Books to Look Forward to From Orion Books

Was it possible that the book he had before him was an original document, squirreled away for sixteen years?  Or was it simply another hoax, the desperate ploy of a poor, ambitious young writer, just as he had been who schemed, just as he had schemed, to captivate the fickle attention of the public by tying a painter to the taffrail of a famous mystery ship?  A ghost ship appears in the mist.  To a struggling author called Arthur Conan Doyle, it is an inspiration.  To Violet Petra, the most infamous mystic of her age, it is a reminder.  To the death-obsessed Victorian public, it is a preoccupation.  And to one family, tied to the sea for generations, it is a tragedy.  In salons and rough seas, séances and the mind of a genius, Valerie Martin looks behind the myth and brings an extraordinary story to life.  The Ghost of the Mary Celeste is due to be published in February 2014.

The Call is by Steve Mosby and is due to be published in May 2015.  A monster is talking the city.  Young women are being assaulted in their own homes, and DI Zoe Dolan knows it’s only a matter of time before the attacks escalate and someone is killed.  An elderly widow is mourning her lost husband and treating from the increasingly terrifying world around her.  Her only support comes from her great-nephew, an odd young man, but the only one who seems to care.  Jane Webster, a shy woman in her twenties, volunteers at a helpline.  When she receives a call from a man claiming to be the attacker, she is forced to confront her fears and make a decision.  It is a choice that will set all three women on a collision course with an evil far darker than they could have ever imagined.

It's a profile, like all the others on the online dating site.  But as NYPD Detective Kat

Donovan focuses on the accompanying picture, she feels her whole world explode, as emotions she's ignored for decades come crashing down on her.  Staring back at her is her ex-fiancé Jeff, the man who shattered her heart eighteen years ago.  Kat feels a spark, wondering if this might be the moment when past tragedies recede and a new world opens up to her.  But when she reaches out to the man in the profile, her reawakened hope quickly darkens into suspicion and then terror as an unspeakable conspiracy comes to light, in which monsters prey upon the most vulnerable.  As Kat's hope for a second chance with Jeff grows more and more elusive, she is consumed by an investigation that challenges her feelings about everyone she ever loved - her former fiancé, her mother, and even her father, whose cruel murder so long ago has never been fully explained.  With lives on the line, including her own, Kat must venture deeper into the darkness than she ever has before, and discover if she has the strength to survive what she finds there.  Missing You is by Harlan Coben and is due to be published in April 2014.

Hell’s Gate is by Richard Compton and is due to be published in March 2014.  It must have been someone's idea of a joke.  Too many offended egos back at headquarters, too many influential people unhappy with him in Nairobi.  And yet, with his record, almost impossible to dismiss.  So where had they sent Mollel?  Straight to Hell.  When Mollel, a former Maasai warrior turned detective, ends up in a small, fly-blown town on the edge of a national park, it looks as if his career has taken a nose-dive.  His colleagues are a close-knit group and they have not taken kindly to a stranger in their midst.  Mollel suspects they are guilty of the extortion and bribery that plague the force, but when the body of a flower worker turns up in the local lake, he wonders if they might be involved in something more disturbing...For all is not as it seems in Hell's Gate.  Amid rumours of a local death squad, disappearances and blackmail, Mollel is forced not only to confront his Maasai heritage, but also to ask himself where justice truly lies.  In upholding the law, is he doing what is right?

Bourne's friend Eli Yadin, head of Mossad, learns that Ouyang Jidan, a senior member of China's Politburo, and a major Mexican drug lord may have been trafficking in something far more deadly than drugs.  Yadin convinces Bourne to investigate.  Bourne agrees, but only because he has a personal agenda: Ouyang Jidan is the man who ordered Rebeka - one of the only people Bourne has ever truly cared about - murdered.  Bourne is determined to avenge her death, but in the process, he becomes enmeshed in a monstrous worldwide scheme involving the Chinese, Mexicans, and Russians.  Bourne's increasingly desperate search for Ouyang takes him from Tel Aviv, to Shanghai, Mexico City, and, ultimately, a village on China's coast where a clever trap has been laid for him.  Bourne finds himself pursued on all sides and unsure whom he can trust.  As he moves closer to Ouyang, closer to avenging the woman he loved, he also moves ever-closer to his own death...  Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Retribution is by Eric Van Lustbader and is due to be published in January 2014.

