July 2020
If it had happened to you, you would have run away too. Twenty-five years ago, Paul's friend Charlie Crabtree brutally killed their classmate - and then vanished without a trace. Paul's never forgiven himself for his part in what happened. He's never gone back home. Until his elderly mother has a fall. It's finally time to stop running. It's not long before things start to go wrong. His mother claims there's someone in the house. Paul realises someone is following him. And, in a town many miles away, a copycat killer has struck. Which makes him wonder - what really happened to Charlie the day of the murder? And can anyone stop it happening again? The Shadow Man is by Alex North.
How to Disappear is by Gillian McAllister. What do you do when you can't run, and you can't hide? Lauren's daughter Zara witnessed a terrible crime. But speaking up comes with a price, and when Zara's identity is revealed online, it puts a target on her back. The only choice is to disappear. To keep Zara safe Lauren will give up everything and everyone she loves, even her husband. There will be no goodbyes. Their pasts will be rewritten. New names, new home, new lives. The rules are strict for a reason. They are being hunted. One mistake - a text, an Instagram like - could bring their old lives crashing into the new. They can never assume someone isn't watching, waiting.
Imagine you've finally escaped the worst relationship of your life, running away with only a suitcase and a black eye. Imagine your new next-door neighbours are the friends you so desperately needed - fun, kind, empathetic, very much in love. Imagine they're in trouble. That someone is telling lies about them, threatening their livelihoods - and even their lives. Imagine your ex is coming for you. If your new best friends needed you to tell one small lie, and all of these problems would disappear, you'd do it, wouldn't you? It's only one small lie, until someone turns up dead. One White Lie is by Leah Konen.
Out of Time is by David Klass. American’s most wanted man. The world’s only hope? For months, the FBI have been on the hunt for a terrorist who seems invincible. The death toll is rising, yet somehow the killer, known only as the "Green Man", has avoided leaving a single clue. This is no ordinary villain. Each attack is carefully planned to destroy a target that threatens the environment. Each time, the protest movement that supports the Green Man grows ever larger. Tom Smith is a young computer programmer with the FBI, trying to escape his father's domineering shadow. An expert in pattern recognition, Tom believes he's spotted something everyone else has missed. At long last, Tom makes a breakthrough. But as he closes in on America's most dangerous man, he's forced to ask himself one question: What if the man you're trying to stop is the one who's trying to save the world?
Dark Waters is by G R Halliday. THREE MISTAKES. TWO MURDERS. ONE MORE VICTIM TO GO . . .Annabelle has come to the Scottish Highlands to escape. But as she speeds along a deserted mountain road, she is suddenly forced to swerve. The next thing she remembers is waking up in a dark, damp room. A voice from the corner of the room says 'The Doctor will be here soon'. Scott is camping alone in the Scottish woodlands when he hears a scream. He starts to run in fear of his life. Scott is never seen again. Meanwhile DI Monica Kennedy has been called to her first Serious Crimes case in six months - a dismembered body has been discovered, abandoned in a dam. Days later, when another victim surfaces, Monica knows she is on the hunt for a ruthless killer. But as she begins to close in on the murderer, her own dark past isn't far behind ...
Don’t Turn Around is by Jessica Barry. Two strangers, Cait and Rebecca, are driving across America. Rebecca is trying to escape something. Cait doesn't know what Rebecca has left behind her - she doesn't ask any questions - her job is solely to transport women to safety. But the secrets Rebecca holds could put them both in danger. Cait too has a past of her own - there's a reason she chooses to spend time on the road, looking out for others. Because she knows what it's like to be followed. As the two women travel across America, it quickly becomes clear someone is right behind them, watching their every move. The question is: who, and why?
