Forthcoming books from Quercus Books (Including Maclehose Press)

 January 2026

They know she killed them. They've just never known why. Connie Cross was a trusted pharmacy assistant when she was arrested for the gruesome murders of at least seven strangers. Now, she's serving a whole-life order for the shocking crimes she refuses to explain. Olivia Lang never forgot Connie, the awkward teenager from a south London estate she first met while working for the police. Twenty years later, Olivia is desperate to understand what made Connie turn into a murderer. But as she begins to uncover the truth about the UK's most notorious female serial killer, Olivia risks revealing secrets she's kept hidden for years. Connie is by Charlotte Duckworth.

Darling Mine is by Romy Hausmann. She went missing decades ago. He is still looking for her . . . Julie Nowak has been missing since 7th September 2003. It broke her family. Only her father, Theo, doesn't give up on her. On the 20th anniversary of her disappearance, Theo is contacted by podcaster Liv. She's come across a new lead. But if Theo wants to find out the truth he must be quick before his progressing dementia smothers everything in darkness. Who has taken his daughter? Why does Julie's ex-boyfriend Daniel keep his mother's bedroom door locked, years after she passed away? And is there anything more gruesome than the uncertainty of not knowing what happened to your own child?

True Blue is by Joe Thomas. New Year's Eve 1988. An illegal rave in Hackney. Acid House has arrived in the UK. But the Second Summer of Love is no golden era for Britain. A decade of Thatcher is starting to bite and her planned "Community Charge" will only rub salt in the wounds. Privatisation has lined shareholders pockets, but at what cost? A nation stripped of its assets, going for broke. DC Patrick Noble is assigned to a task force working out of Stoke Newington, gathering evidence of police corruption to use against his new colleagues. But this is a dangerous game. And his underlings - spycop Parker and reluctant civilian Suzie Scialfa - are getting restive. Turns out blackmail and intimidation can only get you so far. Meanwhile, council solicitor Jon Davies is once again lifting stones that shouldn't be lifted - this time plumbing the depths of the deal to privatise water. As the country hurtles towards disorder, in the form of riots that even the Iron Lady can't withstand, Noble walks an inexorable path towards his own inescapable fate. Things can only get better. But first they have to hit rock bottom.

February 2026

The Killing Floor is by Elly Griffiths. Ali Dawson is a police detective who leads a unit that investigates cases so cold her team must travel to the distant past to solve them. But Ali and the team haven't been allowed to time-travel ever since their technical expert, Jones, got stuck in Victorian London, never to be seen again. To distract herself from meaningless tasks, Ali decides to look into a present-day case - an apparent suicide of a young man who fell to his death from a high building. She believes the death is linked to a psychic medium called Barry Power, who convinced the boy he could fly. Ali goes to one of Power's shows where he claims to be in contact with Jones. When Ali notices that evening that her cat, Terry, has gone missing, she decides to go back in time just long enough to prevent Terry from escaping through his open cat flap. A dangerous plan which backfires, and she finds herself once more in Victorian London, where she meets Jones, as well as Power, and the darkly mysterious Cain Templeton with whom Ali has unfinished business from her previous visit to the past . .

Cromarty, The Black Isle, 1831. As seagulls shriek and rise on the coastal winds, a circulating library in the bustling port town of Cromarty is meeting for the first time. Ostensibly united by a love of books, the demands of social convention have brought together a disparate group of people. Charlotte Mackenzie, the remote and fragile wife of the local laird, seeks an escape from a loveless marriage; her best friend, Rachel Mackay, a former governess who is ardently in love with her own older husband, the town's minister; the young schoolmaster, John Learmonth, newly arrived from Edinburgh with secrets in tow; and the gentle bank clerk, Ludovic Cameron who dreams of a new life across the ocean, far from his erstwhile schoolmate, the malevolent Farquhar Hossack. When the laird befriends a wounded officer, a chain of events is set into motion that threatens to upset the delicate equilibrium of the community. Against the backdrop of mass emigrations, an encroaching cholera epidemic, political unrest and the campaign to abolish chattel slavery in the British Caribbean, the people of Cromarty must negotiate their new world and each other, flitting in and out of each other's lives through one extraordinary year. The Cromarty Library Circle is by Shona Maclean.

