January 2025
Notes on a Drowning is by Anna Sharpe. Alex knows she risks getting fired from her law firm if she takes on another unpaid case, but when she hears Rosa's desperate voice at the other end of the phone, she knows she has to help: the body of Rosa's shy teenage sister, Natalia, has been dragged, lifeless, from the Thames. Alex can't help but think of her own missing little sister. She knows how a lack of answers can eat you alive. Kat has worked hard to become Special Adviser to the Home Secretary, and is eager to finally put the dark and tragic part of her past behind her. But when she discovers a series of cover-ups, she begins to wonder whether her seemingly perfect new boss could be involved. Then she she's shocked to discover a letter that raises worrying questions about a girl found drowned in London... Natalia. There are complex and painful reasons for Alex and Kat not to work together, but when it becomes clear that there are powerful people involved in Natalia's death, and that other girls are at risk, Alex and Kat must overcome their differences to find answers. Will they save the girls and discover the truth? Or will the high-powered players in this game stop Alex and Kat for good?
Adrianna, heir to the multimillion dollar Kensington nightclub empire, is planning her dream wedding - a lavish ceremony funded by exclusive sponsors, on the Kensington's private tropical island Elysium. There's only one flaw in her perfect plans. Elysium holds traumatic memories as the place where she was kidnapped and held hostage for three days on her 21st birthday - a case that was never solved... When a bridesmaid is murdered the night before the dress fitting, it soon becomes clear that Adrianna won't be able to get hitched without a hitch. The body is staged in a gruesome display, chillingly reminiscent of Adrianna's kidnapping. When forensic expert Holly becomes embroiled in this alien world, the secrets that have dogged the bride and her bridesmaids since childhood start to come out. The answers lie on Elysium, if Holly can find her way into this playground of the rich and famous - and more importantly, if she can get out of it alive... The Bridesmaid is by Cate Quinn
The Time of the Fire is by Emma Kavanagh Northern California, end of summer. Fire Hazard Severity Zone: Very High. A mysterious death. On the anniversary of her mother's death, CEO-in-waiting Robyn Sandoval goes for a morning run. She knows her father - a local fire fighting hero - is desperate to speak to her, to tell her something he wants her to know before she starts her new job leading the corporation that owns most of their Northern Californian town of Destino. But when Robyn arrives, she finds him dead. A devastating fire. Meanwhile, after months of drought, a freak forest fire ignites on the mountain ridge looming over the town. Destino has never burned; its unique position protected by the seemingly insurmountable barrier of the ridge, a favourable wind direction, and a belief long held by the community that they are categorically safe. A life split in two. Robyn is shaken to the core by her father's death, and her life is shattered in two, the fabric of her reality shorn by the sheer force of her grief. The next time she wakes, everything is different: her father is alive, and there's no sign of the fire on the ridge. To understand what is happening, she has to confront not only the secrets of her past but both versions of her present. Because back in her world, the fire is spreading and the time to find answers is running out...
They've faked your child's death. And if you don't give them what they want, they'll make it a reality. Things have been difficult for annie since her husband left; her teenage daughter, Ifsla, has become a ghost of her former self. Annie's terrified that Isla might do something desperate, and she'll lose her, too. So when Annie receives a video of herself crying at Isla's funeral, her blood runs cold. Confused and horrified, Annie races upstairs to check on Isla, who is alive and well. The video has been faked. But who sent it and what do they want? One dark truth soon becomes clear: Annie is the latest in a string of parents being blackmailed, and Isla will be killed if Annie goes to the police or if she fails to give the sender what they want. Annie has a deadly choice: comply with the demands, or try to unmask the dangerous criminal. Your Child Next is by M J Arlidge and Andy Maslen
February 2025
The Naming of the Birds is by Paraic O'Donnell. 'Some wrong was done long ago. It can never be righted, and it has not been forgotten. Someone remembers it.' London, 1894. Inspector Henry Cutter is in an unconvivial temper. Then the murders begin. The first to die is Sir Aneurin Considine, a decorated but long-retired civil servant, is found dead amongst his beloved orchid collection, killed by a wound inflicted with surgical precision. Soon, other victims suffer similar fates. More men in powerful positions; more murders that are gruesome but immaculately orchestrated. The perpetrator comes and goes like a ghost, leaving only carefully considered traces. Hot on the tails of this invisible adversary are Inspector Cutter, along with his hapless but endlessly enthusiastic sidekick, Sergeant Gideon Bliss. But as the pressure mounts, victims will start to look like perpetrators, murderers like truth-tellers, long-hidden failings will come resurface, and not even their very selves are safe from suspicion.
