Books I am looking forward to in 2016 (Part 1)

So, I have done my list of favourite books for 2015 and you can read the list here.  Looking forward to the first six months of 2016 there are a number of books that I am looking forward to reading and they are as follows –

Mourad Hafiz appears to have dropped out of university and disappeared. Engaged by his family to try and find him, Makana comes to believe that the Hafiz boy became involved in some kind of political activity just prior to his disappearance. But before he can discover more, the investigation is sidetracked: a severed head turns up on the riverbank next to his home, and Makana finds himself drawn into ethnic rivalry and gang war among young men from South Sudan. The trail leads from a church in the slums and the benevolent work of the larger-than-life Rev. Preston Corbis and sister Liz to the enigmatic Ihsan Qaddus and the Hesira Institute.  The fifth installment of this acclaimed series is set in Egypt in December 2005. While Cairo is torn by the protests by South Sudanese refugees demanding their rights, President Mubarak has just been re-elected by a dubious 88 percent majority in the country's first multi-party elections. In response to what appears to be flagrant election-rigging, there are early stirrings of organized political opposition to the regime. Change is afoot and Makana is in danger of being swept away in the seismic shifts of his adopted nation. City of Jackals (Bloomsbury) is by Parker Bilal and is due to be published in July 2016.

Introducing Elizabethan cutpurse and adventurer Jack Blackjack in the first of a brand-new historical mystery series. Light-fingered Jack knows he’s not going to have a good day when he wakes with a sore head next to a dead body in a tavern’s yard. But with the rebel army marching on London, Jack cannot escape the city. Instead he must try to work out who killed the man, a troublesome task as the rebel army comes closer and the death toll mounts. Rebellion’s Message (Severn House) is by Michael Jecks.

Chicago, 1928. Al Capone runs the city but cracks in his rule are starting to show ... In the heavy summer heat, a series of shocking events takes place. A group poisoned in a swanky hotel. A rich white man found dead in a down-and-out neighbourhood he should never have been in. A socialite, known across the city, vanished without trace. Could these events be connected? Is someone trying to bring down Al Capone? Ida and Michael at Pinkerton Detective Agency; Jacob, a police photographer with a personal vendetta; and Dante, working on behalf of Capone himself, are all trying to find answers in the city of jazz, dancing and corruption.  Dead Man’s Blues (Pan Macmillan) is by Ray Celestin.

Nick Alston, a Los Angeles private investigator, is hired to find the kidnapped son of America's richest and most hated man. Hastings, a mob hitman in search of redemption, is also on the trail. But both men soon become ensnared by a sinister cabal that spreads from the White House all the way to Dealey Plaza. Decades later in Dallas, Alston's son stumbles across evidence from JFK conspiracy buffs that just might link his father to the shot heard round the world. Violent, vivid, visceral: Fever City is a high-octane, nightmare journey through a Mad Men-era America of dark powers, corruption and conspiracy.  Fever City (Faber and Faber) is by Tim Baker and is due to be published in January 2016. 

Orphan X (Penguin/Michael Joseph) is by Gregg Hurwitz and is due to be published in April 2016. “Do you need my help?” It was always the first question he asked. They called him when they had nowhere else to turn. As a boy he was chosen, then taken from the orphanage he called home. Raised and trained as part of a top secret programme he was sent to the worst places in the world to do the things his government denied any knowledge of. Then he broke with the programme, using everything he'd learned to disappear. He wanted to help the desperate and deserving. But now someone's on his tail. Someone who has issues with his past. Someone who knows he was once known simply as Orphan X.

A Fever of the Blood (Penguin/Michael Joseph) is by Oscar de Muriel and is due to be published in February 2016. New Year's Day, 1889. In Edinburgh's lunatic asylum, a patient escapes as a nurse lays dying. Leading the manhunt are legendary local Detective 'Nine-Nails' McGray and Londoner-in-exile Inspector Ian Frey. Before the murder, the suspect was heard in whispered conversation with a fellow patient - a girl who had been mute for years. What made her suddenly break her silence? And why won't she talk again? Could the rumours about black magic be more than superstition? McGray and Frey track a devious sychopath far beyond their jurisdiction, through the worst blizzard in living memory, into the shadow of Pendle Hill - home of the Lancashire witches - where unimaginable danger awaits.

