Books to Look Forward to From Quercus and MacLehose Press

July 2019

The Boy Who Fell is by Jo Spain. Kids can be so cruel. They'll call you names. Hurt your feelings. Push you to your death. In the garden of an abandoned house, Luke Connolly lies broken, dead. The night before, he and his friends partied inside. Nobody fought, everybody else went home safely. And yet, Luke was raped and pushed to his death. His alleged attacker is now in custody. DCI Tom Reynolds is receiving the biggest promotion of his career when a colleague asks him to look at the Connolly case, believing it's not as cut and dried as local investigators have made out. And as Tom begins to examine the world Connolly and his upper class friends inhabited, the privilege and protection afforded to them, he too realises something. In this place, people cover up for each other. Even when it comes to murder.

London, 1656: Captain Seeker is back in the city, on the trail of an assassin preparing to strike at the heart of Oliver Cromwell's Republic.  The Commonwealth is balanced on a knife edge. Royalists and disillusioned former Parliamentarians have united against Oliver Cromwell, now a king in all but name. Three conspirators, representing these factions, plan to assassinate the Lord Protector, paving the way back to the throne for Charles Stuart once and for all.  Captain Damian Seeker, meanwhile, is preoccupied by the horrifying discovery in an illegal gambling den of the body of a man ravaged by what is unmistakably a bear. Yet the bears used for baiting were all shot when the sport was banned by Cromwell. So where did this fearsome creature come from, and why would someone use it for murder?  With Royalist-turned-Commonwealth-spy Thomas Faithly tracking the bear, Seeker investigates its victim. The trail leads from Kent's coffee house on Cornhill, to a German clockmaker in Clerkenwell, to the stews of Southwark, to the desolate Lambeth Marshes where no one should venture at night.  When the two threads of the investigation begin to join, Seeker realises just what - and who - he is up against. The Royalists in exile have sent to London their finest mind and greatest fighter, a man who will stop at nothing to ensure the Restoration. Has Seeker finally met his match?  The Bear Pit is by S G MacLean.

Sanctuary is by Luca D’Andrea.  Marlene Wegener is on the run. She has stolen something from her husband, something priceless, irreplaceable.  But she doesn't get very far. When her car veers off a bleak midwinter road she takes refuge in the remote home of Simon Keller, a tough mountain man who lives alone with his demons. Here in her high mountain sanctuary, she begins to rekindle a sense of herself: tough, capable, no longer the trophy on a gangster's arm.  But Herr Wegener does not know how to forgive, and in his rage he makes a pact with the devil. The Trusted Man. He cannot be called off, he cannot be reasoned with and one way or another he will get the job done.  Unless, of course, he's beaten to it . . .

 

One wet and misty weekend in October, the Niemann family find a stranger in their garden. He is armed and tries to force his way into the house, but disappears as soon as the police are alerted. That night he's back with an impossible ultimatum . . .  Freiburg detective Louise Boni and her colleagues are put under enormous pressure. Traces of evidence lead her to a no-man's-land, and to a ruthless criminal who brings with him the trauma of conflict in the Balkans.  The Dance of Death is the third book in the Black Forest Investigation series by Oliver Bottini

August 2019

"There's something I have to explain, my love," he says, taking your hand in his. "That wasn't a dream. It was an upload."  Abbie wakes in a hospital bed with no memory of how she got there. The man by her side explains that he's her husband. He's a titan of the tech world, the founder of one of Silicon Valley's most innovative startups. He tells Abbie she's a gifted artist, a doting mother to their young son, and the perfect wife. Five years ago, she suffered a terrible accident. Her return from the abyss is a miracle of science, a breakthrough in artificial intelligence that has taken him half a decade to achieve.  But as Abbie pieces together memories of her marriage, she begins questioning her husband's motives - and his version of events. Can she trust him when he says he wants them to be together forever? And what really happened to her, half a decade ago?.  The Perfect Wife is by J P Delaney 

The Washington Decree is by Jussi Adler-Olsen.  "The president has gone way too far. . . . These are practically dictatorial methods we're talking about." When Democratic Senator Bruce Jansen is elected president of the United States, it is a personal victory for Dorothy "Dottie" Rogers. She has secured a job in the White House, has proved to her Republican father that she was right to support Jansen, and is proud to see the rise of an intelligent, inspiring leader who shares her ideals. But the triumph is short-lived: Jansen's pregnant wife is assassinated on election night, and the alleged mastermind behind the shooting is none other than Dottie's own father. When Jansen ascends to the White House, he is a changed man, determined to end gun violence by any means necessary. Rights are taken away as quickly as weapons. Checkpoints and roadblocks destroy infrastructure. The media is censored. Militias declare civil war on the government. The country is in chaos, and Dottie's finds herself fighting for the life of her father, who just may be innocent.

