June 2021
All Human Wisdom is by Pierre Lemaitre. In 1927, the great and the good of Paris gather at the funeral of the wealthy banker, Marcel Pericourt. His daughter, Madeleine, is poised to take over his financial empire (although, unfortunately, she knows next to nothing about banking). More unfortunately still, when Madeleine's seven-year-old son, Paul, tumbles from a second floor window of the Pericourt mansion on the day of his grandfather's funeral, and suffers life-changing injuries, his fall sets off a chain of events that will reduce Madeleine to destitution and ruin in a matter of months. Using all her reserves of ingenuity, resourcefulness, and a burning desire for retribution, Madeleine sets about rebuilding her life. She will be helped by an ex-Communist fixer, a Polish nurse who doesn't speak a word of French, a brainless petty criminal with a talent for sabotage, an exiled German Jewish chemist, a very expensive forger, an opera singer with a handy flair for theatrics, and her own son with ideas for a creative new business to take Paris by storm.
July 2021
The Lesson is by Lisa Bradley. Someone's got to make him pay. Evie has just started her second year at University. She is young, beautiful and popular. She should be having the time of her life, except she has something to hide - a one-night-stand with her English Professor, Simon. Not wanting any of his other students to be used in the same way, Evie reports their relationship to University HR. But hours later, Village Vixen, the student gossip blogger, is baying for blood. She's found out about the accusation and is firmly on Simon's side. But how could Village Vixen possibly have known? Evie can't help but feel like she's being watched. As paranoia and fear set in, the one thing Evie knows for sure is someone has to teach Simon a lesson..
Whitethroat is by James Henry. It's November 1983 in Essex and there are reasons to be cheerful. Uptown Girl is sitting pretty at the top of the charts, Risky Business is raking it in at the box office, and there are now four channels on the telly. However, social tensions are beginning to bubble beneath the surface: Mrs Thatcher has embarked on her second controversial term, and the situation in Northern Ireland is ever-escalating. Yet in the garrison town of Colchester, it's another deadly standoff that is hogging the headlines. The body of a nineteen-year-old Lance Corporal has been discovered on the local High Street, the result of what appears to be a bizarre, chivalrous duel. It seems he was the victim of a doomed army love triangle. As such, the military police are wishing to keep the matter confined within military ranks. This is all just fine, as far as Colchester CID is concerned. They have enough on their plate as is: with DI Nick Lowry in a tailspin following the breakdown of his marriage, WPC Jane Gabriel exasperated by the male-favoured system, Detective Daniel Kenton relying on substance abuse to quieten his demons from his last case; and their boss, DCS Sparks, shortly to become a first-time father at 55. However, it is not long before the blood from the duel runs into civilian police affairs, and the trail presents CID with a local rogues' gallery. A savvy entrepreneur. A wayward skinhead. A member of the landed gentry. And a shadowy Mauritian travel agent with a chilling reputation. Soon, they will discover, a real estate deal, a racist, and the town's Robin Hood pub hold the key to the killing...
The Murder Box is by Olivia Kiernan. Some games can be deadlyAt first, Detective Chief Superintendent Frankie Sheehan believes the murder mystery game sent to her office is a birthday gift from one of her colleagues. But when Frankie studies the game's contents, she notices a striking resemblance between the 'murder victim' and missing twenty-two-year-old Lydia Callin. As Frankie and her team investigate, a series of grisly crimes connected to the game are discovered across Dublin city and Lydia's involvement with a shadowy network of murder mystery players becomes clear.On the hunt for Lydia's murderer, Frankie is drawn more deeply into the game. Every successful move brings her closer to the killer. But the real question is not what happens should she lose -- but what happens if she wins.
The Therapist is by Helene Flood. At first it's the lie that hurts. A voicemail from her husband tells Sara he's arrived at the holiday cabin. Then a call from his friend confirms he never did. She tries to carry on as normal, teasing out her clients' deepest fears, but as the hours stretch out, her own begin to surface. And when the police finally take an interest, they want to know why Sara deleted that voicemail. To get to the root of Sigurd's disappearance, Sara must question everything she knows about her relationship. Could the truth about what happened be inside her head?
Jean Garnier lives on the fringes - a lonely nobody who has lost everything dear to him. His girlfriend was killed in an unexplained accident, his mother has just been sent to prison - he has even lost his job after the sudden death of his boss. In one last, desperate cry for help, Jean sets up seven lethal bombs, hidden all over Paris and timed so that one will explode every 24 hours. After the first detonation, Jean gives himself up to the police. He has one simple demand: his mother must be released, or the daily explosions will continue. Camille Verhoeven is faced with a race against time to uncover the secrets of this troubled young man and avert a massive human disaster. Rosy & John is by Pierre Lemaitre and is a return to the award winning series featuring Camille Verhoeven.
