Forthcoming books from Quercus Publishing incl Machlehose Press

 January 2025

Some murders can't be solved in just one lifetime. From the no 1 bestselling author Elly Griffiths, The Frozen People is a brand-new series with a brand-new heroine to fall in love with. Ali Dawson is as colourful as her bright red hair - warm, funny, forthright - and mother to a grown son, Finn. Ali works on cold cases, crimes so old, the joke goes, they are almost frozen. What most people don't know is that Ali and the team travel back in time to complete their research - a process pioneered by the mysterious Italian physicist, Serafina Pellegrini. So far, the team has only ventured a few years or decades back, but Ali's boss has a new assignment for her. He wants her to step back to 1850, the heart of the Victorian age, to clear the name of Cain Templeton, the eccentric great-grandfather of Tory MP Isaac Templeton, her son's boss. To ready herself for the challenge ahead, Ali researches the Victorian era. She learns that Cain Templeton was part of a sinister group called The Collectors, the rumour being that you had to kill a woman to become a member. Duly prepared, she arrives in London in January 1850 in the middle of a freezing winter. She is directed to a house inhabited by artists and is greeted by a dead woman at her feet. Soon she finds herself in extreme danger. Even worse - she appears to be stuck, unable to make her way back to the present, to the life she loves and to her son, Finn.

Deep deception, twisted fate. Thames Valley has a new Superintendent - DCS Wainwright - young, charismatic and ruthless, charged with pushing through big reforms. Her in-tray is full of problems - and at the top of the pile is the problem of Wilkins and Wilkins. Trailer park boy DI Ryan Wilkins, interesting looking in baggy trackies and over-large lime-green puffa. In his personnel file is a handwritten note scribbled by the outgoing Super: 'Do not, repeat not, give him responsibility.' And posh boy DI Ray Wilkins, improbably handsome in navy blazer and tan chinos: 'Thinks too highly of himself. More experience needed at the wet end.' Their previous investigations - though somehow successful - were models of disorder and dysfunction. The new Super needs to take action. There's been a shocking murder in the heart of Oxford, the stabbing of a security guard during an attempted armed robbery. Meanwhile, an elderly professor of linguistics goes missing from his home in cosy Iffley Village. The high-profile murder investigation can be safely handled by reliable detective DI Hare. The entry-level enquiry into the wandering academic can be given to the problem duo, with instructions to keep it simple. But when the body of the professor is found, still dressed in his pyjamas and dripping wet, spreadeagled on a hotel lawn miles from home, things get a little unexpected for the Wilkinses. Will Ray keep on top of the brief? Will Ryan keep it together? A Voice in the Night is by Simon Mason.

February 2025

The Stolen Heart is by Andrey Kurkov. Samson Kolechko has been assigned a most perplexing case - though it is mostly perplexing because it's hard to understand why selling the meat of one's own pig constitutes a crime. But apparently it does, and at the insistence of the Chekist secret police officer assigned to "reinforce" the Lybid police station, Samson does his diligent - if diffident - best. Yet no sooner has he got started than his live-in fiancée Nadezhda is abducted by striking railway workers who object to the census she's carrying out. And when you factor in a mysterious thief in the police station itself, a deadly tram accident that may have been pre-meditated, and the potential reappearance of the culprit in the case of the silver bone, it's no wonder the "meat case" takes a back seat. But it is in the pursuit of that petty-fogging, seemingly mundane matter that Samson's fate lies - and Nadezhda's too, for the two are inextricably entwined.

March 2025

1999. A group of archaeologists are excavating a Bronze Age burial site in the grounds of Trusloe Hall, a minor stately home in Wiltshire. Excited that their dig is being filmed for a TV documentary, the group are camping onsite and having the time of their lives. In the blink of an eye, one of the party disappears: a young woman called Nazma Kirmani. An extensive police investigation fails to find any trace of her, and the case goes cold for over twenty years. 2020. When a chance discovery presents new evidence into Nazma's disappearance, DI Lockyer and DC Gemma Broad are put on the case. Did Nazma intend to disappear, or was she taken? Did she walk out on her life, or was she murdered? Lockyer must see past the upheavals in his own life to find out the truth for her desperate family. Hollow Grave is by Kate Webb.

