Books to Look Forward to from Hodder & Stoughton and Mulholland

July 2019

If you know what you're doing, you can find anything on the internet. Drugs, guns, porn, ideologies, elections, even lives and deaths are all up for sale . . . and everything must go. Elite hacker Azi Bello lives his life in the technological underbelly of the 21st century. A loner, charmer, and lover of grey areas, he works for himself and answers to no one - until his online existence crashes violently into the real world.   The secretive but intriguing Munira has reached out to Azi for help, and her story has sparked his interest: Munira's cousin has been recruited by terrorists and, in her attempts to find out more, she has attracted the attention of some very dangerous people.   Now forced to go on the run, Azi and Munira are drawn into a conspiracy, at the heart of which is Gomorrah: an exclusive online marketplace where anything can be acquired, and where the world's worst individuals lurk. As he throws himself into uncovering Gomorrah's dark secrets, it isn't long before Azi realises that the stakes are high and the risks even higher when you're no longer behind a screen.  The gates of Gomorrah have been opened.  All hell is about to break loose.  This is Gomorrah is by Tom Chatfield.

Short Range is by Stephen Leather.  Dan 'Spider' Shepherd's career path - soldier, policeman, MI5 officer - has always put a strain on his family. So he is far from happy to learn that MI5 is using teenagers as informants. Parents are being kept in the dark and Shepherd fears that the children are being exploited.  As an undercover specialist, Shepherd is tasked with protecting a 15-year-old schoolboy who is being used to gather evidence against violent drug dealers and a right-wing terrorist group. But when the boy's life is threatened, Shepherd has no choice but to step in and take the heat.  And while Shepherd's problems mount up at work, he has even greater problems closer to home. His son Liam has fallen foul of the Serbian Mafia and if Shepherd doesn't intervene, Liam will die.

For seven years, Sasza Zaluska has lived with her little girl in the north of England. Far from her previous job as an undercover cop, far from her dependence on alcohol and the traumatic case that made her flee from the police, her family and her native Poland. But now she is coming back.  This time, Sasza is looking for a quieter life. She has studied to become a psychological profiler and she soon picks up a freelance job to check out some threats made against the owner of a nightclub. But no sooner has Sasza visited the club than a man is murdered there and Sasza finds herself drawn back towards the world she left behind.  The dead man is a musician - famous for one song in particular: Girl at Midnight. Both the song and the crime seem to be connected to a double tragedy of years before, when a brother and sister both died on the same day.  Now Sasza Zaluska must follow a crooked, complex trail from a violent past to a more sophisticated criminal present, in which the gangsters have corrupted every level of society.  Girl at Midnight is by Katarzyna Bonda.

The Bone Fire is by S D Sykes.  1361. Plague has returned to England - thirteen years after the devastation of The Black Death. As destruction advances towards his estate in Kent, Oswald de Lacy leads his family to the safety of a remote castle in the marshes - where his friend Godfrey is preparing a fortress to survive the coming disaster.  The rules are clear: once the de Lacys and other guests are inside the castle the portcullis will be lowered and no-one permitted to enter or leave until the Pestilence has passed.  And then a murderer strikes.  Oswald is confronted with a stark choice - leave and face the ravages of the plague, or stay and place his family at the mercy of a brutal killer. With word of his skills as an investigator preceding him, it falls to Oswald to unmask the murderer in their midst. Host, guest, or servant - everyone is a suspect in this poisoned refuge of secrets, deceit and malice.

Girls Like Us is by Cristina Alger.  FBI Agent Nell Flynn is about to work the most personal case of her life.  Back home for the first time in a decade, Nell is getting ready to close the family estate after her father's death.  But there's one piece of unfinished business. Her father, a homicide detective, was investigating the murders of two young women. Now his partner has asked for Nell's help.  Nell soon realises that her father should be the prime suspect, and that his friends on the force are covering for him.  With no idea who she can trust, Nell also starts to question events that took place when she was a child. Could it be that the answers she so desperately needs are buried deep within her own memory?