August 2021
Hell and High Water is by Christian Unge and is the first in a new Swedish crime series featuring Tekla Berg, a fearless doctor with a remarkable photographic memory With 85% per cent burns to his body and a 115% risk of dying, it's a miracle the patient is still alive. He only made it this far thanks to Tekla Berg, an emergency physician whose unorthodox methods and photographic memory are often the difference between life and death. Convinced that the fire was a terrorist attack - and that the patient was involved - the police are determined to question him. Almost as determined as those who would silence him at any cost. And while Tekla battles to keep him breathing, she can't shake the thought that something about him is strangely familiar. Tekla has always hidden her remarkable mind from her hospital colleagues, resorting to amphetamines to take the edge off the endless whirl of lucid memories. But now she'll need to call on all her wits as she's drawn into a mystery involving corrupt police, the godfather of the Uzbek mafia, and her beloved but wayward brother.
Velvet Was The Night is by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. 1970s Mexico City: while student protests and political unrest consume the city, Maite escapes from her humdrum life in the stories of passion and danger that fill the latest issue of Secret Romance.She is deeply envious of her neighbour, Leonora, a beautiful art student who lives the life of excitement and intrigue Maite craves - so when she disappears under suspicious circumstances, Maite jumps at the chance to uncover Leonora's secrets.Maite is not the only one searching for the missing girl. Elvis, a goon-for-hire who is longing to escape his violent life, has been assigned to find the student. Like Maite, he loves old movies, comics and rock 'n' roll and he's beginning to be interested in the mousy secretary who is fast becoming involved in a world of political intrigue.As Maite and Elvis follow Leonora's trail, they journey deeper into a world of student radicals, hitmen, government agents and Russian spies, who are all determined to unearth Leonora's secrets- at gunpoint.
September 2021
Private investigator Kitt Hartley and her twin sister Rebecca are preparing for a holiday in Scotland when cruise ship entertainer Errol Jackson appears at the door. Errol breaks the news that Bryce Griffin, a former smuggler and an old friend of Kitt's, has been murdered: his body found washed up by a lighthouse, bearing a gunshot wound. Kitt persuades Rebecca to cancel their trip and, together with Kitt's assistant Grace Edwards and best friend Evie Bowes, books onto the next cruise to Norway to help with the ongoing murder investigation. Aboard the cruise ship Kitt, Grace and Rebecca encounter burlesque dancers, casino dealers, drag queens and a talking parrot named Skittles - seemingly the only witness to Bryce's death. But what dark secrets are lurking below deck? Can Kitt catch the killer before it's too late? A Body by the Lighthouse is by Helen Cox.
The Wrong Goodbye by Toshihiko Yahagi pits homicide detective Eiji Futamura against a shady Chinese business empire and U.S. military intelligence in the docklands of recession Japan. After the frozen corpse of immigrant barman Tran Binh Long washes up in midsummer near Yokosuka U.S. Navy Base, Futamura meets a strange customer from Tran's bar. Vietnam vet pilot Billy Lou Bonney talks Futamura into hauling three suitcases of "goods" to Yokota US Air Base late at night and flies off leaving a dead woman behind. Thereby implicated in a murder suspect's escape and relieved from active duty, Futamura takes on hack work for the beautiful concert violinist Aileen Hsu, a "boat people" orphan whose Japanese adoption mother has mysteriously gone missing. And now a phone call from a bestselling yakuza author, a one-time black marketeer in Saigon, hints at inside information on "former Vietcong mole" Tran and his "old sidekick" Billy Lou, both of whom crossed a triad tycoon who is buying up huge tracts of Mekong Delta marshland for a massive development schemeAs the loose strands flashback to Vietnam, the string of official lies and mysterious allegiances build into a dark picture of the U.S.-Japan postwar alliance.
The Midnight Hour is by Elly Griffiths. Brighton, 1965. When theatrical impresario Bert Billington is found dead in his retirement home, no one suspects foul play. But when the postmortem reveals that he was poisoned, suspicion falls on his wife, eccentric ex-Music Hall star Verity Malone. Frustrated by the police response to Bert's death and determined to prove her innocence, Verity calls in private detective duo Emma Holmes and Sam Collins. This is their first real case, but as luck would have it they have a friend on the inside: Max Mephisto is filming a remake of Dracula, starring Seth Billington, Bert's son. But when they question Max, they feel he isn't telling them the whole story. Emma and Sam must vie with the police to untangle the case and bring the killer to justice. They're sure the answers must lie in Bert's dark past and in the glamorous, occasionally deadly, days of Music Hall. But the closer they get to the truth, the more danger they find themselves in...
