Books to Look Forward to from Bloomsbury Books

July

The Secrets of Wishtide is by Kate Saunders.  Mrs Laetitia Rodd is the impoverished widow of an Archdeacon, living modestly in Hampstead with her landlady Mrs Bentley. She is also a private detective of the utmost discretion. In winter 1850, her brother Frederick, a criminal barrister, introduces her to Sir James Calderstone, a wealthy and powerful industrialist who asks Mrs Rodd to investigate the background of an 'unsuitable' woman his son intends to marry - a match he is determined to prevent. In the guise of governess, she travels to the family seat, Wishtide, deep in the frozen Lincolnshire countryside, where she soon discovers that the Calderstones have more to hide than most. As their secrets unfold, the case takes an unpleasant turn when a man is found dead outside a tavern. Mrs Rodd's keen eyes and astute wits are taxed as never before in her search for the truth - which carries her from elite drawing rooms to London's notorious inns and its steaming laundry houses.

  

August

On a searing summer Friday, Eddie Chapman has been stuck for hours in a traffic jam. There are accidents along the highway, but ambulances and police are conspicuously absent. When he decides to abandon his car and run home, he sees that the trees along the edge of a stream have been burnt, and the water in the stream bed is gone. Something is very wrong. When he arrives home, the power is out and there is no running water. The pipes everywhere, it seems, have gone dry. Eddie and his wife, Laura, find themselves thrust together with their neighbours while a sense of unease thickens in the stifling night air. Thirst takes place in the immediate aftermath of a mysterious disaster - the Chapmans and their neighbours suffer the effects of the heat, their thirst, and the terrifying realisation that no one may be coming to help. As violence rips through the community, Eddie and Laura are forced to recall secrets from their past and question their present humanity.  Thirst is by Benjamin Warner

Brighton is by Michael Harvey. You came back here to bury your past ...Thing is, you gotta kill it first Brighton, 1975: a Boston neighbourhood where racial tensions run high and gangs jostle for dominance in the trades that matter – drug-running, book-keeping and theft. Fifteen-year-old Kevin Pearce knows his best hope is to get the hell out before its bloody streets get a grip on his dreams. Bitterness and brutality stalk the hard-drinking generations of his Irish immigrant family. But when an act of violence tears their home apart, Kevin is forced to leave for New York, changing the course of his life forever. Twenty-seven years later, in 2002, Kevin wins the Pulitzer Prize for an investigative article on the wrongful conviction and death of a man from Brighton, and decides to visit his old neighbourhood for the first time in decades. But his past has long shadows - shadows which have taken on a life of their own. And when Kevin's prosecutor girlfriend Lisa asks his advice on a murder case, he is plunged into a web of deception and bloodshed that will test his loyalties to the limit and place the life he has built at risk. 

September

 

Ruso and Tilla’s excitement at arriving in Rome with their baby daughter is soon dulled by their discovery that the grand facades of polished marble mask an underworld of corrupt landlords and vermin-infested tenements.  Ruso finds that his predecessor Doctor Kleitos has fled, leaving a dead man in a barrel on the doorstep with the warning.  Be careful who you trust.  Distracted, Ruso makes a grave mistake, causing him to question his own competence and integrity.  With Ruso’s reputation under threat, he and Tilla must protect their small family by tracking down the vanished doctor – and discovering the truth behind the man in the barrel. Vita Brevis is by Ruth Downie

Books to look forward to from Bloomsbury

Under the heartless vault of the Greenland's arctic sky the body of a girl is discovered. Half naked and tied up, buried hundreds of miles from any signs of life, she has lain alone, hidden in the ice cap, for twenty-five years. Now an ice melt has revealed her. When Detective Chief Superintendent Konrad Simonsen is flown in to investigate this horrific murder and he sees how she was attacked, it triggers a dark memory and he realises this was not the killer's only victim. As Simonsen's team work to discover evidence that has long since been buried, they unearth truths that certain people would rather stayed forgotten. But the pressure is on as it becomes clear that the killer chooses victims, who all look unsettlingly similar, a similarity that may be used to the investigators' advantage, just so long as they can keep the suspect in their sights...  The Girl in the Ice is by Lotte and Søren Hammer and is due to be published in July 2015.

