Forthcoming books from Profile Books (Including Viper)

 January 2026

Vivian Dies Again is by C E Hulse. Time heals all wounds. Except blunt force trauma. Vivian Slade is a cautionary tale. The wrong side of thirty, she's no longer the life and soul of the party - she's a party of one. But she's determined to turn over a new leaf, even if that means going to a family gathering where everyone hates her. Turns out, someone really hates her - enough to push her off a balcony to a very messy end. But then Vivian wakes up! Only to be murdered again. And again. Stuck in a baffling time loop, Vivian's only ally is a sleep-deprived waiter who just wants to finish his shift. Will Vivian be able to solve her own murder? Only time will tell...

February 2026

The Nowhere Children are expecting you... High in the mountains sits Nowhere, a verdant valley surrounded by walls of rock. People have lived at Nowhere for centuries, though never for long, and rarely happily. Its last owner was its most famous: movie star Leaf Winham, who built Nowhere House as a refuge to hide from his fame... and to hide his crimes. Only when Nowhere House went up in flames were the graves discovered, the last resting places of lost young men who would never go home. Years later, Nowhere valley has become a sanctuary for runaway children, a place where adults cannot enter. Drawn by this promise, fourteen-year-old Riley pulls her brother Oliver from his bed in the middle of the night, hoping to find a new family. But the Nowhere Children are fierce in defending their valley and their secrets. For something dark lives in the ruins of Nowhere House, something that asks a terrible price for sanctuary.. Nowhere Burning is by Catriona Ward.

Mischance Creek is by Garry Disher. A deadly drought. A broken town. It's the worst drought in a generation, and the people of Senior Constable Paul Hirschhausen's vast outback beat are suffering. Foreclosures. Failing businesses. Petty quarrels that are spiralling out of control. So when a naive tourist runs into a ditch beyond the ruins of Mischance Creek, Hirsch is relieved to step away from Tiverton. But Annika Nordrum asks for more than just roadside assistance. Her father's body was found at the bottom of a mineshaft seven years ago - his death ruled an accident - and her mother hasn't been seen since. Can Hirsch close this cold case before the town reaches breaking point?

Inspector Jian and his daughter Weiwei just want to go back to their home in China: but Jian is facing a corruption charge in his absence and risks arrest. Instead he tries to scrape a living on London's meanest streets as an illegal immigrant, reduced to hustling Mah Jiang for cash. A bleak future looks to be growing bleaker still when a triad gang blackmail him into tracking down an unlikely young robber. In No Exit Jian and Weiwei scramble between London's grimiest bedsits and its swankiest penthouses as they penetrate the glittering world of 'princelings' - the rich children of the Chinese elite, who treat the city as their playground. Locked in a desperate struggle, with no way out in sight, It will take all their wiles, as well as some lucky gambles, to come out of this latest venture alive. No Exit is by Simon Lewis.

March 2026

Intelligence is by Robert Newman. Was he about to recruit her into the secret service? She held her breath. Frogwoman, codebreaker, assassin, saboteur - whatever it was, she'd do it!  Oxford, 1938. Ida and Medora are two brilliant young philosophers at the heart of a group who gather in storied rooms to dance, drink and debate theories of right and wrong. But as the world spins towards war, theoretical questions of life and death become all too real. While her friends are called up to do intelligence work, Ida, the irrepressible Texan outsider, seeks academic distraction. Then she stumbles across secret Nazi information that could radically change the direction of the war. Can she and Medora capture the attention of the spymasters and mandarins in London on time to save lives.

'You are quite the chameleon, aren't you? You could wear anything, do anything, and yet you choose plain, plain, plain. Is it all a front for a secret life?' Anna Harris knows how to blend in, to be whoever she has to be to get by. But somehow she has ended up in a quaint, sleepy village, swallowed into the lives of her boyfriend and in-laws. She's not unhappy, but this isn't the life she remembers choosing. When vivacious Sofia Carstairs moves to the village, Anna is reminded of the freedom she once had. She used to be carefree and rebellious. But is she willing to throw away her future for some fun? Perhaps leading two lives is more enticing than one. After all, Anna's not a bad person. She just wants to try it out...The Artful Anna Harris is by Tracy Maton.