August 2019

Outfox is by Sandra Bown. One man with multiple identities. Eight women who vanished without a trace.  The next likely victim...his wife   FBI agent Drex Easton is relentlessly driven by a single goal: to outmanoeuvre the conman once known as Weston Graham. Over the past thirty years, Weston has assumed many names and countless disguises, enabling him to lure eight wealthy women out of their fortunes before they disappeared without a trace. The only common trait among the victims: a new man in their life who also vanished, leaving behind no evidence of his existence.  Drex is convinced that these women have been murdered, and that the man he knows as Weston Graham is the sociopath responsible. But each time Drex gets close to catching him, Weston trades one persona for another and disappears again. Now, for the first time in their long game of cat and mouse, Drex has a suspect in sight.  Attractive and charming, Jasper Ford is recently married to a successful businesswoman many years his junior, Talia Shafer. Drex insinuates himself into their lives, posing as a new neighbour and setting up surveillance on their house. The closer he gets to the couple, the more convinced he becomes that Jasper is the clever, merciless predator he's sought-and that his own attraction to Talia threatens to compromise his purpose and integrity.   This is Drex's one chance to outfox his cunning nemesis before he murders again and eludes justice forever. But first he must determine if the desirable Talia is a heartless accomplice . . . or the next victim.

DI Birch joined the police to find her little brother, who walked out of his life one day and was never seen again. She stayed to help others, determined to seek justice where she could.  On the fourteenth anniversary of Charlie's disappearance, Birch takes part in a raid on one of Scotland's most feared criminal organisations. It's a good day's work - a chance to get a dangerous man off the streets. Two days later, Charlie comes back. It's not a coincidence. When Birch finds out exactly what he's been doing all those years, she faces a terrible choice: save the case, or save her brother. But how can you do the right thing when all the consequences are bad?   As she interrogates Charlie, he tells his story: of how one wrong turn leads to a world in which the normal rules no longer apply, and you do what you must to survive.  What You Pay For is by Claire Askew. 

The Art of Dying is by Douglas Lindsay.  When businessman Thomas Peterson is killed outside a football ground in the Highlands, there are several witnesses. Yet the hunt for the killer is proving as futile as the search for a motive.  Possible connections to Russian money and an eerie retirement home are soon thrown into the mix. To further complicate things, DI Westphall's MI6 past is coming back to haunt him. Guilt stalks his dreams, but could there be a message in these nightmares? Westphall is in danger of losing his head just when he needs it the most. He must find answers, and fast, before the murderer strikes again.

A series of gruesome killings take place in Dubai, Ghana and America. The victims are all connected with the SAS. In Hereford Danny Black realises they have something more specific in common - they were all involved in training a young Muslim soldier, Ibrahim Khan.  Khan has been working under cover in Islamic State in a mission organised by MI6. Danny Black sets out to track him down with the help of Khan's MI6 handler on a trail that leads him to a library of ancient manuscripts in Damascus, the Syrian desert and finally back in the Brecon Beacons. There Danny discovers that he has finally met his match, his deadliest enemy - and it is the last person he ever expected.  Black Ops is by Chris Ryan.

Bad Day at The Vulture Club is by Vaseem Khan. In the gripping new Baby Ganesh Agency novel, Inspector Chopra and his elephant sidekick investigate the death of one of Mumbai's wealthiest citizens, a murder with ramifications for its poorest.  The Parsees are among the oldest, most secretive and most influential communities in the city: respected, envied and sometimes feared.  When prominent industrialist Cyrus Zorabian is murdered on holy ground, his body dumped inside a Tower of Silence - where the Parsee dead are consumed by vultures - the police dismiss it as a random killing. But his daughter is unconvinced. Chopra, uneasy at entering this world of power and privilege, is soon plagued by doubts about the case.  But murder is murder. And in Mumbai, wealth and corruption go in hand in hand, inextricably linking the lives of both high and low...

The shot is impossible.  In the middle of a blizzard, down a busy New York avenue, into a moving car. And there's nothing worse than hunting a killer with a rifle in a city of windows. The agent in charge knows only one man with the skills to work out where the bullet came from. Lucas Page, physics professor and maths prodigy, quit the FBI after it nearly cost him his life. But he can't resist the call to help, to prove that he is still capable of extraordinary things. Because Page is wired to see crime from a different angle. The science that explains the impossible shot. The geometry that reveals the killer's location. The logic that tells him this shooter has killed like this before. And will do it again, and again, until they are stopped... City of Windows is by Robert Pobi.