Annie thought the murders were over. She was wrong. It is autumn in Castle Knoll and Annie Adams is busy settling into her new home. She doesn't find Gravesdown Hall particularly cosy, especially since she found two dead bodies there over the summer. What's more, ever since she arrived in the village, Annie has had the creeping sense she's being watched. Lonely, and desperate for some company, Annie starts talking to a stranger she meets in the grounds of the estate. The striking old woman introduces herself as Peony Lane, the fortune-teller who predicted Great Aunt Frances' murder all those years ago. And now she has a fortune to tell Annie. Desperate not to fall into the same trap as Frances, Annie flees Peony Lane, refusing to hear any of her grim predictions. But she can't outrun Peony for long, as hours later she finds her, dead on the floor of Gravesdown Hall, a ruby-hilted dagger plunged into her back.  But who killed the mysterious fortune teller and why? And can Frances' library of evidence help Annie solve the case? How to Seal Your Own Fate is by Kristen Perrin.

The Bureau is by Eoin McNamee. Lorraine would say afterwards that she was smitten straight off with Paddy Farrell. You could tell that he was occupying the room in a different way, he found the spaces that fitted him. She was the kind of girl the papers called vivacious, always a bit of dazzle to her. Could she not see there was death about him? Could he not see there was death about her? Paddy worked the border, a place of road closures, hijackings, sudden death. Everything bootleg and tawdry, nobody is saying that the law is paid off but it is. This is strange terrain, unsolid, ghosted through. There's illicit cash coming across the border and Brendan's backstreet Bureau de Change is the place to launder it. Brendan knows the rogue lawyers, the nerve shot policemen, the alcoholic judges and he doesn't care about getting caught. For the Bureau crew getting caught is only the start of the game. Paddy and his associates were a ragged band and honourless and their worth to themselves was measured in thievery and fraud. But Lorraine was not a girl to be treated lightly. She's cast as a minx, a criminal's moll but she's bought a shotgun. And she's bought a grave.

April 2025

Fortress of Evil is by Javier Cercas. A father's worst nightmare - Melchor Marín's teenage daughter has disappeared. Years have passed since Melchor took revenge for his mother's murder and at last found peace with his daughter Cosette in the sleepy backwater of Terra Alta. But their idyll is shattered when one day Cosette, now seventeen, discovers that her father has been concealing the truth of her mother's death- that she was killed in a hit-and-run "accident" intended to scare Melchor off a case. Angry and betrayed, Cosette disappears to Mallorca with her friend Elisa. And that's the last Melchor hears of her. His texts and calls go unanswered, and when she returns alone, Elisa can only say Cosette needed "space to think".  Now the former policeman has no choice but to travel to Port de Pollença, where his daughter was last seen alive, and enter the dark, looking-glass world of Swedish-American billionaire Rafael Mattson.

May 2025

You Can’t Escape the Past is by Anna Smith. The future is looking bright for Billie Carlson. With her child safely home and a new relationship on the horizon, she hasn't felt so settled in years. But when Billie takes on a new client, Elizabeth Fletcher, it's clear trouble is imminent. Elizabeth has killed a man in self-defence. She met him in a bar but he'd turned aggressive, attacking Elizabeth in the middle of the night when she caught him going through her husband's desk drawers. Refusing to go to the police for fear her husband will find out, Elizabeth wants Billie to work out who he was - and what secrets he was looking for. Can Billie help Elizabeth, or is she in way over her head?

The Cliffhanger is by Emily Freud. You think you know how this ends. Think again. Stray too close to the edge... New York-based writers Felix and Emma have it all. As the husband and wife team behind the bestselling Morgan Savage thrillers, their meteoric rise to global literary fame seemed unstoppable. Until Felix messed up. And someone is going to get hurt. Now, the couple has been exiled to the south of France. Their sentence: a long, hot summer to cure their writers' block - and save their marriage.  But as tensions rise beneath the sweltering sun, Felix and Emma become trapped in a deathly plot of their own making....

Victim or murderer . . .  Can she discover the truth? On a misty autumn afternoon, a woman covered in blood clutching a baseball bat walks silently into a London police station. The two officers assigned to her case are DI Leah Hutch and DS Benjamin Randle. But the woman refuses to speak. She is not injured and the blood on the bat is not hers. What has she done? Is she the victim or the perpetrator? As Leah and Randle start their inquiry, a man is found battered to death in a nearby park. Journalist Odie Reid receives a tip off and is determined to solve the case first, trying to link this death to the woman held in custody. Leah and Odie have history and very quickly their cat and mouse game becomes personal, leading them both to the very darkest corners of their pasts. Innocent Guilt is by Remi Kone. 