May 2026

The Hollow Boys is by Tariq Ashkanani. Two children lost. The wrong one found. It's a warm evening in September when nine-year-old Danny Yates comes back from the dead. He walks into town half-starved and silent, ten months after he and his best friend Will Keefe were presumed drowned. And when Danny does finally speak, he swears that he's not Danny. He's Will. Danny's mother is convinced that her boy has come back wrong. More than that, she thinks the town itself is now at risk from whatever dark force returned her son. Chief of Police John Deacon is more interested in how the sinister disappearance of two boys could have been written off as a tragic accident, and who was responsible. What happened to Danny to make him take on his friend's name, his personality? And does Danny's return mean there's a chance that Will is still alive?

June 2026

North Dakota, 1970s. Renee 'Cash' Blackbear, a nineteen-year old Ojibwe woman spends her days playing pool, drinking beer and driving trucks for the local wheat farmers. When the body of the Ojibwe man is found in a field just outside of time, Sheriff Wheaton – Cash's guardian and only friend – and asks for her help. For Cash has an intuitive nature , and she knows that the answers will be found on the Red Lake Reservation. But navigating local racial tensions brings its own dangers, and soon Cash isn't only searching for justice: she is fighting for her life. Murder on the Red River is by cMarcie R. Rendon.

32nd St Hilda's Crime Fiction Weekend - Detecting the Gothic:- Tales from the Dark Heart of Crime Fiction

 

Those who have been attending St Hilda’s College Crime Fiction Weekend over the many years of its existence know that it is a weekend with a difference. Launched at St Hilda's College in 1994, it offers the crime fiction fans the unique experience of hearing their favourite authors exploring the genre, their own work and the writers who inspired them.

This year the theme is ‘Detecting the Gothic: Tales from the Dark Heart of Crime Fiction and will take place from 8^th to 10^th August 2025.

Guest of Honour is Val McDermid and featured speakers include Mick Herron, Olivia Isaac-Henry, Anna Mazzola, Stuart Neville, Ambrose Parry, William Ryan, Catherine Ryan Howard, Stuart Turton, Ruth Ware, Catriona Ward and Louise Welsh.

Taking place in the heart of Oxford in a glorious riverside location the St Hilda’s Weekend includes not only the speaker sessions, but a massive Blackwell's shop open on site every day, author signings, prizes and a brimming goodie bag all enjoyed in a relaxed, intimate College atmosphere. Beginning on Friday evening with a dinner and drinks reception, the packed weekend finishes with a traditional lunch on Sunday.

Look out for some mini interviews in the run up to the weekend from the authors taking part.

Ticket information can be found here.

Books to look Forward to from Profile Books (Incl Viper Books)

 January 2022

A murder that no-one wants to solve... Dublin 1986. The murder of an off-duty officer in Phoenix Park should have brought down the full power of the Dublin police force. But Kieran Lynch was found in a notorious gay cruising ground, so even as the press revels in the scandal, some of the Murder Squad are reluctant to investigate. Only Detectives Vincent Swan and Gina Considine are willing to search out the difficult truth, walking the streets of nighttime Dublin to find Kieran's lovers and friends. But Gina has her own secret that means she must withhold vital evidence. When a fire rips through Temple Bar and another man is killed, she must decide what price she is willing to pay to find a murderer. The Burning Boy is by Nicola White.

The Twyford Code is by Janice Hallett. It's time to solve the murder of the century... Forty years ago, Steven Smith found a copy of a famous children's book, its margins full of strange markings and annotations. He took it to his remedial English teacher, Miss Isles, who became convinced it was the key to solving a puzzle. That a message in secret code ran through all Edith Twyford's novels. Then Miss Isles disappeared on a class field trip, and Steven's memory won't allow him to remember what happened. Now, out of prison after a long stretch, Steven decides to investigate the mystery that has haunted him for decades. Was Miss Isles murdered? Was she deluded? Or was she right about the code? And is it still in use today? Desperate to recover his memories and find out what really happened to Miss Isles, Steven revisits the people and places of his childhood. But it soon becomes clear that Edith Twyford wasn't just a writer of forgotten children's stories. The Twyford Code has great power, and he isn't the only one trying to solve it...