September 2019

Missing-linc.com comprises a group of misfit sleuths scattered across the States. Their macabre passion is giving names to the unidentified dead. When Ellie Caine starts investigating the corpse known as the Boy in the Dress, the Boy's killer decides to join the group. The closer they get to the truth, the closer he will get to them. The Boy was Teddy Ryan. He was meant to have been killed in a car crash in the west of Ireland in 1989. Only he wasn't. There is no grave in Galway and Teddy was writing letters from New York a year after he supposedly died. But one night he met a man in a Minnesota bar and vanished off the face of the earth.  Teddy's nephew, Shaun, is no hero, but he is determined to solve the thirty-year-old mystery. He joins forces with the disparate members of Missing-linc to hunt down the killer. The only problem: the killer will be with them every step of the way . . .  Missing Person is by Sarah Lotz.

Sam is doing well in her career, she has a husband and a baby and life is going well. That is until she gets the note through her door that stops her heart in her chest. Never Have I Ever Been Punished For What I Have Done.  Sam is catapulted back to those teenage years spent with her best friends, teasing out each other's secrets by announcing things they had Never, ever done. Pushing each other's boundaries, growing closer and growing up.   If only they had stopped there. But they added their own rules. They went from sharing secrets to sharing firsts. First kisses, first drinks, first fake IDs. And that was before it all went spiralling out of control. Before that day in the woods ended it all.  Because no matter how far it goes, you have to obey the rules of the game. Even if what you've never done should stay that way. And now Sam is about to discover that the game isn't over.  Never Have I Ever is by Lucy Hay.

She Lies in Vines is by Benjamin Stevenson.  Four years ago Eliza Dacey was brutally murdered.  Within hours, her killer was caught.  Wasn't he?  So reads the opening titles of Jack Quick's new true-crime documentary.  A skilled producer, Jack knows that the bigger the conspiracy, the higher the ratings. Curtis Wade, convicted of Eliza's murder on circumstantial evidence and victim of a biased police force, is the perfect subject. Millions of viewers agree.  Just before the finale, Jack uncovers a minor detail that may prove Curtis guilty after all. Convinced it will ruin his show, Jack disposes of the evidence and delivers the finale unedited: proposing that Curtis is innocent.  But when Curtis is released, and a new victim is found bearing horrifying similarities to the original murder, Jack realizes that he may have helped a guilty man out of jail. And, as the only one who knows the real evidence of the case, he is the only one who can send him back...

Some family secrets demand to be told . . . Connie lost her words at the age of five, the day she witnessed her mother and father's untimely death. Since then she has been all but mute, only being able to choke out a few select words. Now, years on, Connie's husband is on his deathbed and all she can do is quietly sit by his side.   But there are so many dreadful secrets locked up in Connie's silent prison. And time is running out to set them free . . .  Don’t Say A Word is by Rebecca Tinnelly.

A skinny young boy is found dead - his body carelessly stuffed into wheelie bin. Detective Superintendent Alan Banks and his team are called to investigate. Who is the boy, and where did he come from? Was he discarded as rubbish, or left as a warning to someone? He looks Middle Eastern, but no one on the East Side Estate has seen him before.  As the local press seize upon an illegal immigrant angle, and the national media the story of another stabbing, the police are called to investigate a less newsworthy death: a middle-aged heroin addict found dead of an overdose in another estate, scheduled for redevelopment.  Banks finds the threads of each case seem to be connected to the other, and to the dark side of organised crime in Eastvale. Does another thread link to his friend Zelda, who is facing her own dark side? The truth may be more complex - or much simpler - than it seems . . .  Many Rivers to Cross is by Peter Robinson.

October 2019

London 1963. The Beatles, Carnaby Street, mini-skirts. But the new mood hasn't reached the drab and fearful corridors of MI5 and MI6. Many agents joined the secret service to fight the Nazis. Now they are locked in a Cold War against the Russians.  And some of them are traitors.  The service has been shaken to its core by the high-profile defections of Cambridge-educated spies Burgess, MacLean and now Philby. Appalled at such flagrant breaches of British security, the Americans are demanding a rigorous review.  Harry Vaughan is brought back from Vienna to be part of it. The Chief asks him to join two investigators - Arthur Martin and Peter Wright - who are determined to clean out the stables, and the first target of their suspicions is the Deputy Director General of MI5, Graham Mitchell.  Harry slips back into a relationship with an old flame, Elsa, and joins the hunt - somewhat reluctantly. He is sceptical of the case against Mitchell and wary of the messianic fervour of the two spy-catchers. But the further the investigation goes - and the deeper his commitment to Elsa becomes - the greater the sense of paranoia and distrust that spreads through the 'wilderness of mirrors' that is the secret service. The only certainty is that no-one is above suspicion. Including Harry Vaughan. Witchfinder is by Andrew Williams.