The Promise (Orion) is by Robert Crais and is due to be published in January 2016.  Elvis Cole and Joe Pike are joined by Suspect heroes Scott James and his K-9 partner, Maggie. Loyalty, commitment, the fight against injustice - these are the things that have always driven Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. If they make a promise, they keep it. Even if it could get them killed. When Elvis Cole is hired to locate a woman who may have disappeared with a stranger she met online, it seems like an ordinary case - until Elvis learns the missing woman worked for a defence contractor and was being blackmailed to supply explosives components for a person or persons unknown. Meanwhile, in another part of the city, LAPD

officer Scott James and his patrol dog, Maggie, enter an abandoned building to locate an armed and dangerous thief, only to discover far more than they expected. The fugitive is dead, the building is filled with explosives, and Scott and Maggie are assaulted by a hidden man who escapes in the chaos, all as a bloodied Joe Pike watches from the shadows. Soon, Scott and Maggie find themselves targeted by that man and, as their case intertwines with Elvis and Joe's, join forces to follow the trail of the missing woman as well. From inner-city drug traffickers to a shadowy group of Afghan war veterans with ties to a terrorist cell, the people they encounter on that trail add up to ever-increasing odds, and soon the four of them are fighting to find the woman not only before she is killed ...but before the same fate happens to one of them.

A Time of Torment (Hodder and Stoughton ) is by John Connolly and is due to be published in April 2016. Jerome Burnel was once a hero. He intervened to prevent multiple killings and in doing so damned himself. His life was torn apart. He was imprisoned, brutalized. But in his final days, with the hunters circling, he tells his story to private detective Charlie Parker. He speaks of the girl who was marked for death, but was saved; of the ones who tormented him, and an entity that hides in a ruined stockade. Parker is not like other men. He died, and was reborn. He is ready to wage war. Now he will descend upon a strange, isolated community called the Cut, and face down a force of men who rule by terror, intimidation, and murder. All in the name of the being they serve. All in the name of the Dead King.

The Plea (Orion) is by Steve Cavanagh and is due to be published in March 2016.  For years, respected New York law firm Harland & Sinton has been running a fraud of gargantuan proportions. The FBI are on to them, but they need witnesses to secure their case. When a major client of the firm, David Child, is arrested for murder, the FBI ask con-artist-turned-lawyer Eddie Flynn to secure Child as his client and force him to testify against the firm in exchange for a lesser sentence. Eddie's not a man to be forced into representing a guilty client, but the FBI have incriminating files on Eddie's wife, Christine, and if Eddie won't play ball, she'll pay the price. Eddie agrees, but when he meets David Child he knows this is going to be harder than it sounds. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Eddie is convinced that Child didn't kill his girlfriend and he refuses to send an innocent man to prison. With the FBI putting pressure on him to secure the plea and the formidable Gerry Sinton breathing down his neck, Eddie must find a way to prove Child's innocence while keeping his wife out of danger - not just from the FBI, but from the firm itself. But it's not long before Eddie realises he's part of a dangerous game, with each player willing to kill to get what they want.

The Man Who Wanted to Know (Quercus) is by M A Mishani and is due to be published in June 2016.Called on a stormy day to his first murder scene as the new commander of investigations, Inspector Avraham Avraham is astounded to discover he knows the victim: a middle-aged woman who had been assaulted in the past. His only lead is an eyewitness claiming he saw a policeman going down the building's staircase a few minutes after the murder. Eager to solve his first murder case, Avraham is determined to follow this lead even though it puts him in conflict with the entire police force. It'll take him to Mazal Bengtson - a young woman who doesn't know anything about the murder. She remembers the day of the storm for a different reason. And she will change everything Avraham thought about the case.