The Widows is by Anna Smith. One false move could get them killed. Ruby, Bella and Cissy are used to the high life. Married to gangland bosses at the top of their game, the riches of Costa del Sol are at their fingertips, the world at their feet. But when Cissy's husband is brutally murdered, everything changes. With his lifelong friend - the notorious drug lord Tommy Mallon - hellbent on revenge, the three women are forced to go on the run. Soon they find themselves caught up in an explosive struggle for money and power. A new life awaits - but only if they can outrun the one they've left behind.

March 2026

The Move is by J P Delaney. Few beginnings can be deadly . . .  Kate and Matt Crowther are finally moving out of London, in search of a better life for their young family. Trade Cottage seems to be the house of their dreams - and they immediately hit it off with the sellers, Rosemary and Paul Finch, who brought up their own family there.  When Kate and Matt move in, they're pleased to discover the Finches still very much in evidence: offering advice, introducing them to the local community, and becoming honorary grandparents to Will, 11, and Tilly, 9. But when the Finches take exception to Kate and Matt's renovations, relations with the neighbours sour, and Kate and Matt find themselves subjected to a vicious campaign of hate. But Kate isn't giving up her dream home without a fight. And it turns out Trade Cottage has secrets of its own to reveal - secrets that may endanger the very family Kate has moved there to protect .

Vital Signs is by Kate Webb. Can a killer leave no trace? August 2010. The Tobins - a happy, well-off family - spend a sunny afternoon at a birthday party with friends. By dawn, most of them are dead. It's a crime that grabs headlines and shocks the nation. The key suspect, Aidan Tobin, was known as a loving husband and father, but his desperate attempt to take his own life is as good as a confession. The case begins and ends with him. August 2021. A survivor of the attacks regains a memory of that horrific night. Chloë Tobin never believed her father was guilty. Only six at the time, she is the sole witness to the brutal attacks. Now, she insists that somebody else was involved. Could she be right? DI Matt Lockyer and DC Gemma Broad of Wiltshire Police's cold case unit aren't so sure. But as they begin to investigate, they soon discover there's more to this case than meets the eye. After all, why would a man who had everything destroy it all?

The Dangerous Stranger is by Simon Mason. On a warm and pleasant evening in Oxford, gentle city of poets and scholars, rioters outside a hotel full of asylum seekers set a young refugee on fire. The city - the country - convulses in shock. Is this who we are? It's international news of the very worst kind, and the Chief Constable demands immediate and exemplary action in bringing the perpetrators to justice. The detectives leading the investigation fill him with misgivings, however: DIs Ryan and Ray Wilkins (no relation), Thames Valley's detective pantomime horse, one Oxford-educated, the other Oxford-trailer park. He doesn't understand why they work together. 'Do they even get on?' 'Somehow that doesn't seem necessary,' their Superintendent replies. Who burned the boy alive? Was it a far-right extremist? Was it an ordinary person who had simply gone along to watch and got caught up in the emotion? Could it even be one of the children who were there? Deploying a range of investigative skills, some standard, some unconventional and some frankly nuts, the Wilkinses do what they do: results with chaos. But when they discover that the victim was not an asylum seeker after all, or even a resident of the hotel, the whole investigation kicks into a completely different configuration.

