a prank by medical students, they return it to Dr Strangeway, who works at Corvus Hall, a private anatomy school run by Dr James Crowe - one of  Edinburgh's most revered surgeons and teachers of anatomy. Jem's persistence reveals that a body does indeed lie in the school's mortuary, minus its right arm. But the body has no provenance. More macabre still, its face has been dissected, making identification impossible. Dr Strangeway denies all knowledge, and Dr Crowe seems unwilling to pursue the matter.  At Corvus Hall, Will is employed to illustrate Dr Crowe's new anatomy handbook. Soon, it becomes evident that all is not as it should be. Dr Crowe's daughter, Lilith, visits the mortuary in the dead of night and her twin sisters, Sorrow and Silence - one blind and one deaf - exert a malign influence over the students. Organs, freshly dissected, appear in the anatomy museum. Fear grips lecturers and students, even as something unseen binds them in a bloody pact of silence.  In a mystery that ranges from the wynds of Burke and Hare's Edinburgh to the dissecting tables of London's notorious anatomy schools, Jem and Will find that the stakes have never been higher.  Surgeon’s Hall is by E S Thomson. 

Murder Fest is by Julie Wassmer.  Pearl's detective agency takes a back seat as she prepares to offer a warm welcome to a group of special visitors. A local Arts Festival is being held to honour a cultural exchange visit from representatives of Borken - Whitstable's Twin Town in Germany.  Yet very soon, personality clashes surface among the participants; local politicians try to use the festival for their own ends while others jostle for improved billing on the festival programme. Tempers flare, old feuds re-surface and on the eve of the first event, a cryptic message - Murder Fest - is received by the local police. Before DCI Mike McGuire has a chance to investigate, the festival commences with an unscheduled event when a celebrated author is found brutally murdered . . .  Soon the only 'Arts' on display are dark ones, as Whitstable's celebration of local culture transforms into a real-life murder fest - offering Whitstable's Pearl Nolan another mystery to solve.

April 2019

A game of blackmail and betrayal is played among the backstreets and canals of Venice . . .  Carnevale is in full swing, the streets and waterways of Venice are crowded with masked revellers and Nathan Sutherland's birthday is about to be ruined.  A night at the opera at La Fenice is always a memorable experience - and this time it will be so for all the wrong reasons as the curtain call is interrupted by a fatal stabbing. But why is the dead man carrying one of Nathan's business cards in his wallet?  The mystery of the murdered stranger takes Nathan on the trail of a lost opera by Monteverdi. But what begins as a harmless treasure hunt leads to ruthless criminals asking the highest of prices for the lost score... and then a second body is found in the sanctuary of Venice's English church.  The quest for the lost manuscript will bring Nathan back to the stage of La Fenice, where a final confrontation has deadly consequences...  The Venetian Masquerade is by Philip Gwynne Jones. 

May 2019

The intelligence service puts two years and over GBP100k into the training of new field officers. You're shown how to steal cars, strip weapons, hack bank accounts. There are courses on the use of blackmail and improvised explosives, two workshops solely dedicated to navigating by the stars. But nothing about what I had heard one old spy call whiplash. No one tells you how to go home.  There is a dark side to MI6 that needs men like Elliot Kane - mercurial, inquisitive, free floating. He's spent fifteen years managing events overseas that never make the papers, deniable and deeply effective. Kane is a ghost in his own life, picking

up and dropping personalities as each new cover story comes into play. But when a woman he loves, Joanna Lake, vanishes without a trace in Kazakhstan, he is forced centre stage.  Drawn ever deeper into a realm of deception, Kane moves from merely infiltrating events to steering them. He's used to a new mode of hybrid psychological warfare - but snowbound Kazakhstan presents unique challenges. Poised between China, Russia and the West, dictatorship and democracy, state intelligence and an increasingly powerful world of private agencies, it's impossible to work out who is manipulating who. And Kane's not the only one trying to figure out where Joanna Lake has gone or what she learned before disappearing.  Unable to trust anyone, hunted by his own colleagues, and with the life of someone he loves at stake, Kane needs to work out who is driving events, and why...  A Shadow Intelligence is by Oliver Harris.