November 2019

A cold case for Captain Benny Griessel and Vaughn Cupido of the Hawks - not what they were looking for. And a difficult case too, surrounded by mystery, lies and evasion. The body of Johnson Johnson, ex-cop, has been found by the side of a railway line. He appears to have jumped from the world's most luxurious train, and two suspicious characters seen with him have disappeared into thin air. The regular police have already failed to make progress and others are intent on muddying the waters.  Meanwhile in Bordeaux, Daniel Darret is settled in a new life on a different continent. But his skills as an international hit-man are required one more time, and Daniel is given no choice in the matter. He must hunt again - his prey the corrupt president of his homeland. Two strands of the same story become a race against time - for the Hawks to stop the assassination, for Daniel to evade the relentless Russian agents tracking him, for Benny Griessel to survive long enough to finally ask Alexa Bernard to marry him . . .  The Last Hunt is by Deon Meyer.

Yorkshire, 1845.  A young woman has gone missing from her home, Chester Grange, leaving no trace, save a large pool of blood in her bedroom and a slew of dark rumours about her marriage. A few miles away across the moors, the daughters of a humble parson, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte are horrified, yet intrigued.  Desperate to find out more, the sisters visit Chester Grange, where they notice several unsettling details about the crime scene: not least the absence of an investigation. Together, the young women realise that their resourcefulness, energy and boundless imaginations could help solve the mystery - and that if they don't attempt to find out what happened to Elizabeth Chester, no one else will.  The path to the truth is not an easy one, especially in a society which believes a woman's place to be in the home, not wandering the countryside looking for clues. But nothing will stop the sisters from discovering what happened to the vanished bride, even as they find their own lives are in great peril...  The vanished Bride is by Bella Ellis.  

You're at home with your family. You think you're safe. You're wrong... Ava's life is the kind other people envy: loving husband; great kids; beautiful house. Until the night a violent home invasion turns the dream into a nightmare, and leaves her beautiful daughter fighting to survive. And then things get worse. Ava realises that the attack wasn't random. Someone is targeting her family. Why? Who could hate them enough to kill?  Ava must find out what really happened that night, to save those she loves from even greater danger. But when everyone around you has been lying, how do you decide who to trust? And Ava has secrets of her own... In Her Eyes is by Sarah Alderson.

Books to Look Forward to from Mulholland and Hodder and Stoughton

Banks is back and now he’s the one being hunted.  When two boys vanish under mysterious circumstances, the local community is filled with unease.  And when a caravan belonging to one of the youths is burned to the ground, and a bloodstain is discovered in a disused World War Two hangar nearby, things quickly become much more sinister.  Assigned to the case, DCI Banks and his team are baffled by the mystery laid out before them.  But when a motor accident throws up a gruesome discovery, the investigation spins into a higher gear - and in another direction.  As Banks and his team struggle desperately to find the missing boy who holds the key to the puzzle, they find themselves in a race against time where it's their turn to become the prey ... Abattoir Blues is the twenty-second novel in the DCI Banks series by Peter Robinson and is due to be published in July 2014.

Oswald de Lacy was never meant to be the Lord of Somerhill Manor.  Despatched to a monastery at the age of seven, sent back at seventeen when his father and two older brothers are killed by the Plague, Oswald has no experience of running an estate.  He finds the years of pestilence and neglect have changed the old place dramatically, not to mention the attitude of the surviving peasants.  Yet some things never change.  Oswald's mother remains the powerful matriarch of the family, and his sister Clemence simmers in the background, dangerous and unmarried.  Before he can do anything, Oswald is confronted by the shocking death of a young woman, Alison Starvecrow.  The ambitious village priest claims that Alison was killed by a band of demonic dog-headed men.  Oswald is certain this is nonsense, but proving it - by finding the real murderer - is quite a different matter.  Every step he takes seems to lead Oswald deeper into a dark maze of political intrigue, family secrets, and violent strife.  And then the body of another girl is found.  SD Sykes brilliantly evokes the landscape and people of medieval Kent in this thrillingly suspenseful debut entitled The Plague.  The Plague is due to be published in October 2014.