Charlotte Alton has put her old life behind her.  The life where she bought and sold information, unearthing secrets buried too deep for anyone else to find, or fabricating new identities for people who need their histories erased.  But now she has been offered one more job.  To get a hit man into an experimental new prison and take out someone who according to the records isn't there at all.  It's impossible.  A suicide mission.  And quite possibly a set-up.  So why can't she say no?  The Distance is by Helen Giltrow and is due to be published in May 2014

The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths is by Harry Bingham and is due to be published in March 2014.  When DC Fiona Griffiths says 'yes' to her policeman boyfriend, it's an affirmation that she wants finally to put her psychological breakdown behind her, and become a resident of 'Planet Normal' like everybody else.  But she still can't resist the challenge of an undercover policing course, and finding it remarkably easy to assume a new identity; she comes top of the class.  So when an ingenious payroll fraud starts to look like the tip of a huge criminal iceberg, Fiona is selected to infiltrate the fraudsters' operation.  Posing as a meek former payroll clerk now forced to work as a cleaner, Fiona Griffiths becomes Fiona Grey, hoping the criminals will try and recruit her - knowing that if they discover her real identity, she's dead meat.  But as Fiona penetrates deeper into their operation, coming closer to identifying the mastermind behind it, she faces another, even more frightening danger - that her always-fragile grip on her sense of self has now been lost and she may never find her way back.

The first thing you should know about me is that my name is not Carter Blake.  That name no more belongs to me than the hotel room I was occupying when the call came in.  When Caleb Wardell, the infamous 'Chicago Sniper', escapes from death row two weeks before his execution, the FBI calls on the services of Carter Blake, a man with certain specialised talents whose skills lie in finding those who don't want to be found.  A man to whom Wardell is no stranger.  Along with Elaine Banner, an ambitious special agent juggling life as a single mother with her increasingly high-flying career, Blake must track Wardell down as he cuts a swathe across America, apparently killing at random.  But Blake and Banner soon find themselves sidelined from the case.  And as they try desperately to second-guess a man who kills purely for the thrill of it, they uncover a hornets' nest of lies and corruption.  Now Blake must break the rules and go head to head with the FBI if he is to stop Wardell and expose a deadly conspiracy that will rock the country.  Slick, fast-paced and assured, The Killing Season is by Mason Cross and is the first novel in the gripping new Carter Blake series.  It is due to be published on April 2014.

The Tournament is by Matthew Reilly and is due to be published in January 2014.  England, 1546: A young Princess Elizabeth is surrounded by uncertainty.  The Black Death stalks the land and with it deadly conspiracies against her.  She is not currently in line for the throne, but she remains a threat to her older sister and brother.  In the midst of this fevered atmosphere comes an unprecedented invitation from the Sultan in Constantinople.  He seeks to assemble the finest players of chess from the whole civilised world and pit them against each other.  The prize?  Fabulous wealth but also the honour of Christendom.  Roger Ascham, Elizabeth's teacher and mentor, is determined to keep her out of harm's way and continue her education in the art of power and politics.  Ascham resolves to take Elizabeth with him when he accompanies the English chess champion to the Ottoman capital.  But once there, the two find more danger than they left behind.  There's a grotesque killer on the loose and a Catholic cardinal has already been found mutilated in the grounds of the palace.  Ascham is asked by the Sultan to use his razor-sharp mind to investigate the crime.  But as he and Elizabeth delve deeper into the murky world of the court and the glittering chess tournament, they find dark secrets, horrible crimes and unheard-of depravity.  Things that mark the young princess for life and define the queen that she will become...

Charlie Boxer messed up his family life.  First, the army, then the police, then high-stakes kidnap and recovery, his ex-wife and daughter learnt to live without him as his work took him places no man can come back from unscarred.  Trying to rebuild a relationship with Amy, his teenage daughter hasn't been easy.  But Charlie only realises just how wrong things have gone when he finds her empty room and a note: You will never find me.  Having spent years working to track down kidnap victims, Charlie knows that sometimes, the missing don't want to be found.  And he knows the hell it brings for families - the vanished are neither dead nor alive, but simply gone.  Worse still, Charlie Boxer knows how quickly a life can fall apart once you're living under the radar.  For Charlie, danger has finally come to his front door and to crack the hardest case he's ever worked, it's time to face up to the true meaning of the sins of the father.  You Will Never Find Me is the second book in the Charlie Boxer series by Robert Wilson and is due to be published in February 2014.

God and the Devil is by Dan Smith and is due to be published in July 2014.  ‘There were times I felt I would always be death’s passenger….’  So begins God and the Devil, inviting you on a terrifying journey into the dark heart of South America, where the lines between good and evil are blurred in the battle to stay alive.  And for one man, the choice is stark: if you want to escape this place, kill the only good thing you’ve ever know.