February 2022

Who will survive the night? A nightmare jolts Debs awake. She leaves the kids tucked up in their beds and goes downstairs. There's a man in her kitchen, holding a knife. But it's not an intruder. This is her husband Marc, the father of her children. A man she no longer recognises. Once their differences were what drew them together, what turned them on. Him, the ex-army officer from a good family. Her, the fitness instructor who grew up over a pub. But now these differences grate to the point of drawing blood. Marc screams in his sleep. And Debs hardly knows the person she's become, or why she lets him hurt her. Neither of them is completely innocent. Neither is totally guilty. Marc is taller, stronger, and more vicious, haunted by a war he can't forget. But he has no idea what Debs is capable of when her children's lives are at stake... A powerful exploration of a relationship built on passion, poisoned by secrets and violence. Nasty Little Cuts is by Tina Baker

March 2022

You can't escape the desert. You can't escape Sundial. Rob fears for her daughters. For Callie, who collects tiny bones and whispers to imaginary friends. For Annie, because she fears what Callie might do to her. Rob sees a darkness in Callie, one that reminds her of the family she left behind. She decides to take Callie back to her childhood home, to Sundial, deep in the Mojave Desert. And there she will have to make a terrible choice. Callie is afraid of her mother. Rob has begun to look at her strangely. To tell her secrets about her past that both disturb and excite her. And Callie is beginning to wonder if only one of them will leave Sundial alive. Sundial is by Catriona Ward.

April 2022

Begars Abbey is by V L Valentine. A dark house filled with darker secrets. Winter 1954, and in a dilapidated apartment in Brooklyn, Sam Cooper realises that she has nothing left. Her mother is dead, she has no prospects, and she cannot afford the rent. But as she goes through her mother's things, Sam finds a stack of hidden letters that reveal a family and an inheritance that she never knew she had, three thousand miles away in Yorkshire. Begars Abbey is a crumbling pile, inhabited only by Sam's crippled grandmother, Lady Cooper, a housekeeper and a handful of servants. Sam cannot understand why her mother kept its very existence a secret, but her diaries offer a glimpse of a young girl growing increasingly terrified. As is Sam herself. Built on the foundations of an old convent, Begars moves and sings with the biting wind. Her grandmother cannot speak, and a shadowy woman moves along the corridors at night. For there are dark places in the hidden tunnels beneath Begars. And they will not give up their secrets easily...

May 2022

Murder by the Seaside is by Cecily Gayford. It's the height of summer. As the heat shimmers on the streets and ice cream melts onto sticky fingers, tempers begin to rise and old grudges surface. From Cornish beaches to the French Riviera, it's not just a holiday that's on people's minds ... it's murder. In these ten classic stories from writers such as Dorothy L. Sayers, Cyril Hare and Margery Allingham, you'll find mayhem and mysteries aplenty. So grab the suncream and head down to the beach - if you dare.

To tell the truth? Or protect his family? Cornell is having a bad time. Kicked out of secondary school for a fight he didn't start, he finds himself in a Pupil Referral Unit. Here he makes friends with one of the Sinclair family. You don't mess with the Sinclairs, and when Ryan Sinclair demands Cornell comes with him to teach another student some respect, Ryan witnesses something that will change his life. Torn between protecting his family and himself, Cornell has one hell of a decision to make. Witness is by Alex Wheatle.

'There were good people in The Homes. But there were also some very, very bad ones...' A thousand unwanted children live in The Homes, a village of orphans in the Scottish Lowlands on the outskirts of Glasgow. Lesley was six before she learned that most children live with their parents. Now Lesley is twelve, and she and her best friend Jonesy live in Cottage 5, Jonesy the irrepressible spirit to Lesley's quiet thoughtfulness. Life is often cruel at The Homes, and suddenly it becomes much crueller. A child is found murdered. Then another. With the police unable to catch the killer, Lesley and Jonesy decides to take the matter into their own hands. But unwanted children are easy victims, and they are both in terrible danger... The Homes is by J B Mylet.

June 2022

Would you open The Box to save your daughter? Ed Truman's family is falling apart. His daughter Ally is being targeted by an alt-right incel organisation, Men Together. His house is being picketed, former clients are accusing him of sexual assault, his son won't speak to him. And then Ally disappears. Frantic, Ed suspects that Men Together have abducted her. But before he can go to the police, his DNA is found on the body of a young woman. Suddenly he's the subject of a nationwide manhunt, led by the tenacious DCI Jackie Rose. Ed finds himself on the run with Ally's friend, the enigmatic Phoenix, who claims to know where Ally is. But what is the truth? Is Ed a violent sexual predator? Or is he the victim of a ruthless conspiracy? The answers are in The Box. But not everyone who goes in, comes out alive... The Box is by Dan Malakin. 

