Sunday 12 December 2021

Books to Look Forward to From Simon & Schuster

 January 2022

Monster? Murderer? Child? Victim? Michelle Cameron's name is associated with the most abhorrent of crimes. A child who lured a younger child away from her parents and to her death, she is known as the black girl who murdered a little white girl; evil incarnate according to the media. As the book opens, she has done her time, and has been released as a young woman with a new identity to start her life again. When another shocking death occurs, Michelle is the first in the frame. Brought into the police station to answer questions around a suspicious death, it is only a matter of time until the press find out who she is now and where she lives and set about destroying her all over again. Natalie Tyler is the officer brought in to investigate the murder. A black detective constable, she has been ostracised from her family and often feels she is in the wrong job. But when she meets Michelle, she feels a complicated need to protect her, whatever she might have done. The Gosling Girl is by Jacqueline Roy.

February 2022

Tell Me Your Lies is by Kate Ruby. Lily Appleby will do anything to protect the people she loves. She's made ruthless choices to make sure their secrets stay buried, and she's not going to stop now. When her party-animal daughter, Rachel, spins out of control, Lily hires a renowned therapist and healer to help her. Amber is the skilled and intuitive confidante that Rachel desperately needs. But as Rachel falls increasingly under Amber's spell, she begins to turn against her parents, and Lily grows suspicious. Does Amber really have Rachel's best interests at heart or is there something darker going on? Only one thing is clear: Rachel is being lied to. Never quite knowing who to believe, her search for the truth will reveal her picture-perfect family as anything but flawless.

Berlin. 1963. The height of the Cold War. An early morning spy swap, not at Glienecke Bridge, the familiar setting for such exchanges, or at Checkpoint Charlie, where international visitors cross into the East, but at a more discreet border crossing, usually reserved for East German VIPs, next to the Charite hospital complex. The Communists are trading two American students caught helping people to escape over the wall and a lower level CIA operative. Not the stuff of headlines and, as planned, no journalists are here to write them. On the other side of the trade: Martin Keller, an American physicist who once indeed made headlines, but who then disappeared into the English prison system. Keller's most critical possession: his American passport. Keller's most ardent desire: to see his ex-wife Sabine and their young son. The exchange is made with the formality characteristic of these swaps - equal paces to the concrete barrier, etc. - with each side sizing up the relative value of the other. Three for one? Small fry for a nuclear spy? But Martin has other questions: who asked for him? who negotiated the deal? Just the KGB bringing home one of its agents? Or, as he hopes, a more personal intervention? He has worked for the service long enough to know that nothing happens by chance. They want him for something. Not physics - his expertise is years out of date. Something else, which he cannot learn until he arrives in East Berlin, when suddenly the game is afoot. The Berlin Exchange is by Joseph Kanon. 

March 2022.

Reputation is by Sarah Vaughan. Reputation: it takes a lifetime to build and just one moment to destroy. Emma Webster is a respectable MP. Emma Webster is a devoted mother. Emma Webster is innocent of the murder of a tabloid journalist. Emma Webster is a liar. #Reputation: The story you tell about yourself. And the lies others choose to believe...

Lost something? Gabriela Rose knows how to get it back. As a recovery agent, she's hired by individuals and companies seeking lost treasures, stolen heirlooms, or missing assets of any kind. She's reliable, cool under pressure, and well trained in weapons of all types. But Gabriela's latest job isn't for some bamboozled billionaire, it's for her own family, whose home is going to be wiped off the map if they can't come up with a lot of money fast.  Inspired by an old family legend, Gabriela sets off for the jungles of Peru in pursuit of the Ring of Solomon and the lost treasure of Cortez. But this particular job comes with a huge problem attached to it - Gabriela's ex-husband, Rafer. It's Rafer who has the map that possibly points the way to the treasure, and he's not about to let Gabriela find it without him. Rafer is as relaxed as Gabriela is driven, and he has a lifetime's experience getting under his ex-wife's skin. But when they aren't bickering about old times the two make a formidable team, and it's going to take a team to defeat the vicious drug lord who has also been searching for the fabled ring. A drug lord who doesn't mind leaving a large body count behind him to get it. The Recovery Agent is by Janet Evanovich. 

April 2022

County Ghost is by Chris Petit. When a government minister is shot there are many suspects but few leads. Days before the attempted assassination, Charlotte Waites, a Home Office analyst, dismissed a crucial intel flag and now has to account for her actions. Dragged into a web of intrigue that will draw in everybody from the prime minister to her ailing father, she must try to get the bottom of the mystery while confronting dark secrets from her family's past.

May 2022

A body is discovered in a frozen lake, its wrists bound. When it is linked to a case from 2002, Tyler, DC Rabbani and the CCRU team are called in. But fresh blood is soon discovered at the scene and the disturbing events from all those years ago are dragged sharply into the present . . . Cold Reckoning is by Russ Thomas.

Do No Harm is by Jack Jordan. My child has been taken. And I've been given a choice... Kill a patient on the operating table. Or never see my son again. The man lies on the table in front of me. As a surgeon, it's my job to save him. As a mother, I know I must kill him. You might think that I'm a monster. But there really is only one choice. I must get away with murder. Or I will never see my son again. I've saved many lives. Would you trust me with yours?

Storm Rising is by Chris Hauty. Ex-White House intern Hayley Chill is in training as an MMA fighter, trying to leave her past behind her. But hard as she may try to escape it, the past finds her. Under the floorboards of her father's house, she uncovers a ciphered document titled 'The Storm'. More Clues lead her into the Deeper State. What begins as incidental evidence of a subculture of white supremacy within the US military emerges as a much more extensive and dire threat. Hayley's lonely and often violent investigative pursuit travels up a mysterious cabal's chain of command, leading to the revelation of a fully-realized conspiracy to break off several southern states from the US, forming a new country and one founded on white nationalist ideals. It is up to Hayley Chill alone to stop a second civil war before it starts, while at the same time revealing the ultimate truth about her own father's role in this harrowing chapter of American history.

A woman boards a plan in Burkina Faso having just completed a targeted assassination for the state of Israel. Two minutes after takeoff her plane is blown out of the sky. 6000 miles to the east, James Reece watches the names and pictures of the victims cross cable news. One face triggers a distant memory of a Mossad operative attached to the CIA years earlier in Iraq, a woman with ties to the intelligence services of two nations, a woman Reece thought he would never see again... In a global pursuit spanning four continents, James Reece will enlist the help of friends new and old to track down her killer and walk right into a trap set by a master sniper, a sniper who has enlisted help of his own... In The Blood is by Jack Carr.

June 2022

The Terminal List is by Jack Carr. On his last combat deployment, Lieutenant Commander James Reece's entire team was killed in a catastrophic ambush. But when those dearest to him are murdered on the day of his homecoming, Reece discovers that this was not an act of war by a foreign enemy but a conspiracy that runs to the highest levels of government. Now, with no family and free from the military's command structure, Reece applies the lessons that he's learned in over a decade of constant warfare toward avenging the deaths of his family and teammates. With breathless pacing and relentless suspense, Reece ruthlessly targets his enemies in the upper echelons of power without regard for the laws of combat or the rule of law.








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