Books to Look Forward to From House of Zeus

The Three Day Affair is by Michael Kardos and is due to be published in January 2013.  Will, Jeffrey, and Nolan have been friends since college.  Their lives are normal, even boring.  Until one shocking moment changes everything.  One night they stop at a convenience store for Jeffrey to pick up cigarettes.  Within moments, Jeffrey comes out of the store looking confused and terrified.  He is dragging a young woman towards Will’s car and shouting at him to drive.  In a moment of madness, he has robbed the store, and she is the only witness.  Suddenly three ordinary men find themselves in an agonizing moral nightmare, debating what to do with their hostage.  For these friends, three days will decide their fate — between freedom and prison, innocence and guilt, life and death.

It is AD 529 and Constantinople is a city simmering on the edge of chaos,  a maelstrom of creeds, cults and cultures.  at is heart lies the Great Palace  and the imperial court of the roman Empire, a seething knot of ambition,  competition, intrigue and treachery.  John the Eunuch, Lord Chamberlain to the Emperor Justinian,  is faced with a particularly byzantine problem: he must discover why three  of Constantinople’s holy stylites have burned to death as they stand  atop their pillars – just as a heretical preacher foretold they would.  The hand of God or mortal?  John must find out before hell is unleashed.  Two for Joy is by M E Mayer and is due to be published in  June 2013.

Cat DeLuca’s short, stormy marriage was a crash course in infidelity – his, not hers.  It taught her everything she needed to launch her own Detective agency.  Cat DeLuca, recently divorced, owner of the Pants On Fire Detective agency, and the only daughter in a family of Chicago’s finest, doesn’t have any pity for unfaithful spouses.  If they’re cheating, she’ll catch them.  But this time her client seems to have set her on the case of an innocent man.  In fact, the suave and handsome Chance Savino isn’t even married.  When Chance disappears after a bombing, Cat makes enquiries into her client.  It transpires that her client Rita Polansky is a journalist for the local paper, but when Cat tracks her to an apartment building, she finds Savino…  standing over Rita’s dead body.  Liar, Liar is the debut novel by KJ Larsen and is due to be published in March 2013.

What Comes Next is by John Katenbach and is due to be published in May 2013.  After receiving a diagnosis of degenerative dementia, a slow but sure death  sentence, Adrian Thomas, a retired professor, decides to go home and shoot himself, but fate intervenes when he witnesses a man and a woman in an  unmarked van kidnap 16-year-old runaway Jennifer Riggins.  Jennifer awakes blindfolded and gagged, strapped to a metal bed frame.  Her clothes have been removed.  The webcam above turns to ‘live feed’  as an email has goes out: Victim Number 4 lives today.  But what will  happen tomorrow?  Can the professor save Jennifer?

Edgar Award Winning author Dana Stabenow is the author of the Kate Shugak novels.  Alaskan investigator Kate Shugak becomes entangled in bitter tribal rivalries in her twentieth murder case and first UK hardback outing.  One hundred years of bad blood between two Alaskan villages, come to a boil when the body of a young Kushtaka man is found wedged in a fish wheel.  Sergeant Jim Chopin’s prime suspect is a Kuskulana man who is already in trouble in both villages for falling in love across the river.  But when he disappears, both tribes refuse to speak to Jim – so when there’s a second murder which looks suspiciously like payback, Jim calls on Kate Shugak for help.  Now Kate must untangle the village tales of tragedy and revenge if she is to find the truth before it’s too late...  Bad Blood is due to be published in February 2013.

Traitor’s Gate is a nerve-shredding thriller based around the first plot to kill Hitler, 

the story of a secret conflict ignited on the eve of World War Two.  Conrad de Lancey is a young, upper-class man who, disillusioned by his  experiences fighting with the International Brigade in Spain, moves to Berlin  to write an exposé on what’s really happening in Hitler’s Germany.  Following the death of his cousin Joachim at the hands of the SS, Conrad  meets up with Theo von Hertenberg, a university friend from their years  together at Oxford.  Conrad and Theo become involved in the beginning of  the German army’s resistance to Hitler’s increasingly aggressive stance towards the rest of Europe.  as the stakes grow, allegiances are questioned and both  men find they stand to lose everything — and everyone — they hold dear.  Traitor’s Gate is by Michael Ridpath and is due to be published in June 2013.

The Abomination is a dazzling, multi-layered thriller set in modern-day Venice and is the first in the Carnivia Trilogy.

 THE VICTIM: a body has washed up from the Grand Canal.  a woman,  wearing the robes of a priest – a desecration known as The abomination.  THE INVESTIGATOR: The trail leads Captain Kat Tapo from the backstreets of Venice to an abandoned Catholic asylum.  Then the case is shut down.  Why?  THE MASKED CITY: In an encrypted online simulation of Venice, secrets are shared, and anonymity guaranteed.  It’s the only place Kat can seek the truth.  THE CONSPIRACY: In the dark depths of post-war politics, Europe’s history was re-written in blood.  Now powerful people want the past to stay buried…  The Abomination is the debut novel by Jonathan Holt and is due to be published in May 2013.

