Books To Look Forward To From Atlantic Books and Corvus Books

 July 2021

The Case of the Vanishing Blonde is by Mark Bowden Six captivating true-crime stories, spanning Mark Bowden's long and illustrious career, cover a variety of crimes complicated by extraordinary circumstances. In The Case of the Vanishing Blonde, the veteran reporter revisits some of his most riveting stories and examines the effects of modern technology on the journalistic process. From a story of a campus rape in 1983, to three cold cases solved by the inimitable private detective Ken Brennan, an LAPD investigation that unearths a murderer within its own ranks and the darkest corners of internet chatrooms, this collection contains all the best the genre has to offer. Gripping true crime from 'an old pro'.

When a scream shatters the summer night outside their country house, reformed literary forger Will and his wife Meghan find their daughter Maisie shaken and bloodied, holding a parcel her attacker demanded she present to her father. Inside is a literary rarity the likes of which few have ever handled, and a letter laying out impossible demands regarding its future. After twenty years of living life on the straight and narrow, Will finds himself drawn back to forgery, ensnared in a plot to counterfeit the rarest book in American literature: Edgar Allan Poe's first publication, Tamerlane. Facing threats to his life and family, coerced by his former nemesis and fellow forger Henry Slader, Will must rely on the artistic skills of his other daughter Nicole to help create a flawless forgery of this 1827 publication regarded as the Holy Grail of American letters. Part mystery, part case study of the shadowy side of the book trade, and part homage to the writer who invented the detective tale,  The Forger's Daughter is by Bradford Morrow portrays the world of literary forgery as diabolically clever, genuinely dangerous and inescapable, it would seem, to those who have ever embraced it.

She already has your looks. Now she wants your life... Beautiful twin sisters Iris and Summer are startlingly alike, but beneath the surface lies a darkness that sets them apart. Cynical and insecure, Iris has long been envious of open-hearted Summer's seemingly never-ending good fortune, including her perfect husband Adam. Called to Thailand to help sail the beloved family yacht to the Seychelles, Iris nurtures her own secret hopes for what might happen on the journey. But when she unexpectedly finds herself alone in the middle of the Indian Ocean, everything changes. Now is her chance to take what she's always wanted - the idyllic life she's coveted from afar. But just how far will she go to get the life she's dreamed about? And how far will she go to ensure no one discovers the truth? Filled with chilling suspense, The Girl in the Mirror is by Rose Carlyle and is an addictive thriller about greed, lust, secrets and deadly lies.

Such a quiet Place is by Megan Miranda. We had no warning that she would come back...Welcome to Hollow's Edge - a picture-perfect neighbourhood where everyone has each other's backs. At least, that's how it used to be, until the night Brandon and Fiona Truett were found dead... Two years ago, branded a grifter, thief and sociopath by her friends and neighbours, Ruby Fletcher was convicted of murdering the Truetts. Now, freed by mistrial, Ruby has returned to Hollow's Edge. But why would she come back? No one wants her there, least of all her old housemate, Harper Nash. As Ruby's return sends shockwaves through the community, terrified residents turn on each other, and it soon becomes clear that not everyone was honest about the night the Truetts died. When Harper begins to receive threatening, anonymous notes, she realizes she has to uncover the truth before someone else gets hurt... Someone like her.

The Viper is by Christobel Kent. Sandro Cellini faces his demons... Sandro Cellini hasn't set foot in La Vipera, a derelict farmhouse just outside Florence that was once home to a free-living commune, for forty years - until the discovery of two bodies nearby leads him back there. At the start of his career, Cellini investigated an accusation that minors were being corrupted at La Vipera, but no charges were ever brought. Now, tasked with tracking down former members of the community, he has a chance to finally discover what really went on all those years ago. But in order to learn the true nature of the commune's mission, he must face his own traumatic memories. As he sifts through the lies, those closest to him are placed in danger. Only Cellini can unravel the final mystery of La Vipera, and so protect those he loves.

August 2021

How to Kill Your Best Friend is by Lexie Elliott. The perfect getaway - to get away with murder... Georgie, Lissa and Bronwyn have been best friends since they met on their college swimming team. Now Lissa is dead - drowned off the coast of the remote island where her second husband owns a luxury resort. But could a star open-water swimmer really have drowned? Or is something more sinister going on? Brought together for Lissa's memorial, Georgie, Bron, Lissa's grieving husband and their friends find themselves questioning the circumstances around Lissa's death - and each other. As the weather turns ominous, trapping the guests on the island, it slowly dawns on them that Lissa's death was only the beginning. Nobody knows who they can trust. Or if they'll make it off the island alive...

