Helen
and Ellie are identical twins - like two peas in a pod, everyone says. The
girls know this isn't true, though: Helen is the leader and Ellie the follower.
Until they decide to swap places: just for fun, and just for one day. But Ellie
refuses to swap back...And so begins a nightmare from which Helen cannot wake
up. Her toys, her clothes, her friends, her glowing record at school, the
favour of her mother and the future she had dreamed of are all gone to a sister
who blossoms in the approval that used to belong to Helen. And as the years
pass, she loses not only her memory of that day but also herself - until
eventually only 'Smudge' is left. Twenty-five years later, Smudge receives a
call from out of the blue. It threatens to pull her back into her sister's
dangerous orbit, but if this is her only chance to face the past, how can she
resist? Beside Myself is a compulsive
and darkly brilliant psychological thriller by Ann Morgan and is about family and identity - what
makes us who we are and how very fragile it can be and is due to be published
in January 2016.
Sidney Chambers and the Dangers of
Temptation is by James Runcie and is due to be published in June 2016. It's
the summer of love in late 1960s England. The Apollo 11 astronauts are
preparing to land on the moon, the war in Biafra dominates the news and Basil
D'Oliveira has just been dropped from the England cricket team before a test
series in apartheid South Africa. In the midst of all this change, Sidney
Chambers, the loveable English clergyman continues his amateur sleuthing
investigations. A bewitching divorcee enlists Sidney's help in convincing her
son to leave a hippy commune; at a soiree on Grantchester Meadows during May
Week celebrations a student is divested of a family heirloom; Amanda's marriage
runs into trouble; Sidney and Hildegard holiday behind the Iron Curtain; Mrs
Maguire's husband returns from the dead and an arson attack in Cambridge leads
Sidney to uncover a cruel case of blackmail involving his former curate. In the
rare gaps between church and crime, Sidney struggles with a persistent case of
toothache, has his first flutter at the Newmarket races and witnesses the
creation of a classic rock song.
Jonathan
is a private investigator in a decaying eastern European city, consumed by his
work and his failing marriage. Approached one day by an elderly couple, he is
presented with a faded photograph of their daughter, missing for nearly two
decades. Troubled by the image of the little girl, who was the same age when
she vanished as his own daughter is now - he is compelled to find her. But one
night, soon after taking on the case, as he walks across the bridge spanning
the river that divides the city, he encounters a young woman crouched at the
foot of a stone angel - a woman who suddenly leaps into the icy water below.
Without thinking, Jonathan plunges after her, and is soon drawn into her
ghostly world of confusion, coincidence and intrigue, and the city he thought
he knew turns strange and threatening. Haunting and deeply moving, The Drowned Detective is an
intoxicating, atmospheric exploration of relationships, lies and betrayal and
is due to be published in February 2016.
The
death of a postman, Jorgen Kramer Nielsen, looks like a straightforward
accident, the prefect case for Detective Inspector Konrad Simonsen to return to
after a severe heart attack. However, as
new forensic evidence comes to light, the facts of Nielsen’s life unravel. The postman is linked to the disappearance of
an English teenager almost 40 years previously and as Simonsen and his team try
to pull all of the threads together it becomes clear that events leading to his
death were more sinister than anyone imagined.
The Vanished is by Lotte
Hammer and Søren Hammer and is due to be published in March 2016.
How
far would you go to protect the people you love? When young painter Marianne Glass is found
dead in her snow covered Oxford garden, Rowan Winter, her once closest friend,
knows it wasn’t an accident. Marianne
had paralysing vertigo: she would never have gone so close to the roof
edge. Rowan’s pursuit of the truth about
her old friend’s death takes her into every corner of her life, from bohemian
East London to the professional art world in which Marianne had made her
name. Rowan is determined to find out
what really happened – but some secrets are better left uncovered, and others
are lethal. Keep You Close is by Lucie
Whitehouse and is due to be published in April 2016.
Terrorists
are nothing new. The year is 1368 and
Granada is under threat from violent extremists. Enter Abu Abdallah, the penniless
globetrotter who has wives and concubines on three continents and is still
searching for the right woman, and his West African slave Sinan, the one with
the brawn, the brains, the looks – and demons from the past. Granada’s labyrinthine palace –citadel,
Alhambra, is nearing its triumphant completion.
But Sinan and Abu Abdallah are drawn to a darker maze, where baffling
mysteries threaten to ruin the balance of Muslim-Christian power in Spain. Alhambra
is by Tim Mackintosh-Smith and is due to be published in March 2016.
Early
in the morning of Monday 8 July 1895, thirteen-year-old Robert Coombes and his
twelve-year-old brother Nattie set out from their small, yellow brick terraced
house in east London to watch a cricket match at Lord's. Their father had gone
to sea the previous Friday, leaving the boys and their mother at home for the
summer. Over the next ten days Robert and Nattie spent extravagantly, pawning
family valuables to fund trips to the theatre and the seaside. During this time
nobody saw or heard from their mother, though the boys told neighbours she was
visiting relatives. As the sun beat down on the Coombes house, an awful smell
began to emanate from the building. When the police were finally called to
investigate, what they found in one of the bedrooms sent the press into a
frenzy of horror and alarm, and Robert and Nattie were swept up in a criminal
trial that echoed the outrageous plots of the 'penny dreadful' novels that
Robert loved to read. The Wicked Boy is by Kate Summerscale
and is due to be published in May 2016.
Mourad
Hafiz appears to have dropped out of university and disappeared. Engaged by his
family to try and find him, Makana comes to believe that the Hafiz boy became
involved in some kind of political activity just prior to his disappearance.
But before he can discover more, the investigation is sidetracked: a severed
head turns up on the riverbank next to his home, and Makana finds himself drawn
into ethnic rivalry and gang war among young men from South Sudan. The trail
leads from a church in the slums and the benevolent work of the
larger-than-life Rev. Preston Corbis and sister Liz to the enigmatic Ihsan
Qaddus and the Hesira Institute. The
fifth installment of this acclaimed series is set in Egypt in December 2005.
While Cairo is torn by the protests by South Sudanese refugees demanding their
rights, President Mubarak has just been re-elected by a dubious 88 percent
majority in the country's first multi-party elections. In response to what
appears to be flagrant election-rigging, there are early stirrings of organized
political opposition to the regime. Change is afoot and Makana is in danger of
being swept away in the seismic shifts of his adopted nation. City of Jackals is by Parker Bilal and
is due to be published in July 2016.
This is how it begins. With a near-empty
building, the inhabitants forced out of their homes by property developers.
With two women: idealistic, impassioned blogger Ella and seasoned campaigner,
Molly. With a body hidden in a lift shaft. But how will it end? This is
How it Ends is by Eva Dolan.
Gosford Park meets Inception, by way of
Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express `Somebody's going to be murdered
at the ball tonight. It won't appear to be a murder and so the murderer won't
be caught. Rectify that injustice and I'll show you the way out.' It is meant
to be a celebration but it ends in tragedy. As fireworks explode overhead,
Evelyn Hardcastle, the young and beautiful daughter of the house, is killed.
But Evelyn will not die just once. Until Aiden - one of the guests summoned to
Blackheath for the party - can solve her murder, the day will repeat itself,
over and over again. Every time ending with the fateful pistol shot. The only
way to break this cycle is to identify the killer. But each time the day begins
again, Aiden wakes in the body of a different guest. And someone is determined
to prevent him ever escaping Blackheath...
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn
Hardcastle is by Stuart Turton.
