Books to Look Forward to from Head of Zeus

 July 2021

Cabin Fever is by Alex Dahl. Alone and isolated in a vast Scandinavian forest, a therapist begins to read her client's novel manuscript, only to discover the main character is terrifyingly familiar... You are her therapist. Kristina is a successful therapist in central Oslo. She spends her days helping clients navigate their lives with a cool professionalism that has got her to the top.She is your client. But when her client Leah, a successful novelist, arrives at her office clearly distressed, begging Kristina to come to her remote cabin in the woods, she feels the balance begin to slip.But out here in the woods. When Leah fails to turn up to her next two sessions, Kristina reluctantly heads out into the wilderness to find her.Nothing is as it seems. Alone and isolated, Kristina finds Leah's unfinished manuscript, and as she reads she realises the main character is terrifyingly familiar...

A blockbuster thriller set against one of the most horrific scenes in the Second World War. On Sunday 22nd June 1941 at 03.05, three-and-a-half million Axis troops burst into the Soviet Union along a 1,800-mile front to launch Operation Barbarossa. The southern thrust of the attack was aimed at the Caucuses and the oil fields beyond. Kyiv was the biggest city to stand in their way. Within six weeks, the city was under siege. Surrounded by Panzers, bombed and shelled day and night, Soviet Commissar Nikita Krushchev was amongst the senior Soviet officials co-ordinating the defence. Amid his cadre of trusted personnel is British defector Bella Menzies, once with MI5, now with the NKVD, the Soviet secret police. With the fall of the city inevitable, the Soviets plan a bloody war of terror that will extort a higher toll on the city's inhabitants than the invaders. As the noose tightens, Bella finds herself trapped, hunted by both the Russians and the Germans. Kyiv is by Graham Hurley.

Robert Ludlum's ™ The Bourne Treachery is by Brian Freeman. Three years ago, Jason Bourne embarked on a mission in Estonia with his partner and lover, a fiery Treadstone agent codenamed Nova. Their job was to rescue a Russian double agent, recently been smuggled out of St. Petersburg in the midst of an FSB manhunt. They failed. Their charge died at the hands of a shadowy assassin. Now, three years later, everything has changed. Nova is gone, killed in a mass shooting in Las Vegas. Bourne is a lone operative working in the shadows for Treadstone. He's awaiting his next assignment when his handler bring him shocking news.The Estonian mission was a set up. The double agent is still alive, deep in hiding from the Russian State Intelligence Agency. In order to find her, Bourne will have to come face to face with the errors of his past - and the death of the woman he love. And with the body count rising. he comes to an invevitable conclusion: Some secrets should stay buried.

Lone wolf Evan Ryder works for a clandestine, black-ops arm of the Department of Defence, dedicated to protecting America and its people. Or at least, she did. Having thwarted the international fascist syndicate known as Nemesis, Evan has returned to Washington D.C. to discover her division shut down, and her dead sister's children missing. Among the supporters of Nemesis were a cabal of American billionaires, whose influence reaches to the highest office in the country: the President of the United States. If Evan is to take them on and hunt down her family's kidnappers, she will have to learn to work with her former boss Ben Butler, and navigate their tricky past. The search will take them from the ports of Istanbul to an ancient church deep within the Carpathian Mountains of Romania. And all the while, an unimaginable enemy stalks in the shadows, an adversary whose secretive past will upend Evan's entire world - and might just annihilate her. The Kobalt Dossier is by Eric Van Lustbader.

August 2021

The Soul Breaker is by Sebastien Fitzek. The Soul Breaker destroys his victims. He doesn't kill them, or mutilate them. But he leaves them completely dead inside, paralysed and catatonic. His only trace a note left in their hands. There are three known victims when suddenly the abductions stop. The Soul Breaker has tired of his game, it seems. Meanwhile, a man has been found in the snow outside an exclusive psychiatric clinic. He has no recollection of who he is, or why he is there. Unable to match him to any of the police's missing people, the nurses call him Casper. Casper makes little progress regaining his memory, but he grows restless and wants to leave the clinic to piece together the few clues to his life. But the weather has taken a turn for the worse, and the clinic becomes completely cut off to the world outside. No one is able to reach the clinic, and its staff and patients cannot leave. So when the head psychiatrist is found trembling, naked and distraught, with a slip of paper clasped in her hands, it seems somehow the Soul Breaker has returned...