Durham Book Festival

 

The Durham Book Festival have announced their programme. The festival is due to take place between 9^th and 17^thOctober 2021. The full programme can be read here. They are combining a return to live in-person events at the Gala Theatre with a full digital programme of over 50 literary events, films, podcasts, essays and more.

Tickets are now availble.

The crime fiction events are -

Catriona Ward and Abigail Dean: Thrillers With a Twist - (9^th October 2021- 11:00am)

Join Abigail Dean and Catriona Ward, two thriller writers who are turning the genre on its head as they explore trauma and survival in these gripping and intelligent novels.

In Girl A by Abigail Dean, Lexie Grace is the girl who escaped. Following the news that their abusive mother has died in prison, Lex is forced to return to the House of Horrors that she grew up in. Together with her sister, Evie, Lex intends to turn the house into a force for good. But first she must come to terms with her six siblings – and with the childhood they shared. An ordinary house on an ordinary street becomes a pit of unimaginable darkness in The Last House on Needless Street, a truly nerve-shattering psychological thriller by Catriona Ward. This is the story of a serial killer. A stolen child. Revenge. Death. You think you know what’s inside the last house on Needless Street. You think you’ve read this story before. That’s where you’re wrong.

Chaired by Grace Keane, New Writing North

Richard Osman: Books That Made Me - (9^th October 2021 – 7:00pm)

We are delighted to welcome Richard Osman back to Durham Book Festival for a special pre-recorded digital event. Richard will be talking about his new crime novel The Man Who Died Twice as well as some of the books that have inspired him throughout his life.  The Man Who Died Twice is the second novel in the record-breaking, bestselling Thursday Murder Club series. Elizabeth has received a letter from an old colleague, a man with whom she has a long history. He’s made a big mistake, and he needs her help. His story involves stolen diamonds, a violent mobster, and a very real threat to his life. As bodies start piling up, Elizabeth enlists Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron in the hunt for a ruthless murderer. And if they find the diamonds too? Well, wouldn’t that be a bonus?  Richard Osman is an author, producer and television presenter and the creator and co-presenter of the BBC One television quiz show Pointless. His first novel, The Thursday Murder Club, was a million-copy bestseller.

Chaired by Professor Katy Shaw, Northumbria University.

Murder, Mystery and Mayhem: Durham City Guided Walk - (15^th October 2021 – 10:30am)

(Meet outside Gala Theatre entrance) It could be said that Durham City exists because of crime. Pillaging by raiding Vikings led to the city’s formation as we know it today. Take a walk around Durham and hear how crimes gone by have been recorded through the written word. Discover how the city and its hinterland have provided a backdrop and been incorporated into crime fiction and writing.

Denise Mina and Lucy Jago: Women Who Dare - (15^th October 2021 – 5:30pm)

Denise Mina and Lucy Jago discuss their new novels, which tell the stories of transgressive women in history and the secrets and scandals of the royal courts. It’s Saturday evening, 9 March 1566 and Mary Queen of Scots is six months pregnant. She’s hosting a supper party. Mary doesn’t know that her Palace is surrounded – that an army of men is creeping upstairs to her chamber. They’re coming to murder David Rizzio, her friend and secretary. Mary’s husband wants it done in front of her and he wants her to watch it done. Rizzio by Denise Mina looks at history through a modern lens and explores the lengths that men – and women – will go to in the search for love and power. Frances Howard has beauty and a powerful family. Anne Turner has wit and talent – but no stage on which to display them. When these two very different women meet a powerful friendship is sparked. Frankie sweeps Anne into a world of splendour that exceeds all she imagined: a Court whose foreign king is a stranger to his own subjects and where ancient families fight for power. Based on the true scandal that rocked the court of James I, A  Net for Small Fishes is an exhilarating dive into the pitch-dark waters of the Jacobean court.

Chaired by Dr Natalie Mears, Durham University.

