January 2021
Wicked deeds require the cover of darkness... A struggling silhouette artist in Victorian Bath seeks out a renowned child spirit medium in order to speak to the dead - and to try and identify their killers - in this beguiling new tale from Laura Purcell. Silhouette artist Agnes is struggling to keep her business afloat. Still recovering from a serious illness herself, making enough money to support her elderly mother and her orphaned nephew Cedric has never been easy, but then one of her clients is murdered shortly after sitting for Agnes, and then another, and another... Desperately seeking an answer, Agnes approaches Pearl, a child spirit medium lodging in Bath with her older half-sister and her ailing father, hoping that if Pearl can make contact with those who died, they might reveal who killed them. But Agnes and Pearl quickly discover that instead they may have opened the door to something that they can never put back... What secrets lie hidden in the darkness? The Shape of Darkness is by Laura Purcell.
Post Mortem is by Gary Bell. Can Rook keep his criminal past a secret when facing the most dangerous case of his life? Thirteen men have died in a London prison. Barrister Elliot Rook QC, who risks losing everything if his secret criminal past is revealed, must defend Charli Meadows, the vulnerable single mother accused of smuggling the deadly tainted drugs inside. But just as Rook becomes suspicious of those closest to Charli, a note arrives at his flat - threatening violence if the trial is not called off. While Rook battles to defend Charli and protect himself, his young protege Zara Barnes is fighting for her livelihood. In a few short weeks, only one tenancy at the legal chambers will be available to the ever-multiplying mass of pupils. Determined to make it hers, Zara takes on her biggest solo case yet. But will her gamble pay off?
Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires: The Life of Patricia Highsmith is by Richard Bradford. Made famous by the great success of her psychological thrillers, The Talented Mr Ripley and Strangers on a Train, Patricia Highsmith is lauded as one of the great modern writers. However, there has never been a clear picture of the woman behind the books. The triangular relationship between Highsmith's lesbianism, her fraught personality - by parts self-destructive and malicious - and her fiction has been largely avoided by other biographers. She was openly lesbian and would, in modern times, be venerated as a radical exponent of an LGBT lifestyle. However, her status as an exemplar of gay radicalism is undermined by the incontrovertible fact that she was gratuitously cruel and exploitative of her lovers. In this new biography, Richard Bradford brings his sharp, incisive style to one of the great, and most controversial, writers of the twentieth century. He considers Highsmith's best-sellers in the context of her troubled personal life; her alcoholism, her anti-Semitism and her misogyny.
February 2021
Lightseekers is by Femi Kayode. Three young students are brutally murdered in a Nigerian university town, their killings - and their killers - caught on social media. The world knows who murdered them; what no one knows is why. As the legal trial begins, investigative psychologist Philip Taiwo is contacted by the father of one of the boys, desperate for some answers to his son's murder. Philip is an expert in crowd behaviour and violence but travelling to the sleepy university town that bore witness to the killings, he soon feels dramatically out of his depth. Years spent first studying, then living in the US with his wife and children mean he is unfamiliar with many Nigerian customs and no one involved in the case seems willing to speak out. The more Philip digs, and the more people he meets with a connection to the case, the more he begins to realise that there is something very wrong concealed somewhere in this community.
March 2021
The Mystery of the Parsee Lawyer is by Shrabani Basu. In the village of Great Wyrley near Birmingham, someone is mutilating horses. Someone is also sending threatening letters to the vicarage, where the vicar, Shahpur Edalji, is a Parsi convert to Christianity and the first Indian to have a parish in England. His son George - quiet, socially awkward and the only boy at school with distinctly Indian features - grows up into a successful barrister, till he is improbably linked to and then prosecuted for the above crimes in a case that left many convinced that justice hadn't been served. When he is released early, his conviction still hangs over him. Having lost faith in the police and the legal system, George Edalji turns to the one man he believes can clear his name - the one whose novels he spent his time reading in prison, the creator of the world's greatest detective. When he writes to Arthur Conan Doyle asking him to meet, Conan Doyle agrees. From the author of Victoria and Abdul comes an eye-opening look at race and an unexpected friendship in the early days of the twentieth century, and the perils of being foreign in a country built on empire.
Musician Charlotte Dove has vanished after playing in a concert for a prestigious orchestra led by a conductor world-renowned as a charismatic, obsessive genius who pushes his musicians to their very limit. The police insist that there are no signs of foul play and that with Charlotte's passport missing, she is unlikely to be in any danger. But where did Charlotte go? And why would she leave without a word to her husband, fellow musician Henry, having just secured the job of a lifetime? Journalist Richard Blake is struggling to find work in the new online world. He sees Charlotte's disappearance as an opportunity to restart his career by exploiting the growing obsession with true crime podcasts. But the more he delves into Charlotte's past, and the more his audience grows, bringing him into direct conflict with the police, the murkier her story becomes... The Disappearance of Charlotte Dove is by Alice Clark-Platts.
April 2021
Greenwich Park is by Katherine Faulkner. Helen has it all... Daniel is the perfect husband. Rory is the perfect brother. Serena is the perfect sister-in-law. And Rachel? Rachel is the perfect nightmare. When Helen, finally pregnant after years of tragedy, attends her first antenatal class, she is expecting her loving architect husband to arrive soon after, along with her confident, charming brother Rory and his pregnant wife, the effortlessly beautiful Serena. What she is not expecting is Rachel. Extroverted, brash, unsettling single mother-to-be Rachel, who just wants to be Helen's friend. Who just wants to get know Helen and her friends and her family. Who just wants to know everything about them. Every little secret...
May 2021
When the police are called to the report of a late-night shooting, they expect it to be drugs or gang-related. They don't expect to find a young student executed on his way home. Jordan Radley was an aspiring journalist: hard working, well-liked, dedicated. His first major story - looking at the fallout following the closure of a major local factory - had run recently and looked to be the first step in his longed-for career. Even after the story ran, Jordan continued to stay in contact with those he interviewed: he was on his way back from their social club the night he was murdered. But as the detectives quickly discover, not only was Jordan killed, but those responsible also broke into his house, taking his laptop and notes. What was he researching that might have led to his death? And can this really be linked to another case - long ruled an accident - in the same area or are the police being forced to prioritise those with the best connections rather than the ones that most need their help? One Half Truth is by Eva Dolan.
June 2021
I know What I Saw is by Imran Mahmood. I saw it. He smothered her, pressing his hands on her face. The police don't believe me, they say it's impossible - but I know what I saw. This is Xander Shute: once a wealthy banker, now living on the streets. As he shelters for the night in an empty Mayfair flat, he hears its occupants returning home, and scrambles to hide as the couple argue. Trapped in his hiding place, he soon finds himself witnessing a vicious murder. But who was the dead woman, who the police later tell him can't have been there? And why is the man Xander saw her with evading justice? As Xander searches for answers, his memory of the crime comes under scrutiny, forcing him to confront his long-buried past and the stories he's told about himself. How much he is willing to risk to understand the brutal truth?
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