Thursday 27 December 2018

Books to Look Forward to from Bloomsbury Publishing


January 2019

The Flower Girls is by Alice-Clark Platts.  Three children went out to play, only two came back. The Flower Girls. Laurel and Primrose. One convicted of murder, the other given a new identity. Now, nineteen years later, another child has gone missing. And the Flower Girls are about to hit the headlines all over again...

February 2019

A journalist must follow the clues, no matter how far that takes her. Casey Benedict, star reporter at the Post, has infiltrated the lives and exposed the lies of countless politicians and power players. Using her network of contacts, Casey is always on the search for the next big story, no matter how much danger this might place her in, no matter what cost emotionally. Tipped off by an overheard conversation at an exclusive London nightclub, she begins to investigate the apparent suicide of a wealthy young British man, whose death has left his fiancee and family devastated. Casey's determined hunt for the truth will take her from the glitz of St-Tropez to the deserts of Libya and on to the very darkest corners of the human mind.  To The Lions is by Holly Watt.

March 2019

The Road to Granchester by James Runcie is the captivating prequel to the treasured Grantchester series follows the life, loves and losses of a young Sidney Chambers in post-war London It is 1938, and eighteen-year-old Sidney Chambers is dancing the quickstep with Amanda Kendall at her brother Robert's birthday party at the Caledonian Club. No one can believe, on this golden evening, that there could ever be another war. Returning to London seven years later, Sidney has gained a Military Cross, and lost his best friend on the battlefields of Italy. The carefree youth that he and his friends were promised has been blown apart, just like the rest of the world - and Sidney, carrying a terrible, secret guilt, must decide what to do with the rest of his life. But he has heard a call: constant, though quiet, and growing ever more persistent. To the incredulity of his family and the derision of his friends - the irrepressible actor Freddie, and the beautiful, spiky Amanda - Sidney must now negotiate his path to God: the course of which, much like true love, never runs smooth. 

The thrilling true story of Richard Sorge - the man John le Carre called `the spy to end spies', and whose actions turned the tide of the Second World War Richard Sorge was a man with two homelands. Born of a German father and a Russian mother in Baku in 1895, he moved in a world of shifting alliances and infinite possibility. A member of the angry and deluded generation who found new, radical faiths after their experiences on the battlefields of the First World War, Sorge became a fanatical communist - and the Soviet Union's most formidable spy. Like many great spies, Sorge was an effortless seducer, combining charm with ruthless manipulation. He did not have to go undercover to find out closely guarded state secrets - his victims willingly shared them. As a foreign correspondent, he infiltrated and influenced the highest echelons of German, Chinese and Japanese society in the years leading up to and including the Second World War. His intelligence regarding Operation Barbarossa and Japanese intentions not to invade Siberia in 1941 proved pivotal to the Soviet counteroffensive in the Battle of Moscow, which in turn determined the outcome of the war. Never before has Sorge's story been told from the Russian side as well as the German and Japanese.  An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin’s Master Agent is by Owen Matthews.

April 2019

Impossible Causes is by Julie Mayhew. Four elements. Four seasons. Four points on the compass. Four teenage girls. And one body. Black-haired, pure islander, Britta. The alpha female of the so-called Eldest Girls. 'Half-blood' Jade-Marie, her missionary father long drowned. Blonde, angelic looking Anna - the moral compass of the trio. And then red-headed Viola. Viola, the newcomer to the island, escaping tragedy and desperate to belong. Viola, who turns three girls into four and completes the set. Viola, who finds the man's body, lying in the stone circle. Viola, who has watched and waited for her opportunity to become one of the inner circle, whatever it takes. In Julie Mayhew's mesmerising and compelling thriller, a remote and deeply religious island with a history of paganism is riven when a man is found dead. As rumours spread and tensions rise, and fog descends, sealing the island off from the mainland, the four teenage girls of Lark Island find themselves accused of witchcraft - and murder.

Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps is by Ursula Buchan.  John Buchan's name is known across the world for The Thirty-Nine Steps. In the past one hundred years the classic thriller has never been out of print and has inspired numerous adaptations for film, television, radio and stage, beginning with the celebrated version by Alfred Hitchcock. Yet there was vastly more to `JB'. He wrote more than a hundred books, fiction and non-fiction and about a thousand articles for newspapers and magazines. He was a scholar, antiquarian, barrister, colonial administrator, journal editor, literary critic, publisher, war correspondent, director of wartime propaganda, member of parliament and imperial proconsul - given a state funeral when he died, a deeply admired and loved Governor-General of Canada. His teenage years in Glasgow's Gorbals, where his father was the Free Church minister, contributed to his ease with shepherds and ambassadors, fur-trappers and prime ministers. His improbable marriage to a member of the aristocratic Grosvenor family means that this account of his life contains, at its heart, an enduring love story.

May 2019

It's been a year since Leo Stanhope lost the woman he loved, and came closing to losing his own life. Now, more than ever, he is determined to keep his head down and stay safe, without risking those he holds dear. But Leo's hopes for peace and security are shattered when the police unexpectedly arrive at his lodgings: a woman has been found murdered at a club for anarchists, and Leo's address is in her purse. When Leo is taken to the club by the police, he is shocked to discover there a man from his past, a man who knows Leo's birth identity. And if Leo does not provide him with an alibi for the night of the woman's killing, he is going to share this information with the authorities. If Leo's true identity is unmasked, he will be thrown into an asylum, but if he lies... will he be protecting a murderer?  The Anarchists’ Club is by Alex Reeve.

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