A brand-new historical spy thriller series set in 1930s London, Cambridge and Berlin.  1936 and Europe is on the brink of a cataclysm it cannot foresee. In Berlin, a young woman risks her life to rescue a Jewish dissident. In a London club, two men exchange a vital message. In a country house near Cambridge, an elderly couple are discovered, horribly murdered. It will take Cambridge professor and maverick Thomas Wilde, expert in the Elizabethan spy networks, to put the pieces of a conspiracy that reaches the very highest levels of government. But can he decipher its true meaning before it's too late?  Corpus (Hodder and Stoughton) is by Rory Clements and is due to be published in June 2016.

A Masterpiece of Corruption (Little Brown/ Constable) is by L C Tyler and is due to be published in January 2016.  It is December 1657. John Grey, at his cramped desk in Lincoln's Inn, is attempting to resume his legal career. A mysterious message from a 'Mr SK' tempts him out into the snowy streets of London and to what he believes will be a harmless diversion from his studies. Mr SK's letter proves to have been intended for somebody else entirely and Grey finds himself unwittingly in the middle of a plot to assassinate the Lord Protector - a plot about which he now knows more than it is safe to know. Can he both prevent the murder and (of greater immediate relevance) save his own skin? Both the Sealed Knot and Cromwell's Secretary of State, John Thurloe believe he is on their side, but he is unsure that either is on his. As somebody is kind enough to point out to him: 'You are a brave man, Grey. The life of a double agent can be exciting but very short.' Grey just has to hope that prediction is wrong.

Having shot someone in what he believed was self-defense in the chaotic streets of postwar Berlin, East End Londoner turned spy Joe Wilderness finds himself locked up with little chance to escape. But an official pardon from Burne-Jones, a senior agent at MI6, means he is free to go. His return to London is brief, for another assignment from Burne-Jones puts him into the line of danger again. The operation will take him back to Berlin, where he spent several years working the black market after the war, the city now the dividing line between the West and the Soviets. Khrushchev and Kennedy are playing a game of chicken, gambling with the fate of millions of German lives.  On August 13, 1961, barbed wire is laid down, separating the Soviet controlled sectors from the rest of the city. With an old paramour at threat in the divided city, and the inscrutable Khrushchev developing plans for something that could change the fate of the Cold War, Wilderness is thrust into matters well beyond his control. And meanwhile, MI6's new man in Moscow has to improvise some quite unusual techniques in order to get the information he needs . . .  The Unfortunate Englishman (Corvus/Atlantic) is by John Lawton and is  due to be published in May 2016.

We first met Flavia Albia, Falco's feisty adopted daughter, in The Ides of April. Albia is a remarkable woman in what is very much a man's world: young, widowed and fiercely independent, she lives alone on the Aventine Hill in Rome and makes a good living as a hired investigator. An outsider in more ways than one, Albia has unique insight into life in ancient Rome, and she puts it to good use going places no man could go, and asking questions no man could ask.  In Graveyard of The Hesperides Albia is called in to investigate a long-dead corpse discovered during renovations to a local tavern.  But the investigation will reveal some terrible secrets, and force Albia to question everything that she believes is true about her own life. In Graveyard of The Hesperides (Hodder and Stoughton) is by Lindsey Davies and is due to be published in April 2016.

Books to Look Forward to from Quercus Books

Coffin Road is by Peter May and is due to be published in January 2016.  A man is washed up on a deserted beach on the Hebridean Isle of Harris, barely alive and borderline hypothermic. He has no idea who he is or how he got there. The only clue to his identity is a map tracing a track called the Coffin Road. He does not know where it will lead him, but filled with dread, fear and uncertainty he knows he must follow it. A detective crosses rough Atlantic seas to a remote rock twenty miles west of the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. With a sense of foreboding he steps ashore where three lighthouse keepers disappeared more than a century before - a mystery that remains unsolved. But now there is a new mystery - a man found bludgeoned to death on that same rock, and DS George Gunn must find out who did it and why. A teenage girl lies in her Edinburgh bedroom, desperate to discover the truth about her father's death. Two years after the discovery of the pioneering scientist's suicide note, Karen Fleming still cannot accept that he would wilfully abandon her. And the more she discovers about the nature of his research, the more she suspects that others were behind his disappearance. Coffin Road follows three perilous journeys towards one shocking truth - and the realisation that ignorance can kill us.

