Books to Look forward to From Bloomsbury

In the second of Thomas Mogford's exciting crime series Spike Sanguinetti investigates the underbelly of Malta and all of its darkness and danger A domestic dispute has escalated into a bloodbath. Spike Sanguinetti's uncle and aunt are found dead. Leaving the courtroom behind, Spike crosses the Mediterranean to Malta for the funerals. The more he learns about his relatives' violent deaths, the more he is troubled by one thing: what could have prompted a mild-mannered art historian to stab his wife before turning the knife upon himself? Reunited with his ex-girlfriend, Zahra, Spike embarks on a trail that leads from the island's squalid immigrant camps to the ornate palazzos of the legendary Knights of St John. In Malta, it seems, brutality, greed and danger lie nearer to the surface than might first appear.  Sign of the Cross is due to be published in May 2013.

The Hanging is the first in an exciting new six-part crime series, international bestseller.  The Hanging is an explosive introduction to the dark world of Copenhagen police investigator Konrad Simonsen On a cold Monday morning before school begins, two children make a gruesome discovery. Hanging from the roof of the school gymnasium are the bodies of five naked and heavily disfigured men. Detective Chief Superintendent Konrad Simonsen and his team from the Murder Squad in Copenhagen are called in to investigate this horrific case - the men hanging in a geometric pattern; the scene so closely resembling a public execution. When the identities of the five victims and the disturbing link between them is leaked to the press, the sinister motivation behind the killings quickly becomes apparent to the police. Up against a building internet campaign and even members of his own team, Simonsen finds that he must battle public opinion and vigilante groups in his mission to catch the killers. A nerve-wrenching look at justice and retribution, The Hanging is by Soren and Lotte Hammer and is due to be published in June 2013.

The Memory Theatre is the fourth book in the Alec Blume series by Conor Fitzgerald and it is due to be published in August 20013.  When magistrate Matteo Arconti's namesake, an insurance man from Milan, is found dead outside the court buildings in Piazzo Clodio, it's a clear warning to the authorities in Rome - a message of defiance and intimidation. Commissioner Alec Blume, interpreting the reference to his other ongoing case - a frustrating one in which he's so far been unable to pin murder on a mafia boss operating at an untouchable distance in Germany - knows he's too close to it. Handing control of the investigation to now live-in and not-so-secret partner Caterina Mattiola, Blume takes a back seat. And while Caterina embarks on questioning the Milanese widow, Blume has had an underhand idea of his own to lure the arrogant mafioso out of his hiding place...

The Innocence Game is by Michael Harvey and is due to be published in July 2013.  Master crime writer Michael Harvey returns to the city of Chicago in this tense and fast-paced standalone thriller about three students whose curriculum leads them into dark and dangerous territory They're young, smart, mostly beautiful...and naive enough to believe they can make a difference. For three graduate students, a class at the country's best journalism school was supposed to teach them how to free the innocent from prison. Little did they know the most important lesson they'd learn is how to stay alive. The first day of class for Ian Joyce and Sarah Gold starts like any other, until a fellow student, Jake Havens, pulls a wrinkled envelope from his jacket. Inside is a blood-stained scrap of shirt from a boy murdered fourteen years ago and an anonymous note taking credit for the killing. The only problem is the man convicted of the murder is already dead. Suddenly, the class has a new assignment: find the real killer. As the case unravels, the bodies and questions begin to pile up. Why are innocent men being framed in Chicago? And who's been getting away with murder? As the hunt for a serial killer unfolds, the students realise they too are being hunted by the very men and women sworn to uphold the law. These students are smart...but are they smart enough to stay alive?

Dogstar Rising is the second book in the Makana series by Parker Bilal and is due to be published in February 2013.  It is the summer of 2001 and in Cairo's crowded streets the heat is rising... The unsolved murders of young homeless boys are fanning the embers of religious hatred.As tensions mount, Makana - who fled his home in Sudan a decade ago - has a premonition that history is about to repeat itself.  Hired to investigate threats that have been made to a hapless travel agent Makana finds himself drawn to Meera, a woman who knows what it is like to lose everything and who needs his help. But Makana's troubled past is trying to lay claim to him once again, this time in the form of a dubious businessman who possesses a powerful secret.   When Makana witnesses a brutal killing he attracts the attention of both the state security services and a dangerous gangster family. His search for answers takes him from the labyrinths of Cairo to the ancient city of Luxor and an abandoned monastery in the desert, into a web of intrigue and violence.

The olive harvest is drawing to a close in the town of Dendra, and when Hermes Diaktoros arrives for the celebratory festival he expects an indulgent day of food and wine. But as young men leap a blazing bonfire in feats of daring, one is badly burned. Did he fall, or was he pushed? Then, as Hermes learns of a deep-running feud between two families, one of their patriarchs dies. Determined to find out why, Hermes follows a bitter trail through the olive groves to reveal a motive for murder, and uncovers a dark deed brought to light by the sin of gluttony.  The Feast of Artemis is by Anne Zouroudi and is due to be published in June 2013.

2059. Nineteen-year-old Paige Mahoney is working in the criminal underworld of London, based at Seven Dials, employed by a man named Jaxon Hall. She works as an envoy between secret cells: she drops in and out of people’s minds. For Paige is a dreamwalker, a clairvoyant, and in her world – the world of Scion – she commits high treason simply by breathing.  It is raining the day her life changes forever. Attacked, kidnapped and transported to Oxford, a city that has been kept secret for two hundred years, she meets Warden, a Rephaite with dark honey skin and heavy-lidded yellow eyes. He is the single most beautiful and frightening thing she has ever laid eyes on – and he will become her keeper.  The Bone Season is by Samantha Shannon and is due to be published in August 2013.