3 Hoursis by Roslund & Hellström. The explosive third novel in the Ewert Grens-Piet Hoffmann trilogy, which began with Three Seconds.  Stockholm, Sweden. Seventy-three refugees have been found dead, suffocated in a container at Varta harbour.  Niamey, Niger. Ewert Grens arrives in a city he's never heard of, in search of a man he never thought he would see again.  Piet Hoffmann has again got himself in too deep, infiltrating a West African trafficking ring. He thinks he has two weeks to extricate himself, but will learn that his life, and that of countless defenceless people, now hangs on his actions during three desperate hours.

What will you do now?" "I shall be the hunter and not the hunted"  The girl with the dragon tattoo is finally ready to confront her nemesis, the only woman who is evidently and in many ways her match. Salander will not wait to be hunted. When she strikes it will be a double blow: vengeance for recent atrocities, and the settling of lifelong scores.  It begins with the discovery of Mikael Blomkvist’s number at Millennium magazine in the pocket of an unidentified homeless man who died with the name of a government minister on his lips.  Blomkvist, at extreme risk to himself, tracks down his old friend and will protect her as far as he can. But he is powerless to crush her enemies on his own.  And for Lisbeth Salander, the personal is always political - and deadly.  For months now Salander has been closing in on her target. She has moved from Stockholm, her hair is newly styled, her piercings are gone. She could pass for any other businesswoman. But not all businesswomen have a Beretta Cheetah beneath their jacket. They do not wield the lethal power of a hacker’s genius. They do not carry scars and tattoos to remind them that they have survived the unsurvivable.  The Girl Who Lived Twice is by David Lagercrantz.

September 2019

As the head of Swedish Intelligence in Brussels Bente Jensen has many enemies, even among those who ought to be her allies, like Jonathan Green of MI6. In a city heaving with competing espionage agencies he is the person she fears and distrusts most. She has good reason. They share a past.  Green has been part of an MI6 conspiracy to hold, interrogate, torture and kill its political prisoners in a safe house in Syria. This explosive information has been leaked to Bente by a conscience-stricken British operative. When it is clear she can expose this operation MI6 uses its full arsenal of dirty tricks to shame her, disgrace her, destroy her relationships and remove her from active service.  But Green's private life has more in common with Bente's than he acknowledges. He is far from fireproof himself. Both spies will find themselves targets of the UK establishment's precisely calculated revenge.  The Silent War is by Andreas Norman.

October 2019

Ten years have passed since the events described in The Vanishing Box. Edgar Stephens is now a Superintendent and married to former DS Emma Holmes. Edgar's wartime partner in arms, magician Max Mephisto, is a movie star in Hollywood, while his daughter Ruby has her own TV show, Ruby Magic.  The funeral of Stan Parks, aka Diablo, actor and wartime comrade to Edgar and Max, throws the gang back together. The reunion sparks all sorts of feelings. Bob Willis, now a DI, is dealing with the disappearance of local schoolgirl Rhonda Miles. Emma, frustrated by living the life of a housewife and mother, keeps thinking how much better she would run the case. She is helped by Sam Collins, a woman reporter also hampered by sexism at work. Sam notices a pattern with other missing girls. Edgar listens to the theory but doesn't give it much credence. He is preoccupied with the threatened invasion of Brighton by Mods and Rockers on the May Bank Holiday.  The case takes a more sinister turn when one of the missing girls is found dead. Then Ruby fails to turn up for a rendezvous and it becomes clear that she too has disappeared. Emma takes risks to track down the killer herself while Edgar is working flat out dealing with violent clashes between rival gangs on Brighton's seafront. With tension and anger hitting him on all sides, Edgar must keep the coolest of heads to track down the killer.  Now You See Them is by Elly Griffiths.

A Body in the Bookshop is by Helen Cox. Librarian Kitt Hartley thought her life had gone back to normal after the shocking events of Murder by the Minster. Then her friend Evie Bowesbreaks some bad news: DS Charlotte Banks has been suspended from duty, on suspicion of assaulting a suspect in a string of antique bookshop robberies.   Evie wants justice for Charlotte who she is sure was not the attacker, and how could any self-respecting librarian turn down the chance to find missing rare books? The two friends team up once again to investigate the rarefied world of York's bookshops and antiques dealers and find out just who has framed their friend. But Kitt and Evie will soon learn that there are some books people will kill for - will this story have a happy ending?

Goodfellas meets White Fang. A gripping coming of age thriller of vengeance and destiny set between Mexico City's murderous 1960s underworld and the bleak tundras of Canada's most remote province.  Yukon, Canada's far north. A young man tracks a wolf through the wilderness.  The one his grandfather warned him about:  "Of all the wolves you will see in your life, one alone will be your master."  In Mexico City, Juan Guillermo has pledged vengeance. For his murdered brother, Carlos.  For his parents, sentenced to death by their grief.  But in 1960s Mexico justice is sold to the highest bidder, and the Catholic fanatics who killed Carlos are allied to Zunita, a corrupt and influential police commander.  If he is to quench his thirst for revenge  Juan Guillermo will have to answer his inner call of the wild and discover what links his destiny to a hunter on the other side of America.  The Untameable is by Guillermo Arriaga.