I talked to my mother the night she died, losing myself in memories of when we were happiest together. But I held one memory back, and it surfaces now, unbidden. I see a green post-box and a small hand stretching up to its oblong mouth. I am never sure whether that small hand is mine. But if not mine, whose? Louise Redmond left Ireland for London before she was twenty. Now, more than two decades later, her heart already breaking from a failing marriage, she is summoned home. Her mother is on her deathbed, and it is Louise's last chance to learn the whereabouts of a father she never knew. Stubborn to the end, Marjorie refuses to fill in the pieces of her daughter's fragmented past. Then Louise unexpectedly finds a lead. A man called David Prescott ...but is he really the father she's been trying to find? And who is the mysterious little girl who appears so often in her dreams? As each new piece of the puzzle leads to another question, Louise begins to suspect that the memories she most treasures could be a delicate web of lies.  What She Never Told Me is by M R McQuaile and is due to be published in March 2016.

Retribution is by Steffen Jacobsen and is due to be published in February 2016. On a warm

Autumn afternoon, Tivoli Gardens - Denmark's largest amusement park - is devastated by a terrorist attack. 1,241 people are killed. The unknown bomber is blown to bits; the security forces have no leads. One year later, the nation is still reeling, and those behind the attack are still at large. Amidst the increasingly frustrated police force, Superintendent Lene Jensen is suffering the effects of tragedy closer to home. Everyone is aware the terrorists may soon strike again. Then Lene receives a strange call. A young desperate Muslim woman needs her help, but by the time Lene reaches her she's already dead - supposedly suicide. Already suspicious, Lene's initial investigations suggest that the woman was unknowingly part of a secret services research project. Silenced by her superiors, Lene turns to her old ally Michael Sander to dig deeper. But with even her allies increasingly adamant her actions are a risk to national security, Lene begins to understand that finding the truth might be the most dangerous thing of all.

Ruth Galloway's friend Cathbad is housesitting in Walsingham, a Norfolk village famous as a centre for pilgrimages to the Virgin Mary. In an attempt to stop a malevolent cat from escaping, Cathbad sees a strange vision in the graveyard beside the cottage: a young woman dressed in blue. Cathbad thinks that he may have seen the Madonna herself but, the next morning, the woman's body, dressed in white nightdress and blue dressing-gown, is found in a ditch outside Walsingham. DCI Nelson and his team are called in and establish that the dead woman was a recovering addict being treated at a nearby private hospital. Ruth, a devout atheist, has managed to avoid Walsingham during her seventeen years in Norfolk. But then an old university friend, Hilary Smithson, asks to meet her in the village. When Ruth arrives at the Blue Lady cafe, she's amazed to discover that her friend is now a priest. Hilary has been receiving vitriolic anonymous letters targeting women priests - letters containing references to local archaeology and a striking phrase about a woman 'clad in blue, weeping for the world.' Then another woman is murdered - a priest. As Walsingham prepares for its annual Easter re-enactment of the Crucifixion, the race is on to unmask the killer before they strike again. Ruth has got herself tangled up in a grisly mystery play ...  The Woman in Blue is by Elly Griffiths and is due to be published in April 2016.

Arnaud Mars – a former police divsionnaire on the run after being implicated in a seismic defence contracts scandal – has been found dead in Africa.  The Smith & Wesson that killed him belongs to Commandant Sacha Duguin, a longstanding friend of Lola’s.  Who was really behind Mars’ death?  And what is it that has made Duguin the ideal scapegoat?  Lola joins forces once again with her partner-in-crime-fighting, Ingrid Diesel, in an investigation that will take them from France to Africa to Hong Kong.  Shadows and Sun is by Dominique Sylvain and is due to be published in June 2016.