Val McDermid: 1979 - (16^th October 2021 – 7:30pm)

Join us for an evening with bestselling crime writer Val McDermid as she talks about 1979, the heart-pounding first novel in a gripping new series by the Queen of Crime.  Set in Glasgow and following crime reporter Allie Burns, 1979 draws upon McDermid’s own experiences as a journalist, where she witnessed life in the newsroom at first-hand.  It is the winter of discontent, and reporter Allie Burns is chasing her first big scoop. There are few women in the newsroom and she needs something explosive for the boys’ club to take her seriously. Soon Allie and fellow journalist Danny Sullivan are exposing the criminal underbelly of respectable Scotland. They risk making powerful enemies – and Allie won’t stop there. When she discovers a home-grown terrorist threat, Allie comes up with a plan to infiltrate the group and make her name. But she’s a woman in a man’s world… and putting a foot wrong could be fatal.

Chaired by Doug Johnstone, author of The Jump.

Catriona Ward on the Inspiration for The Last House on Needless Street

 The Lake, the Forest

How the Lake Sammamish Murders helped inspire ‘The Last House on Needless Street’ 

By Catriona Ward

It’s a misconception that those who write crime, thrillers and horror are more resilient to the subject matter than others. I find you can only write impactfully about something if you feel the impact of it yourself. Certain crimes weave their way into the imagination and cling to your subconscious. The ones that reverberate throughout ‘The Last House on Needless Street’ have horrified me as long as I can remember. 

It’s almost impossible to talk about this novel without revealing the bones of the plot. But I’ll do my best to describe what fed into it and why this book burned in me, demanding to be written. 

In ‘The Last House on Needless Street,’ children have been going missing from the lakeshore for years. None have ever been found. Dee’s little sister, Lulu, was one of the missing children, and Dee has been searching for her abductor ever since. She thinks she has found him. Ted Bannerman lives in a boarded-up house at the end of Needless Street with his daughter, Lauren, and his disapproving cat, Olivia. Lauren and Olivia don’t go outside. Needless Street ends in the wild, Olympic forest, and is only a short hike from the lake. Dee moves into the vacant house next door to Ted’s and begins her watch. She has to be sure it’s him. When Ted’s daughter Lauren goes missing, suspicion turns to terror. 

There were thousands of people at Lake Sammamish, in Washington State on July 14th 1974, when Ted Bundy abducted two women from the crowded summer shores. He approached Janice Ott with his arm in a cast and a sling, asking for her help to move a sailboat. He drove a gold VW Bug. A few hours later, he used the same ruse to lure Denise Naslund away as she made her way to the restroom.¹ He approached several other women that afternoon, always giving his name - Ted. Janice Ott and Denise Naslund were the fifth and sixth women to go missing in the area that year. They were not the last. 

We feel safe in crowds, in numbers, surrounded by our families. We don’t expect the monstrous to pursue us out of the night, into the blazing light of a summer day. The Lake Sammamish murders were staggering in their greed and cruelty. These women died for their kindness, for wishing to assist what they thought was an injured stranger. As Denise Naslund’s mother told the Seattle Times, ‘she had the kind of helpful nature that would place her in danger.’²

This day has always had a cold grip on my imagination. Ted Bannerman in ‘The Last House on Needless Street’ is not directly based on Ted Bundy. But a sense of the grief and violent loss Bundy inflicted on victims and their families permeates the book, which is full of echoes of that summer day at the lake in 1974. The very setting seems to me an array of disturbing, arresting contrasts. The deep, cool woods of Washington, the burning light on the lake-water. Two women taken from the midst of a crowd, for lonely death. 

The investigative team appealed for all the negatives and film taken by visitors to the lake that day to be sent to them. This image haunts me, too - police combing through holiday photos of smiling families, searching the background for a murderer with his arm in a cast, and his gold VW bug. They found several images of the car in the parking lot. Home video from that day, only discovered in 2018 in the King County archives, shows the gold Volkswagen boxed in by a patrol vehicle, surrounded by milling officers. Bundy is not in the car.³

Washington State has a grim history with serial killers. Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer, murdered so many women around Tacoma and Seattle during the 1980s and 90’s that he lost count. The estimate is 71. During this investigation detectives approached Bundy, then awaiting execution on death row, for insight into how the killer’s mind might work. They also hoped that by encouraging Bundy to talk, they might glean more information about his own crimes. It was a Faustian pact, giving Bundy what he wanted most – power and the sense of importance he craved, as well as titillating details of Gary Ridgeway’s crime scenes, and the chance to relive his own.

