January 2017
A
doting mother or a pushy parent? Karen Bloom expects perfection. Her son, Ewan,
has been something of a disappointment and she won't be making the same mistake
again with her beloved, talented child, Bronte. Bronte's every waking hour will
be spent at music lessons and dance classes, doing extra schoolwork and
whatever it takes to excel. But as Karen pushes Bronte to the brink, the rest
of the family crumbles. Karen's husband, Noel, is losing himself in work, and
his teenage daughter from his first marriage, Verity, is becoming ever more
volatile. The family is dangerously near breaking point. Karen would know when
to stop...wouldn't she? The Trophy
Child is by Paula Daly.
Sirens is by Joseph Knox. It starts with
the girl. How it ends is up to DC Aidan Waits. Isabelle Rossiter has run away
again. When Aidan Waits, a troubled junior detective, is summoned to her
father's penthouse home - he finds a manipulative man, with powerful friends.
But retracing Isabelle's steps through a dark, nocturnal world, Waits finds
something else. An intelligent seventeen-year-old girl who's scared to death of
something. As he investigates her story, and the unsolved disappearance of a
young woman just like her, he realizes Isabelle was right to run away. Soon Waits
is cut loose by his superiors, stalked by an unseen killer and dangerously
attracted to the wrong woman. He's out of his depth and out of time. How can he
save the girl, when he can't even save himself?
February 2017
Blackout is by Marc Elsberg. Tomorrow will be too late. A cold night in
Milan, Piero Manzano wants to get home. Then the traffic lights fail. Manzano
is thrown from his Alfa as cars pile up. And not just on this street - every
light in the city is dead. Across Europe, controllers watch in disbelief as
electricity grids collapse. Plunged into darkness, people are freezing. Food
and water supplies dry up. The death toll soars. Former hacker and activist
Manzano becomes a prime suspect. But he is also the only man capable of finding
the real attackers. Can he bring down a major terrorist network before it's too
late?
Incendium is by A D Swanston. Summer, 1572 and England is vulnerable. Fear
of plague and insurrection taint the air, and heresy, fanaticism and religious
unrest seethe beneath the surface of society. Rumour and mistrust lead to
imprisonment, torture and sometimes murder. To the young lawyer Christopher
Radcliff and his patron and employer, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the
prospects for peace are poor. As Leicester's chief intelligencer, Radcliff is
charged with investigating both rumours of rebellion at home and invasion from
abroad. That the queen's own cousin, the Duke of Norfolk, is found guilty of
treason is a sign of just how deep the dissent goes. Supporters of the imprisoned
Mary Queen of Scots foment revolt, but the papist threat doesn't just come from
within. Across the channel, France is being swept up in a frenzy of brutal and
bloody religious persecution while England's other enemy of old, Spain, makes
preparations to invade. Christopher's own life is far from orderly. His
relationship with the widow Katherine Allington is somewhat turbulent and he
knows full well that the cut-throat world of court politics leaves no room for
indiscretions. So England is a powder-keg, waiting for a spark to ignite it.
And then a whisper of a plot that could provide that spark reaches Christopher.
All he has to go on is a single word - 'incendium'. But what does it mean and
who lies behind it? He must find the answers before it is too late...
Dublin,
1816. A young nursemaid conceals a pregnancy and then murders her new-born in
the home of the Neshams, a prominent family in a radical Christian sect known
as the Brethren. Rumours swirl about the identity of the child's father, but before
an inquest can be held, the maid is found dead after an apparent suicide. When
Abigail Lawless, the eighteen-year-old daughter of the coroner, by chance
discovers a message from the maid's seducer, she sets out to discover the
truth. It's the year without a summer. A climatic event has brought frost to
mid-July, hunger and unrest, and a lingering fog casts a pall over the city. An
only child, Abigail has been raised amid the books and instruments of her
father's grim profession, and he in turn indulges her curious and critical
mind. Now she must push against the restrictions society places on a girl her
age to pursue an increasingly dangerous investigation. Two groups have come to
dominate the city: the Brethren, founded by Mr Darby, a charismatic preacher
and evangelical, and opposed to them, a burgeoning rationalist community led by
the Royal Astronomer, Professor Reeves. Abigail's searches begin to uncover the
well-guarded secrets of both factions, drawing the attention of a sinister
figure who emerges in fleeting glimpses and second-hand reports: the man with
the lazy eye. Abigail leads us through dissection rooms and hospital wards,
austere churches and graceful salons, and to the equatorial room of the Saggart
Observatory; and we see her interact with a wide assortment of characters: the
family and staff of her Rutland Square home; her friends, peers and rivals;
zealots, both religious and rationalist, while always shadowed by a seemingly
pitiless sociopath, whom she believes has killed twice already, and will no
doubt kill again ...Determined, resourceful and intuitive, and more than just a
dutiful daughter or society debutant, Abigail Lawless emerges as a young lady
sleuth operating at the dawn of forensic science. The
Coroner’s Daughter is by Andrew Hughes.