When Delta Force Captain Kyle Mercer disappeared from his post in Afghanistan, a video released by his Taliban captors made international headlines. But circumstances were murky: Did Mercer desert before he was captured? Then a second video sent to Mercer's Army commanders leaves no doubt: the trained assassin and keeper of classified Army intelligence has wilfully disappeared.  When Mercer is spotted two years later in Caracas, Venezuela, top military brass task Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor of the Criminal Investigation Division to fly to Venezuela and bring Mercer back to America-dead or alive. Brodie knows this is a difficult mission, made more difficult by his new partner's inexperience and by his suspicion that Maggie Taylor is reporting to the CIA.  The Deserter is by William DeMille and Alex DeMille.

Brighton,1957.  Mirabelle Bevan can't resist a cry for help, be it the little girl at a seaside sanatorium who is getting bullied or the strange behaviour of Uma, the Indian nurse who is looking after her. Intrigued she soon finds herself drawn into a spider's web of connections between an upmarket brothel, local priest Father Grogan, a man's body washed up on Brighton beach and a missing nursing sister.  Attracted to handsome police doctor, Chris Williams, Mirabelle is determined to finally put her love affair with Jack Duggan behind her and recover from the betrayal of Superintendent Alan McGregor, but the police force in Brighton is undergoing a sea change that keeps leading her back to the sanatorium at the epicentre of a spate of brutal killings. And very soon it becomes apparent Mirabelle is in much more danger than she realises...  Indian Summer is by Sara Sheridan. 

June 2019

One family, two holidays, one devastating secret.   To new nanny Amanda, the Temple family seem to have it all: the former actress; the famous professor; their three successful grown-up children. But like any family, beneath the smiles and hugs there lurks far darker emotions.  Sixteen years earlier, little Niamh Temple died while they were on holiday in Portugal. Now, as Amanda joins the family for a reunion at their seaside villa, she begins to suspect one of them might be hiding something terrible...  And suspicion is a dangerous thing.  Fallen Angel is by Chris Brookmyre.

London, 1976.  In Belgravia in the heat of summer, Lee Jones, a faded and embittered rock star, is checking out a group of women through the heavy cigarette smoke in a crowded pub. He makes eye contact with one, and winks. After allowing glances to linger for a while longer, he finally moves towards her.  In that moment, his programme of terror - years in the making - has begun.  Months later, the first of the many chilling headlines to come appears: 'Police hunting winking killer.'  Meanwhile in France.  Charles Underhill, a wealthy Englishman living in Paris, has good reason to be interested in the activities of the so-called Winking Killer. With a past to hide and his future precarious, Charles is determined to discover the Winker's identity.  In the overheating cities of London, Oxford, Paris and Nice, a game of cat and mouse develops, and catching someone's eye becomes increasingly perilous. But if no one dares look, a killer can hide in plain sight . . .  The Winker is by Andrew Martin.

The Poison Garden is by Alex Marwood.  Born and raised within the confines of a sinister cult, Romy is now alone in a world she knows nothing about and understands even less. But just when she thought she had escaped her past and can start a new life with the child growing insider her, she discovers she is in more danger than she could ever have imagined . . .

My Scotland will be a beautiful, fully illustrated book containing over 100 photos of the landscapes and locations that form the backdrop to Val McDermid's celebrated writing, and some of the places that have inspired her personally. From Skye to Edinburgh, from Glasgow to Jura, the book crisscrosses Scotland, offering readers a fascinating guide to the country, alongside Val's own thoughts about what it means to her.

SuLin is doing her dream job: assistant at Singapore's brand new detective agency. Until Bald Bernie decides a 'local girl' can't be trusted with private investigations, and replaces her with a new secretary - pretty, privileged, and white. So SuLin's not the only person finding it hard to mourn Bernie after he's found dead in the filing room. And when her best friend's dad is accused, she gets up to some sleuthing work of her own in a bid to clear his name.  SuLin finds out that Bernie may have been working undercover, trading stolen diamonds for explosives from enemy troops. Was he really the upright English citizen he claimed to be?  Meanwhile, a famous assassin commits his worst crime yet, and disappears into thin air. Rumours spread that he may be dangerously close to home.  Beneath the stifling, cloudless Singaporean summer, earthquakes of chaos and political unrest are breaking out. When a tragic loss shakes SuLin's personal world to its core, she becomes determined to find the truth. But in dark, hate-filled times, truth has a price - and SuLin must decide how much she's willing to pay for it. The Paper Tree Bark is by Ovidia Yu.

Also due to be published in June is The Graves of Whitechapel by Claire Evans.

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