September 2021

The Man on Hackpen Hill is by J S Monroe. It isn't unusual for crop circles to appear overnight on Hackpen Hill. In this part of Wiltshire, where golden wheat fields stretch for miles, the locals have got used to discovering strange mathematical patterns stamped into the earth. But this time, it's different. Not only because this particular design of dramatic spiralling hexagons has never been seen before. But because of the dead body positioned precisely in the centre of the circle. DI Silas Hart, of Swindon Police, is at a loss. Only Jim, a scientist at secretive government laboratory Porton Down, knows the chilling truth about the man on Hackpen Hill. And he wants Bella, a trainee journalist on her first ever story, to tell the world. But Silas has other ideas - and a boss intent on a cover up. As Bella and Jim race against time, dark forces conspire against them, leading them to confront the reality of their own past and a world in which nothing is as it seems.

October 2021

Lemon is by Kwon Yeo-sun. In the summer of 2002, nineteen-year-old Kim Hae-on was murdered in what became known as the High School Beauty Murder. There were two suspects: Shin Jeongjun, who had a rock-solid alibi, and Han Manu, to whom no evidence could be pinned. The case went cold. Seventeen years pass without justice, and the grief and uncertainty take a cruel toll on her younger sister, Da-on, in particular. Unable to move on with her life, Da-on tries in her own twisted way to recover some of what she's lost, ultimately setting out to find the truth of what happened. Told at different points in time from the perspectives of Da-on and two of Hae-on's classmates, Lemon is a piercing psychological portrait that takes the shape of a crime novel.

November 2021

'Good morning. It's 7.35 AM. And you're listening to your biggest nightmare.' This morning a dangerous psychopath is playing an old game with new rules. He's taken six people hostage at Berlin's leading radio station. Every hour, a telephone will ring somewhere in Berlin. Maybe it will be in your house. Or your office. And if you pick up and answer with the new slogan, then a hostage will be set free. Sounds fair, doesn't it? Police psychologist Ira Samin is rushed to the scene, where she must negotiate live on air. With the nation listening, the kidnapper makes an impossible demand. Can she give him what he wants? And all the while, somewhere in the city... a telephone is ringing. Amok is by Sebastien Fitzek.

Dohany Street is by Adam Lebor. Budapest, January 2016. The Danube is grey and half-frozen, covered with ice, and the city seems to have gone into hibernation. But not for Detective Balthazar Kovacs. He has been called out to investigate the disappearance of a young Israeli historian, Elad Harari. Harari was working in the archives of the city's Jewish museum, researching what happened to the assets of the Hungarian Jews murdered in the Holocaust. His work could bring justice to the families of those who died, but it seems not everyone welcomed his probing into the country's darkest period. Balthazar soon finds that there are powerful forces out to sabotage his investigation, as bizarre warnings escalate to violent attacks. When they finally make their demand, Balthazar will be forced to make an impossible decision: give up real evidence of horrific wrongdoing in Hungary's past, or see the young historian die.

Books to Look Forward to from Head of Zeus

July 2016

Pretty Jane and the Viper of Kidbroke Lane is by Paul Thomas Murphy. In April 1871, a constable walking a beat near Greenwich found a girl dying in the mud - her face cruelly slashed and her brains protruding from her skull. The girl was Maria Jane Clouson, a maid for the respectable Pook family, and who was pregnant at the time of her death. When the blood-spattered clothes of the 20-year-old Edmund Pook, alleged father of the dead girl's unborn child, were discovered, the matter seemed open and shut. Yet there followed a remarkable legal odyssey full of unexpected twists as the police struggled to build a case. 