March 2017
Our
story begins at the end of an investigation, as the members of London's
Peculiar Crimes Unit race to catch a killer near London Bridge Station in the
rain, not realising that they're about to cause a bizarre accident just yards
away from the crime scene. And it will have repercussions for them all...One
year later, in an exclusive London crescent, a woman walks her dog - but she's
being watched. When she's found dead, the Peculiar Crimes Unit is called in to
investigate. Why? Because the method of death is odd, the gardens are locked,
the killer had no way in - or out - and the dog has disappeared. So a typical
case for Bryant & May. But the hows and whys of the murder are not the only
mysteries surrounding the dead woman - there's a missing husband and a lost
nanny to puzzle over too. And it seems very like that the killer is preparing
to strike again. As Arthur Bryant delves in to the history of London's 'wild
chambers' - its extraordinary parks and gardens, John May and the rest of the
team seem to have caused a national scandal. If no-one is safe then all of
London's open spaces must be closed...With the PCU placed under house arrest,
only Arthur Bryant remains at liberty - but can a hallucinating old codger
catch the criminal and save the unit before it's too late? Bryant and May – The Wild Chamber is by Christopher Fowler.
The Owl Always Hunts at Night is by
Samuel Bjork. When a young woman is
found dead, the police are quick to respond. But what they find at the scene is
unexpected. The body is posed, the scene laboriously set. And there is almost
no forensic evidence to be found. Detective Mia Kruger has been signed off work
pending psychological assessment. But her boss has less regard for the rules
than he should. Desperate to get Mia back in the office, Holger Munch offers
her an unofficial deal. But the usually brilliant Mia is struggling and the
team are unable to close the case. Until a young hacker uncovers something that
forces the team to confront the scope of the murderer's plans and face the
possibility that he may already be on the hunt for a second victim.
April 2017
What Alice Knew is by T A
Cotterell. He trusts her with his
secret. But can she trust him?
Detective
Inspector Harry Virdee wasn't expecting this. But there's no denying that the
body lying at his feet is her - Tara, his beloved niece. And although his boss
is already removing him from the case, Harry knows there no such thing as too
close. He will stop at nothing to find the monster that killed his flesh and
blood. But before he can, he must tell his brother the news. And there is no
predicting what a man on the edge will do when confronted with the worst thing
imaginable. Harry may have a murderer to find but if he isn't careful, he may
also have a murder to prevent. Girl Zero is by A A Dhand.
Dead Woman Walking
is by Sharon Bolton. Just before dawn in
the hills near the Scottish border, a man murders a young woman. At the same
time, a hot-air balloon crashes out of the sky. There's just one survivor.
She's seen the killer's face - but he's also seen hers. And he won't rest until
he's eliminated the only witness to his crime. Alone, scared, trusting no one,
she's running to where she feels safe - but it could be the most dangerous
place of all...
It
was a first class deception that would change her life forever. 1939, Europe on
the brink of war. Lily Shepherd leaves England on an ocean liner for Australia,
escaping her life of drudgery for new horizons. She is instantly seduced by the
world onboard: cocktails, black-tie balls and beautiful sunsets. Suddenly, Lily
finds herself mingling with people who would otherwise never give her the time
of day. But soon she realizes her glamorous new friends are not what they seem.
The rich and hedonistic Max and Eliza Campbell, mysterious and flirtatious
Edward, and fascist George are all running away from tragedy and scandal even
greater than her own. By the time the ship docks, two passengers are dead, war
has been declared, and life will never be the same again. A
Dangerous Crossing is by Rachel Rhys.
Frost at Midnight is by James Henry. It was a first class deception
that would change her life forever. 1939, Europe on the brink of war. Lily
Shepherd leaves England on an ocean liner for Australia, escaping her life of
drudgery for new horizons. She is instantly seduced by the world on-board:
cocktails, black-tie balls and beautiful sunsets. Suddenly, Lily finds herself
mingling with people who would otherwise never give her the time of day. But
soon she realizes her glamorous new friends are not what they seem. The rich
and hedonistic Max and Eliza Campbell, mysterious and flirtatious Edward, and
fascist George are all running away from tragedy and scandal even greater than
her own. By the time the ship docks, two passengers are dead, war has been
declared, and life will never be the same again.
May 2017
The Child is by Fiona Barton. When a paragraph in an evening newspaper reveals
a decades-old tragedy, most readers barely give it a glance. But for three
strangers it's impossible to ignore. For one woman, it's a reminder of the
worst thing that ever happened to her. For another, it's the dangerous
possibility that her darkest secret is about to be discovered. And for a third,
a journalist, it's the first clue in a hunt to uncover the truth. The Child's
story will be told.
June 2017
How
do you stop a serial killer who no one believes is real? Alice is in high-risk
psychiatric unit. Fellow patients are
disappearing. She knows they’re not
suicides, though. They are being picked
off one by one. Alice could need your
help. Because she’s next. They All Fall Down is by Tammy Cohen.
After
helping to avert a deadly attack on London, Luke Carlton has been welcomed on
board as a full-fledged member of SIS and is assigned the role of case officer
running agents. He is sent undercover into Iran to 'turn' and recruit an
officer in that country's infamous Revolutionary Guard Corps: the word is that
a conservative group within the IRGC doesn't like the direction
post-revolutionary Iran appear to be taking and are planning something big to
embarrass their own government - and frighten the country's new 'allies' in the
West. The intelligence services need to
find out who and what, and fast...but then a senior British government minister
on an official visit to Iran goes missing, his close protection officers are
found murdered... Ultimatum is by Frank Gardner.
The Restless Dead is by Simon
Beckett. ‘Composed of over sixty per cent water itself, a
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