The Devil's Playbook is by Markus Heitz. Retired gambler Tadeus Boch has just come into possession of a mysterious playing card, apparently from a very rare eighteenth-century deck. He immediately becomes obsessed with tracking down the entire set of cards, rumored to be the one pack in the world for the legendary game Supérieur . . . and said to be created by the Devil himself. But Boch is not the only person searching for the missing cards. And the more he learns about the game, the more dangerous the chase becomes. It's not long before Boch realises he's playing for the highest stakes he's ever wagered: nothing less than his own life.

June 2025

So Happy Together is by Olivia Worley.Jane and Colin are soulmates. He just doesn't know it yet. For twenty-four-year-old Jane, finding love in New York City is even harder than making it as a playwright. So, when Jane meets Colin, a sweet software engineer, she can't believe her luck: they're perfect for each other. Even when Colin breaks off their blooming relationship after six dates, Jane is certain that this is just a stumbling block. She'll get him back. She knows she will. That is, until Colin starts dating Zoe, a perfect, luminous, up-and-coming Brooklyn artist. Even worse, she's actually kind of nice. But Zoe doesn't have what it takes to love Colin. She'd never stay with him through thick and thin. All Jane has to do is prove it, and she and Colin will be so happy together. But when Jane sneaks into Colin's apartment, she makes a shocking discovery - one that will ensnare them all in a complicated web of lies, secrets, and murder.

Bruno Courrѐges is chief of police of the lovely Dordogne town of St Denis with a remit that covers the beautiful valley of the river Vézѐre. One autumn morning he comes across an abandoned car parked near a local beauty spot. Inside is a dead woman, Monique, an apparent suicide resulting from depression. But there are circumstances surrounding the death that raise Bruno's suspicions, particularly when disputes arise surrounding her Will. At the same time, Bruno makes the mistake of interfering in a local marital dispute. Deputy mayor Xavier has been playing away and finds himself evicted from the family home. Old controversies about deer culls take on new life and then a second campaign begins, stating that Bruno is less of a village copper and more of a secret policeman, whose main job is working for French intelligence. Some of the ammunition for this attack, Bruno learns, comes from Xavier, who sees this as a way to topple Bruno and the mayor and succeed to the mayor's job himself. Suddenly Bruno's shiny reputation is looking a little tarnished as he battles to save his name and answer the questions surrounding Monique's suicide. An Enemy in the Village is by Martin Walker.

The Woman Who Laughed is by Simon Mason. In the first months of 2020 there was a spate of murders of Black sex workers in northern cities. One of them was Ella Bailey, last seen talking to a punter in an alley in Sheffield city centre, and although no trace of her was ever found, the punter, Michael Godley, soon confessed to all three murders. Five years later, as another sex worker is murdered in the same district, the bag Ella had been carrying with her reappears, hanging on the door handles of a café, and a local vagrant claims to have seen Ella sitting on a bench in a churchyard near the site of the murder. South Yorkshire Police call in the Finder. So begins a search that takes him back to the strange days of the pandemic, to talk to those who knew Ella best, such as her wayward girlfriend 'Loz', abusive boyfriend Caine Poynton-Smith and respectable foster-parents still struggling to come to terms with Ella's life. How did their intelligent, strong-willed daughter - bright student and national schoolgirl athletics champion - end up in that alley? Is Ella really still alive? If so, why has she reappeared now? And does she realise the danger she is in?

Is Blue the Night!

Today’s guest blog is by Eoin McNamee.  The author of seven books he has also written a trilogy for young adults and has been nominated for the Booker Prize with his novel The Blue Tango.  Using the pseudonym John Creed, he has written three crime novels featuring Jack Valentine. The first novel in the series The Sirius Crossing won the inaugural Ian Fleming Steel Dagger.  In 1990, he was awarded the Macauley Fellowship for Irish Literature.

12^th November 1952.  The starting point.  Nineteen-year-old Patricia Curran steps off the bus at the gate to her family home, The Glen, in Whiteabbey outside Belfast.  Later that night her body is found on the driveway, stabbed thirty-seven times.  From the beginning, an air of the occult settling over the murder, of gothic fakery-the occult of Ouija boards and séances in chilly Victorian sitting rooms.

Patricia was beautiful, wilful, spirited.  Her father Lance Curran was a high-flier, Attorney-General at thirty-six, a judge at the time of her death.  He was icy and brilliant, arguably cunning and manipulative, and certainly a gambler, mortgaged to the hilt, up to his neck in it.  Her brother Desmond was a barrister, a street prostletyser, a man who would turn his back on it all to become a missionary priest.  Her mother Doris…where do you start with Doris?  Where do you start with any of them?