As Good as Dead is by Elizabeth Evans and is due to be published in November 2015. Endearingly flawed and battered-around-the-edges, Charlotte has managed to fashion herself a life that balances marriage and a writing career, but now Esme, the charming friend Charlotte betrayed at university, stands at Charlotte's door: Surprise! Charlotte yearns to make amends, but she's wary. Esme makes no mention of Charlotte's old betrayal and the two resume their friendship, but soon enough a request from Esme will upend Charlotte's careful world. Suspenseful, witty, with spot-on evocations of university life in the late 1980s, As Good As Dead performs an exquisite psychological high-wire act, exploring loves and friendships poisoned by secrets and fears.

When he had finished writing Casino Royale, the first in the James Bond series, Ian Fleming treated himself to a gold-plated typewriter.  It was on this glittering machine that he typed not only his bestselling novels, but also his letters.  Readers immediately engaged with Secret Agent 007 and wrote to Fleming with all sorts of quibbles, corrections and opinions; Fleming’s replies were considered and often charming, full of wry remarks and original turns of phrase.  This entertaining correspondence relating to the Bond novels shows a fascinating and little-known side of Ian Fleming and sheds light on the development of his legendary creation, and on the era in which he first operated.  The Man with the Golden Typewriter: Ian Fleming’s Bond Letters is edited by Fergus Fleming and is due to be published in September 2015.

John Le Carré is still at the top, more than half a century after The Spy Who Came in from the Cold became a worldwide bestseller. From his bleak childhood - the departure of his mother when he was five was followed by 'sixteen hugless years' in the dubious care of his father, a serial-seducer and con-man - through recruitment by both MI5 and MI6, to his emergence as the master of

the espionage novel, Le Carré has repeatedly quarried his life for his fiction. Millions of readers are hungry to know the truth about him. Written with exclusive access to Le Carré himself, to his private archive and to many of the people closest to him, this is a major biography of one of the most important novelists alive today.  John Le Carré is by Adam Sisman and is due to be published in October 2015.

The Governor’s Wife is by Michael Harvey and is due to be published in July 2015. It's been two years since disgraced Illinois governor Ray Perry disappeared from a federal courthouse in Chicago moments after being sentenced to thirty-eight years in prison on corruption charges. PI Michael Kelly is sitting in his office when he gets an anonymous email offering to pay him nearly a quarter million dollars if he will find Perry, no questions asked. Kelly's investigation begins with the woman Ray Perry left behind - his wife, Marie. Ostracized by her former friends and hounded by the feds, Marie tells Kelly she has no idea where her husband is. Like everyone else, Kelly doesn't believe her. As he hunts for her husband, Kelly begins to unwind Marie Perry's past. What he finds is a woman who turns out to be even more intriguing than her husband; with her own deeply complicated reasons for standing by him. Everyone in Chicago has secrets, including the governor's wife. Some of them she shared with her husband. Some of them she kept to herself. And some of them could get Michael Kelly killed. The Governor's Wife is a hard-eyed look at the intersection of the political and the personal, at the perils of trusting even those closest to us and the collateral damage of our highest aspirations.

The Lost Detective: Becoming Dashiell Hammett is by Nathan Ward and is due to be published in November 2015. Before he became a household name in America as perhaps our greatest hard-boiled crime writer, before his attachment to Lillian Hellman and blacklisting during the McCarthy era, and his subsequent downward spiral, Dashiell Hammett led a life of action. Born in 1894 into a poor Maryland family, Hammett left school at fourteen and held several jobs before joining the Pinkerton National Detective Agency as an operative in 1915 and, with time off in 1918 to serve at the end of World War I, he remained with the agency until 1922, participating alike in the banal and dramatic action of an operative. The tuberculosis he contracted during the war forced him to leave the Pinkertons--but it may well have prompted one of America's most acclaimed writing careers. While Hammett's life on centre stage has been well-documented, the question of how he got there has not. That largely overlooked phase is the subject of Nathan Ward's enthralling The Lost Detective. Hammett's childhood, his life in San Francisco, and especially his experience as a detective deeply informed his writing and his characters, from the nameless Continental Op, hero of his stories and early novels, to Sam Spade and Nick Charles. The success of his many stories in the pulp magazine Black Mask following his departure from the Pinkertons led him to novels; he would write five between 1929 and 1934, two of them (The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man) now American classics. Though he inspired generations of writers, from Chandler to Connelly and all in between, after The Thin Man he never finished another book, a painful silence for his devoted readers; and his popular image has long been shaped by the remembrance of Hellman, who knew him after his literary reputation had been made. Based on original research across the country, The Lost Detective is the first book to illuminate Hammett's transformation from real detective to great American detective writer, throwing brilliant new light on one of America's most celebrated and remembered novelists and his world.