The search for Denise Naslund and Janice Ott intensified, as the summer of 1974 turned to fall. The two women seemed to have vanished without a trace, swallowed whole by the land and the forest. Their remains were found in September, that hot fateful year, on a hillside two miles distant from Lake Sammamish. Homicide detective Robert Keppel recalled his first sight of the scene:

‘The surrounding tree cover was so dense that even in daylight the forest floor was very dark, like the mysterious landscape in a fairy tale and only occasional sunbursts escaped through the small openings in the canopy of leaves.’⁴

That part of the Pacific Northwest is rich in wildlife – elk, deer, herons, scavengers like raccoons and wild dogs. Certain artefacts were recovered from the scene - coyote faeces containing human hand bones; a bird’s nest entwined with long blond hair. Just how long, Keppel wondered, had it taken for the birds to learn to use human hair in this way? How long had this place been used? Vertebrae and pieces of leg bone belonging to an unknown third woman were also found. She has never been conclusively identified, though Bundy later claimed the remains belonged to eighteen-year-old Georgann Hawkins. The wilderness had indeed begun to absorb Denise Naslund, Janice Ott and the third woman back into itself. 

These details are at the heart of ‘The Last House on Needless Street’ – the wilderness of those parts, and how it can swallow people, is part of the fabric of the book. The birds have no concept of how horrifying their nests are. Coyotes will always eat whatever they can find. Similarly, the forest at the end of Needless Street is vast and indifferent to human suffering.

It’s neither good nor bad, but its own roiling force. It does not distinguish between human evil, suffering, love or hope. Human endeavour is overrun by the wild, leaving no trace. 

But love and hope do endure, and can even be born, in the face of horror and suffering. Having conjured this atrocity in ‘The Last House on Needless Street,’ I was determined that compassion and life must also thread their way through the novel - like filigree perhaps, or golden hair, woven into a nest for hatching birds. 

1^ https://www.newspapers.com/clip/31113871/remains-of-janice-anne-ott-and-denise/

2^ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/remembering-the-washington-victims-of-ted-bundy-the-serial-killer-spotlighted-in-new-movie-and-netflix-docuseries/

3^ https://www.kiro7.com/living/dating/never-before-seen-film-shows-ted-bundys-vw-where-he-killed-two-women-in-1974/696707928/

4^ ‘The Riverman: Ted Bundy and the Hunt for the Green River Killer,’ Keppel, Robert D., Pocket Books, a division of Simon and Schuster, New York, !995. Ebook, location 381

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward Published by Profile Books (Out Now)

This is the story of a serial killer. A stolen child. Revenge. Death. And an ordinary house at the end of an ordinary street. All these things are true. And yet they are all lies... You think you know what's inside the last house on Needless Street. You think you've read this story before. That's where you're wrong. In the dark forest at the end of Needless Street, lies something buried. But it's not what you think...

Books to Look Forward to from Profile Books (Incl Serpent's Tail, & Viper Books)

October 2020

In celebration of the 30th anniversary of Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley a new edition of this seminal novel is being published. 'I need to find somebody and I might need a little help looking...' It's the summer of '48 in the city of Angels and there's heat on the streets when Daphne Monet hits the sidewalk. Heat when she disappears with a trunkload of somebody else's cash. Easy Rawlins is a war veteran just fired from his job. Drinking in a friend's bar, he wonders how to meet his mortgage when a white man in a linen suit walks in, offering good money if Easy will locate Miss Monet, a blonde with a reputation. It's a simple decision, but for one thing. Nobody warned him - better the devil you know... In the sleazy, fearful city, Easy must rely on his instincts, not just to solve the case, but to save his own life.

January 2021

Dear Reader, Enclosed are documents relating to the events surrounding the Fairway Players' staging of All My Sons, and the tragic death of one of its members. Another member is currently in prison for the crime. We have reason to suspect that they are innocent, and that there were far darker secrets that have yet to be revealed. We believe that the killer has given themselves away. It's there in writing, hidden in the emails, texts, and letters. In the events surrounding the charity appeal for little Poppy Reswick, and the question of whether that money was truly being used to fund her life-saving cancer treatment. Will you accept the challenge? Can you uncover the truth? Do you dare? The Appeal is by Janice Hallett.