Doris and Patricia were not getting on.  Doris was highly strung.  Two weeks after her daughter’s death Doris was sent to a mental hospital where she remained until her death in 1976.  A young airman was wrongfully convicted of Patricia’s murder and had his conviction overturned in 2001.  Fingers have always been pointed at Doris.  Did she kill her own daughter?  Did her husband cover for her?

I’d heard that Doris Curran was brought up in Broadmoor Prison for the Criminally Insane. 

Her father was superintendent.  Researching it, I found that Ripper suspect, Thomas Cutbush was incarcerated there at the same time.  There’s always a moment that fixes a book for you, defines it.  For Blue Is the Night I was reading the physical description of Cutbush in his admission documents.  It describes height, hair colour, and then it comes to the crucial detail.  ‘Eyes: dark blue, very sharp.’  It caught the texture of the book.  A watcher in the shrubberies and ill-lit byways of post war Ulster.  A malice glittering in the provincial shadows.  A loving mother couldn’t take a child’s life (thirty-seven stab wounds) but a paranoid schizophrenic certainly could.

If Doris killed her daughter (and that is by no means certain) she isn’t the only one who transgressed.  Judge Lance Curran put on the black silk cap to hang Robert McGladdery for the murder of nineteen-year-old Pearl Gamble in 1961, nine years after the murder of his own nineteen-year-old daughter, despite the lack of substantive evidence.  Patricia herself becomes a nexus of rumour and counter-rumour, white mischief abroad in a town where pleasure taking was always furtive, always clothed in sin and consequence.

Lance Curran wasn’t always thus.  In 1949, he prosecuted Robert Taylor for the murder of Mary McGowan.  Robert Taylor was a man-child, dead spit of the freckled and wholesome child film star Bobby Breen.  He was also a stone killer who left Mrs McGowan cut, strangled and scalded.  Curran’s prosecution was relentless.  It seemed that Taylor was doomed.  However, would a protestant hang for the murder of a catholic woman in 1949 Belfast?  Moreover, if the answer is no, what happens to the rigorous and fair-minded prosecutor?  Does he shrug his shoulders and go with the cynical flow?

Three cases involving Lance Curran.  Three dead women.  I started haunting the Curran family.  Latterly, they’ve been haunting me.  I wanted to find out who killed Patricia Curran and ended up wondering who she was.  I have her photograph at home the downturned mouth, the eyes in shadow.  At the end of the trilogy I find myself in the vicinity of truth, but fatally drawn away from it by those eyes.  Finding myself lost in the shadow, in their mesmeric void.

Blue is the Night by Eoin McNamee is out now, £12.99 (Faber & Faber)

Books to Look Forward to from Faber and Faber

Blood Whispers is by John Gordon Sinclair and is due to be published in May 2014.  'Truth is, it's all lies.' Teresa Gow is under arrest for a string of offences ranging from prostitution to attempted murder. Lawyer Keira Lynch wants the charges dropped and her client taken into protective custody. The CIA and a Serbian drug trafficker by the name of Fisnik Abazi, want Teresa dead. Keira's cool head and laid-back approach has earned her the respect of most of the big-time players on the Glasgow crime scene. She doesn't tell lies, she 'stylises the truth', and they trust her with their darkest secrets. In a room full of murder suspects, Keira will finger the culprit every time. They put her uncanny ability down to luck, but there's a more sinister explanation. Keira has a dark secret of her own - when she was eight years old she killed a man. It takes one to know one. In a deadly game where nothing is what it seems and no one is who they say they are, Keira Lynch finds herself facing the biggest challenge of her life. The question is not will she kill again, but when...

Introducing Jefferson Winter - A serial criminal. An ex-FBI profiler with a past. A missing woman. Not everyone who's broken can be fixed. Death is easy - Four victims, all young women, all tortured and then lobotomised. None of them able to tell the police the name of their attacker. None of them able to live normal lives again. Just broken dolls, played with then discarded. Living is hard - Ex-FBI profiler Jefferson Winter is no ordinary investigator. The son of one of America's most renowned serial killers, Winter has spent his life trying to distance himself from his father's legacy. But are they more similar than he can admit? Failure is worse - When another young woman goes missing, Winter has to race against the clock to identify the attacker and find the latest victim before it's too late.  Broken Dolls is by James Carol and is due to be published in January 2014.