When a young Pakistani bride falls to her death from a window, Rosie has to navigate the

story with care, trying not to upset the girl's devastated family or the local Pakistani community. After talking to the family, however, Rosie becomes convinced that there is more to the story than a tragic accident, and that something is being kept from her and the police. Meanwhile, on the other side of Glasgow, Nikki and Julie, two prostitutes, find themselves in trouble when a client dies during an assignment and it looks like one of them is to blame. Their problems become far worse though, when a briefcase they steal from the dead man turns out to contain some very valuable rough diamonds and several fake passports. It's clear it belonged to some serious criminals, and now they have much more to worry about than a dead body. Investigating the Pakistani girl's death, Rosie has been talking to Laila, another young girl from the community, who has voiced her fears of being forced into marrying a much older man in Pakistan. When Laila disappears, Rosie is sure her fears have been realised. Then Nikki contacts her asking for help, and Rosie senses a parallel with her current case. Sure enough, as Rosie flies to Pakistan to try and rescue Laila, it becomes clear that the 'accidental' death, Laila's disappearance and the briefcase are all linked - and once back in Glasgow, she, Julie and Nikki discover just how much danger they are in...  Rough Cut is by Anna Smith and is due to be published in January 2016.

The Man Who Wanted to Know is by M A Mishani and is due to be published in June 2016.Called on a stormy day to his first murder scene as the new commander of investigations, Inspector Avraham Avraham is astounded to discover he knows the victim: a middle-aged woman who had been assaulted in the past. His only lead is an eyewitness claiming he saw a policeman going down the building's staircase a few minutes after the murder. Eager to solve his first murder case, Avraham is determined to follow this lead even though it puts him in conflict with the entire police force. It'll take him to Mazal Bengtson - a young woman who doesn't know anything about the murder. She remembers the day of the storm for a different reason. And she will change everything Avraham thought about the case.

SIX FOUR. THE NIGHTMARE NO PARENT COULD ENDURE. THE CASE NO DETECTIVE COULD SOLVE. THE TWIST NO READER COULD PREDICT. For five days in January 1989, the parents of a seven-year-old Tokyo schoolgirl sat and listened to the demands of their daughter's kidnapper. They would never learn his identity. They would never see their daughter again. For the fourteen years that followed, the Japanese public listened to the police's apologies. They would never forget the botched investigation that became known as 'Six Four'. They would never forgive the authorities their failure. For one week in late 2002, the press officer attached to the police department in question confronted an anomaly in the case. He could never imagine what he would uncover. He would never have looked if he'd known what he would find.  Six Four is by Hideo Yokoyama and is due to be published in March 2016.

The Other Side of Silence is by Philip Kerr and is due to be published in May 2016.  Bernie Gunther has done various jobs since the war. Now it's the 1950s and he's working in a hotel on the Cote D'Azur. It's winter, and the Riviera is empty and a little sad. In a bar one evening he bumps into Herr Leuthard, an acquaintance from the war, who offers him a most enticing job. Leuthard owns the Grand Hotel du Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. It's the best hotel on the Cote D'Azur and everyone has heard of it. Leuthard knows of Bernie' skills and thinks he could use them. Bernie's not so sure, says his detective days are over and he couldn't find a missing person in a phone booth. No matter, Leuthard tells him, I need a concierge, not a detective. A good concierge has to be like a detective. He's expected to know things, to fix things - sometimes he has to know things he's not supposed to know, and do things that others wouldn't want to do. Pleasing guests can be a tricky business, especially the ones with a lot of money. It sounds like a cushy number for a man like Bernie Gunther. And so begins a new adventure for him, where he'll discover just how many bad people pass through the doors of the Grand Hotel du Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat.