A Carnival of Shadows is by R J Ellory and is due to be published in May 2014.  When Special Agent Michael Travis is posted to the small town of Seneca Falls, Kansas, to investigate the mysterious death of a man at a travelling show, he is plunged into the weird and wonderful world of the Carnival Diablo.  Led by the elusive Edgar Doyle, the carnival folk range from the enigmatic to the bizarre, but none of them will give Travis a straight answer to his questions.  As Doyle and his companions challenge Travis's unshakeable faith in solid facts and hard evidence, it emerges that this case is not as straightforward as it at first appeared.  Can Michael open his mind to a truth that is beyond comprehension?  And will he be able to set his own beliefs aside to solve a mystery that threatens to overthrow everything he has ever had trust in?

The Dead in their Vaulted Arches is by Alan Bradley and is due to be published in March 2014.  The presumed death of Harriet de Luce in a mysterious mountaineering accident in Tibet while Flavia was only a baby cast a sombre shadow over the family, leaving Colonel de Luce a broken man and Flavia herself with no memories of her mother.  But now, astonishingly, a specially commissioned train is bringing Harriet back to Buckshaw.  But rather than putting the past finally to rest, Harriet's return is set to trigger a further series of bizarre and deadly events, as a most curious group of individuals converge on Buckshaw to pay their respects.  For Flavia, a gruesome new crime to solve is only one of the mysteries confronting her, as she begins to unravel the shocking revelations of Harriet's past and in doing so discovers an extraordinary tale of espionage and betrayal that also seems to be the key to her own destiny.

Pia has struggled with her agoraphobia for several years.  She lives in architectural curiosity - a landmark London house full of passages, secret stairs and a deep underground swimming pool.  Unable to face leaving the house, she rents out rooms to lodgers – but only women.  When one of her lodgers moves on, she has a room to fill and for once, she ignores her own rule.  The man on her doorstep is handsome, charming and he needs a break.  Surely, he’s no threat to her?  Having granted him a room, Pia begins to hear strange noises at night and then one of her tenants disappears.  It seems she may have invited into her house the one person who might tear her safety and security apart…  Rooms for Lost Souls is by Lezanne Clannachan and is due to be published in June 2014.

Slingshot is by Matthew Dunn and is due to be published in March 2014.  Will Cochrane monitors the nighttime streets of Gdansk, Poland, waiting for the appearance of a Russian defector, a man bearing a top-secret document.  Will believes the defector is about to step out of the cold and into the hands of Polish authorities, but suddenly everything goes sideways.  The target shows up, but so does a team from the Russian foreign intelligence service SVR, and they are hell-bent on keeping the man from walking.  Then, in a hail of crossfire, a van speeds into the melee and snatches the defector out from under them all.  Everyone wants the man and the codes he carries - but now he's gone and it's up to Will and his CIA/MI6 team to find him before the Russians do.  Will tracks both the missing Russian and his kidnappers, believing the defector has his own warped agenda.  But soon it's apparent that the real perpetrator could be someone much more powerful: a former East German Stasi officer who instigated a super-secret pact between Russian and US generals almost 20 years ago.  An agreement, which if broken for any reason, was designed to unleash the world's deadliest assassin.  Then Will learns that the Russians have tasked their own 'spycatcher' - an agent just as ruthless and relentless as Will - to retrieve the document.  Now Will knows that he faces two very clever and deadly adversaries, who will stop at nothing to achieve their aims.

Reformed from his days of covert operations, Paul Janson has set a new mission for himself.  Working in partnership with champion sharpshooter Jessica Kincaid, he rehabilitates disenchanted agents and helps them create new lives outside of the violent intelligence sector.  Janson also takes on independent assignments - for a fee, he'll use his skills to resolve international crises.  But only those that he believes contribute to the greater good of all.  When oil executive Kingsman Helms begs Janson to rescue his wife, Allegra, from Somali pirates, Janson and Kincaid seize the opportunity.  At last, they can derail American Synergy Corporation's scheme to subvert sovereign nations into wholly owned subsidiaries.  But the pirates are the least lethal threat in the violent chaos of oil-rich East Africa, and when Janson and Kincaid stumble into a bewildering storm of plots and counterplots, they begin to fear that the only way to escape would be to abandon the innocent Allegra.  Robert Ludlum’s The Janson Option is by Paul Garrison and is due to be published in March 2014.

Things aren't going so well for Brian McKechnie.  His wife was attacked in their home, his cat was brutally killed and now a man with a suspiciously erratic accent is blackmailing him.  When the police fail spectacularly at finding out who's after him, McKechnie engages the services of London's most unusual private eye.  Duffy is a detective like no other.  A bisexual ex-policeman with a phobia of ticking watches and a penchant for Tupperware.  But what he lacks in orthodoxy he makes up for in street-smart savvy and no-nonsense dealings.  Intrigued by McKechnie's dilemma and the apparent incompetency of his ex-colleagues, Duffy heads to his old patch, the seedy underbelly of Soho, to begin inquiries of his own.  Helped by some shady characters from his past, Duffy discover that while things have changed in the years since he was working the area, the streets are still mean and the crooks walk arm in arm with the blues.  Full to bursting with sex, violence and dodgy dealings, Duffy is a gripping and entertaining crime novel with a distinctly different and entirely lovable anti-hero.  Duffy is by Dan Kavanagh and is due to be published in April 2014.