Meet Liz Lyon: respected TV producer, stressed-out executive, guilty single mother...woman of the hour. StoryWorld is the nation's favourite morning show, and producer Liz Lyon wants to keep it that way. Her job is to turn real-life stories into thrilling TV - and keep a lid on the scandals and backbiting that happen off-stage. But then simmering tensions erupt at the station, trapping Liz in a game of one-upmanship where she doesn't know the rules. As the power struggle intensifies, can Liz keep her cool and keep her job? Does she even want to? Woman of the Hour is by Jane Lythell.

August 2016

Any Minute Now is by Eric Van Lustbader. Red Rover, the blakest of black ops teams, is finished - betrayed on a mission to capture and interrogate a mysterious Saudi deep in Pakistan. One of the team was killed, the remaining two barely escaped alive. Now, the unit has been shut down and Greg Whitman and Felix Orteno are left adrift, wondering what went wrong. Into their midst comes Charlize Daou, a brilliant, wildly talented arms expert, who becomes the reason - and supplies the means - to resurrect their mission. Disobeying orders, they secretly set out to find the Saudi - the first step in a perilous journey that will lead them to the dark heart of a terrifying conspiracy that threatens to change the balance of power across the globe.

September 2016

The girl who teetered out of the doorway was exactly who they were looking for...It's

Hallowe'en, and the people of Cork are partying. At half past two in the morning, a girl with green hair and sad eyes stumbles out of a club. She never makes it home. DS Katie Maguire and her team are stretched to their limit. A gang of dognappers are terrorising the kennel owners of Cork. The city's drug trade is at an all-time high. Now they have a missing girl to find too - and all in the glare of the media spotlight. As Katie closes in on the truth, she realises that the three cases might be connected. And that with every second she spends investigating, the clock ticks on for the missing girl, trapped in a living death...  Living Death is by Graham Masterton.

The Borrowed is by Chan Ho-Kei.  Six interlocking stories. One spellbinding novel. The year is 2013, and Hong Kong's greatest detective is dying. For fifty years, Inspector Kwan quietly solved cases while the world changed around him. Now his partner Detective Lok has come to his deathbed for help with one final case. Where there is murder, there is humanity. This bold and intricate crime novel spans five decades of love, honour, race, class, jealousy and revenge in one of the most intriguing nations in the world. This is the story of a man who let justice shine in the space between black and white. This is the story of Hong Kong.

A controversial, right-wing, German politician is due to speak at the Oxford Union. Following a series of murders linked to a violent anarchist group, the city is on high alert. DCI Hanlon has been partnered with DI Huss to ensure the speech goes smoothly and put an end to the killing. The murders soon reveal a chilling alliance between the anarchists and European Jihadis. And when Hanlon traces the killer she soon realises that the truth has a terrible price. Is Hanlon willing to meet the cost?  An Incidental Death is by Alex Howard.

November 2016

Celcius Daly is investigating the abduction of a boy by a group of travellers already under investigation for smuggling and organised crime. As he digs into the child's background, he discovers a family secret linked to an unsolved crime during the Troubles - the disappearance of a young woman and her baby. Daly's investigation shakes loose some harrowing truths about the past treatment of travellers and the present day lawlessness of Northern Ireland's border country. Undergoing an internal investigation over his handling of the search for IRA spy Daniel Hegarty, Daly realises that he has much in common with the beleaguered and outcast travellers and soon finds himself entangled in a vigilante mission, discovering just how far a group of outsiders will go to find their own justice.  Trespass is by Anthony J Quinn

Jack the Ripper is edited by Otto Penzler.  The predatory ritual, the escalating savagery of the crimes, the grisly trophies taken from his victim's bodies, the games played with his pursuers, the cannibalism: Jack the Ripper's reign of terror in London's East End during the autumn of 1888 casts a long shadow. Many have murdered more, but few have killed so brutally and none have forged such an enduring legend. For a century and a quarter the Ripper's crimes have appalled and fascinated in equal measure, inspiring over one hundred theories about this prototypical serial killer's identity and spawning thousands of works of fiction. This collection is the ultimate exploration of the Ripper legend. It sifts through Jack's legacy, blending the true story (told via contemporary reports and a century's worth of the best analysis) with the best crime and horror fiction his depraved deeds have inspired.