April 2026

Laura never meant to lie, but old habits die hard. When Annie Adams heads to London to visit her mother, Laura, the last thing she expects to find is a dead body. Least of all for it to be Fliss, the budding artist Laura had just taken under her wing.  Annie is no stranger to murder - after all, she's solved a few cases already. And something about the way Fliss died feels familiar. She's seen a case like this before. Or read about it, rather, in the journals of her dead Great Aunt Frances, whose close friend was killed in the 1960s in the exact same way: with her heart surgically removed from her chest. As threats pile up on Laura's doorstep, it soon becomes clear that she's next, and that she's hiding something . . . With her mother's life on the line, can Annie find the killer before it's too late?  From the gritty streets of 1960s Soho to the lofty galleries of present-day West London, follow Annie and Frances as they race to bring a killer to justice. How to Cheat Your Own Death is by Kristen Perrin.

Fresh from case of the stolen heart, one that shattered his belief in the regime he works for, Samson Kolechko is confronted with a mystery that borders on the impossible. How could a squad of Red Army soldiers have disappeared from the Galician bathhouse, leaving only their boots and their uniforms as evidence they ever existed? Faced with such a fantastical conundrum, Samson resorts to fantastical investigation method: stitching his operative severed ear into a bathhouse worker's jacket, he is able to eavesdrop on his every move. But he discovers far more than he bargained for, uncovering human remains in the stoves and the presence of a sinister religious cult in the city. With his quick-witted new wife Nadezhda at his side, Samson must not only solve the case but navigate the political turmoil that still grips Kyiv as civil war looms and trust between neighbours and comrades is eroded day by day. The Lost Soldiers is by Andrey Kurkov.

May 2026

Just Kill is by Remi Kone. London during a blistering heatwave. A man wakes in the middle of the night, hearing noises from downstairs. He assumes it's a burglar - nothing prepares him for what he finds. Across the city, DI Leah Hutch and DS Benjamin Randle are called to a murder scene outside their jurisdiction. A woman has been killed - the only suspect, a friend from Leah's past who refuses to speak to anyone but her. Meanwhile, fourteen-year-old Zed Okoro's mother has vanished. He will do anything in his power to find her - even if it means risking his own life. As Leah and Randle investigate, they discover a conspiracy with roots far from home. Three incidents. One connection. What secrets make people kill?

In a brilliant feat of literary detective work Master of Lies by Piers Blofeld tells the extraordinary untold story of Anthony Blunt's life as a spy. Based on extensive research into newly released files he is revealed as not simply "the fourth man", but the most dangerous spy of the twentieth century. During the war, as the fate of the world hung in the balance, Blunt's intelligence was being fed straight on to the desks of Hitler, Stalin and Churchill. His hand was secretly guiding our collective fate and his treason led to the deaths of tens of thousands. He casts a shadow which looms large to this day. The official narrative is that Blunt was the least of the Cambridge spies - and yet he was the one who got away with it. While the rest drank themselves to death in dingy Moscow flats, Blunt revelled in his brilliant career as an art historian, Surveyor of the Queen's pictures and Knight of the Realm. He was protected not just by his many friendships with the great and the good, but by the brilliance with which he played the game - his was a secret too big to be told.

June 2026

These are your neighbours. One is a killer. Reeling from a very recent divorce, Frankie has moved into a glamorous London neighbourhood. This is a new chapter in her life. She's decided to put down roots with the beautiful Persian cat she left her marriage with named Blue. But little niggles with her perfect new life start to grow and when Blue returns one night from slipping into places he shouldn't, Frankie's concerns solidify. Two words are roughly scratched into his collar: HELP ME. Unsettled and unwilling to ignore the incident, Frankie roots out an old unused "Cat Cam" collar. What slowly begins as a voyeuristic fascination with her neighbours and the secrets they're hiding soon turns into a perilous quest for the truth that threatens to bring untold terrors to her doorstep. These are your neighbours. One is a killer. Reeling from a very recent divorce, Frankie has moved into a glamorous London neighbourhood. This is a new chapter in her life. She's decided to put down roots with the beautiful Persian cat she left her marriage with named Blue. But little niggles with her perfect new life start to grow and when Blue returns one night from slipping into places he shouldn't, Frankie's concerns solidify. Two words are roughly scratched into his collar: HELP ME. Unsettled and unwilling to ignore the incident, Frankie roots out an old unused "Cat Cam" collar. What slowly begins as a voyeuristic fascination with her neighbours and the secrets they're hiding soon turns into a perilous quest for the truth that threatens to bring untold terrors to her doorstep. Nine Lives is by Catherine Steadman