  

In the wake of a failed attack on America's premier theme park, which put his own daughter at risk, Special Forces operator Jad Bell is sent after the man who arranged it.  But it soon becomes clear that capturing him is just the start: his employer, known only as the Architect, has already set something far worse in motion.  At the centre of it all are two women deep under cover.  One is an American spy whose intel is the only hope they have, but who has lived a lie for so long she cannot be trusted.  And the other is a woman as beautiful as she is deadly, already living in the States, and poised to execute the Architect's plans at a moment's notice.  The stakes are even higher, the clock is ticking, and this time the enemies are hiding in plain sight...  Bravo is by Greg Rucka and is due to be published by July 2014.

Hunter-Killer is by Chris Ryan and is due to be published in September 2014.  Following a suicide bombing in central London, series SAS hero Danny Black is recruited to be part of an assassination squad, directed by a joint MI5/MI6/CIA committee and tasked with hunting down and killing the terrorist cells believed to be planning further atrocities.  Early leads take them to a North London mosque and a one-armed hate cleric, whom the Home Secretary repeatedly tries and fails to expel from the country, a sleazy Saudi prince living in a Park Lane Hotel - on the surface a devout Muslim, he devotes himself to booze, drugs and hookers as soon as his family are out of the building - and a grizzled ex-Regiment guy who is spreading rumours that Diana was assassinated by the SAS in the tunnel in Paris because of her Arab lover.  The trail of clues takes Danny to a training camp in the Yemen, but just as he has the enemy in his sights, he discovers that they are somehow one step ahead of him, and he begins to suspect that they are being topped off by someone close to home.

The Secret Place is by Tana French and is due to be published in August 2014.  The photo shows a boy who was murdered a year ago.  The caption says, “I know who killed him”.  Detective Stephen Moran hasn't seen Holly Mackey since she was a nine-year-old witness to the events of Faithful Place.  Now she's sixteen and she's shown up outside his squad room, with a photograph and a story.  Even in her exclusive boarding school, in the graceful golden world that Stephen has always longed for, bad things happen and people have secrets.  The previous year, Christopher Harper, from the neighbouring boys' school, was found murdered on the grounds.  And today, in the Secret Place - the school noticeboard where girls can pin up their secrets anonymously - Holly found the card.  Solving this case could take Stephen onto the Murder squad.  But to get that solved, he will have to work with Detective Antoinette Conway - tough, prickly, an outsider, everything Stephen doesn't want in a partner.  And he will have to find a way into the strange, charged, mysterious world that Holly and her three closest friends inhabit and disentangle the truth from their knot of secrets, even as he starts to suspect that the truth might be something he doesn't want to hear.

Judged: As he watches, her body drifts below the water's surface, forever altered.  Before he disposes of each victim, he takes a trophy.  It's a sign of his power, and a warning - to the one destined to suffer most of all...Condemned In Grizzly Falls, Montana, Detectives Selena Alvarez and Regan Pescoli are struggling with a new commander and a department in the midst of upheaval.  It's the worst possible time for a homicide.  A body has been found, missing a finger.  Alvarez hopes this means a murderer with a personal grudge, not a madman.  But then a second body turns up...Executed: As the clues begin pointing toward a suspect, Pescoli's unease grows.  She senses there's more to this case than others believe.  A killer has made his way to Grizzly Falls, ready to fulfil a vengeance years in the making.  And Pescoli must find the target of his wrath - or die trying...  Deserves to Die is by Lisa Jackson and is due to be published in July 2014.

Havana in the 1850s is a city as dangerous as it is exotic.  The murder of a humble night watchman at the British Consulate seems to worry neither the Consul nor the police.  But one person cared for the old man.  The enigmatic courtesan Leonarda will not rest until she understands the mystery of his death.  In wintry England, George Backhouse is plucked from obscurity in the Foreign Office and given an unexpected promotion.  His task: to travel to Cuba and take a stand against the illegal slave trade still flourishing there.  But Havana is a tinderbox of intrigue.  As the great powers of the region conspire against each other with increasing ruthlessness for control of the island, Backhouse comes to see that the most innocent of actions could spark a devastating war.  To protect their interests, the powers-that-be in Whitehall are prepared to turn a blind eye to many things. Leonarda will not.  But what of George Backhouse?  Havana Sleeping is by Martin Davies and is due to be published in September 2014.

