There are a vast number of books due out during the first six months of 2014 and there are quite a few that I am looking forward to reading. So far between January 2014 and June 2014 I am looking forward to the following in no particular order!
The Ghost Runner is by Parker Bilal
and is due to be published in February 2014.
It is 2002 and as tanks roll into the West Bank and the reverberations
of 9/11 echo across the globe, tensions are running high on Cairo's streets. Private Investigator Makana, in exile from
his native Sudan and increasingly haunted by memories of the wife and daughter
he lost, is shaken out of his grief when a routine surveillance job leads him
to the horrific murder of a teenage girl.
In a country where honour killings are commonplace and the authorities
seem all too eager to turn a blind eye, Makana determines to track down the
perpetrator. He finds unexpected
assistance in the shape of Zahra, a woman who seems to share Makana's hunger
for justice. Seeking answers in the dead
girl's past he travels to Siwa, an oasis town on the edge of the great Sahara
desert, where the law seems disturbingly far away and old grievances simmer
just below the surface. As violence
follows him through the twisting, sand-blown streets and an old enemy lurks in
the shadows, Makana discovers that the truth can be as deadly and as changeable
as the desert beneath his feet.
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...
The
First Horseman is by D K Wilson and is due to be published in June
2014. 1536. In the corrupt heart of Tudor London a killer waits in
the shadows...The Real Crime Before dawn on a misty November morning in 1536,
prominent mercer Robert Packington was gunned down as he crossed Cheapside on
his way to early morning mass. It was the first assassination by
handgun in the history of the capital and subsequently shook the city to its
core. The identity of his assassin has remained a
mystery. Our Story Thomas Treviot is a young London goldsmith and a
close family friend of Robert Packington. Through his own upstanding
social connections - and some less upstanding acquaintances he has made along
the way -, Thomas launches a dramatic investigation into Packington's
death. As Thomas searches for revenge, he must travel from the
golden heart of merchant London, to the straw-covered backstreets of London's
poorest districts before reaching the country's seat of power: the court of
King Henry VIII. Before long, he is drawn into a dark conspiracy
beyond his wildest imaginings and claiming justice for his friend starts to
look impossible. Especially when Thomas realises that Robert wasn't
the man he thought he knew...In the first of a new series investigating real
unsolved Tudor crimes, D. K. Wilson brings the streets of Tudor London to
spectacular life as Thomas Treviot faces a fight to bring the truth to light in
the corrupt world of Anne Boleyn, Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII.
The
Donnybrook is a three-day bare-knuckle tournament held on a thousand-acre plot
out in the sticks of southern Indiana. Twenty
fighters. One wire-fence ring. Fight until only one man is left standing
while a rowdy festival of onlookers - drunk and high on whatever's on offer -
bet on the outcome. Jarhead is a
desperate man who'd do just about anything to feed his children. He's also the toughest fighter in south
eastern Kentucky, and he's convinced that his ticket to a better life is one
last fight with a cash prize so big it'll solve all his problems. Meanwhile, there's Chainsaw Angus - an
undefeated master fighter who isn't too keen on getting his face punched
anymore, so he and his sister, Liz, have started cooking meth. And they get in deep. So deep that Liz wants it all for herself,
and she might just be ready to kill her brother for it. As we travel through the backwoods on the way
to the Donnybrook, we meet a cast of nasty, ruined characters driven to all
sorts of evil, all in the name of getting their fix - drugs, violence, sex,
money, honour. Donny-Brook is by Frank Bill and is due to be published in
March 2014.
Rea
Carlisle has inherited a house from an uncle she never knew. It doesn’t
take her long to clear out the dead man’s remaining possessions, but one room
remains stubbornly locked. When Rea finally forces it open, she discovers
inside a chair, a table – and a leather-bound book. Inside its pages are
locks of hair, fingernails: a catalogue of victims. Horrified, Rea wants
to go straight to the police but when her family intervene, Rea turns to the
only person she can think of: DI Jack Lennon. However, Lennon is facing
his own problems, not least of all his suspension from the police
force. The Final Silence is by Stuart Neville and is due to be
published in July 2014.
The
Wolf in Winter is by John Connolly and is due to be published in April
2014. Prosperous, and the secret that it hides beneath its ruins . . .
The community of Prosperous, Maine has always thrived when others have
suffered. Its inhabitants are wealthy,
its children's future secure. It shuns
outsiders. It guards its own. And at the heart of the Prosperous lie the
ruins of an ancient church, transported stone by stone from England centuries
earlier by the founders of the town . . . But the death of a homeless man and
the disappearance of his daughter draw the haunted, lethal private investigator
Charlie Parker to Prosperous. Parker is
a dangerous man, driven by compassion, by rage, and by the desire for
vengeance. In him the town and its protectors
sense a threat graver than any they have faced in their long history, and in
the comfortable, sheltered inhabitants of a small Maine town, Parker will
encounter his most vicious opponents yet. Charlie Parker has been marked
to die so that Prosperous may survive.
Maybe
it was time I forgot about Nico Peterson, and his sister, and the Cahuilla
Club, and Clare Cavendish. Clare? The
rest would be easy to put out of my mind, but not the black-eyed blonde . . .
It is the early 1950s. In Los Angeles, Private Detective Philip Marlowe is as
restless and lonely as ever, and business is a little slow. Then a new client
arrives: young, beautiful, and expensively dressed, Clare Cavendish wants
Marlowe to find her former lover, a man named Nico Peterson. Soon Marlowe will find himself not only under
the spell of the Black-Eyed Blonde; but tangling with one of Bay City’s richest
families – and developing a singular appreciation for how far they will go to
protect their fortune . . . The
Black-Eyed Blonde is by Benjamin Black and is due to be published in
February 2014. It sees a return of
Raymond Chandler’s iconic private detective Philip Marlowe and the dark
mesmerising world of The Long Goodbye.
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