Books to Look Forward to from Head of Zeus

July 2019

The Heart Keeper is by Alex Dahl.  How do you mend a broken heart? It's been three months since Alison Miller-Juul's world fell apart when her six-year-old daughter, Amalie, died in an accident. Three months of sympathy cards, grief counselling and gritting her teeth, but it's still only the vodka and pills that seem to help. Across town, Iselin Berg's life is finally looking up. Her seven-year-old daughter, Kaia, has survived a life-changing operation. After years of doctors, medication and hope, they can now start thinking about the future. When Alison uncovers a dangerous secret, she is left in turmoil. She can now see a way to heal her broken heart, but will she risk everything to do so?

December, 1939. Having solved the case of the Suffolk Vampire, Inspector Betty Church and her colleagues at Sackwater Police Station have settled back down to business. There's the elderly Mr Fern who keeps losing his slippers, Sylvia Satin's thirteenth birthday party to attend and the scintillating case of the missing bookmark to solve. Though peace and quiet are all well and good, Betty soon finds herself longing for some cold-blooded murder.  When a bomb is dropped on a residential street, both peace and quiet are broken and it seems the war has finally reached Sackwater. But Betty cannot stop the Hun, however hard she tries. So when the body of one of the bomb victims is found stretched out like an angel on Sackwater's beach, Betty concentrates on finding the enemy much closer to home...  A Room of the Dead is by M R C Kasasian

August 2019

There's power in stories and this is a story of power. Dead bodies aren't unusual in the alleyways of Fenest. Muggings, brawls gone bad, debts collected - Detective Cora Gorderheim has seen it all. Until she finds a Wayward man with his mouth sewn shut. As

Cora pieces together the dead man's story, she's drawn into the most dangerous story in the Union of Realms: the election. All she wants is to catch the killer, but nothing is that simple in an election year. Dark forces conspire against the Union and soon she finds herself at the rotten core of it all. Cora will find the killer, but at what cost? Widow”s Welcome is by D K Fields

Bitterroots is by CJ Box. Former police officer Cassie Dewell is trying to start over with her own private investigation firm. Guilty about not seeing her son and exhausted by the nights on stakeout, Cassie is nontheless managing... until an old friend calls in a favor: she wants Cassie to help exonerate a man accused of assaulting a young girl from an influential family. Against her own better judgment, Cassie agrees. But out in the Big Sky Country of Montana, twisted family loyalty runs as deep as the ties to the land, and there's always something more to the story. As Cassie attempts to uncover the truth, she must fight against the ghosts of her own past that threaten to pull her back under. 

September 2019

The newspapers called it The Bad Place. A remote farm out on the Thames estuary, where six children were held captive for two weeks. Five of them got out alive.  That was twenty years ago. Now adults, they meet up annually to hold a candlelit vigil for their friend who died. The only rule is that no-one can talk about what happened the night they escaped. But at this year's event, one of them witnesses a kidnapping. A young girl, Sammi, is bundled into a van in front of their eyes. Is history repeating itself? Is one of them responsible? Or is someone sending them a twisted message? DI Sasha Dawson, of Essex Police, is certain that the key to finding Sammi lies in finding out the truth about The Bad Place. But she also knows that with every second she spends trying to unlock the past, the clock ticks down for the missing girl...  The Bad Place is by M K Hill.

November 2019

No Fixed Line is by Dana Stabenow... though there is no fixed line between wrong and right. There are roughly zones whose laws must be obeyed. It is New Year's Eve, nearly six weeks into an off-and-on blizzard that has locked Alaska down, effectively cutting it off from the outside world. But now there are reports of a plane down in the Quilak mountains. With the National Transportation Safety Board unable to reach the crash site, ex-Trooper Jim Chopin is pulled out of retirement to try to identify the aircraft, collect the corpses, and determine why no flight has been reported missing. But Jim discovers survivors: two children who don't speak a word of English. Meanwhile, PI Kate Shugak receives an unexpected and unwelcome accusation from beyond 

Who really killed Leo Fenton? Two years ago, Ben Fenton went camping with his brother Leo. It was the last time they ever saw each other. By the end of that fateful trip, Leo had disappeared, and Ben had been arrested for his murder. Ben's wife Ana has always protested his innocence. Now, on the hottest day of 2018's sweltering heat wave, she receives a phone call from the police. Leo's body has been found, in a freshly dug grave in her own local churchyard. How did it get there? Who really killed him? St Albans police, led by DCI Jansen, are soon unpicking a web of lies that shimmers beneath the surface of Ana's well-kept village. But as tensions mount, and the tight-knit community begins to unravel, Ana realises that if she wants to absolve her husband, she must unearth the truth alone.  The Scorched Earth is by Rachel Blok.

December 2019

Tobias Hawke was the tech genius boss of the British Institute for Deep Learning. Now his body has been found in his lab: he has been brutally murdered. Hawke was on the brink of an astonishing breakthrough in the field of Artificial Intelligence. His creation, 'Syd', a machine-learning device that mimics human thought, promised to change the face of humanity forever. But, in the wake of her creator's murder, Syd has gone into emergency

shutdown procedure. What secrets are her neural networks hiding? 

Michael North, ex-assassin and spy-for-hire, is the man to find out. But he can't work alone. Teenage hacker Fangfang, and Hawke's widow, a prize-winning ethicist, have their own reasons to solve the murder. But can they uncover the truth before it's too late?  Curse the Day is by Judith O’Reilly.

In the Net is by Chan Ho-Kei. Natasha, a librarian, lives a quiet life with her fifteen-year-old sister Anastasia. After a difficult, impoverished upbringing and the deaths of their parents, they are finally finding a bit of stability. Then one day, Natasha comes home to find her teenage sister has jumped to her death. Was it suicide, or was she pushed? And does it have anything to do with a recent trip on the Hong Kong subway which left Anastasia silent and withdrawn? Natasha cannot rest until she knows the truth about her sister - even if that means tracking down her sister's friends one by one and making them confess. Part detective novel, part revenge thriller, In the Net explores themes of sexual harassment, internet bullying and teenage suicide - and vividly captures the zeitgeist of Hong Kong today.

Blood Ties is by Helen Burnside.  Adele Robinson is behind bars. Having been convicted for the murder of her abusive father, she quickly realises that she’ll have to play it tough if she’s going to survive. Meanwhile, her brother Peter is building his criminal empire on the outside. But he soon comes to the attention of Manchester’s rival gangs, and a turf war breaks out. And when things start to get bloody, only Adele can step in to protect the family business. Will she get out in time to save Peter? After all, blood is thicker than water, and when family’s in trouble you can’t look the other way.