Jason Bourne is working as a 'blacksmith' - someone who is hired by high-level government ministers fearful of assassination attempts.  He is paid to impersonate these men at meetings in places of uncertain security around the globe.  Bourne is at one such meeting when armed gunmen storm the room - but their target is not the minister he impersonates, it is Bourne himself.  Kidnapped and transported to an underground bunker, Bourne finds himself face-to-face with a well-known terrorist, a man who calls himself El Ghadan ('Tomorrow').  El Ghadan demands that Bourne carry out a special mission for him - one, that if completed, will have dire consequences for the entire world. Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Ascendancy by Eric Van Lustbader is due to be published in June 2014.

Also due to be published are books by Alan Furst (in April), The Prophecy of Bees by R S Pateman (in June 2014), Denise Mina and Robert Crais (in July).

Forthcoming books to look forward to from Corvus

Warlord is the latest novel by David Rollins featuring his protagonist Vin Cooper and is due to be published in June 2012. Special Agent Vin Cooper has just returned from an off-books mission in the Congo. Now he's caught up in something even more dangerous. An ex-air force colleague has been kidnapped. His severed hand, buried in a KFC bucket with a demand for five million dollars, has found its way to Cooper's door - and he has just 21 days to pay. Tracking the missing man's movements from a topless revue in Vegas, to the shark-infested Pacific, the favelas of Brazil and finally to the pirate-patrolled waters off Somalia, Cooper discovers his ex-colleague is now an undercover agent working with a vicious Colombian arms dealer. Meanwhile, the CIA are searching for a stolen thermonuclear device. Suddenly, Cooper's quest to find his friend becomes a journey to the heart of a chilling conspiracy. A journey that Cooper might not survive…

Taklimakan desert, 1890: A storm uncovers a city buried deep beneath the shifting sands that lie beyond the roof of the world. A new Pompeii has come to light, and with it two remarkable artefacts, found in a hidden burial chamber. A metal ankh and star - covered in strange hieroglyphs.

Arctic Circle, 1897: On the skerried islands of Svalbard, Swedish aeronaut S A Andrée begins an expedition untried by any other navigator – a polar voyage by hydrogen dirigible. The entire company will disappear without trace, and with them the metal ankh and star.

Sweden, present day: Miles under the earth in a long-flooded mineshaft, a diver’s torch-beam plays over an ancient corpse, uncannily preserved. A coin-sized hole in its forehead suggests a violent death. Skeletal arms clutch a metal ankh to the remains of the body. On the wall of the submerged cavern, one word – NIFLHEIM: the Norse kingdom of the dead. Strindberg’s Star is the debut novel by Jan Wallentin and is due to be published in June 2012

FreeFlow is a group of internet activists dedicated to the freedom of information. They have video evidence of a military atrocity in the Middle East and are preparing to unleash it on the world’s media in from their Iceland HQ. On the glacial rim of an erupting volcano, they christen their endeavour Operation Meltwater. Minutes later one of them is murdered. The list of people FreeFlow have antagonised is long – the Chinese government, the Israeli military, Italian politicians, and even American Fraternities. Magnus Jonson has a long list of suspects but he is getting little help from FreeFlow – for a group dedicated to transparency, they’re a secretive bunch.

But they are not the only ones with secrets. Asta, a newly qualified priest, has contacted FreeFlow with damming information about the former Bishop of Iceland. And with the return of Magnus’s brother Ollie to Iceland, the feud that haunted their family for three generations is about to reignite. Meltwater is the third in the Fire & Ice Quartet by Michael Ridpath and it is due to be published in June 2012.

Vespasian: Rome's Execution is the sequel to Robert Fabbri's debut novel Vespasian: Tribune of Rome. Thracia, 30 AD: Even at the edge of the Roman world, Vespasian can't escape the tumultuous politics of an empire on the brink of disintergration. His patrons in Rome have charged him with the clandestine extraction of an old enemy from a fortress on the banks of the Danube before it falls to the Roman legion besieging it. Vespasian's mission is the key move in a deadly struggle for the right to rule the Roman Empire. The man he has been ordered to seize could be the witness that will destroy Sejanus, commander of the Praetorian Guard and ruler of the empre in all but name. Before he completes his task, Vespasian will face ambush in snowbound mountains, pirates on the high seas and Sejanus's spies all around him. But he will also face a far greater terror: he will have to travel to the island of Capri, there to confront the nightmarish court of an insane emperor. Vespasian: Rome's Executioner is due to be published in May 2012.