After Bruno misses several phone calls from Pamela, he worries that something has happened to his beloved horse he keeps at her riding school. But her reason for calling is entirely unexpected: Pamela’s new lodger has been murdered. Bruno knows that Pamela isn’t capable of killing anyone, but then who’s the culprit? And what’s the motive? The dead woman had only just moved to town to take a job at the local nursing home—she had no enemies in the village, and no friends, either. As Bruno wrestles with these complications, the force realizes that Bruno can’t be impartial when Pamela is involved, and assigns the case instead to their rising star rookie, Fabien. Bruno is happy for Fabien to take the lead. After all, Bruno’s been distracted—by his foundering relationship, by a documentary crew determined to transform the sleepy Vézère Valley into a tourist hotspot, by a group of opinionated small businesses Bruno wants to help organize a logistically complicated night market. He can’t seem to catch a break. But when Fabien realizes that the victim is connected to his past, Bruno has to step back in to help. The village has never felt more crowded, and the clock is ticking: Will Bruno and Fabien be able to catch a killer? A Murder in Springtime is by Martin Walker. 

Forthcoming books from Quercus Publishing incl Machlehose Press

 January 2025

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

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

February 2025

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

March 2025

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

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

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

April 2025

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

May 2025

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

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

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

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

June 2025

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

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

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

Climate change comes to crime by Martin Walker

 The international bestseller explores how the backdrop of climate change in France has become important to Bruno’s story in his latest Dordogne Mystery.

Sherlock Holmes had his fogs. Hercule Poirot had ‘the chill of an early autumn morning.’ Maigret had those magical April days in Paris ‘when the sun bounced off the Seine.’ And Raymond Chandler had those hot dry Santa Anas ‘that come down through the mountain passes...On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks.’

We get climate change. Last summer the surface of the seas around the French and British coasts warmed by as much as five degrees, sending vast shoals of fish fleeing north to cooler waters. Evaporation soared and the westerly winds that carried the sodden air began to dump it as rain once as they reached high ground. And in France, that meant the Massif Central, the ancient volcanoes and sub-Alpine pastures that are the source of every French river from the Loire down to the Spanish border.

So, not for the first time, we had floods. Indeed, we now get them every year, cutting us off from the main road west to Bergerac and the vineyards. We cannot say we weren’t warned. Carved into the stone gateway at Limeuil, a town whose prosperity was built from the trade that boomed where the river Vezere met the much larger Dordogne, are the high points of floods in 1944, 1922 and 1898. They show us that the rivers were forty feet and higher than usual.

The last eighty years saw nothing like that, mainly because of the recurrent dams that have been built all the way up to the Massif, providing us with cheap electricity. But now, year after year, the dams are having to open the sluices to prevent overflows, so we get floods. We’ve had to remove the streetlamps along the quayside, and even evacuate the town’s famous aquarium.

And we get more and more forest fires, more and more days when you can smell them before you see the smoke and you keep an ear tuned to the radio for warnings. It’s almost too hot to stay outside and the water in the swimming pool starts to feel like a bath. Last year, it reached 43 Centigrade (108 degrees Fahrenheit) in my garden in the shade.

We also get hailstorms, so dense that within an hour the table in the courtyard is eight inches deep in hailstone the size of my thumb. We used to get them in late autumn, sometimes early enough to threaten the wine harvest. Now we get them in April and early May, viciously timed to devastate the young grapes on the vines. I have winemaker friends who lost two-thirds of their crop this spring. In the vineyards they say they used to reckon on one bad year in five, but in the last five years we had only one good vintage.

