Books to Look Forward to from John Murray Publishers

 January 2021

'Kill us? They've never needed to kill us,' said Lamb. 'I mean, look at us. What would be the point?'  A year after a calamitous blunder by the Russian secret service left a British citizen dead from novichok poisoning, Diana Taverner is on the warpath. What seems a gutless response from the government has pushed the Service's First Desk into mounting her own counter-offensive - but she's had to make a deal with the devil first. And given that the devil in question is arch-manipulator Peter Judd, she could be about to lose control of everything she's fought for.  Meanwhile, still reeling from recent losses, the slow horses are worried they've been pushed further into the cold. Slough House has been wiped from Service records, and fatal accidents keep happening. No wonder Jackson Lamb's crew are feeling paranoid. But have they actually been targeted?  With a new populist movement taking a grip on London's streets, and the old order ensuring that everything's for sale to the highest bidder, the world's an uncomfortable place for those deemed surplus to requirements. The wise move would be to find a safe place and wait for the troubles to pass.  But the slow horses aren't famed for making wise decisions.  Slough House is by Mick Herron.

May 2021

Aunti Poldi and the Madonna is by Mario Giorando.  There’s only one Auntie Poldi: bewigged, cursing, and knocking back a shot of grappa before breakfast . . . or is there? A nun leaps to her death shortly after participating in a seemingly routine exorcism. But when a priest with an almost unholy level of sex appeal turns up at her door, Auntie Poldi is shocked to hear that she’s a suspect in their case. Who is the woman being exorcised, and where has she disappeared to? And why in the world did she claim to be Poldi? No one is as they seem (and sound) in this hilarious new mystery featuring Sicily’s sultriest sleuth.

Knowledge is power, and the tech company Public Square knows a lot. But who else can access all that information? Reporter William Carver is not tech-savvy, but he needs to learn fast – the people he cares about are in danger. From the Chilean mines where they dig for raw materials that enable tech revolution, to the streets of Hong Kong where anti-government protesters are fighting against the Chinese State, to the research laboratories of Silicon Valley where personal data is being mined everyday – A Cursed Place is by Peter Hanington and is a thrilling saga set against the global forces that shape our times.

June 2021

Our Friends in Beijing is by John Simpson.  Old friends, new enemies.  Jon Swift is in trouble again. His journalism career is in freefall. He is too old to be part of the new world order and he has never learned to suck up to those in charge. But experience has taught him to trust his instincts.   When, for the first time in years, Jon runs into Lin Lifeng in a cafe in Oxford he wonders if the meeting is a coincidence. When Lin asks him to pass on a coded message, he knows it's not. Once a radical student who helped Jon broadcast the atrocities of Tiananmen Square, Lin is now a well-dressed party official with his own agenda.   Travelling to Beijing, Jon starts to follow a tangled web in which it is hard to know who are friends and who are enemies. As he ricochets across the country, Jon seeks to make sense of the ways in which China's past and present are colliding - and what that means for the future of the country and the world. Under the watchful eyes of an international network of spies, double-agents and politicians, all with a ruthless desire for power, Jon is in a high-stakes race to expose the truth, before it's too late.