The second in 'The Grantchester Mysteries' series - six detective novels spanning thirty years of British history 1955. Canon Sidney Chambers, loveable priest and part-time detective, is back. Accompanied by his faithful Labrador, Dickens, and the increasingly exasperated Inspector Geordie Keating, Sidney is called to investigate the unexpected fall of a Cambridge don from the roof of King's College Chapel; a case of arson at a glamour photographer's studio and the poisoning of Zafar Ali, Grantchester's finest spin bowler. Alongside his sleuthing, Sidney has other problems. Can he decide between his dear friend, the glamorous socialite Amanda Kendall and Hildegard Staunton, the beguiling German widow? To make up his mind Sidney takes a trip abroad, only to find himself trapped in a web of international espionage just as the Berlin Wall is going up.  Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night is by James Runcie and is due to be published in May 2013.

Forthcoming books to look forward to from Bloomsbury

The Golden Scales is by Parker Bilal and is due to be published in February 2012. A lost child. A missing hero. A bitter rivalry. In Cairo the ghosts of the past are stirring...The ancient city of Cairo is a whirling mix of the old and the new, where fates collide and the super rich rub shoulders with the desperate and the dispossessed. It is a place where ambition and corruption go hand in hand, and where people can disappear in the blink of an eye. Makana is a former police inspector who fled for his life from his native Sudan seven years ago. Down on his luck and haunted by the past, he lives on a rickety Nile houseboat. When the notorious and powerful Saad Hanafi hires him to track down a missing person Makana is in no position to refuse him. Hanafi, whose past is as shady as his fortune is glittering, is the owner of Cairo's star-studded football team. His most valuable player has just vanished and Adil Romario's disappearance threatens to bring down not only Hanafi's private empire, but the entire country. But why should the city's most powerful man hire its lowliest private detective? Thrust into a dangerous and glittering world Makana's investigation leads him into the treacherous underbelly of his adopted country - where he encounters Muslim extremists, Russian gangsters and a desperate mother hunting for her missing daughter - it becomes a trail that stirs up painful memories, leading him back into the sights of an old and dangerous enemy...

Chicago. A biological weapon is set off in the subway and quickly spreads through the city's west side. Kelly goes into the subway with a team trained in microbial forensics (essentially the next generation of CSI) and gets a hard lesson in "black biology" and the dimensions of the "coming biological war". Meanwhile, the pathogen spreads. The government is forced to quarantine sections of the city. Fences go up, and soldiers in bio-hazard suits take to the streets. Gangs take over day-to-day law and order in the sectioned off hot zones and society generally begins to unravel. Kelly, of course, is in the middle of it, tracking down the bad guys while his city teeters on the precipice. Featuring plenty of next-generation technology, We All Fall Down is by Michael Harvey and is due to be published in March 2012.

The Namesake is the third book in the Commissioner Alec Blume series of Italian crime novels by Conor Fitzgerald and is due to be published in March 2012. When magistrate Matteo Arconti's namesake, an insurance man from Milan, is found dead outside the court buildings in Piazzo Clodio, it's a clear warning to the authorities in Rome - a message of defiance and intimidation. Commissioner Alec Blume, interpreting the reference to his other ongoing case - a frustrating one in which he's so far been unable to pin murder on a mafia boss operating at an untouchable distance in Germany - knows he's too close to it. Handing control of the investigation to now live-in and not-so-secret partner Caterina Mattiola, Blume takes a back seat. And while Caterina embarks on questioning the Milanese widow, Blume has had an underhand idea of his own to lure the arrogant Mafioso out of his hiding place...

Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death is the first in a series of detective novels by James Runcie. It is due to be published in May 2012. Sidney Chambers, the Vicar of Grantchester and Honorary Canon of Ely Cathedral, is a thirty-two year old bachelor. Tall, with dark brown hair, eyes the colour of hazelnuts and a reassuringly gentle manner, Sidney is an unconventional clergyman and can go where the police cannot. In Sidney Chambers and The Shadow of Death Sidney, together with his roguish friend Inspector George 'Geordie' Keating, must enquire into the suspect suicide of a Cambridge solicitor, a scandalous jewellery theft at a New Year's Eve dinner party, the unexplained death of a well-known jazz promoter and a shocking art forgery the disclosure of which puts a close friend in danger. Sidney discovers that being a detective, like being a clergyman, means that you are never off duty, but alongside the mysteries he solves he manages to find time for a keen interest in cricket, warm beer and hot jazz, and the works of Tolstoy and Shakespeare - as well as a curious fondness for a German widow three years his junior.

The violent robbery of a wealthy philanthropist leaves the island of Mithros reeling, and a man dead as the perpetrators escape. For years, it seems the crimes will go unpunished; then, as investigator Hermes Diaktoros arrives to learn more about the missing Bull of Mithros, a stranger is thrown overboard by his shipmates and, lacking money or identification, is forced for a while to remain. But is he truly a stranger? To some, his face seems familiar; and when he suffers an unpleasant death, it seems someone has set themselves up as judge and jury for those long-ago offences. In his inimitable style, Hermes sets about solving the complex puzzle of who is guilty and who is innocent; what part has been played by the fabled bull, and who has fallen prey to the seductive sin of sloth. The Bull of Mithros is the sixth book in the Hermes Diaktoros series by Anne Zouroudi. It is due to be published in June 2012.