So more and more these days the weather has become a regular feature of my books, almost a character, just as the Perigord itself has become much more than a backdrop for the lives of Bruno, the chief of police of the small town of St Denis. I was hugely fortunate to stumble on this region, home to more prehistoric cave paintings and engravings than anywhere else on earth. Picasso came out of the 18,000-year-old art gallery of the Lascaux cave, saying, ‘We have learned nothing in all these thousands of years.’

The history never stopped. Julius Caesar’s legions fought the Gaul's here and captured a hilltop fort which then became a Roman oppidum, and then one of the guard posts Charlemagne built against Viking raids, and then the English and French battled over the castle for three hundred years. And then the French Catholics took up arms against the Protestants for another bloody century.

On top of all that, the region has become famous as one of the true heartlands of French cuisine, home to foie gras and the sublime black truffles, the confit de canard and the seven different types of strawberries, each protected by an Indication Géographique Protégée. ‘Great food and fine wines, this place is paradise on earth,’ said King Henri IV, the only French monarch to have given his name to a classic dish.

Naturally, therefore, Bruno is as much a cook as a policeman, and these days helps the volunteer firemen to control forest fires and organize evacuations from low ground and protect the town bridges from the floods. He’s not sure yet what he can do about the hailstorms but he’s working on it.

A Grave in the Woods by Martin Walker (Quercus Books) Out Now)

The long arm of history reaches into the present in Bruno's latest case when three sets of bones are discovered, buried deep in the woods outside the Dordogne town of St Denis. It appears that the remains have lain there since World War 2. Bruno must investigate who the bones belong to and whether their burial amounts to a war crime. Bruno has other concerns too. After weeks of heavy autumn rain, the normally tranquil Dordogne River has risen to record levels, compromising the upriver dams that control the Vezere that flows through St Denis, bringing the threat of a devastating flood. As ever, Bruno must rely on his wits, tenacity, and people skills to ensure that past wrongs do not result in present violence, and to keep his little town and its inhabitants safe from harm.

You can find Martin Walker on Facebook.

Forthcoming Books from Quercus Books (Incl Riverrun and MacLehose Press

January 2024

A long, hot summer in Wiltshire is broken by a sudden downpour. Flash floods bring something sinister to the surface - a human skeleton. When forensic testing matches the bones to a man named Lee Geary, reported missing nine years earlier, the case is passed to DI Matt Lockyer. Geary was a known drug user, so it could be a simple case of misadventure, but Lockyer isn't so sure. Geary was a townie, and had learning disabilities, so what was he doing out on the Plain all alone? Lockyer soon learns that the year he disappeared, Geary was questioned in relation to another crime - the murder of a young woman named Holly Gilbert. With the help of DC Gemma Broad, Lockyer begins to dig deeper, and discovers that two other persons of interest in the Holly Gilbert case have also either died or disappeared in the intervening years. A coincidence? Or a string of murders that has gone undetected for nearly a decade...? Laying out the Bones is by Kate Webb.

The Last Word is by Elly Griffiths. Natalka and Edwin, whom we met in The Postscript Murders, are running a detective agency in Shoreham, Sussex. Despite a steady stream of minor cases, Natalka is frustrated, longing for a big juicy case such as murder to come the agency's way. Natalka is now living with dreamer, Benedict. But her Ukrainian mother Valentyna has joined them from her war-torn country and three's a crowd. It's annoying to have Valentyna in the tiny flat, cooking borscht and cleaning things that are already clean. To add to Natalka's irritation,Benedict and her mother get on brilliantly. Then a murder case turns up. Local writer, Melody Chambers, is found dead and her family are convinced it is murder. Edwin, a big fan of the obit pages, thinks there's a link to the writer of Melody's obituary who pre-deceased his subject. The trail leads Benedict and Edwin to a slightly sinister writers' retreat. When another writer is found dead, Edwin thinks that the clue lies in the words. Seeking professional help, the amateur investigators turn to their friend, detective Harbinder Kaur, to find that they have stumbled on a plot that is stranger than fiction.