For journalist Douglas Brodie, Glasgow's out-break of murder and mayhem begins simply enough. A typical Staurday night brawl adds a splash of colour to the morning edition of the Gazette. But Brodie's piece receives a hot-blooded reply - the declaration of a new war upon pettey crime signed by a group of vigilantes: The Glasgow Marshalls. After his own stint at the Front, Brodie counts himself lucky to be back in his home town, paying his way as the local crime reporter. And although the frustrated, demobbed men of Glasgow are taking an ee for an eye. Brodie has some sympathy for their cause. When a man is killed suspicion automatically falls on the Marshalls. But for Brodie, this crime is all wrong. The Marshalls stand for justice, not murder. Amid the heated clash of populace and police, a calculated crime has been ignored. Enlisting the help of advocate Samantha Campbell, Brodie begins to investigate the death himself. Bitter Water is by Gordon Ferris and is due to be published in April 2012.

Joe Pickett's outlaw falconer companion, Nate Romanowski, faces the battle of his life and one he may very likely lose. His mysterious past comes back in the form of his former special forces colleague, an utterly ruthless soldier/homeland security official who knows his rise through the military and intelligence community will be derailed if Nate ever tells what he knows about their time together in Afghanistan in 1995. After years of dispatching fellow special forces team members to take him out, Nate's nemesis decides the time has come to end the threat to him once and for all. And he does it by incorporating many of the same tactics that served their unique and secret unit well in the Middle East: by recruiting locals. Nate can trust no one except Joe Pickett, who is constrained by his oath and duty to the law and the state. But Nate must involve Joe because he knows his enemy will strike at his friends in order to draw him out and the entire Pickett family will be a target. Because of Nate's fugitive status he can only fight back outside the law, and Joe must make a choice: help his friend or adhere to his principles? Force of Nature is by C J Box and is due to be published in March 2012.

The Dead Season is the latest novel by Christobel Kent and is due to be published in May 2012. Every August, Florence shimmers in the summer heat. But this year the heatwave is fiercer than usual, and the city's inhabitants have fled to the cool of the hills and beaches of the surrounding countryside. But former policeman turned private detective Sandro Cellini will not be joining them, and nor will the manager of a branch of a small, failing provincial bank. Sandro has a case: a man who seems to have vanished into thin air leaving his pregnant wife behind him. But the bank manager lies amidst the shrubbery of a busy roundabout, his corpse bloating in the humid air. Meanwhile, bank-teller Roxana Delfino is both worried by her mother's state of mind - is her memory failing? Has she imagined an intruder onto their property? - and puzzled by the disappearance of one her regular clients. And just what does the old porn cinema near Roxana's bank have to do with these three separate mysteries? as all Florence sweats it out, Sandro, his assistant Guili, wife Luisa and former police partner Pietro attempt as best they can to grapple with the case and the complications it throws up along the way. And when the weather finally breaks, it brings with it a shocking revelation...

An American Spy is the latest novel by the award winning author Olen Steinhauer and is due to be published in March 2012. Milo Weaver is still haunted by his last job. As an expert assassin for the Department of Tourism, an ultra-secret group of super-spooks buried deep in the corridors of the CIA, he fought to keep himself sane in a paranoid and amoral profession. Now, the Department has been destroyed, and with it Weaver's livelihood. Finally he can spend time with his family - without constantly looking over his shoulder and fixing one eye on the exits. Weaver's former boss is not so settled. For Alan Drummond, Tourism was everything. Now, all he wants is to take revenge on the Chinese spymaster that exploded their operations from within. Weaver tries to persuade him to leave sleeping cells lie, but when Drummond disappears from a London hotel room after a serpentine journey through the world's cities, Weaver is sucked back down into his old life. Investigating Drummond's intentions in London throws up more questions than answers. Why was an ex-Tourist in his hotel room that night? Why is homeland security suddenly asking questions? And how are the Chinese connected? Soon, Weaver is sifting through what secrets, lies and misinformation he can extract from the sources he still has on the ground. If his time as a Tourist has taught him anything, it's that nothing and no-one can be trusted - even within the CIA itself...

A Name in Blood is by Matt Rees and is due to be published in May 2012. Italy, 1605: For the ruling Borgia family, Rome is a place of grand palazzos and the frescoed cathedrals. For the lowly artist Caravaggio, it is a place of rough bars, knife fights, and grubby whores. Until he is commisioned to paint the pope... Soon, Caravagio has gained entry into the inner circle of Rome's power-brokers, and becomes the most celebrated artist in Italy. But when he falls for Lena, a low-born fruit seller, and paints her as the Madonna, Italian society is outraged. Discredited as an artist, but desperate to defend the honour of the woman he loves, Carravagio is forced into a duel - and murders a nobel man. Even his powerful patrons cannot protect him from a death sentence. So Carravagio flees to Malta, where in oredr to be pardoned, he must undergo the rigorous training of the Knights of Malta. His paintings continue to speak of his love for Lena. But before he can return to her, as a knight and a noble, Carravagio, the most famous artist in Italy simply disappears....