UN covert negotiator, Yael Azoulay, has been sent to Reykjavik to broker a secret meeting between US President Freshwater and the Iranian president. Both parties want the violence to stop, but Yael soon realises that powerful enemies are pulling the strings. Enemies for whom peace means an end to their lucrative profit streams. The Reykjavik Assignment is by AdamLebor.

December 2016

Germany, October 1944: Dozens of cities lie in ruins. Enemy armies are at the gates. For the Thousand Year Reich, time is running out. Desperate to avoid the humiliation of unconditional surrender, German intelligence launch Operation Finisterre - a last-ditch plan to enable Hitler to deny the savage logic of a war on two fronts and bluff his way to the negotiating table. Success depends on two individuals: Stefan Portisch, a German naval officer washed ashore on the coast of Spain after the loss of his U-boat, and Hector Gomez, an ex-FBI detective, planted by Director J. Edgar Hoover in the middle of the most secret place on earth: the American atomic bomb complex. Both men will find themselves fighting for survival as Operation Finisterre plays itself out.  Finisterre is by Graham Hurley.

Road Rage is by Hanna Jameson. A new thriller set in the nowhereland between New York and LA. Eli and Ronnie are two British ex-cons on the road in America. Their mission is to find Trent, a guy who screwed them over and disappeared. But now, after forty hours driving through yellow desert, eating at lonely motels, what seemed real is no longer certain. Where did Trent stay? What did he do? Did he even exist at all? Leaving violent killings in their wake, Ronnie and Eli can do nothing except keep travelling. Now, trapped in a nightmarish road trip together, these two men must confront their own personal demons before they can come home.

Books to Look Forward to from Head of Zeus

Klara Walldeen, orphaned as a child and brought up by her grandparents on a remote Swedish archipelago, is now a political aide in Brussels.  And she has just seen something she shouldn't: something people will kill to keep hidden.  On the other side of the world, an old spy hides from his past.  Once, he was a man of action: so dedicated to the cause that he abandoned his baby daughter to keep his cover.  Now the only thing he lives for is swimming in the local pool.  Then, on Christmas eve, Klara is thrown into a terrifying chase through Europe. Only the Swimmer can save her.  But time is running out...  The Swimmer is the debut novel by Joakim Zander and is due to be published in July 2014.

The Moon Pool is by Sophie Littlefield and is due to be published in October 2014.  North Dakota is like nowhere Colleen has ever seen.  Vast rolling plains of silvery snow, studded with shimmering black pools, lit by occasional flares of orange light.  It is a landscape both beautiful and terrible.  It is the landscape that swallowed her son.  Across town, another mother also searches for her missing boy.  He too went missing from the oilfields where he worked.  And no one - not his employers, not the police - seems to care that he is gone.  As long as they are alone, these two women will never find out the truth.  But if they team up, and help each other, then maybe, just maybe, this freezing wilderness will give them back their sons.

C.J. Box has been consistently hailed for his brilliant storytelling and his extraordinary skills at creating character, suspense, and a deep sense of place.  All of those strengths can be found in the ten riveting stories - three of them written especially for this book - that make up Shots Fired.  In 'One-Car Bridge,' one of four Joe Pickett stories, Pickett goes up against a 'plain mean' landowner, with disastrous consequences, and in 'Shots Fired,' his investigation into the radio call of the title nearly ends up being the last thing he ever does.  In 'Pirates of Yellowstone,' two Eastern Europeans, strangers in a strange land, hear that American tough guys can be ruthless, but it's not till they try strong-arming one that they discover the real truth of the statement; and in 'Le Sauvage Noble,' a Lakota Indian takes a job in the Wild West Show at Disneyland Paris and finds its perks to be pleasant - good wages, decent food, and French women who find his 'noble savage' act to be pretty exotic - that is, until he meets Sophie.  Then he finds out what 'savage' really means.  Shots Fired is due to be published in July 2014.

