Saturday, 7 April 2012

Forthcoming books to look forward to from Faber and Faber


Playing Dead is the debut novel by Julia Heaberlin and is due to be published in July 2012.  The letter that turns Tommie McCloud’s world upside down arrives from a stranger only days after her father’s death.  The woman who wrote it claims that Tommie is her daughter—and that she was kidnapped as a baby thirty-one years ago.  Tommie wants to believe it’s all a hoax, but suddenly a girl who grew up on a Texas ranch finds herself linked to a horrific past: the slaughter of a family in Chicago, the murder of an Oklahoma beauty queen, and the kidnapping of a little girl named Adriana.  Tommie races along a twisting, nightmarish path while an unseen stalker is determined to keep old secrets locked inside the dementia-battered brain of the woman who Tommie always thought was her real mother.  With everything she has ever believed in question, and no one she can trust, Tommie must discover the truth about the girl who vanished—and the very real threats that still remain.
  
The Devil I Know is a thrilling novel of greed and hubris, set against the backdrop of a brewing international debt crisis.  Told by Tristram, in the form of a mysterious testimony.  It recounts his return home after  a self-imposed exile only to find himself trapped as a middle man played on both sides – by a grotesque builder he has known since childhood on the one hand, and a shadowy businessman he’s never met on the other.  Caught between them, as an overblown property development begins in his home town of Howth, it follows Tristram’s dawning realisation that all is not well. The Devil I Know is by Claire Kilroy and is due to be published in August 2012.

Seventy Times Seven is the debut novel by actor J (ohn) G (ordon) Sinclair and is due to be published in September 2012.  Danny McGuire doesn't like his job, but he's good at it.  Since his brother's murder eight years earlier he has become a professional killer: a hit man for hire, bent on retribution.  The Job: Danny's been contracted to eliminate the 'Thevshi' - the Ghost - the most elusive informant that has ever penetrated the Republican movement in Northern Ireland.  But there's a problem: the Thevshi claims to know who's responsible for his brother's death.  Danny's never killed someone he needed to talk to first.  The Target: When Finn O'Hanlon (A.K.A. the Thevshi) is attacked in a bar in Alabama he realises that his past has finally caught up with him.  Forced to flee, he embarks on a desperate journey to find Danny McGuire before it's too late.  The Complication: But Danny and Finn are up against someone who's spent years hiding a secret, and it's a secret they'll go to any lengths to protect.

Time On My Hands is by Giorgio Vasta and is due to be published in August 2012.  Palermo, Sicily, 1978.  The Christian Democrat leader Aldo Moro has just been kidnapped in Rome by members of the notorious Red Brigades.  Two months after his disappearance on 9th May, Moro is found dead in the boot of a car.  A trio of eleven-year-old schoolboys, Nimbo, Raggio, and Volo, avidly follow the news of the abduction as their admiration for the brigatisti grows.  When the boys themselves resolve to abduct a classmate and incarcerate him in a makeshift 'people's prison', the darkness within their world, and the world of the novel, becomes all-pervasive.  A vivid and hellish description of Sicily in the late seventies, Time on my Hands is an unforgettable novel from a significant new voice in Italian fiction.

Pierced is the follow-up novel to Thomas Enger’s debut novel Burned and once again features Henning Juul.  A Convicted Killer: Despite always maintaining his innocence, Tori Pulli, once a powerful player on Oslo's underground crime scene, has been found guilty of murder.  A Loose End: Scarred reporter, Henning Juul, is contacted by Pulli, who claims that if Henning can help clear his name he can give him details of who was responsible for the fire which killed his six-year-old son, Jonas.  A Double Threat: Desperate to continue his own search for justice, Henning realises that the information Pulli promises is life threatening, to both of them and to others.  As events take a deadly turn, Henning finds himself on the trail of two killers for whom the stakes have never been higher…  Pierced is due to be published in July 2012.

When Rob Hale wakes up in hospital after a motorcycle crash he is told that Lena, the woman he claims was travelling with him, doesn't exist.  The woman he describes bears a striking resemblance to his recently deceased sister, Laura, but has he really only imagined her?  Rob sets out to find the answers to who Lena is and where she has gone.  He is aided by Rebecca Lewis, a London-based PI, who has come to the Isle of Man at the behest of his parents to investigate his sister's suicide.  But who is Rebecca really and how did she know his sister?  Together Rob and Rebecca follow the clues to discover who took Lena.  In doing so they discover that even on an island where most people know each other, everyone hides a secret, and that sometimes your best option isn't to hide but to stay and fight.  Safe House is by Chris Ewan and is due to be published in August 2012.

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