Smart, tough Los Angeles FBI agents Jack Harper and Oscar Hidalgo breathe sighs of relief after violent diamond smuggler Karl Steinbach is finally arrested in a complex sting. Vowing vengeance on the agents who brought him down, Steinbach is imprisoned - only to be offered a release with total immunity in a dodgy deal with Homeland Security. As Jack and Oscar's team of agents start to die, it becomes clear that Steinbach's is no idle threat. But when the pair investigate their slain comrade's lives, they discover that what looked like retribution is actually tied to a web of deceit that stretches to the highest echelons of the FBI. Navigating car chases, shootouts, and even venomous reptiles, Jack and Oscar furiously pursue clues scattered throughout the underbelly of Los Angeles, in a desperate attempt to find the killer - before he finds them. With a storyline crackling with action, a dazzling cast of thugs, traitors, killers and creeps, and a cinematic portrait of a seamy Los Angeles clogged with corruption and greed, Robert Ward's turbulent new thriller is clever, contemporary and cool as ice. Total Immunity is due to be published in January 2012.

Books to look forward to from Corvus

Mozart’s Last Aria is by Matt Rees. It is 1791 and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is enlightenment Vienna’s brightest star. Master of the city’s music halls and devoted member of the Austrian Freemason’s guild, he stands at the heart of an electric mix of art and music, philosophy and science, politics and intrigue. But, six weeks ago, the great composer told his wife he had been poisoned. yesterday, he died. The city is buzzing with rumours of infidelity, bankruptcy and murder. But Wolfgang’s sister Nannerl will not believe base gossip. Who but a madman would poison such genius? yet as she looks closely at the objects that her brother left behind, Nannerl finds traces of something sinister: a masonic secret that might just be connected to his death. And as she listens to Wolfgang’s bewitching last opera, The Magic Flute, she realizes that the arias might contain more than just the music. Mozart’s Last Aria will be published in May 2011.

July 1805. The armies of France have only to sail to England to complete Napoleon’s domination over Europe. Britain is militarily weak, politically divided, unsettled by her rioting poor. Into this feverish environment comes a dead man. Pulled half-drowned from a shipwreck, his past erased, Tom Roscarrock is put to work for the Comptrollerate-General for Scrutiny and Survey, a shadowy Government bureau. He is thrown into a bewildering world of political intrigue and violence. In France, a plan is underway to shatter the last of England’s stability. In England, the man who recruited Roscarrock has disappeared, his agents keep turning up dead, and reports of a secret French fleet are panicking the authorities. Roscarrock begins to realize that his mission is a deliberate device to reveal the British spy net- work in France... and his own opaque past is the key to the conspiracy. For Tom Roscarrock, the battle of the Empires is his chance for private vengeance. Will he prove nemesis or saviour? The Emperor’s Gold is by Robert Wilton and is due to be published in June 2011.

Iceland

1934: Two boys playing in the lava fields surrounding their isolated farmsteads see something they shouldn’t. The consequences will haunt them and their families for generations. Iceland 2009: The credit crunch bites. Currency is devalued, banks nationalized, savings annihilated, lives ruined. Grassroots revolution is in the air, as is the feeling that someone ought to pay... ought to pay the blood price. And in a country with a population of just 300,000 souls, in a country where everyone knows everybody, it isn’t hard to draw up a list of exactly who is responsible. And then,

one-by-one, to cross them off. Iceland 2010: As bankers and politicians start to die, at home and abroad, it is up to Magnus Jonson to unravel the web of conspirators before they strike again. But while Magnus investigates the crimes of the present, the crimes of the past are catching up with him. 66° North is by Michael Ridpath and is due to be published in May 2011.

The Killing Way by Anthony Hays is due to be published in April 2011. Welcome to fifth century Britain: the Romans have left, the Saxons have invaded, the towns are decaying and the countryside is dangerous. A young leader has forged a reputation as both a warrior and a diplomat and supreme power is within his grasp. But this is not the Arthur of legend: Camelot does not exist; chivalry is nonexistent; betrayal and treachery are endemic. And neither is this Arthur’s story. This tale belongs to its grim narrator, Malgwyn ap Cuneglas, a man whose broken life mirrors the broken Roman roads that divide the landscape. Once a feared warrior, he should have lost his life when he lost his swordhand on the battlefield. Arthur saved him, condemning Malgwyn to a half-life as a meagre scribe. But when a young woman is murdered and Arthur’s reputation is threatened, Malgwyn is tasked with solving the mystery and safeguarding the stability of Arthur’s newborn realm.