Disappeared is by Anthony Quinn and is due to be published in August 2014.  In Northern Ireland’s darkest corner, the Troubles have never ended.  Though bombs no longer rock Belfast, for some the fight goes on.  Retired Special Branch agent David Hughes disappears after looking into the previously closed case of Oliver Jordan, who went missing at the hands of the IRA decades ago.  Soon after, a former spy is found bludgeoned to death, the day after placing his own obituary in the newspaper.  Beneath Northern Ireland’s modern calm, ancient jealousies threaten to rend the country asunder once more.  A Catholic detective in a Protestant nation, Celcius Daly knows too well the agonies of sectarian strife.  To solve this string of murders, he must reach decades into the past, confronting a painful history that Ireland would prefer to forget. 

Two books by Phillip Hunter are due to be published in September 2014.  The first is To Die For, which is the first book in The Killing Machine series.  To Die For is a novel of vengeance and betrayal about a runaway twelve-year-old girl and her protector, Joe, a broken down ex-soldier who has turned his face from the world.  It is easy to be anonymous in the city.  Make no ties.  Work, on one side of the law or the other. Drift from place to place.  Keep your head down.  Hide when you must.  It was the life ex-soldier Joe threw himself into when the woman he loved was murdered.  The life that has ultimately betrayed him. But in all this, Joe does have one thing left worth protecting in his care.  Something he would sacrifice himself for gladly.  A twelve-year-old girl called Kid. And now the life he chose is coming for them both...  To Kill For is the second book in the series.  Ex-boxer, ex-paratrooper, Joe once had meaning in his life.  People, who cared for him, people who needed him.  Then he lost everything, and now he is a hitman for London's most vicious criminals.  Brenda was the only woman who ever loved him.  The only woman who believed he could escape the underworld.  She died protecting others: now Joe wants revenge on her killers.  With nothing left to lose, Joe prepares for the fight of his life...

Bravo Shaw always knew his father had secrets, he just didn't realise how dangerous they were...When Bravo's father dies in mysterious circumstances, his hidden life is laid bare.  Dexter Shaw belonged to a secret religious order long thought extinct.  For centuries, the sect has guarded a lost Testament that could end Christianity, as we know it.  Dexter was the Keeper of the Testament - now his son must take his place.  Bravo has to solve the clues his father left behind, locate this precious document, and ward off those who want it destroyed.  But his enemies are powerful, and will stop at nothing to keep their secrets buried...  The Testament is by Eric Van Lustbader and is due to be published in August 2014.

In Death Sentences: Stories of Deathly Books, Murderous Booksellers and Lethal Literature Sigmund Freud deals with an unwelcome visitor; Columbo confronts a murderous bookseller; a Mexican cartel kingpin with a fatal weakness for rare books; deadly secrets deep in the London Library: who knew literature could be so lethal?  Here are 15 short stories to die for from the world's best crime writers.  With an introduction from Ian Rankin, Death Sentences includes original, specially commissioned stories about deadly books from Jeffrey Deaver, Andrew Taylor, Laura Lippman, C.J. Box, Anne Perry, Ken Bruen, Thomas H. Cook, Micky Spillaine & Max Adam Collins, Nelson DeMille and John Connolly.  Death Sentences is edited by Otto Penzler and is due to be published in October 2014.

Books to Look Forward to from Head of Zeus!

Alli Carson was once First Daughter, only child of the US President. Then, after a car crash killed her father and hospitalised her mother. Alli battled her grief and threw herself into her FBI training at the elite Fearington Institute. Alli thought she had nothing more to lose...but she was wrong. On the same night that her mother dies from her injuries, Alli's boyfriend is brutally murdered - and she is the only suspect. Suspended from her work, bewildered and alone, Alli must find a way to contact the one person she can trust: National Security Adviser, Jack McClure. Jack knows that Alli is innocent.  So who would want to frame her for murder?  With Fearington in lockdown, they must navigate a treacherous underworld of violence and intrigue to uncover the truth...  Blood Trust is the third book in the Jack McClure series by Eric Van Lustbader and is due to be published in July 2013.