It's New Year's Eve in Edinburgh when Emily sees Nicky. Or at least she thinks she does. He looks, laughs, and moves just like Nicky. But how can that be? Nicky died when they were teenagers, in an accident on a remote road up in the Highlands... didn't he? A week later, Emily sees the man again. He says his name Nicholas. This man not only looks like an adult version of her friend, but he also knows things that only Nicky should know. As her encounters with Nicholas become more frequent and her fixation intensifies, the truth becomes murkier, and more unsettling. Is Emily being haunted, is she going mad - or is something altogether darker going on... One Came Back is by Rose McDonagh.
March 2025
Decisions were made: I made them. Violence was done: I did it. Crime scenes were fled: I fled them. People were hurt: I hurt them. Someone was loved: I loved them. Not everything I did was bad. Just most of it. A scholarship kid with straight As and big dreams, Evie Gordon always thought she was special, that she'd be someone. But after graduating from an elite university, she finds herself drowning in debt and working as an SAT tutor for the super-rich of Los Angeles. Everything changes one Sunday, when she arrives for a weekly lesson at the Victors' Beverly Hills mansion to discover pure carnage: the bloody remains of Mr. and Mrs. Victor sullying their beautiful back garden, and a woman crying for help from within the walls of the family's estate. Within moments, Evie and the woman go from bystanders to suspects to fugitives. Anointed the new Charles Manson by the press, a bloodthirsty ninety-nine percenter hoping to spark a class war, Evie is finally someone. At the heart of a nationwide manhunt, Evie is desperate to clear her name. But first she'll have to break down the barriers of her new companion - who is inscrutable, surprisingly skilled at being on the run, and quickly becoming the most important person in Evie's upside-down life. Killer Potential is by Hannah Deitch.
The Grapevine is by Kate Kemp. Australia, 1979. It's the height of summer and on a quiet suburban cul-de-sac a housewife is scrubbing the yellow and white chequered tiles of her bathroom floor. But all is not as it seems. For one thing, it's 3 a.m. For another, she is trying desperately to remove all traces of blood before they stain. Her husband seems remarkably calm, considering their neighbour has just been murdered. As the sun rises on Warrah Place, news of Antonio Marietti's death spreads like wildfire, gossip is exchanged in whispers and suspicion mounts. Twelve-year-old Tammy launches her own investigation, determined to find out what happened, but she is not the only one whose well-meaning efforts uncover more mysteries than they solve. There are secrets behind every closed door in the neighbourhood - and the identity of the murderer is only one of them . . .Richly atmospheric and simmering with tension, The Grapevine is an acutely observed debut novel about prejudice and suspicion, the hidden lives of women, and how the ties that bind a community can also threaten .
What brings people together often throws them apart especially when it involves family. Ordinarily a close and loyal unit, the relationnships between detectives David Stone and Frankie Oliver is stretched to a breaking point when, without hwe knowledge he embarks on an investigation into the tragic open-unsolved murder of her sister. The past and present will collide with devastating consequences. A Truth More Painful than Murder is by Mari Hannah.
Murder at the Palace is by N R Daws. When one of the ladies in residence at Hampton Court Palace fails to answer her maid's call in the morning, Mrs Lydia Bramble, palace housekeeper, is called in to investigate. What Mrs Bramble finds sends shockwaves through the whole palace: Miss Philomena Franklin, slumped over her desk, a knife in her back. With the police determined to bark up the wrong tree, Mrs Bramble decides to take up her own investigation with the help of Miss Franklin's maid. After all, as servants, they know just how many dangerous secrets and secret squabbles the genteel residents of the palace apartments harbour.
April 2025
A Darker Side of Paradise is by R J Ellory. A masterful, gripping serial-killer thriller covering three killers over four decades, and the dogged police officer who tracks them down across small-town America. Rachel Hoffman enters a cat and mouse chasewith a shadowy killer who taunts her with passages from Dante's inferno. Over forty years of her life will be ripped apart and changed in her search for the truth.