Agatha Christie's detailed plotting is what makes her books so compelling. Christie used poison to kill her characters more often than any other murder method, with the poison itself being a central part of the novel, and her choice of deadly substances was far from random; the chemical and physiological characteristics of each poison provide vital clues to discovery of the murderer. With gunshots or stabbings the cause of death is obvious, but not so with poisons. How is it that some compounds prove so deadly, and in such tiny amounts? Christie demonstrated her extensive chemical knowledge (much of it gleaned from her working in a chemists during both world wars) in many of her novels, but this is rarely appreciated by the reader. A is for Arsenic celebrates the use of science in Christie's work. Written by Christie fan and research chemist Kathryn Harkup, each chapter takes a different novel and investigates the poison (or poisons) the murderer used. A is for Arsenic looks at why certain chemicals kill, how they interact with the body, and the feasibility of obtaining, administering and detecting these poisons, both at the time the novel was written and today. This book is published as part of the 125th anniversary celebration of Christie's birth. Fourteen novels. Fourteen poisons. Just because its fiction doesn't mean it’s all made-up ...  A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie is due to be published in September 2015.

Books to Look forward to From Bloomsbury

In the second of Thomas Mogford's exciting crime series Spike Sanguinetti investigates the underbelly of Malta and all of its darkness and danger A domestic dispute has escalated into a bloodbath. Spike Sanguinetti's uncle and aunt are found dead. Leaving the courtroom behind, Spike crosses the Mediterranean to Malta for the funerals. The more he learns about his relatives' violent deaths, the more he is troubled by one thing: what could have prompted a mild-mannered art historian to stab his wife before turning the knife upon himself? Reunited with his ex-girlfriend, Zahra, Spike embarks on a trail that leads from the island's squalid immigrant camps to the ornate palazzos of the legendary Knights of St John. In Malta, it seems, brutality, greed and danger lie nearer to the surface than might first appear.  Sign of the Cross is due to be published in May 2013.

The Hanging is the first in an exciting new six-part crime series, international bestseller.  The Hanging is an explosive introduction to the dark world of Copenhagen police investigator Konrad Simonsen On a cold Monday morning before school begins, two children make a gruesome discovery. Hanging from the roof of the school gymnasium are the bodies of five naked and heavily disfigured men. Detective Chief Superintendent Konrad Simonsen and his team from the Murder Squad in Copenhagen are called in to investigate this horrific case - the men hanging in a geometric pattern; the scene so closely resembling a public execution. When the identities of the five victims and the disturbing link between them is leaked to the press, the sinister motivation behind the killings quickly becomes apparent to the police. Up against a building internet campaign and even members of his own team, Simonsen finds that he must battle public opinion and vigilante groups in his mission to catch the killers. A nerve-wrenching look at justice and retribution, The Hanging is by Soren and Lotte Hammer and is due to be published in June 2013.

The Memory Theatre is the fourth book in the Alec Blume series by Conor Fitzgerald and it is due to be published in August 20013.  When magistrate Matteo Arconti's namesake, an insurance man from Milan, is found dead outside the court buildings in Piazzo Clodio, it's a clear warning to the authorities in Rome - a message of defiance and intimidation. Commissioner Alec Blume, interpreting the reference to his other ongoing case - a frustrating one in which he's so far been unable to pin murder on a mafia boss operating at an untouchable distance in Germany - knows he's too close to it. Handing control of the investigation to now live-in and not-so-secret partner Caterina Mattiola, Blume takes a back seat. And while Caterina embarks on questioning the Milanese widow, Blume has had an underhand idea of his own to lure the arrogant mafioso out of his hiding place...