Kiyomi Ishida was just twenty years old when she left Japan for a better life in London. Now nicknamed Seven, she’s had to work her way up to gain access to The Underground, an exclusive club that fuels the night time urges of the gang lords, traffickers, and madams that stalk the streets of south London.  Resourceful and ruthless, Seven will do anything to fund her future; preferably a future far away from here. But as she becomes associated with a mercenary Russian gang, Seven must decide. How many people will she betray to further her own ends?  Girl Seven is the second book in the London Underground series by Hanna Jameson and is due to be published in December 2013.

It was Danielle and Gracie's secret. A teenage adventure. A 1000 mile drive along the spine of the Rocky Mountains to visit Danielle's boyfriend in Montana. Their parents were never to know. But now the girls have simply vanished. The only person who knows they're missing is Danielle's boyfriend. He persuades his father, an ex-cop, to search for them. But he too simply disappears. Its up to his new partner, war widow and single mother Cassie Dewell to find them. Her investigation will introduce her to the FBI's Highway Serial Killer Task Force, force her to confront a spate of roadside sexual mutilations and murders and lead her into the lair of a predator who styles himself The Lizard King.  The Highway is by C J Box and is due to be published in August 2013.

The Abomination is the first book in the trilogy by Jonathan Hole and is due to be published in October 2013.  THE VICTIM: On the steps of Santa Maria della Salute lies the body of a woman, wearing the robes of a Catholic priest. In the eyes of the Church, she is an abomination. THE INVESTIGATOR: Captain Kat Tapo has matched the victim's tattoo to graffiti in an abandoned asylum. Now she's been ordered to close the case. THE HACKER: Carnivia.com is a virtual Venice that holds the city's secrets. Only its reclusive creator can help Kat unearth the shocking truth...THE ABOMINATION has arrived.

The Bull Slayer is the second book in the series featuring Pliny the Younger by BruceMacbain and is due to be published in July 2013. THE ROMAN EMPIRE, 109 AD the frontier province of Bithynia is a cesspit of sedition, rotten with corruption and seething with hatred of Rome. When a rich Roman official is found dead on a desolate hillside; two riderless horses tethered in a nearby wood, it is assumed he was killed as a protest against Emperor Trajan's unlimited power. But Pliny the Younger, newly appointed Governor of Bithynia, is not so sure. Who was the other rider? What were the two of them doing in the middle of nowhere? And what links this murder to a secret cult of the Persian sun god, Mithras - the Bull Slayer?  But as Pliny pursues one baffling lead after another, he is being betrayed where he least expects it: his beautiful wife, neglected and lonely in an alien city, falls desperately in love with a handsome young provincial – an affair which threatens to ruin Pliny’s career.

When a movie producer hurtles to his death from the top of the Golden Gate Bridge, an apparent suicide, it shocks the film community and puts a two hundred million dollar production in jeopardy. A female colleague comes forward claiming it was murder, but the police are sceptical.  Preoccupied by a sudden drug war between the tong gangs of Chinatown and the mob, they listen to her story and send her packing. She turns to private detective Cape Weathers, who believes her just enough to let her pay his day rate. Then two Russian gangsters show up on his doorstep and tell him to drop the case or die. Cape and his partner Sally - a female assassin raised by the Triads - take on the Russian mob, a major movie studio, and a recalcitrant police department by enlisting the help of rogue cops, computer hackers, and an investigative journalist who just doesn't give a damn. But with a sniper on their trail, the challenge will be staying alive long enough to learn the truth.  Beating the Babushka is the second book in the San Francisco Noir series by Tim Maleeny and is due to be published in October 2013.