Who can be trusted, when betrayal is a way of life?  Danny Curnow used to run agents and informers during the Troubles.  Now he lives in quiet isolation in northern France.  The covert world of deception and betrayal he left behind came close to destroying him.  Fifteen years later, when the call comes from his old boss, the stakes are higher, the risks are greater, and if he wants to survive, Danny will have to prove that he has not softened – that he is just as hard and ruthless as before.  Vagabond is by Gerald Seymour and is due to be published in July 2014.

Vendetta is by Dreda Say Mitchell and is due to be published in November 2014.  'If you seek revenge, dig two graves.’  Undercover cop John 'Mac' MacDonagh has been living a double life, infiltrating the network of Reuben Volk, one of London's deadliest criminals.  But the brief definitely didn't include falling in love with a member of Volk's gang: the beautiful and enigmatic Elena Romanov.  Now Elena has been murdered.  Waking in his hotel to discover her battered body in the next room, Mac is left with no clue as to who killed her - or why.  In fact, all the evidence suggests that it was Mac who killed her, but he can't believe that.  Or can he?  With the police on his tail he enters into a race against time.  All he knows is that something is happening at 11pm, something that could help him to uncover the truth.  Was Mac framed?  Or does he really have a dead woman's blood on his hands?

White Lies is by Stephen leather and is due to be published in August 2014.  Dan 'Spider' Shepherd is used to putting his life on the line - for his friends and for his job with MI5.  So when one of his former apprentices is kidnapped in the badlands of Pakistan, Shepherd doesn't hesitate to join a rescue mission.  But when the rescue plan goes horribly wrong, Shepherd ends up in the hands of al-Qaeda terrorists.  His SAS training is of little help as his captors beat and torture him.  Shepherd's MI5 controller Charlotte Button is determined to get her man out of harm's way, but to do that she's going to have to break all the rules.  Her only hope is to bring in America's finest - the elite SEALs who carried out Operation Neptune Spear - in a do-or-die operation to rescue the captives.  White Lies is a fast paced, seat-of-your-pants thriller, which will have you, hooked from the first page until the last.

The Competition is by Marcia Clark and is due to be published in July 2014.  It's every parent's worst nightmare.  A Columbine-style massacre in a crowded high school hall has left the community shocked to the core.  Two students are identified as the killers.  Both are dead, believed to have committed a mutual suicide.  But in the aftermath, as LA Special Trials prosecutor Rachel Knight and Detective Bailey Keller dig deeper, they realise that the pieces don't add up.  Did the shooters really kill themselves?  Or are they still on the loose?  When someone starts dropping clues that another horrific crime is in the works, Rachel and Bailey scramble desperately to identify their suspects.  The question now isn't whether they plan to kill again.  It's whether they can be stopped...

 The Suicide Club is a First World War spy thriller set in Occupied Belgium in 1917, and tells the dark, disturbing and untold story of the shadow espionage battle fought behind the lines.  The Suicide Club is by Andrew Williams and is due to be published in November 2014.  August 1917.  Europe is mired in bloody stalemate at Passchendaele.  Soldier spy Sandy Innes is not best pleased to be summoned from his undercover work in Belgium and seconded to British Army Headquarters.  Field Marshal Haig's intelligence chief wants Innes's expertise - and access to his spy network - in preparation for the Big Push he hopes will win the war by Christmas.  But Innes's boss, the wily Mansfield Cumming, head of the new Secret Service, has his own reasons for securing Innes a place on Haig's Staff - there are, he tells Innes, 'concerns' in government about the army's intelligence operation.  Innes deduces that it must be a great deal more serious than that if Cumming's political masters want him to spy on the senior officers of their own army.  Behind the lines at H.Q., his new boss, Brigadier General Charteris, largely ignores Innes’s briefings on the German defences in Belgium.  Instead he discovers he is to be part of an advance assault group that will prepare the way for the British 'breakthrough'.  The other Intelligence Officers have a name for the group: 'The Suicide Club'.  It is clear they have little faith in Charteris and his schemes, and are deeply suspicious of the advice he is offering Haig.  They tell Innes that one of their number questioned the integrity of Charteris's intelligence reports, but died in mysterious circumstances before he could take it further.  As Innes digs deeper, he discovers that the dead man had begun to investigate Charteris's prized spy network in Belgium, Operation Faust.  In what becomes a race against time, Innes must uncover a traitor, protect his own network, and survive membership of The Suicide Club.

