Forthcoming books from John Murray

 July 2023

Australian inventor and geo-engineer Clive Winner is the genius who brought the Great Barrier Reef back from the brink, yet his ambition goes well beyond that. He wants to save the planet. To Winner, climate change is just another engineering problem, and he is determined to find the solution. For the all-powerful fossil fuel industry, Winner is their 'get out of jail free card'. If he can engineer a solution to a rapidly warming planet then this trillion-dollar business can continue as usual. The stakes - both financial and moral - are high. But does Winner still believe his own lucrative brand of ambitious climate engineering holds the answer? With the Paris Climate conference looming on the horizon, scientists in the same field as Winner begin to disappear in suspicious circumstances. Old-school journalist William Carver is given a tip-off by a trusted Whitehall source. His gut instinct tells him there's a story there, but he'll need help to tell it, and time is of the essence. With scientists, green campaigners and well-intentioned politicians in the firing line, William Carver and his colleagues have to move fast. They know the journalist's job is to speak truth to power - but first you must uncover that truth and this time it's buried deeper than ever. Racing between Sydney, New York, Seville and London, The Burning Time by Peter Hanington is a smart, fast-paced and action-packed international thriller for the 21st century.

September 2023

The Secret Hours is by Mick Herron. Monochrome is a busted flush - an inquiry into the misdeeds of the intelligence services, established by a vindictive prime minister but rendered toothless by a wily chief spook. For years it has ground away uselessly, interviewing witnesses with nothing to offer, producing a report with nothing to say, while the civil servants at its helm see their careers disappearing into a black hole. And then the OTIS file falls into their hands … What secrets does this hold that see a long-redundant spy being chased through Devon's green lanes in the dark? What happened in a newly reunified Berlin that someone is desperate to keep under wraps? And who will win the battle for the soul of the secret service - or was that decided a long time ago? Spies and pen-pushers, politicians and PAs, high-flyers, time-servers and burn-outs ... They all have jobs to do in the daylight. But what they do in the secret hours reveals who they really are.

October 2023

Edinburgh, 1923. Evelyn Hazard is a young Scottish woman living a comfortable and unremarkable middle-class life until her quiet existence is shattered when her staid, reliable husband Robert suddenly announces that he can communicate with the dead. As the couple are pulled into the spiritualist movement that emerged following the mass deaths caused by the First World War and the Spanish Flu, dark secrets from Evelyn's past threaten to surface. Faced with the prospect of losing all that is dear to her, Evelyn finds herself asking: is the man she loves a fraud, a madman or - most frighteningly - is he telling the truth? Hazardous Spirits is by Anbara Salam.

November 2023

The year is 1795 and evil lurks in the winding alleys of eighteenth-century Stockholm. The sinister, vengeful landowner, Tycho Ceton, remains at large after he set a devastating fire that claimed many lives. In 1795, the third and final trilogy we are reunited with Mickel Cardell and Emil Winge as they attempt to catch Ceton before he can wreak further havoc on the city. They must act quickly before the city sees its darkest days yet. 1795 is by Niklas Natt och Dag

Books to Look Forward to from John Murray Press

 

January 2022

1794: The City Between The Bridges is by Niklas Natt och Dag. The year is 1794. A young nobleman, Eric Three Roses, languishes in hospital. Some think he would be just at home in the madhouse across the road. Ridden with guilt, he spends his nights writing down memories of his lost love who died on their wedding night. Her mother also mourns her and when no one listens to her suspicions, she begs the aid of the only person who will listen: Jean Mickel Cardell, the one-armed watchman. Cecil Winge is six months in the ground but when his younger brother Emil seeks out the watchman to retrieve his brother's missing pocket watch, Cardell enlists his help to discover what really happened at Three Roses' estate that night. But, unlike his dead brother, the younger Winge is an enigma, and Cardell soon realises that he may be more hindrance than help. And when they discover that a mysterious slave trader has been running Three Roses' affairs, it is a race against time to discover the truth before it's too late.In 1794, the second installment of Niklas Natt och Dag's historical noir trilogy, we are reunited with Mickel Cardell, Anna Stina Knapp, and the bustling world of late eighteenth century Stockholm. The city is about to see its darkest days yet as veneers crack and the splendour of old gives way to what is hiding in the city's nooks and crannies.

February 2022

Lady Joker is by Kaoru Takamura. Tokyo, 1995. Five men meet at the racetrack every Sunday to bet on horses. They have little in common except a deep disaffection with their lives, but together they represent the social struggles and griefs of post-War Japan: a poorly socialized genius stuck working as a welder; a demoted detective with a chip on his shoulder; a Zainichi Korean banker sick of being ostracized for his ethnicity; a struggling single dad of a teenage girl with Down's syndrome. The fifth man bringing them all together is an elderly drugstore owner grieving his grandson, who has died in suspicious circumstances. Intent on revenge against a society that values corporate behemoths more than human life, the five conspirators decide to carry out a heist: kidnap the CEO of Japan's largest beer conglomerate and extract blood money from the company's corrupt financiers. Inspired by the unsolved true-crime kidnapping case perpetrated by "the Monster with 21 Faces," Lady Joker has become a cultural touchstone since its 1997 publication, acknowledged as the magnum opus by one of Japan's literary masters, twice adapted for film and TV and often taught in high school and college classrooms.

May 2022

Intelligence has a new home. A governmental think-tank, whose remit is to curb the independence of the intelligence service, has lost one of its key members, and Claude Whelan-one-time head of MI5's Regent's Park-is tasked with tracking her down. But the trail leads straight back to the Park itself, with Diana Taverner as chief suspect. Has Diana overplayed her hand at last? What's her counterpart, Moscow's First Desk, doing in London? And does Jackson Lamb know more than he's telling? Over at Slough House, with Shirley Dander in rehab, Roddy Ho in dress rehearsal, and new recruit Ashley Khan turning up the heat, the slow horses are doing what they do best, and adding a little bit of chaos to an already unstable situation . . . There are bad actors everywhere, and they usually get their comeuppance before the credits roll. But politics is a dirty business, and in a world where lying, cheating and backstabbing are the norm, sometimes the good guys can find themselves outgunned. Bad Actors is by Mick Herron.

Books to Look Forward to from John Murray Press

January 2019

The year is 1793, Stockholm. King Gustav of Sweden has been assassinated, years of foreign wars have emptied the treasuries, and the realm is governed by a self-interested elite, leaving its citizens to suffer. On the streets, malcontent and paranoia abound. A body is found in the city's swamp by a watchman, Mickel Cardell, and the case is handed over to investigator Cecil Winge, who is dying of consumption. Together, Winge and Cardell become embroiled in a brutal world of guttersnipes and thieves, mercenaries and madams, and one death will expose a city rotten with corruption beneath its powdered and painted veneer.  The Wolf and the Watchman is by Niklas Natt och Dag.

June 2019

In the sixth Jackson Lamb thriller by Mick Herron, in Slough House memories are stirring, all of them bad.  And with winter taking its grip Jackson Lamb would sooner be left brooding in peace, but even he can’t ignore the dried blood on his carpets.  So when the man responsible breaks cover at last, Lamb sends the slow horses out to even the score.  This time they are heading into joe country.  And they’re not all coming home.