Oxford, city of rich and poor, where the homeless camp out in the shadows of the gorgeous buildings and monuments. A city of lost things - and buried crimes.  At three o'clock in the morning, Emergency Services receives a call. 'This is Zara Fanshawe. Always lost and never found.' An hour later, the wayward celebrity's Rolls Royce Phantom is found abandoned in dingy Becket Street. The paparazzi go wild.  For some reason, news of Zara's disappearance prompts homeless woman Lena Wójcik to search the camps, nervously, for the bad-tempered vagrant known as 'Waitrose', a familiar sight in Oxford pushing his trolley of possessions. But he's nowhere to be found either.  Who will lead the investigation and cope with the media frenzy? Suave, prize-winning, Oxford-educated DI Ray Wilkins is passed over in favour of his partner, gobby, trailer-park educated DI Ryan Wilkins (no relation). You wouldn't think Ray would be happy. He isn't. You wouldn't think Ryan would be any good at national press presentations. He isn't. And when legendary cop Chester Lynch takes a shine to Ray - and takes against Ryan - things are only going to get even messier. Lost and Never Found is by Simon Mason.

Farewell Dinner for a Spy is by Edward Wilson. 1949: William Catesby returns to London in disgrace, accused of murdering a 'double-dipper' the Americans believed to be one of their own. His left-wing sympathies have him singled out as a traitor. Henry Bone throws him a lifeline, sending him to Marseille, ostensibly to report on dockers' strikes and keep tabs on the errant wife of a British diplomat. But there's a catch. For his cover story, he's demobbed from the service and tricked out as a writer researching a book on the Resistance. In Marseille, Catesby is caught in a deadly vice between the CIA and the mafia, who are colluding to fuel the war in Indochina. Swept eastwards to Laos himself, he remains uncertain of the true purpose behind his mission, though he has his suspicions: Bone has murder on his mind, and the target is a former comrade from Catesby's SOE days. The question is, which one.

February 2024

Last Seen is by Anna Smith. Life has changed for Private Investigator Billie Carlson. After years of chasing down every lead possible, she's finally found her son, Lucas, and brought him safely home to Glasgow. One afternoon, Billie gets a call from an unknown number. The man on the end of the phone refuses to tell her his name, but he explains that his brother, Omar, is being held in prison after stabbing two men outside a block of flats. He wants Billie to investigate what happened that night and find out any information that might help Omar. Reluctantly, Billie takes on the case. But as she starts to untangle what happened that night, she can't shake the feeling that she's being watched. With Lucas depending on her, Billie is determined to avoid any dangerous encounters. But trouble seems to have a way of tracking her down....

Some people think foxes go around collecting qi, or life force, but nothing could be further than the truth. We are living creatures, just like you, only usually better looking. Manchuria, 1908: A young woman is found frozen in the snow. Her death is clouded by rumours of foxes, believed to lure people into peril by transforming into beautiful women and men. Bao, a detective with a reputation for sniffing out the truth, is hired to uncover the dead woman's identity. Since childhood, Bao has been intrigued by the fox gods, yet they've remained tantalizingly out of reach. Until, perhaps, now. Snow is a creature of many secrets, but most of all, she's a mother seeking vengeance. Hunting a murderer, the trail will take her from northern China to Japan, with Bao following doggedly behind. And as their paths draw ever closer together, both Snow and Bao will encounter old friends and new foes, even as more deaths occur.  The Fox Wife is by Yangsze Choo.

The Winter Visitor is by James Henry. Essex, February, 1991. The weather is biting cold. Everyone would rather be somewhere warmer, which is why it's a big surprise when a wanted drug smuggler, Bruce Hopkins, risks a return to his old haunts in Colchester after a decade long exile on the Costa del Sol. Lured back by a letter from the wife Hopkins left behind, no one is more surprised than him when he finds himself abducted and stripped bare only to be sent to a watery grave in the boot of a stolen Ford Sierra. The police wonder if it could be retaliation from a Spanish gang, sending a warning to their English counterparts? DS Daniel Kenton is teamed up with the unorthodox DS Brazier to investigate a crime wave which takes in not only the murder of an expat dope smuggler, but a sophisticated arson attack on a Norman church and the unexpected suicide of an ageing florist. Could there possibly be a thread that connects them?