The Girl with a Clock for a Heart is the debut novel  by Peter Swanson and is due to be published in February 2014.  George Foss never thought he'd see her again, but on a late-August night in Boston, there she is, in his local bar, Jack's Tavern. When George first met her, she was an eighteen-year-old college freshman from Sweetgum, Florida. She and George became inseparable in their first fall semester, so George was devastated when he got the news that she had committed suicide over Christmas break. But, as he stood in the living room of the girl's grieving parents, he realized the girl in the photo on their mantelpiece - the one who had committed suicide - was not his girlfriend. Later, he discovered the true identity of the girl he had loved - and of the things she may have done to escape her past. Now, twenty years later, she's back, and she's telling George that he's the only one who can help her.

                                                                                                                         

1949. Lance Curran is set to prosecute a young man for a brutal murder, in the 'Robert the Painter' case, one which threatens to tear society apart. In the searing July heat, corruption and justice vie as Harry Ferguson, Judge Curran's fixer, contemplates the souls of men adrift, and his own fall from grace with the beautiful and wilful Patricia. Within three years, Curran will be a judge, his nineteen year old daughter dead, at the hands of a still unknown murderer, and his wife Doris condemned to an asylum for the rest of her days. In "Blue Is the Night", it is Doris who finally emerges from the fog of deceit and blame to cast new light into the murder of her daughter.  Blue is the Night is by Eoin McNamee and is due to be published in March 2014.

The Beast in the Red Forest is the latest book in the Inspector Pekkala series by Sam Eastland and is due to be published in January 2014.   A soldier returns from the frontline of battle to report that Pekkala's charred body has been found at the site of an ambush. But Stalin refuses to believe that the indomitable Pekkala is dead. On Stallin's orders, Pekkala's assistant Kirov travels deep into the forests of Western Russia, following a trail of clues to a wilderness where partisans wage a brutal campaign against the Nazi invaders. Unknown to Kirov, he is being led into a trap. A new enemy has emerged from the fog of war, more deadly than any Kirov or Pekkala have ever faced before. Pursuing the legend of a half-human creature, said to roam the landscape of this war within a war, each step brings Kirov closer to the truth about Pekkala's disappearance. Meanwhile, Pekkala's nemesis is also closing in for the kill.

The Accident is a riveting time-bomb of a thriller. In New York City, Isabel Reed, one of the most respected and powerful literary agents in the city, frantically turns the pages of a manuscript into the early dawn hours. This manuscript - printed out, hand-delivered, totally anonymous - is full of shocking revelations and disturbing truths, things which could compromise national security. Is this what she's been waiting for her entire career: a book that will help her move on from a painful past, a book that could save her beloved industry ...a book that will change the world? In Copenhagen, Hayden Gray, a veteran station chief, wary of the CIA's obsession with the Middle East, has been steadfastly monitoring the dangers that abound in Europe. Even if his bosses aren't paying attention, he's determined to stay vigilant. And he's also on the trail of this manuscript - and the secrets that lie at its heart. For him, quite simply, it must never see the light of day. As Isabel and Hayden try to outwit each other, the nameless author watches on from afar. With no-one quite sure who holds all the cards, the stakes couldn't be higher: in just twenty-four hours careers could be ruined, devastating secrets could be unearthed, and innocent people could die. The Accident is by Chris Pavone and is due to be published in March 2014.

New York Times bestseller Laura Lippman returns with a classic story of murder and mystery, in which one man's disappearance echoes through the lives of his wife, daughters - and mistress. When Felix Brewer meets nineteen-year-old Bernadette 'Bambi' Gottschalk at a Valentine's Dance in 1959, he charms her with wild promises, some of which he actually keeps. Thanks to his lucrative if not always legal businesses, she and their three -little girls live in luxury. But on the Fourth of July, 1976, Bambi's world implodes when Felix, newly convicted and facing prison, mysteriously vanishes. Though Bambi has no idea where her husband - or his money - might be, she suspects one woman does: his devoted young mistress, Julie. When Julie herself disappears ten years to the day that Felix went on the lam, everyone assumes she's left to join her -old lover - until her remains are found in a secluded wooded park. Now, twenty-six years after Julie went missing, Roberto 'Sandy' Sanchez, a retired Baltimore detective working cold cases for some extra cash, is investigating her murder. What he discovers is a tangled web of bitterness, jealously, resentment and greed stretching over the three decades and three generations that connect these five very different women. And at the center of every woman's story is the man who, though long gone, has never been forgotten: the enigmatic Felix Brewer. Somewhere between the secrets and lies connecting past and present, Sandy could find the explosive truth...  After I’m Gone is due to be published in April 2014.