The Boyfriend is by Thomas Perry and is due to be published in March 2013 Private investigator Jack Till is an ex-LaPD homicide detective.  When the parents of a recently murdered young girl ask for his help after the police come up empty, Till reluctantly takes the case.  The victim had been working as a high-class prostitute, and as Till digs deeper he finds that she was one of several young female escorts killed in different cities in the same manner – all had strawberry blonde hair and all were shot with a 9mm in their home.  As the body count rises, Till must risk his life to find a seductive and ruthless killer whose murderous spree masks a far deadlier agenda.

Tyrant Mind is a chilling mystery series: greed, lust, violence and murder  disrupt monastic life in 13th Century Britain.  In the winter of 1271, Death stalks the corridors of Wynethorpe Castle on  the Welsh border.  When the Grim reaper touches the beloved grandson of the  castle lord, Baron Adam sends for his daughter, Prioress Eleanor of Tyndal,  and her sub-infirmarian, Sister Anne, to save the child with prayers and  healing talents.  Soon after the trio arrives, an important guest is murdered.  The prioress’ brother Robert, bloody dagger in hand, stands over the corpse.  all others may believe in his guilt, but Eleanor is convinced her brother is innocent.  Tyrant Mind is by Priscilla Royal and is due to be published in May 2013.

Breaking Point is the latest book in the Joe Picket series by C J Box.  Lyle Pendergast was a hard-working, upright local business owner.  But two men have been murdered.  and all signs point to Pendergast as the killer.  The problem is, he’s just disappeared.  Game warden Joe Pickett is organising the manhunt, but as he investigates, he begins to wonder: was Lyle’s family really torn apart by debt?  Did he really crack because his land was under threat?  As Pickett gets closer to the truth, he realises powerful forces want Lyle not just caught, but dead and the same goes for anyone who stands in their way.  Breaking Point is due to be published in April 2013.

Last Snow is the second book in the Jack McClure series by Eric Van Lustbader and is due to be published in April 2013.  An American senator, supposedly on a political trip to the Ukraine, turns up dead on the island of Capri.  When the President asks him to find out how and why, Jack McClure sets out from Moscow across Eastern Europe, following a perilous trail of diplomats, criminals and corrupt politicians.  As he struggles to unearth the answers he seeks, hunted by everyone from the Russian mafia to the Ukrainian police to his own NSA, McClure learns just how far up the American and Russian political ladders corruption and treachery has reached.  and though Jack’s abilities are as good as it gets, there is much more to gain – and lose – on this journey than the truth about the Senator.

The Detective’s Daughter is by Lesley Thomson and is due to be published in May 2013.  A woman reconnects with her dead father by solving the murder case  that obsessed him in life.  Summer, 1981: the body of Kate Rokesmith is found by the river Thames in London.  Her four-year-old son is wandering nearby, traumatised and mute.  Detective Inspector Darnell cancels yet another trip he had promised his daughter and heads for the scene of the crime.  The murder is never solved.  Winter, 2011: Stella Darnell is annoyed to have her routine interrupted by the news that her father has died of a heart attack.  Dutifully sorting his belongings, she finds the case papers for the Kate Rokesmith murder gathering dust in his attic.  Stella cannot resist the lure of bringing order to chaos.  red pen in hand, she determines to find the killer.

Stealing The Dragon Introduces the San Francisco Noir series, starring a wisecracking  ex-detective and a beautiful, deadly Chinese assassin. When a container ship of illegal Chinese immigrants runs aground on Alcatraz Island, the authorities find the crew have been slaughtered like cattle. Private Investigator Cape Weathers is afraid that his friend and sometime partner Sally Mei, a fugitive Triad assassin, might have been the killer.  But Sally has disappeared, and Weathers is terrified that the past she has tried so desperately to elude has finally caught up with her.  Stealing The Dragon is by Tim Maleeny and is due to be published in June 2013.

Forthcoming books to look forward to by Head of Zeus

The Return of the Thin Man is by Dashiell Hammett and is due to be published in November 2012.  Although characters and stories like Sam Spade and The Maltese Falcon are famous the world over, despite the New York Times' description of him as the 'dean of the school of hard-boiled noir', Dashiell Hammett wrote only five full-length novels in his career.  The Thin Man was the last of these, published in 1934.  But Hammett wrote two other 'treatments' for investigator Nick Charles and his nemesis Charles Wynant; the 'thin man' of the title.  Lost when Hammett retired as a novelist, together those treatments form the continuing story of The Thin Man, which is now being published for the first time.  Dashiell Hammett died in 1961.  His influence lives on in generations of writers as diverse as Raymond Chandler and William Burroughs.