Resolution by the late Robert B Parker is the second instalment of a new series. The dust has yet to settle in the new frontier town of Resolution. It’s barely even a town: a general store, a handful of saloons and a run-down brothel for the workers at a nearby copper mine. No sheriff has been appointed, and gunslingers have taken control. Amid the chaos, itinerant lawman Everett Hitch has created a small haven of order at the Blackfoot Saloon.

Charged with protecting the girls who work the back room, Hitch has seen off passing cowboys and violent punters – though it’s his scheming boss, Amos Woolfson, who stirs up the most trouble. When a greedy mine owner threatens the local ranchers, Woolfson ends up at the centre of a makeshift war. Hitch knows only too well how to protect himself, but with the bloodshed mounting, he’s relieved when his friend Virgil Cole rides into town. In a place where justice and order don’t yet exist, Cole and Hitch must lay down the law – without violating their codes of honour, duty and friendship. Resolution is due to be published in March 2011.

Smart, tough Los Angeles FBI agents Jack Harper and Oscar Hidalgo breathe sighs of relief after violent diamond smuggler Karl Steinbach is finally arrested in a complex sting. Vowing vengeance on the agents who brought him down, Steinbach is imprisoned only to be offered a release with total immunity in a dodgy deal with Homeland Security. As Jack and Oscar's team of agents start to die, it becomes clear that Steinbach's is no idle threat. But when the pair investigate their slain comrade's lives, they discover that what looked like retribution is

actually tied to a web of deceit that stretches to the highest echelons of the FBI. Navigating car chases, shootouts, and even venomous reptiles, Jack and Oscar furiously pursue clues scattered throughout the underbelly of Los Angeles, in a desperate attempt to find the killer - before he finds them. Total Immunity is by Robert Ward and is due to be published in March 2011.

In Daddy’s Girl by Margie Orford It is Friday evening on deserted street below Table Mountain where a six-year-old ballerina waits alone for her mother to fetch her. Then an unmarked car approaches, and she is gone. With no trace of where, or why she's been abducted, suspicion falls on her divorced father, Captain Riedwaan. The boss of Cape Town's gang unit, Riedwaan is tough and ruthless, a man accustomed to being in control. But now he is powerless. Suspended from the squad for wasting police time, Riedwaan watches helplessly as the search for his daughter is called off. In desperation, Riedwaan turns to investigative journalist and police profiler Dr Clare Hart, whose brutal TV documentary about Cape Town's missing young girls has made her something of a local celebrity. Clare has seen how aspiring gangsters in the Cape Flats ghetto prove their worth by tormenting children. She knows that the odds of a victim's survival worsen with each passing minute. She understands that finding the child without police involvement will be difficult, dangerous, and probably illegal. But she also knows she'll do anything to help this heartbroken father - even if it puts all their lives at risk. Daddy’s Girl is due to be published in March 2011.

Glasgow, 1946: The last time Brodie came home he was a proud young man in a paratrooper’s uniform. Now, the war is over but victory’s wine has soured, and Brodie’s back to try and save

his childhood friend Hugh Donovan from the gallows. Donovan returned from war burned, mutilated, unrecognizable. It’s no surprise that he keeps his own company, venturing out only to score heroin. And it’s no surprise that when a local boy is found raped and murdered, there is only one suspect. A mountain of evidence says he’s guilty. But Donovan denies it, and ex-policeman Brodie feels compelled to help him. Working with advocate Samantha Campbell, Brodie trawls the mean streets of the Gorbals and confronts an unholy alliance of troublesome priests, corrupt coppers and Glasgow’s deadliest razor gang. As time runs out for the condemned man, and the murder tally of innocents starts to climb, Brodie reverts to his wartime role as a trained killer. It’s them or him. The Hanging Shed is due to be published in March 2011 and is by Gordon Ferris.

Marc Lucas had it all, and lost it all. He is only slowly putting his life back together after the car crash that killed his pregnant wife, when things start to go strangely wrong for him. Nothing too sinister to begin with: his credit cards stop working. But then his key no longer fits his door, and he discovers someone else working in his office. Much worse is to come: he returns home to find himself face to face with his once-dead wife, and she doesn’t have a clue who he is. The next day, there is no trace of her. Could this have anything to do with the clinic? They wanted to test their ability to remove traumatic memories from live subjects. Marc had met them, just once, but declined their experimental technology. He now fears they may have begun their tests illicitly... Can he discover what is happening to him before the waking nightmare he finds himself living overwhelms his sanity? Splinter is a psychological novel by Sebastian Fitzek and s due to be published in April 2011.