Scarred by Thomas Enger is a thrilling novel of murder and political scandal in Oslo. An elderly woman is found dead in a nursing home. Bjarne Brogeland, who heads up the investigation, soon realises that they are on the trail of a meticulous killer who has developed a keen taste for revenge. A killer who has only just begun...Trine Juul-Osmundsen, Norway's Secretary of State and Henning Juul's sister, is accused of sexually harassing a young male politician. As the allegations cause a media frenzy, Trine receives an anonymous threat telling her to resign. If she doesn't, the truth about what she really did that night will be revealed. Scarred reporter Henning Juul, finds himself torn between the two high profile cases. He wants to help his estranged sister, but as he digs into their past, he discovers memories that haunt them both. Memories of a broken home. Memories of a dead father. As the two cases collide, both their worlds threaten to fall apart.  Scarred is due to be published in February 2014.

The Dead Beat is by Doug Johnstone and is due to be published in June 2014.  If you're so special, why aren't you dead? Meet Martha. It's the first day of her new job as intern at Edinburgh's The Standard. But all's not well at the ailing newspaper, and Martha is carrying some serious baggage of her own. Put straight onto the obituary page, she takes a call from a former employee who seems to commit suicide while on the phone, something which echoes with her own troubled past. Setting in motion a frantic race around modern-day Edinburgh, The Dead Beat traces Martha's desperate search for answers to the dark mystery of her parents' past and is soundtracked by and interspersed with a series of gigs from the alternative music scene of her parents' generation in the early '90s.

Books to Look Forward to From Faber and Faber

A New Town - Clairmont, Texas is home to some of the South's most wealthy and established families. When Emily Page and her husband Mike move there from New York City, so Mike can become the new sheriff, they believe that it's a place where they can build a new life for themselves. A New Start - Pregnant Emily is soon invited to a prestigious lunch hosted by local doyenne Caroline Warwick. There she meets Clairmont's rich housewives, but soon discovers that under the veneer of respectability lies shifting loyalties and dangerous secrets. A Troubled Past - When Caroline Warwick disappears, Emily wonders if any of the well-bred Southern ladies in Caroline's circle could have wanted her harmed. What was the hold that Caroline had over them and what was Caroline herself trying to hide? As Emily begins to search for clues about Caroline's disappearance, secrets from her own troubled past start to come to light. Have her problems followed her to Clairmont, or is there something more sinister going on closer to home?  Lie Still is by Julia Heaberlin and is due to be published in August 2013.

Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway is the second book in the series by Sara Gran and is due to be published in July 2013.  When Paul Casablancas, Claire DeWitt's musician ex-boyfriend, is found dead in his home in San Francisco's Mission District, the police are convinced it's a simple robbery. But, as Claire knows, nothing is ever simple. With the help of her new assistant Claude, Claire follows the clues, finding possible leads to Paul's fate in other cases - a long-ago missing girl and a modern-day miniature horse theft in Marin. As visions of the past reveal the secrets of the present, Claire begins to understand the words of the enigmatic French detective Jacques Silette: 'The detective won't know what he is capable of until he encounters a mystery that pierces his own heart.'

Josephine Tey is brought face to face with her own ghosts when she inherits a remote Suffolk cottage from her godmother, the actress Hester Larkspur. Red Barn Cottage stands close to the site of one of England's most notorious nineteenth century murders, and holds a time-capsule of secrets that Josephine must unravel to solve the mysteries of Hester's life - and her death. As she gets closer to the truth, Josephine is horrified to realise that the cottage has the power to destroy the peace of a village still stained by the shame of its past. Moving between Suffolk, London and Inverness, between the popular world of melodrama and the painful crimes at its heart, "The Death of Lucy Kyte" is both an intriguing insight into the dilemmas of Tey's personal life and a disturbing story of obsession, abuse and deceit.' The Death of Lucy Kyte is by Nicola Upson and is due to be published in August 2013.

The Cry is by Helen Fitzgerald and is due to be published in September 2013.  He’s gone and telling the truth won’t bring him back…… 'Someone's stolen my baby!' When Joanna shouts for help on a lonely roadside in Australia, it sets off a police investigation that will become a media sensation and dinner-table talk across the world.  The search for baby Noah takes on a life of its own as rumours begin to circulate online and it turns out everyone has something to hide. Guilt eats away at Joanna's sanity and she and her partner slowly turn against each other. Finally Joanna starts thinking the unthinkable: could the truth be even more terrible than she suspected? And will it take another death to finally make things right?