The Innocence Game is by Michael Harvey and is due to be published in July 2013.  Master crime writer Michael Harvey returns to the city of Chicago in this tense and fast-paced standalone thriller about three students whose curriculum leads them into dark and dangerous territory They're young, smart, mostly beautiful...and naive enough to believe they can make a difference. For three graduate students, a class at the country's best journalism school was supposed to teach them how to free the innocent from prison. Little did they know the most important lesson they'd learn is how to stay alive. The first day of class for Ian Joyce and Sarah Gold starts like any other, until a fellow student, Jake Havens, pulls a wrinkled envelope from his jacket. Inside is a blood-stained scrap of shirt from a boy murdered fourteen years ago and an anonymous note taking credit for the killing. The only problem is the man convicted of the murder is already dead. Suddenly, the class has a new assignment: find the real killer. As the case unravels, the bodies and questions begin to pile up. Why are innocent men being framed in Chicago? And who's been getting away with murder? As the hunt for a serial killer unfolds, the students realise they too are being hunted by the very men and women sworn to uphold the law. These students are smart...but are they smart enough to stay alive?

Dogstar Rising is the second book in the Makana series by Parker Bilal and is due to be published in February 2013.  It is the summer of 2001 and in Cairo's crowded streets the heat is rising... The unsolved murders of young homeless boys are fanning the embers of religious hatred.As tensions mount, Makana - who fled his home in Sudan a decade ago - has a premonition that history is about to repeat itself.  Hired to investigate threats that have been made to a hapless travel agent Makana finds himself drawn to Meera, a woman who knows what it is like to lose everything and who needs his help. But Makana's troubled past is trying to lay claim to him once again, this time in the form of a dubious businessman who possesses a powerful secret.   When Makana witnesses a brutal killing he attracts the attention of both the state security services and a dangerous gangster family. His search for answers takes him from the labyrinths of Cairo to the ancient city of Luxor and an abandoned monastery in the desert, into a web of intrigue and violence.

The olive harvest is drawing to a close in the town of Dendra, and when Hermes Diaktoros arrives for the celebratory festival he expects an indulgent day of food and wine. But as young men leap a blazing bonfire in feats of daring, one is badly burned. Did he fall, or was he pushed? Then, as Hermes learns of a deep-running feud between two families, one of their patriarchs dies. Determined to find out why, Hermes follows a bitter trail through the olive groves to reveal a motive for murder, and uncovers a dark deed brought to light by the sin of gluttony.  The Feast of Artemis is by Anne Zouroudi and is due to be published in June 2013.

2059. Nineteen-year-old Paige Mahoney is working in the criminal underworld of London, based at Seven Dials, employed by a man named Jaxon Hall. She works as an envoy between secret cells: she drops in and out of people’s minds. For Paige is a dreamwalker, a clairvoyant, and in her world – the world of Scion – she commits high treason simply by breathing.  It is raining the day her life changes forever. Attacked, kidnapped and transported to Oxford, a city that has been kept secret for two hundred years, she meets Warden, a Rephaite with dark honey skin and heavy-lidded yellow eyes. He is the single most beautiful and frightening thing she has ever laid eyes on – and he will become her keeper.  The Bone Season is by Samantha Shannon and is due to be published in August 2013.

The second in 'The Grantchester Mysteries' series - six detective novels spanning thirty years of British history 1955. Canon Sidney Chambers, loveable priest and part-time detective, is back. Accompanied by his faithful Labrador, Dickens, and the increasingly exasperated Inspector Geordie Keating, Sidney is called to investigate the unexpected fall of a Cambridge don from the roof of King's College Chapel; a case of arson at a glamour photographer's studio and the poisoning of Zafar Ali, Grantchester's finest spin bowler. Alongside his sleuthing, Sidney has other problems. Can he decide between his dear friend, the glamorous socialite Amanda Kendall and Hildegard Staunton, the beguiling German widow? To make up his mind Sidney takes a trip abroad, only to find himself trapped in a web of international espionage just as the Berlin Wall is going up.  Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night is by James Runcie and is due to be published in May 2013.