September 2021

No one even knew they were together. Now one of them is dead. 56 days ago.Ciara and Oliver meet in a supermarket queue in Dublin and start dating the same week COVID-19 reaches Irish shores. 35 dys ago. When lockdown threatens to keep them apart, Oliver suggests they move in together. Ciara sees a unique opportunity for a relationship to flourish without the scrutiny of family and friends. Oliver sees a chance to hide who - and what - he really is. Today, Detectives arrive at Oliver's apartment to discover a decomposing body inside. Can they determine what really happened, or has lockdown created an opportunity for someone to commit the perfect crime? 56 Days is by Catherine Ryan Howard.

October 2021

The Diplomat's Wife is by Michael Ridpath 1936: Devastated by the death of her beloved brother Hugh, Emma seeks to keep his memory alive by wholeheartedly embracing his dreams of a communist revolution. But when she marries an ambitious diplomat, she must leave her ideals behind and live within the confines of embassy life in Paris and Nazi Berlin. Then one of Hugh's old comrades reappears, asking her to report on her philandering husband, and her loyalties are torn. 1979: Emma's grandson, Phil, dreams of a gap-year tour of Cold War Europe, but is nowhere near being able to fund it. So when his beloved grandmother determines to make one last trip to the places she lived as a young diplomatic wife, and to try to solve a mystery that has haunted her since the war, he jumps at the chance to accompany her. But their journey takes them to darker, more dangerous places than either of them could ever have imagined...

November 2021

A Memory for Murder is by Anne Holt. When high-powered lawyer Selma Falck is shot and her oldest friend, a junior MP, is killed in a sniper attack, everyone - including the police - assume that Selma was the prime target. But when two other people with connections to the MP are also found murdered, it becomes clear that there is a wider conspiracy at play. As Selma sets out to avenge her friend's death, and discover the truth behind the conspiracy, her own life is threatened once again. Only this time, the danger may be closer to home than she could possibly have realised...

Nights of the Lingering Ghosts is by Phil Rickman. ''I called on Darkness-but before the word. Was uttered, midnight darkness seemed to take. All objects from my sight...'William Wordsworth. England's most famous poet once thought of himself as a modern druid and found his deepest inspiration on the banks of the River Wye, where Celtic magic can still be found and an old darkness lingers. Now, as the world is at the mercy of the coronavirus pandemic, diocesan exorcist Merrily Watkins learns that the ghosts of the lower Wye Valley still need some attention...

Books to Look Forward to from Atlantic Books and Corvus Press

July 2020

The Girl from Widow Hills is by Meghan Miranda. Everyone knows the story of the girl from Widow Hills. When Arden Maynor was six years old, she was swept away in terrifying storm and went missing for days. Against all odds, she was found alive, clinging to a storm drain. A living miracle. Arden's mother wrote a book, and fame followed. But so did fans, creeps and stalkers. It was all too much, and as soon as she was old enough, Arden changed her name and left Widow Hills behind. Now, a young woman living hundreds of miles away, Arden is known as Olivia. With the twentieth anniversary of her rescue looming, media interest in the girl who survived is increasing. Where is she now? The stress brings back the night terrors of Olivia's youth. Often, she finds herself out of bed in the middle of the night, sometimes outside her home, even streets away. Then one evening she jolts awake in her yard, with the corpse of a man at her feet.  The girl from Widow Hills is about to become the centre of the story, once again.

August 2020

The Viper is by Christobel Kent.  Forty years have passed since Sandro Cellini last set foot in La Vipera. But when two bodies are discovered on a hillside just south of Florence, he must come out of retirement to unravel the mystery. La Vipera, a strange, derelict farm house, was once home to a free-living commune, but nobody knows what shady activities took place there.  Now, Cellini hopes his investigation of the recent murders will shed light on the past. But in order to reach the truth, he must face traumatic memories of his own as he sifts through the chaos and lies.

The Nothing Man is by Catherine Ryan Howard.  I was the girl who survived the Nothing Man.  Now I am the woman who is going to catch him...  You've just read the opening pages of The Nothing Man, the true crime memoir Eve Black has written about her obsessive search for the man who killed her family nearly two decades ago. Supermarket security guard Jim Doyle is reading it too, and with each turn of the page his rage grows. Because Jim was - is - the Nothing Man. The more Jim reads, the more he realises how dangerously close Eve is getting to the truth. He knows she won't give up until she finds him. He has no choice but to stop her first...