Roman Games is the debut novel by Bruce MacBain and is due to be published in September 2012.  Rome: September, 96 AD.  When the body of Sextus Verpa, informer and libertine, is found stabbed to death in his bedroom, there is no way in or out.  The method and motive remains a mystery, so suspicion falls on his slaves.  Pliny, a young senator, is ordered by Emperor Domitian to investigate.  But the Roman Games have begun and for the next fifteen days, the law courts are in recess.  If Pliny can't identify the murderer in that time, Verpa's entire slave household will be burned alive in the arena.  Along with the poet Martial, Pliny's investigation unravels a plot involving Egyptian cultists and a missing horoscope that will lead him through the tenements and brothels of Rome's most decadent age, and finally to the palace itself, where no one is safe from the paranoid Emperor.  As the deadline approaches, Pliny struggles with the painful dilemma of a good man forced to serve a brutal regime--a regime implicated in conspiracy that touches the heart of Imperial Rome. 

The First Daughter is the first in the series featuring Jack McClure and is by Eric Van Lustbader.  It is due to be published in December 2012.   When an accident takes the life of his daughter, Emma, ATF agent Jack McClure blames himself, numbing the pain by submerging himself in work.  Then he receives a call from his old friend Edward Carson.  Carson is just weeks from taking the reins as President of the United States when his daughter, Alli, is kidnapped.  Because Emma McClure was Alli's best friend, Carson turns to Jack, the one man he can trust to go to any lengths to find his daughter and bring her home safely.

Julian Wells was a writer of dark non-fiction works that detailed some of the worst crimes of the 20th Century.  Was it this exploration of man's inhumanity to man that caused him to take his own life?  When his body is found in a boat drifting in a pond in Montauk, New York, his best friend, the literary critic Philip Anders, begins to reread his work in order to prepare a eulogy.  This rereading, along with other clues, convinces the critic that his friend has committed a terrible crime, and that it was as punishment for this crime that Wells took his own life.  Anders' investigation sparks an obsession with unravelling the mystery of the man he thought he knew.  His journey towards understanding leads him from Paris to Budapest, spans four decades, and takes him deeper and deeper in to the heart of darkness that was Julian Wells…  The Crime of Julian Wells is by Thomas H Cook and is due to be published in October 2012.

Nocturne is by Joseph Wambaugh and is due to be published in December 2012.  The southernmost Los Angeles district of San Pedro, once of the world's busiest harbours.  Now it is a locus for gangs, human trafficking and all manner of decadence and mayhem.  The ubiquitous Croatian and Italian longshoremen have diminished in numbers and influence.  One Croat, Dinko Babich, has even stooped to taxi service.  But one night, driving a 19-year-old Mexican dancer to her club, he falls desperately for this sweet, sincere and endearing girl.  And when she sees something she should not have, something that links her to an investigation of a shipping container filled with 13 corpses, Dinko will do all he can to protect her from the lethal and terrifying men behind it.

The vengeance of Memory is by Mark Oldfield and is due to be published in November 2012.  Madrid, winter 1953: the snow lies thick on the ground and Comandante Guzman of the infamous Brigada Especial is preparing a dawn raid.  It is job to hunt down opponents of Franco's regime and destroy them.  Feared by all, Guzman profits from the corruption of Franco's Spain, taking what he wants: food, drink, and women.  But that is about to change.  Guzman is going to find himself on the wrong side of an ambitious general, on the wrong side of Franco, on the wrong side of history.  It's not the first time Guzman has been on the wrong side.  But there's no one left alive who knows about that...until he gets a message from a dead man...Madrid, 2009: Ana Maria Galindez is a forensic scientist investigating a mass grave from the Franco era.  She is soon drawn into the race to discover the hidden ledger of secret policeman Leopoldo Guzman - a man who disappeared without trace in 1953.  Of course, there are those who would much rather Guzman's ledger never be found, would much rather its secrets remained unread.  Galindez's pursuit of the past has revealed a secret battle for the present...

2004: when violent Jihadists bomb a Masonic lodge in Istanbul, the Turkish military enlist maverick British agent Toby Ashe to find the cause of the attack.  Hurled into a tense race against the CIA to solve an intelligence puzzle encompassing genetic research, a covert SAS mission, the true origins of Freemasonry, and the strange disappearance of the leader of a Kurdish mystical religion, Ashe must travel the globe in pursuit of answers.  What if the invasion of Iraq was nothing to do with WMD?  What if America wasn't motivated by oil, or regime change?  What if the world's largest superpower was driven by a desire to find something far more dangerous - a viral weapon passed down through history ...Explosive, fast-paced and brimming with expert knowledge of everything from Freemasonry to genetics, Christian mythology to military tactics, The Babylon Gene is the debut novel by Alex Churton and is due to be published in September 2012.

Nic Caruana is paid to kill people.  Once, he was destined for a white-collar job in a middle-class area.  But like many kids, he made a fatal mistake.  Now, he inhabits the bleak, dark city that runs like a seam beneath London.  His latest job is to track down the daughter of an arms dealer, using any weapon necessary to get to the truth.  But Nic has fallen in love with his dangerous employer's wife.  When the missing girl turns up dead, this grief-stricken mother starts playing twisted games with Nic...  And this time he has nothing in his armoury to protect himself.  Taut, spare, and brilliantly plotted, Something You Are is the debut novel by Hanna Jameson and is also the first in a series of menacing urban crime novels known as the London Underground series.  Something You Are is due to be published in December 2012.