When John Dyer returns to Oxford from Brazil with his young son, he doesn't expect to find them both in danger. Every day is the same. He drops Leandro at his smart prep school and walks to the library to research his new book. His time living on the edge as a foreign correspondent in Rio is over. But the rainy streets of this English city turn out to be just as treacherous as those he used to walk in the favelas. Leandro's schoolmates are the children of influential people, among them an international banker, a Russian oligarch, an American CIA operative and a British spook. As they congregate round the sports field for the weekly football matches, the network of alliances and covert interests that spreads between these power brokers soon becomes clear to Dyer. But it is a chance conversation with an Iranian nuclear scientist, Rustum Marvar, father of a friend of Leandro, that sets him onto a truly precarious path. When Marvar and his son disappear, several sinister factions seem acutely interested in Marvar's groundbreaking research at the Clarendon Lab, and what he might have told Dyer about it, given Dyer was the last person to see Marvar alive. The Sandpit is by Nicholas Shakespeare
August 2020
Eight Detectives is by Alex Pavesi. All murder mysteries follow a simple set of rules. Grant McAllister, an author of crime fiction and professor of mathematics, once sat down and worked them all out. But that was thirty years ago. Now he's living a life of seclusion on a quiet Mediterranean island - until Julia Hart, a sharp, ambitious editor, knocks on his door. His early work is being republished and together the two of them must revisit those old stories: an author, hiding from his past, and an editor, keen to understand it. But as she reads, Julia is unsettled to realise that there are things in the stories that don't make sense. Intricate clues that seem to reference a real murder, one that's remained unsolved for thirty years. If Julia wants answers, she must triumph in a battle of wits with a dangerously clever adversary. But she must tread carefully: she knows there's a mystery, but she doesn't yet realise there's already been a murder…
It's been a decade since Trumanell Branson disappeared from a farm, leaving only a bloody handprint behind. Her face still hangs on the posters on the walls of the town's Baptist Church, the police station, and in the high school. They all promise the same thing: We will find you. Meanwhile, her brother, Wyatt, lives as a pariah in the desolation of the old family house, cleared of wrongdoing by the police but tried and sentenced in the court of public opinion and in a new crime documentary. But when Wyatt finds a lost girl, he believes she is a sign. And for the town's youngest cop, Odette Tucker, the girl's mysterious appearance resurrects old wounds. Odette is haunted by her own history with the missing Tru. Desperate to solve both cases, Odette fights to save a lost girl in the present and to dig up the shocking truth about a fateful night in the past . . . We are all the Same in the Dark is by Julia Heaberlin.
When Margo goes in search of her birth mother for the first time, she meets her aunt, Nikki, instead. Margo learns that her mother, Susan, was a sex worker murdered soon after Margo's adoption. To this day, Susan's killer has never been found. Nikki asks Margo for help. She has received threatening and haunting letters from the murderer, for decades. She is determined to find him, but she can't do it alone... The Less Dead is by Denise Mina.
Three sisters. Three secrets. Three ways to fall… Forcibly seduced by George Villers, Duke of Buckingham and the King’s favourite, doctor’s daughter Hester was cast aside to raise her illegitimate son, Rafe, alone and in sereet. She hopes never to see his father again. Melis’s visions cause disquiet and talk. She sees what others can’t – and what has yet to be. She’d be denounced as a witch if Hester wasn’t so carefully protective. Young Hope’s beauty marks her out, drawing unwelcome attention to the family. Yet she cannot always resist others’ advances. And her sisters cannot always be on their guard. So when the powerful Duke decides to claim his son against Hester’s wishes, the sisters find themselves almost friendless and at his mercy. But are their secrets their undoing or their salvation? Because in the right hands a secret is the deadliest weapon of all… The Honey and the Sting is by E C Fremantle.
Arkhangel is by James Brabazon. Officially Max McLean doesn't exist. An off-the-books government asset he operates alone and without back-up. But when a routine mission is fatally compromised Max is lucky to escape alive. His only clue is a marked $100 dollar bill prised from the hands of a dead man. And the knowledge that he's been set up. To reveal the bill's secrets, Max must follow a trail that leads him from Paris to Tel Aviv and to a remote Russian village: Arkhangel. If he can survive long enough. Because it's soon clear there are other forces who will stop at nothing to get there first. And that the consequences of failure are too terrible to contemplate ...
On a cold, windswept night, Fiona arrives on a tiny, isolated island in Orkney. She accepted her old friend's invitation with some trepidation - her relationship with Madison has never been plain sailing. But as she approaches Madison's cottage, she sees that the windows are dark. The place has been stripped bare. No one knows where Madison has gone. As Fiona tries to find out where Madison has vanished to, she begins to unravel a web of lies. Madison didn't live the life she claimed to, and now Fiona's own life is in danger . . . Night Falls, Still Missing is by Helen Callaghan.
They'll call her a bad mother. Cole can live with that. Because when she breaks her son Miles out of the Male Protection Facility - designed to prevent him joining the 99% of men wiped off the face of the Earth - she's not just taking him back. She's setting him free. Leaving Miles in America would leave him as a lab experiment; a pawn in the hands of people who now see him as a treasure to be guarded, traded, and used. What kind of mother would stand by and watch her child suffer? But as their journey to freedom takes them across a hostile and changed country, freedom seems ever more impossible. It's time for Cole to prove just how far she'll go to protect her son. Afterland is by Lauren Beukes.
16-year-old Sadie Saunders is missing. Five friends set out into the woods to find her. But they're not just friends... THEY'RE SUSPECTS. You see, this was never a search party. It's a witch hunt. And not everyone will make it home alive. The Search Party is by Simon Lelic.