Dead Line is by Chris Ewan and is due to be published in August 2013.And just as your plan is developing, so you're evolving, too. You're changing in ways you never would have thought possible before. But that's acceptable to you. You're prepared to do whatever it takes...Why? Because you're the specialist. And that's how you're going to succeed. What do you do if your fiancee goes missing, presumed taken? If you're Daniel Trent, a highly-trained specialist in hostage negotiation, the answer is simple: You find out who took her and you make them talk. But what if your chief suspect is kidnapped? How do you get him back quickly - and alive? Set in Marseille, "Dead Line" is a fast-paced thriller that pitches the reader into Daniel's world, as he tries desperately to secure the release of Jerome Moreau from a ruthless gang in order to interrogate him on the whereabouts of his fiancee. When things don't go according to plan however, Daniel must use all his skills and instincts to find the answers he's looking for, but will he be in time?

North East India, 1923. On the broiling Night Mail from Calcutta to Jamalpur, a man is shot dead in a first class compartment. Detective Inspector Jim Stringer was sleeping in the next compartment along. Was he the intended target? Jim should have known that his secondment to the East Indian Railway, with a roving brief to inspect security arrangements, would not be the working holiday he had hoped for. The country seethes with political and racial tension. Aside from the Jamalpur shooting, someone is placing venomous snakes - including giant king cobras - in the first class compartments of the railway. Jim also has worries on the home front: his daughter has formed a connection with a Maharajah's son, who may in turn have a connection to Jim's incredibly rude colleague, the bristling Major Fisher. Jim must do everything he can to keep his family safe from harm, as he unravels the intrigues that surround him...  Night Train to Jamalpur is by Andrew Martin and is due to be published in September 2013.

  

Blue is the Night is by Eoin McNamee and is due to be published in October 2013. 1949. Lance Curran is set to prosecute a young man for a brutal murder, in the 'Robert the Painter' case, one which threatens to tear society apart. In the searing July heat, corruption and justice vie as Harry Ferguson, Judge Curran's fixer, contemplates the souls of men adrift, and his own fall from grace with the beautiful and wilful Patricia. Within three years, Curran will be a judge, his nineteen year old daughter dead, at the hands of a still unknown murderer, and his wife Doris condemned to an asylum for the rest of her days. In "Blue Is the Night", it is Doris who finally emerges from the fog of deceit and blame to cast new light into the murder of her daughter - as McNamee once again explores and dramatizes a notorious and nefarious case.

If You Were Here is by Alafair Burke and is due to be published in September 2013.  When McKenna Jordan, a magazine journalist investigating the story of the heroic and unidentified woman, finds the video footage, she thinks she recognizes her as Susan Hauptmann. But Susan disappeared without a trace ten years earlier, having just introduced McKenna to her future husband, Patrick. McKenna's complex search for her missing friend forces her to unearth secrets that lie deep in all their pasts. A sublimely plotted mystery and a devastating thriller about marriage, private security and journalistic scandal.

In the comfortable suburb where she lives, Heloise is just a mom, the youngish widow with a forgettable job who somehow never misses her son's soccer games or school plays. But in discrete hotel rooms throughout the area, she's the woman of your dreams - if you can afford her hourly fee. For more than a decade, Heloise has believed her unorthodox life to be a safe one; rigidly compartmentalized, maintaining no real friendships and trusting very few people. But now this secret life is under siege. Her once oblivious accountant is asking loaded questions about her business. Her longtime protector is hinting at new, mysterious dangers. Her employees can no longer be trusted. Her ex, the one who doesn't know he's the father of her son, is appealing his life sentence. And, one county over, another so-called 'suburban madam' has been found dead in her car, an apparent suicide...Can Heloise stay alive long enough to remake her life again, and save her son? Can she really expect to leave everything else behind? And When She Was Good is by Laura Lippman and is due to be published in June 2013.

