Thursday 6 April 2023

Forthcoming books from Hodder and Stoughton

 July 2023

Everyone believes that Lenora Hope is a mass murderer.  When the Hope family was massacred decades ago, she was the only one left after that tragic night. Mute, paralysed and confined to a wheelchair, Lenora has never been able to tell her side of the story. Until her new live-in caregiver Kit brings her a typewriter.  And with one working finger Lenora begins to type: I want to tell you everything. The Only One Left is by Riley Sager

Murder at Church Lodge is by Greg Mosse. Maise Cooper is no detective, thak you very much . But she might Just solve a murder...  Maisie left the picture-perfect village of Framlington years ago. But when her brother asks for her help out of the blue she soon finds herself back among the windy lanes and open green fields. But it's not the family reunion she hoped for - upon arrival she learns that she's too late. Stephen is dead. And not just dead – murdered. Frustrated by the slow police investigation headed up by handsome Sergeant Wingard, Maisie determines to start asking questions herself. In a village where everyone knows everyone, surely someonehas some information about Stephen. But the longer Maisie stays, and the deeper she digs, the more she begins to sense something sinister at the heart of the village. What secrets are the residents so desperate to keep hidden? And what exactly was her brother going to tell her before his mysterious demise? And when another death rocks the community, Maisie fears that she needs to catch the killer before they catch her...

Terrorists have shot down a British helicopter in West Africa and taken the crew hostage. Their lives are on the line and the British government is refusing to negotiate. The pilot is Liam Shepherd, and only his father - Dan 'Spider" Shepherd of MI5 - can help. Shepherd and an SAS team fly out to the badlands of Mali to rescue the kidnapped Brits. But the mission takes Shepherd away from an investigation in a high security prison that is about to explode into violence. Hundreds of lives are at risk, and Shepherd is running out of time... Clean Kill is by Stephen Leather.

If you put one step wrong on these streets, you might... wind up dead. One boy dead. Craig Malton rules Manchester, solving crimes for criminals and flying under the police's radar. When he's called to a murder scene before the cops can get their hands on it, he senses something is wrong. Someone is trying to make Zak Alquist's murder look like something it's not. One boy missing. Lesha's son was murdered years ago, so when a local boy goes missing, she feels the sting only a bereaved mother can. But this is more than just a teenage runaway. On the missing boy's phone is a photo of him - and murder victim Zak Alquist. A dark conspiracy. Can Lesha and Malton uncover the rot at the heart of the city and cut it out before another life is taken? Wind Up Dead is by Sam Tobin.

August 2023

Death of a Lesser God is by Vaseem Khan. Can a white man receive justice in post-colonial India? Bombay, 1950 - James Whitby, sentenced to death for the murder of prominent lawyer and former Quit India activist Fareed Mazumdar, is less than two weeks from a date with the gallows. In a last-ditch attempt to save his son, Whitby's father, arch-colonialist, Charles Whitby, forces a new investigation into the killing. The investigation leads Inspector Persis Wadia of the Bombay Police to the old colonial capital of Calcutta, where, with the help of Scotland Yard criminalist Archie Blackfinch, she uncovers a possible link to a second case, the brutal murder of an African-American G.I. during the Calcutta Killings of 1946. How are the cases connected? If Whitby didn't murder Mazumdar, then who did? And why? 

'I am waiting for someone to kill me. Tonight would be a good night for it.' Agent Seventeen, the most infamous hitman in the world, has quit. But whoever wants to become Assassin Eighteen must track him down and kill him first. So when a bullet hits the glass inches from his face, he knows who fired it - doesn't he? But the sniper isn't the hardened killer he was expecting. It's Mireille - a mysterious, silent child, abandoned in the woods with instructions to pull the trigger. Reuniting with his spiky lover, Kat, Seventeen must protect Mireille, and discover who sent her to kill him, and why. But the road he must travel is littered with bodies. And the answer, when it comes, will blow apart everything Seventeen thought he knew. Assassin Eighteen is by John Brownlow. 

September 2023

The Land Of Lost Things is by John Connolly. Twice upon a time - for that is how some stories should continue . . .Phoebe, an eight-year-old girl, lies comatose following a car accident. She is a body without a spirit, a stolen child. Ceres, her mother, can only sit by her bedside and read aloud to Phoebe the fairy stories she loves in the hope they might summon her back to this world. But it is hard to keep faith, so very hard. Now an old house on the hospital grounds, a property connected to a book written by a vanished author, is calling to Ceres. Something wants her to enter, and to journey - to a land coloured by the memories of Ceres's childhood, and the folklore beloved of her father, to a land of witches and dryads, giants and mandrakes; to a land where old enemies are watching, and waiting. To the Land of Lost Things.