Con men and killers, aliens and zombies, priests and soldiers - just some of the characters that kill and thrill in this compelling collection of gun-toting, double-crossing, back-stabbing, pulse

-pounding stories. Jeffrey Deaver investigates the suspicious death of a crime-writer in 'The Plot'; Karin Slaughter's grieving widow takes revenge on her dying ex-husband in 'Cold, Cold Heart'; Stephen Coonts discovers a flying saucer in the depths of the ocean in 'Savage Planet' and John Lescroat's secret field agent finds himself caught up in a complex game of cat-and-mouse in 'The Gate Conundrum'. Handpicked by world number one Lee Child, celebrity authors and stars of the future are brought together, writing brand-new stories, especially commissioned for this must-have collection. First Thrills is edited by Lee Child and is due to be published in February 2011.

End Game is by Matthew Glass and is due to be published in February 2011. July 5 2018, Masini, Uganda: 218 people are massacred when the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) attack a hospital. Amongst the dead are 32 American medical volunteers. September 12, UN Security Council: The US announces its plan to eradicate the LRA once and for all. But it will mean intervening in China’s African sphere of influence. The message from the Chinese is keep out. October 17, Wall Street: Stock prices tumble as a wave of uncertainty sweeps US markets. Washington will do what it takes to prop up America’s banks but their fear is that someone is deliberately undermining them. unrelated incidents, or the opening moves in a deadly confrontation between superpowers? With hardliners on both sides keen to provoke conflict, US ambassador Marion Ellman must defuse the situation before it is too late, but with American and Chinese carrier groups massing off the Horn of Africa, her time is running out.

The elite warriors of the Hereford-based SAS know all about pain and the enduring of it. Syd Spicer, ex-SAS trooper, has found himself back in the Regiment – this time as its chaplain, responsible for the spiritual welfare of the hardest men in or out of uniform. Faced with a case, which would normally be passed discreetly to diocesan exorcist Merrily Watkins, Spicer is forced, for security reasons, to try and handle it himself and is coming close to a breakdown. Meanwhile, the scattered communities along the Welsh border face their own crisis. With recession biting deep, urban crime has spilled into the countryside and old barbaric evils are revived. When a wealthy landowner is hacked to death in his own farmyard, DI Frannie Bliss, the senior investigating officer, is caught in the backlash, his private life in danger of exposure. Merrily Watkins is going to have to venture into areas where neither priest nor woman is welcome, to unearth secrets linked to the pagan past. Secrets which she knows can never be disclosed. The Secrets of Pain is by Phil Rickman and is due to be published in February 2011.

Hollywood Hills is by Joseph Wambaugh and is due to be published in January 2011. For the streetwise cops of Hollywood Station, dealing with the panhandlers, prostitutes and costumed crackheads of the boulevard is all in a day's work. If they're lucky, surf-mad partners Flotsam and Jetsam can spend the morning calming the crazies and the afternoon policing the babes on the beach. But beyond the lights and the crowds on the Walk of Fame, the real Los Angeles simmers dangerously. And when things heat up, even veterans like Viv Daley will see

things that they'll wish they could forget. In the hills above town, it's a different world, where sports-car-studded driveways lead to sprawling villas stuffed with clothes and jewels. Up here, pickings are easy for the Bling Ring - a group of photogenic young addicts who knock off celebrity cribs to fund their next fix. Evenexperienced cop and wannabe filmstar Nate HollywoodA" Weiss has struck gold in the hills. Leona Bruger, wife of an Industry Mover and Shaker, has taken a fancy to him. Although he knows the Hollywood maxim - you don't pet the cougars, especially if they belong to the boss - Nate reckons that a leg-over might be just the leg-up he needs. What Weiss doesn't realise is that his new flame's crooked art-dealer is about to pull a forgery scam right under his nose. And when a pair of desperate junkies hit on a foolproof plan to pay their drug debts with a stolen painting, things get very complicated indeed.

Cassandra Brooks is a single mother-of-two, schoolteacher and water diviner. Deep in the woods as she dowses the land for a property developer, she is confronted by the body of a young girl, swinging from a tree, hanged. When she returns with the authorities, the body has vanished. Already regarded as an eccentric, her story is disbelieved- until a girl turns up in the woods, alive, mute and identical to the girl in Cassandra's vision. In the days that follow, Cassandra's visions become darker and more frequent as they begin to take on a tangible form. Forced to confront a past she has tried to forget, Cassandra finds herself locked in a game of cat-and-mouse with a real life killer who has haunted her for longer than she can remember. At once an ingeniously plotted mystery and a magical love story, The Diviner’s Tale is by Bradford Morrow and is due to be published in January 2011.