Clean Hands is by Patrick Hoffman.  Corporate Lawyer Elizabeth Carlyle is under pressure. Her prestigious New York law firm is working on a high-stakes case, defending a prominent bank that's been accused of fraud. When Elizabeth gets the news that one of her junior associates has lost his phone - and the secret documents that were on it - she needs help.

Badly.  Enter ex-CIA officer Valencia Walker, a high-priced fixer who gets called in when wealthy corporations, people and governments need their problems solved discreetly. But things get complicated when the missing phone is retrieved: somebody has already copied the documents, and now they're blackmailing the firm. The situation gets murkier still when stories about the documents start appearing in the press and a tragic suicide appears staged, hinting that darker forces may be churning below the surface. With billions of dollars on the line, Elizabeth and Valencia must outmanoeuvre their tormentors, all the while keeping their hands clean.  In a world of private security, private diplomacy and private justice, a sharply-drawn cast of characters - including dirty lawyers, black-market traders and Russian criminals - take part in this breakneck tour through New York. Authentic, tense and impossible to put down, Clean Hands offers a vivid perspective on the connections between corporations, government and the underworld.

October 2020

The Scarlet Code is by C S Quinn.  1789. The Bastille has fallen...  As Parisians pick souvenirs from the rubble, a killer stalks the lawless streets. His victims are female aristocrats. His executions use the most terrible methods of the ancient regime.  English spy Attica Morgan is laying low in Paris, helping nobles escape. When her next charge falls victim to the killer's twisted machinations, Attica realises she alone can unmask him. But now it seems his deadly sights are set on her.  As the city prisons empty, and a mob mobilises to storm Versailles, finding a dangerous criminal is never going to be easy. Attica's only hope is to enlist her old ally, reformed pirate Jemmy Avery, to track the killer though his revolutionary haunts. But even with a pirate and her fast knife, it seems Attica might not manage to stay alive.

November 2020

When a homeless man dies in a fire in London, film location scout Rachael Lambert is determined to find out his story.  Following the trail to country house hotel Hare’s Land in in West Cork, she uncovers a girl’s body.  But someone is trying to frighten her and fellow guest Caroline Kelly, away.  Then Hare’s Landing is set alight.  Will Rachael and Caroline discover the truth before one of them is killed?  The Dark Room is by Sam Blake.

After Twenty years of living on the straight and narrow, Will finds himself ensnared in a plot to counterfeit the rarest book in American literature: Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Tamerlane’.  Facing threats to his life and family, Will must rely on the skills of his daughter to create a flawless forgery of the publication regarded as the Holy Grail of American letters.  Part mystery, part case study of the book trader’s seamy side and part homage to the writer who invented the detective tale, The Forger’s Daughter by Bradford Morrow portrays the world of literary forgery as diabolically clever, genuinely dangerous and inescapable to those who have ever embraced it.

Life Before is by Carmel Reilly.  She knew she should talk to him. But what could she say?
Once there had been blame to apportion, rage to hurl. Now she no longer had a sense of that. Who knew what the facts of them being here together like this meant. What was she to make of the situation? Scott lying unconscious here in this bed, unknown to her in almost every way. She a wife, a mother, but in her mind no longer a sister. Not a sister for a very long time now.  Lori Spyker is taking her kids to school one unremarkable day when a policeman delivers the news that her brother, Scott Green, has been injured and hospitalised following a hit and run.  Lori hasn't seen Scott in decades. She appears to be his only contact. Should she take responsibility for him? Can she? And, if she does, how will she tell her own family about her hidden history, kept secret for so long?  Twenty years before, when she and Scott were teenagers, their lives and futures, and those of their family, had been torn to shreds. Now, as Lori tries to piece together her brother's present, she is forced to confront their shared past-and the terrible and devastating truth buried there that had been driven them so far apart.

The Promised Land is by Barry Maitland.  Newly promoted Detective Chief Inspector Kathy Kolla investigates a series of brutal murders on Hampstead Heath. Under intense pressure to find answers, she arrests the unlikely figure of Charles Pettigrew, a failing London publisher who lives alone on the edge of the Heath. Pettigrew's lawyer calls on recently retired David Brock for advice, and soon, unable to resist the pull of investigation, the old colleagues, Brock and Kolla, are at loggerheads. At the heart of the gripping mystery of the Hampstead murders lies a manuscript of an unknown novel by one of the greatest literary figures of the 20th century. Brock believes that its story will unlock the puzzle, but how?