Red Menace is by Joe Thomas. Live Aid, July 1985. The great and the good of the music scene converge to save the world. But the TV glitz cannot disguise ugly truths about Thatcher's Britain. Jon Davies and Suzi Scialfa have moved on since the inquest into the death of Colin Roach, but they're about to be drawn back into the struggle - Jon by his restless curiosity and Suzi by the reappearance of DC Patrick Noble. Noble's other asset, the salaried spycop Parker, is a pawn in a game he only dimly comprehends. First, he's ordered to infiltrate the Broadwater Farm Estate in Tottenham; next will come Wapping, ground zero of a plot to smash the print unions. But who is Noble working for, and how far can he be trusted? The Iron Lady is reforging the nation, and London with it. Right to Buy may secure her votes, but who really stands to benefit? Corruption is endemic and the gap between rich and poor grows wider by the day. Insurrection seems imminent - all that's needed is a spark.

March 2024

How to Solve Your Own Murder is by Kristen Perrin. Frances always said she'd be murdered... She was right. In 1965, seventeen-year-old Frances Adams was told by a fortune teller that one day she'd be murdered. Frances spent the next sixty years trying to prevent the crime that would be her eventual demise. Of course, no one took her seriously - until she was dead. For Frances, being the village busybody was a form of insurance. She'd spent a lifetime compiling dirt on every person she met, just in case they might turn out to be her killer. In the heart of her sprawling country estate lies an eccentric library of detective work, where the right person could step in and use her findings to solve her murder. When her great-niece Annie arrives from London and discovers that Frances' worst fear has come true, Annie is thrust into her great-aunt's last act of revenge against her sceptical friends and family. Frances' will stipulates that the person who solves her murder will inherit her millions. Can Annie unravel the mystery and find justice for Frances, or will digging up the past lead her into the path of the killer?

The Silver Bone is by Andrey Kurkov. Kyiv, 1919. The Soviets control the city, but White armies menace them from the West. No man trusts his neighbour and any spark of resistance may ignite into open rebellion. When Samson Kolechko's father is murdered, his last act is to save his son from a falling Cossack sabre. Deprived of his right ear instead of his head, Samson is left an orphan, with only his father's collection of abacuses for company. Until, that is, his flat is requisitioned by two Red Army soldiers, whose secret plans Samson is somehow able to overhear with uncanny clarity. Eager to thwart them, he stumbles into a world of murder and intrigue that will either be the making of him - or finish what the Cossack started. Inflected with Kurkov's signature humour and magical realism, The Silver Bone takes inspiration from the real life archives of crime enforcement agencies in Kyiv, crafting a propulsive narrative that bursts to life with rich historical detail.

April 2024

Her Last Summer is by Emily Freud. No body. No crime? Twenty years ago, Mari vanished while backpacking through Thailand with her boyfriend, Luke. He was accused of murder, but has always insisted he's innocent. Besides, her body was never found. Now, he's finally ready to talk. And filmmaker Cassidy Chambers wants to be the one to uncover what really happened, back then, in the dark of the jungle. But as she delves deeper into the past, Cassidy begins to fear what lies ahead, and the secrets buried along the way.

May 2024

The Wild Swimmers is by William Shaw. The body of a local woman is found washed up on the Folkstone shoreline. Cupidi must find the missing link between a group of wild swimmers, an online dating profile and a slippery killer who feels remarkably close to home. In the latest instalment of the D S Cupidi series low tide reveals a mysterious crime.