A volatile Zimbabwe and the jungles of the Congo are the battlefields for a deadly game of cat and mouse in Africa's wildlife wars. Canadian researcher Michelle Parker jumps at the chance to visit the famed mountain gorillas, but she is wary of the man offering it, a professional big game hunter, Fletcher Reynolds. He represents everything that she has fought against - the slaughter of animals for material gain - but she is reassured by his apparent support for the stamping out of poaching. Ex-SAS officer Shane Castle has been recruited by Fletcher to spearhead the anti-poaching campaign. Shane has seen what bullets can do to both man and animal. He makes Michelle start to doubt the choices she has made.  Safari is by Tony Park and is due to be published in March 2016.

Once a year, Corso Bramard receives a message from the man who destroyed his life. He left the police after a serial killer he was tracking murdered his wife and daughter, but fifteen years later he is still taunted by his old adversary. Mocking letters arrive at his home outside Turin, always from a different country, always typed on the same 1972 Olivetti. But this time the killer may have gone too far. A hair left in the envelope of his latest letter provides a vital clue. Bramard is a teacher now - no gun, no badge, just a score to settle. Isa, an academy graduate whose talent just about outweighs her attitude is assigned to fight his corner. They're a mismatched team, but if they work together they have a chance to unmask the killer before he strikes again - and to uncover a devastating secret that will cut Corso Barmard to the bone.  The Bramard Case is by Davide Longo and is due to be published in May 2016.

A Spring Betrayal is by Tom Callaghan and is due to be published in April 2016.   We uncovered the last of the bodies in the red hour before dusk, as the sun stained the snowcaps of the Tian Shan mountains the colour of dried blood and the spring air turned sharp and cold ...Inspector Akyl Borubaev of Bishkek Murder Squad has been exiled to the far corner of Kyrgystan, but death still haunts him at every turn. Borubaev soon finds himself caught up in a mysterious and gruesome new case: several children's bodies have been found buried together - all tagged with name bands. In his search for the truth behind the brutal killings, Borubaev hits a wall of silence, with no one to turn to outside his sometime lover, the beautiful undercover agent Saltanat Umarova. When Borubaev himself is framed for his involvement in the production of blood-soaked child pornography, it looks as though things couldn't get any worse. With the investigation at a dangerous standstill, Borubaev sets out to save his own integrity, and to deliver his own savage justice on behalf of the many dead who can't speak for themselves ...

A bloody and tragic run-in with ivory hunters in Mozambique left Mike Williams, former Australian Army officer, in despair. A year on, the authorities are on the poachers' trail and need his help to catch them. Now, as an overland tour guide, he must choose between his duty to keep the young tourists in his care safe, and his hunger for retribution. Thrown into the mix is tenacious English journalist Sarah Thatcher, who is determined to cover the story. She'll risk anything and anyone for a scoop, but little does she realize the danger that lies ahead. The murderous hunters and the innocent travellers are on a parallel journey through Africa's most spectacular locations. Eventually their paths will cross and Mike will have his shot at revenge. But at what cost? Far  Horizon is by Tony Parks and is due to be published in May 2016.

Shot Through the Heart is by Isabelle Grey and is due to be published in March 2016. Who can you turn to, if not the police? Essex, Christmas Day. As the residents of a small town enjoy their mince pies, shots ring out in the street. Five people are gunned down before the lone shooter turns his weapon on himself. Grace Fisher, now Detective Inspector, is tasked with making some sense of this

atrocity - all the more sensitive because the first of the victims was one of their own: a police officer. The case throws her back together with crime reporter Ivo Sweatman, but as she investigates it becomes clear that the police connection goes much deeper than she thought. As the evidence of corruption grows and she is obstructed at every turn, Grace knows she is walking further into danger. Then, her young key witness disappears ...What far-reaching compromises will Grace have to make to safeguard the innocent?