Holly is by Stephen King. When Penny Dahl calls the Finders Keepers detective agency hoping for help locating her missing daughter, Holly is reluctant to accept the case. Her partner, Pete, has Covid. Her (very complicated) mother has just died. And Holly is meant to be on leave. But something in Penny Dahl’s desperate voice makes it impossible for Holly to turn her down. Mere blocks from where Bonnie Dahl disappeared live Professors Rodney and Emily Harris. They are the picture of bourgeois respectability: married octogenarians, devoted to each other, and semi-retired lifelong academics. But they are harbouring an unholy secret in the basement of their well-kept, book-lined home, one that may be related to Bonnie’s disappearance. And it will prove nearly impossible to discover what they are up to: they are savvy, they are patient, and they are ruthless. Holly must summon all her formidable talents to outthink and outmanoeuvre the shockingly twisted professors in this chilling new masterwork from Stephen King.

My client's just confessed to the crime I committed. The therapist - Sara seems to have it all - a thriving practice as a trauma counsellor, a comfortable home, a loving husband and two children. A world away from her troubled childhood. She's the only one who knows that her entire is built on a lie. The client - until a new patient confesses to a crime that hits too close to home. Sara is thrown into a quest to hide the truth: from her family, her co-workers, and most importantly, the police.The confession - How can this client know about Sara's past? And how can Sara silence her before it's too late?  One thing is certain: she will do anything to keep her family safe. Trust in Me is by Luca Veste. 

Murder Town is by Shelley Burr. Gemma Guillory has lived in Rainier her entire life. She knows the tiny town's ins and outs like the back of her hand, the people like they are her family, their quirks as if they were her own. She knows her once charming town is now remembered for one reason, and one reason only. That three innocent people died. That the last stop on the Rainier Ripper's trail of deaths fifteen years ago was her innocuous little tea shop. She knows that the consequences of catching the Ripper still haunt her policeman husband and their marriage to this day and that some of her neighbours are desperate - desperate enough to welcome a dark tourism company keen to cash in on Rainier's reputation as the murder town. When the tour operator is killed by a Ripper copycat on Gemma's doorstep, the unease that has lurked quietly in the original killer's wake turns to foreboding, and she's drawn into the investigation. Unbeknownst to her, so is a prisoner named Lane Holland. Gemma knows her town. She knows her people. Doesn't she?

October 2023

Voices of Rome by Lindsey Davis consists of four novella length tales of ancient Rome. The Spook Who Spoke, Vesuvius by Night, Invitation to Die and The Bride of Bythinia, with an introduction by the Author.

Lucy Darkwater has always made her own rules. One of the first women to graduate with a degree from Oxford, she is now the proprietor of London's newest antiquuarian bookshop, with a sideline in scandalous new novels and Ancient Egyptian curios – when she is not attending the lates parties as a woman about time. So whena rival bookshop is chosen to exhibit a selection of extraordinary new Egyptian artefacts, Lucy's pride is piqued – and when the grand opening ends in a gruesome murder she finds herself uniqely placed to unravel the mystery. The Bookshop Murders is by Jennifer Gladwell.

The Exchange is by John Grisham. What became of Mitch and Abby McDeere after they exposed the crimes of Memphis law firm Bendini, Lambert and Locke and fled the country? It is now fifteen years later, and Mitch and Abby are living in Manhattan, where Mitch is a partner at the largest law firm in the world. When a mentor in Rome asks him for a favour that will take him far from home, Mitch finds himself at the centre of a sinister plot that has worldwide implications - and once again endangers his colleagues, friends and family.

The Legend - 1913.Captain Scott and his four companions reach the South Pole to find their Norwegian rival Roald Amundsen has won the race. Defeated, they set out on the 850-mile journey to their ship. Apsley Cherry-Garrard, the explorer sent out to meet them at One Ton depot, peering South through thick spectacles, sees only an infinity of white, and turns back. A year later Scott's pitched tent is found, just ten miles from the depot, and the bodies within speak of hunger, the unbearable strain of hauling the sledge, and the brutal winter cold. They lie in a tomb of ice. Cherry is left forever tormented by thoughts of what might have been. The Truth - 1969. Ten years after Cherry's death, Falcon Grey - who as an orphan of the Blitz was brought up at the explorer's country estate - receives a bequest: a small red notebook that was found in Scott's tent. It is a diary: and it states that they were not victims of the cold, or hunger, but murder, in the coldest of blood. Suspects range from envious foreign powers - such as the Kaiser's Germany - to revolutionaries and even Scott's own men. Vital clues lie in the tent, so Falcon goes South to the ice to see it for himself, but someone is desperate to conceal the truth and will kill to keep the secrets under the ice. The White Lie is by J G Kelly.