Over the course of several days one hot summer, a female student from Freiburg disappears, a father is murdered in a brutal attack, a teenage boy drowns in the Rhine in suspicious circumstances. It soon becomes evident to Chief Inspector Louise Boni and her colleagues at Freiburg's criminal police that the three cases are connected - and that others are now in terrible danger. Including Boni herself. In the fourth of the Black Forest Investigations, Louise Boni is confronted with the grim secrets of outwardly respectable citizens. Sometimes it takes very little to unleash the monster in man. Night Hunters is by Oliver Bottini.
They say you die three times. The first time for me was when my heart stopped beating beneath his hands by the lake. The second was when what was left of me was lowered into the ground in front of Ivan and Raksha at Solna church.The third will be the last time my name is spoken on earth. After a childhood of neglect, Inni is a rebellious teenager, a volatile young woman, a drug addict, a sex worker, an unreliable mother . . . She lives her life on the margins, but it is a life that is full, complex, full of different shades of dark and light, until it is brutally ended one summer's day on a lake shore at the heart of a distant, rain-washed forest.On the surface, this is the story of Inni's death - but really it is about her life before, and the lives that carry on afterwards. It's about her children, her parents, her childhood, adolescence and the chain of choices, tragedies and accidents that lead her to life on the streets and take her into the wrong crowd, the wrong places, and finally the wrong car with the wrong person. The Antarctica of Love is by Sara Stridsberg.
October 2021
The far side of the Moon, 1973. Three astronauts are trapped in a tiny Apollo module, and one of them has murder on the mind From internationally bestselling astronaut Chris Hadfield comes an exceptional Cold War thriller from the dark heart of the Space Race. As Russian and American crews sprint for a secret bounty hidden away on the Moon's surface, old rivalries blossom and the political stakes are stretched to breaking point back on Earth. Houston flight controller Kazimieras 'Kaz' Zemeckis must do all he can to keep the NASA crew together, while staying one step ahead of his Soviet rivals. But not everyone on board Apollo 18 is quite who they appear to be. The Apollo Murders is by Chris Hadfield.
A small town in outback Australia wakes to a crime of medieval savagery.A local schoolteacher is found taped to a tree and stoned to death. Suspicion instantly falls on the refugees at the new detention centre on Cobb's northern outskirts. Tensions are high, between whites and Aboriginals, between immigrants and the towniesStill mourning the recent death of his father, Detective Sergeant George Manolis returns to his childhood hometown to investigate. Within minutes of his arrival, it's clear that Cobb is not the same place he left. Once it thrived, but now it's a poor and derelict dusthole, with the local police chief it deserves. And as Manolis negotiates his new colleagues' antagonism, and the simmering anger of a community destroyed by alcohol and drugs, the ghosts of his past begin to flicker to life. The Stoning is by Peter Papathanasiou.
November 2021
Dangerous Vacation and Other Bruno Tales is by Martin Walker. A bumper collection of stories featuring Bruno, France’s favourite cop, all set in the beautiful Dordogne valley - the perfect escape. With titles like ‘Bruno and the Chocolate War’; ‘Bruno and the Birthday Lunch’; ‘Oystercatcher’; ‘A Market Tale’ and ‘Fifty Million Bubbles’, you may be sure that champagne and gastronomy will feature as well as cosy crime in ‘Dangerous Vacation’. Bruno strides through these tales, keeping calm, settling local disputes and keeping his beloved town of St Denis safe. Only on one occasion does he panic: in ‘Bruno’s Challenge’, his friend Ivan, proprietor and chef of the town’s popular eatery, suddenly collapses on the eve of a large anniversary dinner, and he asks Bruno to take over the restaurant. After a few protests followed by some deep breaths, the inimitable Bruno meets his challenge, as always.
Sue Keller is lost, orphaned in her mid-twenties and craving comfort. Then Sue meets Annie. It’s been twenty years, but Annie could never forget that face. She was Sue’s live-in nanny at their big house upstate, and loved Sue like she was her own. Friends now, they were once closer than mother and daughter. But gradually, Sue begins to uncover the truth about Annie’s time in the Keller household all those years ago, particularly her sudden departure – or dismissal – and the dark secrets that bind these women together. Nanny Dearest is by Flora Collins.
Turf Wars is by Oliver Norek. Since Capitaine Coste and his team's last case, calm appears to have returned to the SDPJ93 - but not for long. The summary execution of three young dealers - one them shot in the head in full view of a police surveillance team - is the signal for hell to be unleashed in the suburb of Seine-Saint Denis. Cocaine stashed in pensioners' apartments; a psychopathic gang leader of just thirteen at large among the high rises; a cult militia recruited from the boxing clubs run by the council; a deputy mayor found tortured to death in his own home. And, if all this wasn't enough to contend with, when a police intervention in a local estate fuels the residents' resentment towards authority, Coste finds himself faced with an army of merciless thugs capable of enacting a genuine revolution.