Una Richardson may finally be able to put her dark past behind her. As companion to the elegant Elspeth McKenzie, Una steps into a world of luxury and feels her heart beginning to mend. That is, until she meets Elspeth’s daughter, Kathryn, who resents Una’s place in her mother’s home. As Una becomes more entangled in Kathryn’s jealousy, she uncovers the family’s dark secrets. Including the mysterious deaths of the two girls who came before her. Just Like The Other Girls is by Claire Douglas.
September 2020
The Kingdom is by Jo Nesbo. In the mountains of Norway a man lives a peaceful existence. However one day his younger brother, always the more successful and charming of the two, turns up to visit, accompanied by his new wife. It soon turns out that the little brother is not quite as angelic as he seems.
October 2020
He's always been there. Now he's looking for you. There have always been deaths in the small town of Eriston over the years - more than can easily be explained. People dying in their houses, behind locked doors. Sean Cole thought he'd spotted a pattern. Thought he was on the trail of a killer. Now he's dead too. When his daughter Rebecca returns to the town, she realises that her father might have been onto something. But can she find the murderer before he finds her? Because if she can't, her father's shabby old Victorian house is no place to hide. Don’t Let Him In is by H A Linskey.
The Accident is by Nicola Moriarty. After a long year, three generations of a family are looking forward to spending a relaxing Christmas together. Driving together on Christmas Eve they are suddenly involved in an accident that will change their lives forever. But it is not just the physical scars that will take time to heal. The accident has exposed secrets which everyone hoped had would stay hidden. But this is just the beginning. No one has noticed that someone is missing. With no search party, and no one to sound the alarm, the clock is ticking. And time is running out.
November 2020
The Dublin Railway Murder is by Thomas Morris. One morning in November 1856 George Little, the chief cashier of the Broadstone railway terminus in Dublin, was found dead, lying in a pool of blood beneath his desk. His head had been almost severed; a knife lay nearby, but strangely the office door was locked, apparently from the inside. This was a deed of almost unheard-of brutality for the peaceful Irish capital: while violent crime was commonplace in Victorian London, the courts of Dublin had not convicted a single murderer in more than thirty years. From the first day of the police investigation it was apparent that this was no ordinary case. Detectives struggled to understand how the killer could have entered and then escaped from a locked room, and why thousands of pounds in gold and silver had been left untouched at the scene of the crime. Three of Scotland Yard's most celebrated sleuths were summoned to assist the enquiry, but all returned to London baffled. It was left to Superintendent Augustus Guy, the head of Ireland's first detective force, to unravel the mystery. Five suspects were arrested and released, with every step of the salacious case followed by the press, clamouring for answers. Under intense public scrutiny, Superintendent Guy found himself blocked at almost every turn. But then a local woman came forward, claiming to know the murderer....
Snow is falling in the exclusive alpine ski resort of Saint Antoine, as the shareholders and directors of Snoop, the hottest new music app, gather for a make or break corporate retreat to decide the future of the company. At stake is a billion-dollar dot com buyout that could make them all millionaires, or leave some of them out in the cold. The clock is ticking on the offer, and with the group irrevocably split, tensions are running high. When an avalanche cuts the chalet off from help, and one board member goes missing in the snow, the group is forced to ask - would someone resort to murder, to get what they want? One by One is by Ruth Ware.
Christmas 1938. The Westbury family and assorted friends have gathered together for another legendary Christmas at the family seat in Sussex. The champagne flows, the family silver sparkles and upstairs the bedrooms are made up ready for their occupants. But one bed will lie empty that night... Come Christmas morning David Campbell-Scott is found lying in the snow, crimson staining the white around him. A hunting rifle is lying beside him and there's only one set of footprints but something doesn't seem right to amateur sleuth Hugh Gaveston. Campbell-Scott had just returned from the East with untold wealth - why would he kill himself? Hugh sets out to investigate... A Christmas Murder is by Ada Moncrieff.
The Guest Book is by C L Pattinson. Charles and Grace wanted a quiet staycation honeymoon, but when their train terminates early due to a storm up ahead, they wonder if they made the wrong decision. Forced to take shelter in the nearest seaside town, Saltwater, they discover their fellow passengers have filled all the recommended B&Bs to the brim. There is only one guesthouse left. Unlike the rest of Saltwater, The Anchorage is entirely deserted. That night, with the storm howling relentlessly, Grace is woken by a child crying. She is haunted by the sound, until Charles convinces her it was only her imagination. But the next day, she finds a warning scrawled in the guest book: Leave now. Do not trust them. As the storm rages on, days go by and phone lines are down, transport links cut off. Grace is desperate to leave, but Charles remains unaffected by the eerie stillness of the house. Is it just Grace's imagination or do the owners, and Charles, have something to hide? THANK YOU FOR STAYING AT THE ANCHORAGE. WE HOPE YOU'LL BE BACK SOON...