Dungeness, Kent Police Sergeant William South has a reason for not wanting to be on the murder investigation. He is a murderer himself. But the victim was his only friend. A quiet, reticent birdwatcher, South finds himself paired with the strong-willed Detective Sergeant Alexandra Cupidi, newly recruited to the Kent coast from London. Together they find the body, violently beaten, inside a wooden chest. The man's sister, broken hearted, cannot guess why he was murdered. But soon - too soon - they find a suspect: Donnie Fraser, a drifter from Northern Ireland. His presence in Kent disturbs William - because he knows him. As a boy, South and his mother fled their home in County Armagh, and, for many reasons, he has never looked back. If the past is catching up with him, South wants to meet it head on. For even as he desperately investigates the connections, he knows there is no crime, however duplicitous or cruel, that can compare to the great lie of his childhood. The Birdwatcher is a crime novel of suspense, intelligence and powerful humanity, that forces open scars from old terrors and faces the fear of retribution.  The Birdwatcher is by William Shaw and is due to be published in May 2016.

A Woman Much Missed is by Valerio Varesi and is due to be published in February 2016.  A few days before Christmas, with Parma gripped by frost, Ghitta Tagliavini, the elderly owner of a student guesthouse in the old town centre, is found dead in her apartment by Commissario Soneri himself. The investigation that follows holds a painful, personal element for Soneri. Tagliavini's guesthouse is where he met his late wife Ada, and where the young couple spent unforgettable hours in each other's company. But the present can embitter even the sweetest memories. An old photograph of Ada with another man sends Soneri into a spiral of despondency, ever more so when he realises her death may be linked to Tagliavini's sideline as a backstreet abortionist. And his retrospective jealousy is compounded when he learns that Ghitta rented her rooms by the hour for the illicit liaisons of Parma's rich and powerful. Did Ada have a part to play? Though Soneri would like nothing more than to be allowed to drop the case, he doggedly persists, uncovering at last, along with the truth behind Tagliavini's death, rife corruption at Parma's rotten heart and a raft of ghosts from Italy's divisive past.

The Wednesday Club is by Kjell Westö and is due to be published in May 2016. 1938. Hitler's expansionist policies are arousing both anger and admiration, not least in the 'Wednesday Club' in Helsinki. Something of a relaxed gentlemen's club, the group's members are old friends of lawyer Claes Thune. They socialise, discuss politics and drink together, but this year it is apparent that the political unrest in Europe is having an effect on the cohesion of the club. Thune, who has returned home after several years serving as a diplomat in Moscow and Stockholm, has recently divorced and is at something of a loss; he runs his law practice without any great enthusiasm, and the growing political anxiety and the chaos in his own life feel like two sides of the same coin. Fortunately he has the assistance of his new secretary, Matilda Wiik. But behind her polished exterior Matilda is tormented by memories of the Finnish Civil War, when at the age of just seventeen she experienced things she has been trying to forget ever since. Then one day her memories catch up with her. When the Wednesday Club gathers for a meeting in Thune's office, she hears a voice she had hoped she would never have to hear again. She is suddenly plunged back into the past, but this time she is no longer a helpless victim.

One time government agent Piet Hoffmann is on the run: both from the life prison sentence he escaped, and from the Polish drug mafia he double- crossed. Only Hoffmann’s handler, Erik Wilson knows he now hides in Cali, Columbia living under a false identity with his wife Zofia and sons Rasmus and Hugo.  But life on the run is precarious. And so when Hoffmann, in order to survive, accepts employment as a bodyguard and hit man for the Columbian cocaine mafia, and is simultaneously approached by the US DEA to infiltrate the same cartel.  He chooses to say yes to both. Hoffmann has a new lucrative double life. However, Hoffmann’s successful balancing act is short-lived.  When Timothy D Crouse, Chairman of the US House of Representatives, is kidnapped while on a trip to Columbia, US forces settle on a new enemy for their War on Terror.  This gives the cartel and the US government the same problem Pet Hoffmann.  Condemned and hung out to dry by both sides, Hoffmann is stranded.  Yet help will come from the most unusual of figures – the stubborn, ascorbic Swedish detective who has doggedly tracked his whereabouts, DC Ewert Grens – the enemy who Hoffmann once tricked – will now become the only ally he can trust.  Three Minutes is by Roslund and Hellström and is due to be published in June 2016.