All Jay wants is to start again, to set himself up in a small, quiet town where no one knows him. Because here, no one will let him forget what they think he did the day his neighbour died in Flat 401. He just needs to keep doing what he's always done: treat people with kindness and respect, and try to stay out of trouble. But when a threatening note makes its way into the hostel he's forced to call home - Everyone is going to know what you really did - his hope for a fresh start begins to crumble. Jay fears that the secret he's fought so hard to hide, that he went to prison to protect, might finally come out. How far is he willing to go to keep his freedom alive? And with a shadowy figure from his past tracking Jay's every move, perhaps it's not just his freedom Jay should be worried about being taken from him, but his life... Flat 401 is by Kingsley Pearson.
The Castle is by John Sutherland. Alex and Pip are in desperate need of an escape. Their stressful roles as hostage negotiators are eased only by the fact that they get to come home to each other every night. When an old friend invites the couple up to the Scottish Highlands for an extended break, Alex and Pip jump at the chance. It's the rest they both need. But soon after they arrive at the castle, they hear the sound of gunshots, and their perfect escape turns into a perfect nightmare. The remote mountainous landscape is now the setting for a terrifying kidnap plot targeting one of the other guests. In the desperate hours that follow, Alex and Pip must call on all their years of negotiating experience to keep everyone alive. But with Pip gravely injured and the net closing in, it might be her life that needs saving most of all...
Venice is alive with the magic and bustle of Carnevale. A city of mysterious masks and gorgeous palaces, of riches, patricians, intellectuals and artists. And amidst it all, something new is being born: magnificent voices are soaring above the spires, astonishing costumes are being crafted, and audiences are being transported, for the first time, by the power of the Opera. And beneath it all: espionage, organised crime, and murder. Swordsman Richard Hughes has arrived on the banks of the Grand Canal looking for a simpler life, only to be plunged - alongside Phillip de Chambray, a remarkable woman unable to show her true self - into the thick of the murkiest, most dangerous European politics, at a moment when someone is trying to destroy the opera, and Venice itself. The Venetian Heretic is by Christian Cameron.
May 2025
Game, Set and Murder is by Judy Murray. Four close friends. One big secret. On a hot midsummer day in the Surrey countryside, close friends Kristin, Vee, Bibi and Hailey are celebrating their Ladies' Team victory at the exclusive Royal Oaks Tennis Club. But when their oh-so-charming coach, Jeremy, collapses after tucking into a carefully decorated sponge cake, it seems the season isn't just ending with a championship trophy - but with a murder. Off the court, it's clear that each of the four women has been keeping a dark secret, but surely no one would wish Jeremy dead? Or perhaps revenge truly is a cake best served cold...
You love your family. They make you feel safe. You trust them. But should you...? Exhausted mum Natalie struggles to put baby Erin down for the night, her tiredness exacerbated by the party preparations for her eldest's 16th birthday. It's supposed to be a joyful celebration, but the family is stretched to breaking point. As the alcohol flows at the birthday party, tensions come to a head. Later, there is widespread horror and panic when baby Erin disappears. Eventually the missing child is found in nearby woods, but any relief is short lived. Erin is rushed to ICU at the local hospital, a criminal investigation into her abduction and attempted murder begins. SIO Max Fleming tears this once loving family apart, as he investigates the crime. Minute by minute, hour by hour, he dissects the events of that fateful night, as a host of secrets and lies are revealed. This will be a party to remember. For all the wrong reasons. The Mistake is by MJ Arlidge and Lisa Hall
June 2025
Death on Set (Location) is by Richard Coles. Canon Daniel Clement is back. In the spring of 1990, we return to Champton, where the characters we've come to love are all aflutter as a glamorous movie set takes over the village. As the actors don their bonnets, gowns and crowns, a murder interrupts filming on set - and it's an ingenious murder. Can Daniel solve the mystery with help from his sidekick Detective Sergeant Neil Vanloo - even when things are so sticky between them?
Margate is in the grip of a heatwave when David Whitehouse stumbles across the mysterious story of a local woman who lived on the ground floor of Saltwater Mansions, a block of flats not far from the sea. On paper, Caroline Lane was unremarkable. She paid her mortgage every month. She always paid her bills. But nobody had seen or heard from her for 13 years, and no one had ever come looking. She had disappeared completely. David quickly becomes as fascinated by this missing woman as the residents of Saltwater Mansions, all of whom have their own theories to share, and their own unique stories to tell. As his obsession grows, David unearths vital clues that private detectives and amateur investigators alike have failed to spot. But the closer he gets to the truth, the clearer it becomes that this mystery was never meant to be solved, and that some stories don't want to be told. What if this one was never about Caroline Lane at all? From acclaimed and award-winning author David Whitehouse, Saltwater Mansions is an astonishing work of creative non-fiction blending reportage and memoir to explore the extraordinary hidden lives of ordinary people, the impact of grief, and the dangerous allure of taking true crime stories into our own hands.