An American spy in China. Name: Unknown. Status: Sleeper. He's meant to be laying low, polishing his Mandarin and awaiting further instructions from Washington. But Shanghai is a difficult city to sleep in, especially when his nights are taken over by the seductive but enigmatic Mei - a woman with secrets he'd rather not hear. Then he is tasked with a delicate operation. Infiltrate the core of the Chinese intelligence service. Distinguish friend from foe. Report to a single contact at HQ. Trust no one. Tell no one. Pushed out into the cold, in a city of millions he's suddenly very, very alone. But in Shanghai city you're never truly alone. Faceless strangers linger in the shadows, watching your every move. No one is safe from the Guoanbu. Not even a spy with no name.  The Shanghai Factor is by Charles McCarry and is due to be published in July 2013.

A car tumbles through darkness down a snowy ravine. A woman without a name walks out of a dust storm in Africa. And in the seething heat of Lagos City, a criminal cartel scours the Internet, looking for victims. Lives intersect. Worlds collide. And it all begins with a single email: 'Dear Sir, I am the daughter of a Nigerian diplomat, and I need your help...' At once a chilling thriller about a lonely woman avenging her father's death and an epic portrait of morality and corruption across the globe, Will Ferguson's Giller Prize-winning novel plunges into the labyrinth of lies that is '419', the world's most insidious Internet scam.  419 is due to be published in September 2013.

Master of War is by David Gilman and is due to be published in August 2013.  England, 1346: For Thomas Blackstone the choice is easy - dance on the end of a rope for a murder he did not commit, or take up his war bow and join the king's invasion of France. As he fights his way across northern France, Blackstone will learn the brutal lessons of war - from the terror and confusion of his first taste of combat, to the savage realities of siege warfare. Vastly outnumbered, Edward III's army will finally confront the armoured might of the French nobility on the field of Crecy. It is a battle that will change the history of warfare, a battle that will change the course of Blackstone's life, a battle that is just the first chapter in a book of legend - Blackstone: Master of War.

In a freezing river in rural Cork, a black-cloaked figure lies bloated and lifeless. It is the

body of a Catholic priest, and he's been bound, garrotted...and castrated. Horrific stories about child abuse in the Church are only just coming to light in Ireland. So this must be a revenge killing by someone who couldn't face the courts. Detective Katie Maguire, of the Irish Gardaí, is not so sure. Two more castrated priests have been found violently murdered, and now her investigation is being obstructed at every turn. Katie's home life is in turmoil, and she knows she must soon choose between her boyfriend and her job. But when she unearths a sinister cover-up that will shake the very foundations of mystical Catholic belief, that choice becomes a matter of life or death.  Broken Angels is the second book in the Kate Maguire series by Graham Masterton and is due to be published in September 2013.

Sandrine is by Thomas H Cook and is due to be published in August 2013. How did Sandrine die? There was no forced entry. She had been gradually stockpiling prescription drugs. A lethal quantity of Demerol was found in her blood. But did the beautiful, luminous Sandrine Madison really take her own life? The District Attorney doesn't think so. Neither does the local newspaper. And so Sandrine's husband must now face a town convinced of his guilt and a daughter whose faith in her father has been shaken to its core. But, as he stands in the dock, Samuel Madison must confront yet more searing questions: Who was Sandrine? Why did she die? And why - how? - is she making him fall in love with her all over again? A psychological thriller from a true master, Sandrine will hold you in its spell until its unexpected end.

1954: Comandante Guzman has been posted deep into the Basque country to confront a man known only as 'El Lobo'. High in the mountains, Guzman will have to fight for his life, not only against El Lobo, but also against someone who has been searching for him for a very long time...2010, Madrid: Forensic Investigator Ana Maria Galindez has spent seven months in hospital recovering from the blast that nearly killed her. Her obsession with Guzman's fate has disturbed long dormant forces. Now she shall reap the consequences: she will be purposely humiliated, abandoned by colleagues and friends, accused of murder...and worse.  The Exile is by Mark Oldfield and is due to be published in October 2013.