The Rosary Garden is by Nicola White. It was Ali who found the body of a murdered newborn baby, hidden in the garden of her convent school. In an Ireland riven by battles of religion and reproduction, the case becomes a media sensation, even as the church tries to suppress it. But this is not the first dead baby Ali has found. For Detectives Vincent Swan and Gina Considine, the pressure to discover the identity of the dead child is little help against a community with secrets to protect. Gina knows all too well how many of Ireland's girls are forced to make difficult decisions in terrible circumstances, silenced by shame. Is Ali one of those girls? Because what evidence there is, points to Ali herself...

February 2021

This mother's day you will call her mummy. Glamorous, beautiful Mummy has everything a woman could want... except for a daughter of her very own. So when she sees Kim - heavily pregnant, glued to her phone and ignoring her eldest child in a busy shop - she does what anyone would do. She takes her. But little foul-mouthed Tonya is not the daughter that Mummy was hoping for. Meanwhile Kim is demonised by the media as a 'scummy mummy', who deserved to lose Tonya and ought to have her other children taken too. Haunted by memories of her own childhood and refusing to play by the media's rules, she begins to spiral, turning on those who love her. Though they are worlds apart, Mummy and Kim have more in common than they could possibly imagine. But it is five-year-old Tonya who is caught in the middle... Call me mummy it'll be better if you do. Call Me Mummy is by Tina Baker.

March 2021

The Last House on Needless Street is by Catriona Ward. This is the story of a serial killer. A stolen child. Revenge. Death. And an ordinary house at the end of an ordinary street. All these things are true. And yet they are all lies... You think you know what's inside the last house on Needless Street. You think you've read this story before. That's where you're wrong. In the dark forest at the end of Needless Street, lies something buried. But it's not what you think...

April 2021

The Plague Letters is by V L Valentine. What is one more corpse, when all around you are dying... London, 1665. Hidden within a growing pile of corpses, one victim of the pestilence stands out: a young woman with a shorn head and pieces of twine delicately tied around each ankle. Symon Patrick, rector of St. Paul's Covent Garden, cannot say exactly why this corpse amongst the many in his churchyard should give him pause. Longing to do good, he joins a group of medical men who have gathered to find a cure for the plague, each man more peculiar and splenetic than the next. But there is another - unknown to The Society for the Prevention and Cure of Plague - who is performing his own terrible experiments upon unwilling plague-ridden subjects. It is Penelope - Symon's unwanted yet unremovable addition to his household - who may yet shed light on the matter. Far more than what she appears, she is already on the hunt. But the dark presence that enters the houses of the sick will not stop, and has no mercy... This hugely atmospheric and entertaining historical thriller will transport readers to the palaces and alleyways of seventeenth-century London.

May 2021

It’s the summer solstice weekend, and 150,000 people descend on a farm in the northeast of England for an open-air music festival. At first, a spot of rain seems to be the only thing dampening the fun – until a mystery bug appears. Before long, the illness is spreading at an electrifying speed and seems resistant to all antibiotics. Can journalist Zoe Meadows track the outbreak to its source, and will a cure be found before the disease becomes a pandemic? A heart-racing thriller, Resistance imagines a nightmare pandemic that seems only too credible in the wake of Covid-19. Resistance is a graphic novel by Val McDermid and Illustrated by Kathryn Briggs. 

Murder Takes a Holiday is edited by Cecily Gayford. For most of us, a summer holiday is an

opportunity to escape from it all: to lounge on warm sands or sip a cool drink in the shade of a city square. But, as the characters in this murderously good collection of classic crime stories discover to their cost ... trouble has a nasty habit of finding you out. From a body found on a beach without a single footprint, to a lemonade stand whose wares appear to have been poisoned and a Wimbledon final ruined by the mysterious disappearance of the championship player, these tales of murder and malice will take you on the trip of a lifetime. So pour that glass of Pimms, grab your sunhat and indulge your dark side: these stories will chill you to your very core, even in a heatwave …

Would you save the man who destroyed your life. When paramedic Megan Lowe is called to the scene of an attempted murder, all she can do is try to save the victim. But as the man is lifted onto a stretcher, she realises she knows this man. She hates him. Why should she save his life when he did everything in his power to ruin hers? Jess Foster is on her way home when she receives a text from Megan. Someone else must hate him as much as we do. The two women haven't spoken in years, not since the night when they were just the teenage girls who no-one believed. And yet this man will bring them together once again. But what terrible secrets are they hiding, and who is telling the truth? You Had It Coming is by B M Carroll.