Confessions is by Kanae Minato and is due to be published in August 2014.  When Yuko Moriguchi's four-year-old daughter died in the middle school where she teaches, everyone thought it was a tragic accident.  It's the last day of term, and Yuko's last day at work.  She tells her students that she has resigned because of what happened - but not for the reasons they think.  Her daughter didn't die in an accident.  Her daughter was killed by two people in the class. And before she leaves, she has a lesson to teach...But revenge has a way of spinning out of control, and Yuko's last lecture is only the start of the story.  In this bestselling Japanese thriller of love, despair and murder, everyone has a confession to make, and no one will escape unharmed.

  

On the rain-drenched, wave-lashed, wind-battered Banffshire coast, tiny fishing villages perch on ledges which would make a seagull think twice and crumbly mansions cling to crumblier cliff tops while, out in the bay, the herring drifters brave the storms to catch their silver darlings.  It's nowhere for a child of gentle Northamptonshire to spend Christmas.  But when odd things start to turn up in barrels of fish - with a strong whiff of murder most foul - that's exactly where Dandy Gilver finds herself.  Enlisted to investigate, she and her trusty cohort Alec Osborne are soon swept up in the fisherfolk's wedding season as well as the mystery.  Between age-old traditions and brand-new horrors, Dandy must think the unthinkable to solve her grisliest case yet.  Dandy Gilver and the Reek of Red Herrings is by Catriona McPherson and is due to be published in July 2014.

Also due to be published is a currently untitled Ali Knight novel and is due to be published in November 2014.  Shy and gentle Darren Sears was only eleven when his sister Jodie and six other girls disappeared, presumed murdered by notorious killer Alicia Duvall.  Ten years later, Darren's mother, now sick with cancer, demands Alicia reveal where Jodie's remains are, but her plea ends in humiliation and failure.  Desperate to alleviate his mum's heartbreak, Darren gets a job as a cleaner in the psychiatric hospital where Alicia is committed, hoping he can find out the truth.  But trying to play a serial killer is a very dangerous game... 

There is also a currently untitled book by Fergus McNeill.  Nigel never meant for it to happen.  At first, he just wanted to be Matt's friend.  But when he discovers he can hear what is going on in the flat below him, his fascination with his new neighbour drifts into obsession.  Rearranging his furniture to recreate the layout of the rooms downstairs.  Buying the same clothes, going through his post, his things.  Becoming Matt without him ever knowing.  And it would have been all right, if Matt hadn't brought the girl home.  When things spiral out of control, Detective Inspector Harland has to unravel the disturbing truth.  But there's far more to the case than meets the eye . 

Hayes Bannock is a Texas Ranger, a natural "lawman" who is tough, taciturn, perceptive, and guarded.  Several years ago, his life was derailed by a tragic chain of events, including the death of his wife in a car accident.  Now he's trying to regain custody of his five-year-old daughter, Georgia, who has been living with his in-laws for the past four years.  Judge Emory Charbonneau is the presiding judge at Georgia Bannock's custody hearing.  Smart and ambitious, she wants to keep the bench to which she was temporarily appointed, which means winning the upcoming election.  But just as she is about to render her decision in Georgia's custody hearing, a man dressed in painter's coveralls and a mask barges into the courtroom and opens fire.  A beloved bailiff is fatally shot and Hayes rushes to Emory, shielding her with his own body and saving her life -- sparking a dangerous attraction between the two.  A chase ensues, and the shooter is eventually cornered and killed.  But after seeing the dead body in the morgue, Hayes realizes that the man killed was not the same man who opened fire in the judge's courtroom.  The actual shooter is still at large and Emory's life is still in danger.  Who was the shooter's actual target and why?  As Hayes and Emory attempt to track him down, they realize that everyone in the courthouse that day is a suspect, and that nobody is who they seem.  Mean Streak is by Sandra Brown and is due to be published in September 2014.