After an accident that nearly kills her, Emily and her husband, Freddie, move from London to a beautiful Dartmoor country house called Larkin Lodge. The house is gorgeous, striking―and to Emily, something about it feels deeply wrong. Old boards creak at night, fires go out, and books fall from the shelves, and all of it stems from the terrible presence she feels in the third-floor room. But these things happen only when Emily's alone, so are they happening at all? She's still medically fragile; her postsepsis condition can cause hallucinatory side effects, which means she can't fully trust her own senses. Freddie doesn't notice anything odd and is happy with their chance at a fresh start. Emily, however, starts to believe that the house is being haunted by someone who was murdered in it, though she can find no evidence of a wrongful death. As bizarre events pile up and her marriage starts to crumble, Emily becomes obsessed with discovering the truth about Larkin Lodge. But if the house has secrets, so do Emily and her husband. And they live here now. We Live Here Now is by Sarah Pinborough.
July 2025
Into the Fire is by M J Arlidge. Nowhere to hide. No-one to turn to. Nothing to lose.Helen Grace is sure she made the right decision to quit the force. Until the day she looks out from her window to see a desperate young woman being beaten by two thugs. Still a force to be reckoned with, Helen races into the night and strikes the men down. For a moment, it feels like she doesn't need her badge to do good, but as she leads the girl to safety, she's struck from behind, regaining consciousness just in time to see the victim being dragged into a white van. Helen's determined to find the woman and save her, but even begging her former colleagues to help gets her nowhere. It's clear it'll be up to her alone to make the rescue. Taking matters into her own hands, Helen uncovers more women connected to the first who need her help. But fighting crime as a maverick is a dangerous game. One that could cost Helen her life, and the life of those she holds most dear...
At the beginning of the twentieth century, as America grapples with forces of human and natural violence more powerful than humanity has ever seen, Bessie Holland yearns for the love that she has never known. She finds a soulmate and mentor in a brilliant but tormented suffragette English teacher, who inspires Bessie to fight the forces of evil that permeate her world. Watching the vast Texas countryside being destroyed by an oil company and a menacing figure with a violent past, Bessie is prepared to defend her home and her family. But when she accidentally kills an unarmed man to defend her father Hackberry, she must flee to New York. There, her older brother introduces her to boys who will grow into gangsters, but as children admire and respect Bessie's spirit and fortitude as she is cast into a gangland that yearns for justice and mercy. A welcome return to the beloved Holland series and populated with characters both radiant and despicable, Don't Forget Me, Little Bessie is by James Lee Burke and is an epic story of a remarkable young girl who fights against potentially overwhelming forces.
Matchmaking for Psychopaths is by Tasha Coryell. Alexandra was expecting a nice evening with her fiancé for her birthday. Instead, her best friend is sitting next to her man, and what's worse: They're in love. To escape her relationship troubles, Alexandra throws herself into her job where she works as a matchmaker for psychopaths-a label that the clients themselves are unaware of-and becomes entangled with two of her most recent clients, both of whom have mysterious pasts that inspire Alexandra to breech work protocol and spend time with them outside of the office. One of them, Rebecca, becomes a candidate to take on the role of Alexandra's new best friend, while the other, Aidan, claims that he's her soulmate, despite her insistence that her significant other is going to return in time for their scheduled wedding. When her fiancé goes missing and threatening packages begin arriving at her doorstep, Alexandra has to figure out who is trying to target her and how it relates to her own dark past. Can she trust her instincts as a matchmaker or has she set herself up with her enemy?
When Isla Hanson's husband, Jerry, dies, leaving his entire estate to her, she knows she'll be set for life. But contrary to the belief of his wealthy friends and business associates, who all seem to think she was only ever interested in him for the money, Isla truly loved Jerry and struggles to imagine life without him. With no children of her own, and no real family to speak of, Isla is grateful for the support of her best friend, Tia. But when a strange woman and child appear at the funeral, Isla's entire world is turned upside down, and she is shocked to learn that the loving husband she dedicated fifteen years of her life to might have been living a double-life all along. The Child is by Mandasue Heller.