The Mangle Street Murders is the first in the Gower Street Detective series by M.R.C Kasasian and is due to be published in September 2013. March Middleton has moved to Gower Street to live with her curmudgeonly guardian, Sidney Grice, London's most famous personal detective. She is intelligent, witty, and talkative. He things young women should be seen and not heard. But he grudgingly allows her to join his latest murder case: a young woman is dead and her loving husband is the only suspect.  Their investigations lead the pair to the darkest alleys of the East End: every twist leads Sidney Grice to think the husband guilty; but March is convinces that he is innocent. And as the case threatens to foment civil unrest, Sidney Grice finds his reputations is not the only thing in mortal danger...

The Killing Machine is by Phillip Hunter and is due to be published in November 2013. Massive, glowering, and ugly as sin, former soldier and ex-boxer Joe has always invited violence.  But now Hackney’s most vicious gangs all want to kill him.  As he tries to unravel the knot of events that have made him a target, Joe is drawn back into his past, back to the memory of the only woman he ever loved.  Brenda was a prostitute who dreamed of something better.  Now she’s dead, and her murder, unsolved haunts Joe every night.  Then a twelve year old runaway enters his life.  Kid is traumatised, mute, and sees Joe as her saviour.  Life has made Joe a machine.  Can Kid – as Brenda once did – make him again?

Cat DeLuca's short, stormy marriage was a crash course in infidelity - his, not hers. But two years of unholy matrimony taught her everything she needed to know to launch the Pants On Fire Detective Agency. Now armed with spy glasses, camera, chocolate and a beagle named Inga, Cat specializes in avenging-all-cheated-upon-women. Sticks and Stones: Cleo Jones' husband stole her money, took her dog and slept with her sister - so she can't feel too guilty about shooting him full of buckshot. But she didn't kill him - despite swearing that she would. So when his corpse is found with a large calibre bullet hole in his chest, guess who's the number one suspect? Shame no one but Cat believes Cleo is innocent. So who did pull the trigger? Turns out there is no shortage of suspects.  Sticks and Stones is the second book in the Pants on Fire Detective Agency series by KJ Larsen and is due to be published in September 2013.

The Dangerous Edge of Things is the first book in the series featuring Tai Randolph by Tina Whittle and is due to be published in August 2013. Tai Randolph has just moved to Atlanta. She thought inheriting a Confederate-themed gun shop was her biggest headache - until she finds a young but dead woman in her brother's driveway. With her brother missing and her firearms connection, the siblings are the Atlanta Police Department's number one suspects. Tai is determined to clear their name. But it doesn't look good. Where's her brother? What's his connection with the dead woman? Why is she being tailed by a private security company? Why will no one tell her the truth? Tai is lead from tasteful suburbia to the cold-eyed glamour of Atlanta's adult entertainment scene to the gilded treachery of the city's most exclusive enclaves. The closer she gets to the truth, the less likely she is to survive. To live long enough to clear her name, she's going to have to trust the most dangerous man she's ever met.

Two books by Ben Cheetham are due to be published in December 2013.  The first is Blood Guilt. Can you ever atone for the death of another by your own hand?  The paperback launch of this bestselling, feverish race-against-time thriller.  Harlan Miller used to be the best detective in Sheffield. But after the death of his son, his life spiralled out of control. One booze-soaked night, he killed a man, was charged, and went down for manslaughter.  Now, after four years in prison, Harlan is free, consumed by guilt, and desperate to atone for the death he caused. Then something happens, something terrible, yet something that offers Harlan a chance at the redemption he craves – the dead man’s son is abducted. And Harlan’s purpose is clear.  He must save the boy to avenge the father.  The second is Angel of Death. In the pursuit of justice, would you break the law? DI Jim Monahan must protect a damaged woman from her criminal past.  In Sheffield, a bankrupt businessman has murdered his family. It seems like an open-and-shut case: a desperate man resorting to desperate measures. In Middlesbrough, a woman named Angel is heading south.  She is a woman alone. A prostitute. Now a murderer. And she has only one thing on her mind: revenge.   Two crimes, a hundred miles apart, but a terrible secret connects them. And although the courts may not agree, DI Jim Monahan has all the proof he needs to bring down justice on a group of particularly vicious criminals...