Death in The Tuscan Hills is by Marco Vichi and is due to be published in October 2014.  Spring, 1967.  The trail of tragedy and destruction that followed the previous winter's flood seems to have died down; Florence is beginning to recover.  But Inspector Bordelli does not feel the same sense of relief - he has not had a moment's peace since his investigation of a young boy's murder went disastrously wrong.  Unsettled and embittered, Bordelli resigns from the force and leaves the city.  He could not continue to work as a policeman while the perpetrators of such a terrible crime were still at large.  Now, in the solitude of his new home in the Tuscan hills, he spends his days cooking, going for long walks, and learning to grow his own vegetables.  But the thought of that case - of justice not served - is constantly with him.  Until fate, in which he has never believed, unexpectedly offers him the chance of retribution.

Everyone keeps telling me I have to move on.  And so here I am, walking down the road where he died, trying to remember him the right way.  A year after her husband Zach's death, Lizzie goes to lay flowers where his fatal accident took place.  As she makes her way along the motorway, she thinks about their life together.  She wonders whether she has changed since Zach died.  She wonders if she will ever feel whole again.  At last she reaches the spot.  And there, tied to a tree, is a bunch of lilies.  The flowers are addressed to her husband.  Someone has been there before her.  Lizzie loved Zach.  She really did.  But she's starting to realise she didn't really know him.  Or what he was capable of ...  Remember Me This Way is by Sabine Durrant and is due to be published in July 2014.

After a hazardous stint in the US law enforcement, Valentine Pescatore is trying to start over in Buenos Aires.  But everything changes when an old friend reappears – just before a terrorist attack.  A call placed to Pescatore’s phone makes him a suspect, and he knows there is only one possible connection.  To clear his name, he must join agents from three countries to track the suspected terrorist who was once his closest confidant.  From the jungles of South America to the streets of Paris, from the mansions of the Spanish Riviera to the compounds of Baghdad The Convert’s Song leads Pescatore on a high-speed chase to stop the deadly convert before he strikes again.  The Convert’s Song is by Sebastian Rotella and is due to be published in December 2014.

Summerhall Historical Fiction Festival

A new historical fiction festival in Edinburgh, the home of Sir Walter Scott, and of history masters Stevenson and Conan Doyle is due to take place from 12 April 2013 - 15 April 2013 at Summerhall Edinburgh’s award winning Arts Center.

Covering four days, there will be a wide range of talks and films.  The talks will cover such topics as Walter Scott and Napoleon, Witches, Pirates, Highwaywomen.... and Shakespeare, moral issues in historical fiction and Dickens.  Some of the films due to be shown include The Leopard (1963) and The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968). There is also a Hugh Buchanan exhibition that will be on display for the whole of the festival.

The speakers include Allan Massie, Owen Dudley-Edwards, Celia Rees and Andrew Williams to name a few.

The Chair is Allan Massie and the Director is Iain Gale.  For more information about the festival please go to the website.

Historically Criminal!

Join Andrew Williams, Mike Ripley and Robert Ryan as they talk about their take on historical crime and thriller fiction.  All three are prolific established authors.

Robert Ryan has been a lecturer and a journalist and has written more than fifteen books to date.  In Dead Man’s Land, Dr Watson must identify a treacherous killer striking in the trenches of the First World War.

Andrew Williams directed and wrote television documentaries for twenty years before becoming an author. His first two books were short-listed for a number of awards.  His latest novel, The Poison Tide centres around the life of a British spy in the First World War.

Mike Ripley is the award winning author of the Angel series of comedy thrillers and has been described as “England's funniest crime writer”. He was a scriptwriter on the BBC series Lovejoy and as a critic has reviewed over 1,000 crime novels in the last 22 years.

Mike Ripley will be chairing a hugely entertaining panel as they discuss why are so many really good thrillers are opting for historical settings these days with Andrew Williams and Robert Ryan explaining their decision to go "Historically Criminal".

When: Monday 18th February 2013*

Where: Victoria Library, Buckingham Palace Road

Time: 6:00pm

*There is no charge but please do book in advance either by email at Victorialibrary@westminster.gov.uk or by calling 020 7641 1300 and asking for Victoria Library.