The Prey is by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir. A box of photo albums is found in the attic of a recently sold house in Hoefn, a small fishing village on the south coast of Iceland. The new owners return it to the seller in Reykjavik, a man who inherited the house along with his brother. Besides the box, the owners hand him a muddied child's shoe, saying they found it during the removal of the lot's old flagpole. The seller cleans the shoe, searching for a mark like the one his mother used to put on his brother's clothing. He finally finds one, but the name is neither his nor his brother's. It's a girl's name: Salvoer. The man is baffled; they never knew a girl named Salvoer. Shortly after the phone rings - it's the nursing home where his mother, an Alzheimer's patient, lives. She's suffered a heart attack and the doctors don't expect her to live much longer. The nurse asks him to let his brother know as well as their sister, Salvoer. Their mother has been asking for her.  Johanna is a member of a search and rescue team in Hoefn and she's searching for two couples from Reykjavik. Their phones' last location has been pinpointed as the road leading up into the highlands. It's far from clear why these people would have made such a risky trip in the middle of the harsh winter, and they soon find the first dead body. Hjoervar works at the Stokksnes Radar Station, remotely situated on a small peninsula approximately 30 minutes away from Hoefn. He is working alone when the phone connected to the gate rings. It's the first time it's done so since he began working there five months ago. He picks up the phone but can hear only interference and what might be a woman's or a child's voice. Peering outside, he sees no one. The day after, he tells his colleague about the strange events, and the other man is strangely alarmed at the news, He finally he tells Hjoervar that the man he replaced had begun acting oddly just before his death, reporting events very similar to these before he climbed onto the rocks outside and drowned. The Prey tells the story of the two couples who made the journey into the highlands, and how the trip of their dreams slowly transformed into a nightmare. What connects this doomed expedition to the ghostly happenings at the radar station and a little girl that died decades ago?

November 2023

Murder at Bunting Manor is by Greg Mosse. Maisie Cooper is ready to return to Parisafter solving her brother's murder. But when she receives a mysterious invitation to Bnting Manor, the lady of the house requesting her help, she can't say no. There's been a mysterious disappearance in the village – but why is no one asking questions? As Maise begins investigating, the murder attempts starts... Will Maise solve the case before the killer comes for her.

It's spring in Shady Hollow, and romance is in the air. Even reporter Vera Vixen is caught up in the season as her relationship with new police chief Orville Braun blossoms. But true love is not always smooth sailing, as two of the hollow's young residents come to find. Jonah Atwater and Stasia von Beaverpelt find themselves battling their families in order to be together. And when Jonah's father, Shelby, goes over the top of Twilight Falls, all signs point to Stasia being the murderer. The evidence against Stasia appears overwhelming, and Orville arrests her. It looks like the case is closed, but Vera isn't so sure. There are almost too many clues indicating Stasia is the killer, leading her to suspect someone is setting Stasia up. Besides, what about the mysterious ghostly creature skulking around town at night? Maybe he or she was involved? As Vera investigates further, her sleuthing puts her in direct opposition to Orville, and soon she's stirred up a hornet's nest of trouble. Twilight Falls is by Juneau Black.

The Party Season is by SJI Holliday, It's the most deadly time of the year... The festive season is in full swing - parties, champagne and Christmas crackers abound. You're having a breather at the hotel bar when a stunning young woman catches your eye. Could she really be interested in you? She flutters her eyelashes and takes your hand. Her Christmas party dress glitters with sequins.  What you don't know is that your life is now in her hands - as she leads you up to her room there's only one thing that will determine whether you live or die.  Are you a good person? Are you really?

Her is by Mira v Shah, You want to be just like her. But do you really know her? Rani has always felt like an outsider. First growing up among her white, wealthy peers. And now next to her successful, child-free friends. From the tiny rented flat she lives in with her family, she imagines being the kind of woman who owns the beautiful house across the street. Then Natalie moves in. With her expensive clothes, adoring husband and high-powered job, she has everything Rani wants, and Rani can't help but be drawn to her new neighbour. But as the two women strike up a friendship and begin open up, Rani wonders - is Natalie's perfect-seeming life too good to be true?











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