After three years in the wilderness, hardboiled reporter Gerry Conway is back at his desk at the Glasgow Tribune. But three years is a long time on newspapers and things have changed - readers are dwindling, budgets are tightening, and the Trib's once rigorous standards are slipping. Once the paper's star reporter, Conway now plays second fiddle to his former protege, crime reporter Martin Moir. But when Moir goes AWOL as a big story breaks, Conway is dispatched to cover a gangland shooting. And when Moir's body turns up in a flooded quarry, Conway is drawn deeper into the city's criminal underworld as he looks for the truth about his colleague's death. Braving the hostility of gangsters, ambitious politicians and his own newspaper bosses, Conway discovers he still has what it takes to break a big story. But this is a story not everyone wants to hear as the city prepares to host the Commonwealth Games and the country gears up for a make-or-break referendum on independence. In this, the second book in the Conway Trilogy, Liam McIlvanney explores the murky interface of crime and politics in the New Scotland. Where the Dead Men Go is due to be published in September 2013.

  

A reformed Sicilian criminal, Carmelo Trapani, has been kidnapped and his search for the the aged Carmello leads Staffe all the way back to a terrible act at the Battle of Cable Street. Meanwhile, Staffe's own loyal servant,, DS Pulford, is in Pentonville awaiting trial for the murder of Jadus Golding, the very man who attempted to murder Staffe, leaving wounds from which Staffe is still recovering and it suits some in the heirarchy to see Pulford go down. Can Staffe save Carmelo without leaving Pulford to the political vultures? As he battles find the man who murdered his own assailant, pressures also mount from within and Staffe's heart falters - in every way. His job is on the line and when he least expects it, his own past puts a gun to his head. Hailed as 'London's answer to The Wire', "Kill And Tell" takes the "Staffe" series up a notch and into the very highest echelon of contemporary crime writing.  Kill and Tell is by Adam Creed and is due to be published in October 2013.

Limehouse, 1880: Dancing girls are going missing from 'Paradise' - the criminal manor with ruthless efficiency by the ferocious Lady Ginger. Seventeen-year-old music hall seamstress Kitty Peck finds herself reluctantly drawn into a web of blackmail, depravity and murder when The Lady devises a singular scheme to discover the truth. But as Kitty's scandalous and terrifying act becomes the talk of London, she finds herself facing someone even more deadly and horrifying than The Lady. Bold, impetuous and blessed with more brains than she cares to admit, it soon becomes apparent that it's up to the unlikely team of Kitty and her stagehand friend, Lucca, to unravel the truth and ensure that more girls do not meet with a similar fate. But are Kitty's courage and common sense and Lucca's book learning a match for the monster in the shadows? Their investigations take them from the gin-fuelled halls and doss houses of the East End to the champagne-fuelled galleries of the West End. Take nothing at face value: Kitty is about to step out on a path of discovery that changes everything...  Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders is by Kate Griffin and is due to be published in July 2013.

Newsy Stuff

He may be dead but Stieg Larsson is still in the news. The Wall Street Journal has an article on previously unpublished emails by Larsson which show how he set out to defy what is considered to be the conventions of the crime fiction genre. The emails published in the book "On Stieg Larsson" is being published as part of the deluxe boxed edition. The book contains four essays about the author as well as emails between the author and his editor Eva Gedin.

In Saturday's Guardian (20 November) there is a round up of John O'Connell's choice of thrillers which include James Lee Burke's new Dave Robicheaux novel The Glass Rainbow, The Last Talk With Lola Faye by Thomas H Cook, Crimson China by Betsy Tobin and Andrew Klavan's The Identity Man. The full round-up can be found here.

Also to be found in the Guardian is a review of the new Eoin McNamee novel Orchid Blue. The review by John Burnside looks at the novel which is once again based on on an historical case which took place in Northern Ireland. Those of you that are familiar with his work will recognise the connection with his 2001 Booker Prize long-listed novel Blue Tango

Jenny Turner (again in the Guardian) has written an article about John Ajvide-Lindqvist's excellent novel Harbour. Lindqvist's latest novel is set on a fictional island where the hero is investigating the disappearance his daughter who has gone missing after he and his wife and the daughter have gone back to the island on a visit.

Maxim Jakubowski's top 10 crime locations are discussed in the Guardian. His book Following the Detectives has been published recently.

The Independent have listed what they consider the 50 best winter reads. The complete list can be found here. At least there are a number of crime novels on the list.

The Independent also have a review of the paperback issue of Arnaldur Indridason's novel Hypothermia.

The Daily Telegraph looks at the new George Clooney film The American and why filmgoers love the lone assassin. Clooney is also said to be rejoining his long-time collaborator Steven Soderbergh in the remake of the classic series The Man from U.N.C.L.E The article can be found here.

CJ Sansom talks about his life in books in the Guardian. The latest book in the Shardlake series is Heartstone and was released this year and was also shortlisted for the Ellis Peters Award.