Forthcoming books to look forward to from Bloomsbury

The Golden Scales is by Parker Bilal and is due to be published in February 2012. A lost child. A missing hero. A bitter rivalry. In Cairo the ghosts of the past are stirring...The ancient city of Cairo is a whirling mix of the old and the new, where fates collide and the super rich rub shoulders with the desperate and the dispossessed. It is a place where ambition and corruption go hand in hand, and where people can disappear in the blink of an eye. Makana is a former police inspector who fled for his life from his native Sudan seven years ago. Down on his luck and haunted by the past, he lives on a rickety Nile houseboat. When the notorious and powerful Saad Hanafi hires him to track down a missing person Makana is in no position to refuse him. Hanafi, whose past is as shady as his fortune is glittering, is the owner of Cairo's star-studded football team. His most valuable player has just vanished and Adil Romario's disappearance threatens to bring down not only Hanafi's private empire, but the entire country. But why should the city's most powerful man hire its lowliest private detective? Thrust into a dangerous and glittering world Makana's investigation leads him into the treacherous underbelly of his adopted country - where he encounters Muslim extremists, Russian gangsters and a desperate mother hunting for her missing daughter - it becomes a trail that stirs up painful memories, leading him back into the sights of an old and dangerous enemy...

Chicago. A biological weapon is set off in the subway and quickly spreads through the city's west side. Kelly goes into the subway with a team trained in microbial forensics (essentially the next generation of CSI) and gets a hard lesson in "black biology" and the dimensions of the "coming biological war". Meanwhile, the pathogen spreads. The government is forced to quarantine sections of the city. Fences go up, and soldiers in bio-hazard suits take to the streets. Gangs take over day-to-day law and order in the sectioned off hot zones and society generally begins to unravel. Kelly, of course, is in the middle of it, tracking down the bad guys while his city teeters on the precipice. Featuring plenty of next-generation technology, We All Fall Down is by Michael Harvey and is due to be published in March 2012.

The Namesake is the third book in the Commissioner Alec Blume series of Italian crime novels by Conor Fitzgerald and is due to be published in March 2012. When magistrate Matteo Arconti's namesake, an insurance man from Milan, is found dead outside the court buildings in Piazzo Clodio, it's a clear warning to the authorities in Rome - a message of defiance and intimidation. Commissioner Alec Blume, interpreting the reference to his other ongoing case - a frustrating one in which he's so far been unable to pin murder on a mafia boss operating at an untouchable distance in Germany - knows he's too close to it. Handing control of the investigation to now live-in and not-so-secret partner Caterina Mattiola, Blume takes a back seat. And while Caterina embarks on questioning the Milanese widow, Blume has had an underhand idea of his own to lure the arrogant Mafioso out of his hiding place...

Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death is the first in a series of detective novels by James Runcie. It is due to be published in May 2012. Sidney Chambers, the Vicar of Grantchester and Honorary Canon of Ely Cathedral, is a thirty-two year old bachelor. Tall, with dark brown hair, eyes the colour of hazelnuts and a reassuringly gentle manner, Sidney is an unconventional clergyman and can go where the police cannot. In Sidney Chambers and The Shadow of Death Sidney, together with his roguish friend Inspector George 'Geordie' Keating, must enquire into the suspect suicide of a Cambridge solicitor, a scandalous jewellery theft at a New Year's Eve dinner party, the unexplained death of a well-known jazz promoter and a shocking art forgery the disclosure of which puts a close friend in danger. Sidney discovers that being a detective, like being a clergyman, means that you are never off duty, but alongside the mysteries he solves he manages to find time for a keen interest in cricket, warm beer and hot jazz, and the works of Tolstoy and Shakespeare - as well as a curious fondness for a German widow three years his junior.

The violent robbery of a wealthy philanthropist leaves the island of Mithros reeling, and a man dead as the perpetrators escape. For years, it seems the crimes will go unpunished; then, as investigator Hermes Diaktoros arrives to learn more about the missing Bull of Mithros, a stranger is thrown overboard by his shipmates and, lacking money or identification, is forced for a while to remain. But is he truly a stranger? To some, his face seems familiar; and when he suffers an unpleasant death, it seems someone has set themselves up as judge and jury for those long-ago offences. In his inimitable style, Hermes sets about solving the complex puzzle of who is guilty and who is innocent; what part has been played by the fabled bull, and who has fallen prey to the seductive sin of sloth. The Bull of Mithros is the sixth book in the Hermes Diaktoros series by Anne Zouroudi. It is due to be published in June 2012.