Between Two Worlds is by Olivier Norek. Undercover police officer Adam Sirkis needs to flee Syria. He knows it's a risk and he's ready for it. First, he sends his wife and daughter to Libya, where they will find boat heading for the Italian coast. Meanwhile, Adam himself winds up in France in the

Calais Jungle, the infamous camp for migrants awaiting passage to the UK. Bastien Miller, a police lieutenant freshly transferred to the Calais police force, arrives at about the same time as Adam. His wife is depressed and his teenage daughter isn't exactly happy with the move. When a murder occurs in the Jungle, Adam and Bastien team up to get to the bottom of it. Between Two Worlds is one of these vital books that illuminate an impossible political and humanitarian situation without sugar-coating it in any way.

June 2024

The Man in Black and Other Stories is by Elly Griffiths. Here are bite-sized tales to please and entertain every thriller taste as well as all Elly Griffiths' fans. There are ghost stories and mini cosy mysteries; tales of psychological suspense and poignant vignettes of love and loss. There's a creepy horror story to make you shiver and a tale narrated by Flint, Ruth Galloway's cat, to make you smile. These stories illustrate the breadth and variety of Elly Griffiths' talent. Even the darkest of them is leavened with light touches of humour. 

The long arm of history reaches into the present in Bruno's latest case when three sets of bones are discovered, buried deep in the woods outside the Dordogne town of St Denis. It appears that the remains have lain there since World War 2. Bruno must investigate who the bones belong to and whether their burial amounts to a war crime. Bruno has other concerns too. After weeks of heavy autumn rain, the normally tranquil Dordogne river has risen to record levels, compromising the upriver dams that control the Vezere that flows through St Denis, bringing the threat of a devastating flood. As ever, Bruno must rely on his wits, tenacity and people skills to ensure that past wrongs don't result in present violence, and to keep his little town and its inhabitants safe from harm. A Grave in the Woods is by Martin Walker. 

The Trial is by Jo Spain. 2014, Dublin: at St Edmunds, an elite college on the outskirts of the city, twenty-year-old medical student Theo gets up one morning, leaving behind his sleeping girlfriend, Dani, and his studies - never to be seen again. With too many unanswered questions, Dani simply can't accept Theo's disappearance and reports him missing, even though no one else seems concerned, including Theo's father. Ten years later, Dani returns to the college as a history professor. With her mother suffering from severe dementia, and her past at St Edmunds still haunting her, she's trying for a new start. But not all is as it seems behind the cloistered college walls - meanwhile, Dani is hiding secrets of her own.

The White Circle is by Oliver Bottini and is the final book in the Black Forest Investigations series. Louise Bonì, Chief Inspector of the Freiburg criminal police, gets intelligence from an informer that two guns have been bought from a Russian criminal network. Desperate to prevent a fatal act of violence, Bonì is swift to investigate. Before long she identifies the vehicle used to collect the weapons, but the car's owner has a watertight alibi. The man driving that night was Ricky Janisch, a neo-Nazi and member of the extreme right-wing group, the Southwest Brigade. Bonì and her team put Janisch under surveillance, and identify others belonging to the extreme right. The further they probe, the more shocking their discoveries. Could this be part of a much more powerful neo-Nazi network which will stop at nothing? And how will they prevent an attack when the perpetrators are always a step ahead and they don't know the target? By the time Bonì pinpoints the victim, it may already be too late . . .

July 2024

Nordland. A region in the Norwegian Arctic; a remote valley that stretches from the sea up to the mountains and the glacier of the Blue Man. It is May. In Nordland it's a time of spring and school-leavers' celebrations - until Daniel, a popular teenage boy, goes missing. Conflicting stories circulate among his friends, of parties and wild behaviour.  As the search for Daniel widens, the police open a disused mine in the mountains. They find human remains, but this body has been there for decades, its identity a mystery. The story is told through characters impacted by these events: misanthropic Svea, whose long life in the area stretches back to the heyday of the mines, and beyond. She has cut all ties with her family, except for her granddaughter, Elin, a young misfit. Elin and her friend Benny, both impacted by Daniel while alive, become entangled in the hunt for answers, while Svea has deep, dark secrets of her own. The Long Water is by Stef Penney.