January 2020
Dora O'Brien had a good start in life, but things went bad when she began to mix with the wrong company. Pregnant by her gangster lover, she found herself on the streets and then in the grips of a bent copper called Donny Maguire. When her daughter Angel is born, Dora is already under the influence of drink and drugs, and handed around to Donny's mates. Growing up in the shadow of her mother's abusive relationship, Angel is nothing like her mother, but when matters turn murderous, Angel is forced to grow up fast and survival becomes the name of the game. For some, being on the wrong side of the law is the safest place to be . . . No one uncovers the underworld like Jessie Keane. The Knock is by Jessie Keane.
An exiled agent. A growing threat. A clandestine war. The world is changing beyond recognition. Radical extremists are rising and seek to enforce their ideology globally. Governments, the military and intelligence agencies are being outmanoeuvred at every step. Borders are breaking down. Those in power are puppets. The old rules are obsolete. To fight this war a new doctrine is needed. In a world where nothing is at it seems, where trust is gone, one man will make the difference. Meet Ex-MI6 agent and man in exile, Scott Pearce. It's time to burn the espionage rulebook. Watch Pearce light the fire. Black 13 is by Adam Hamdy.
February 2020
A Window Breaks is by C M Ewan. If your family was targeted in the middle of the night, what would you do? You are asleep. A noise wakes you. You stir, unsure why, and turn to your partner. Then you hear it. Glass. Crunching underfoot. Your worst fears are about to be realized. Someone is inside your home. Your choices are limited. You can run. Or stay and fight. What would you do? If your family was targeted in the middle of the night, what would you do? You are asleep. A noise wakes you. You stir, unsure why, and turn to your partner. Then you hear it. Glass. Crunching underfoot. Your worst fears are about to be realized. Someone is inside your home. Your choices are limited. You can run. Or stay and fight. What would you do?
Babes in the Wood is by Graham Bartlett with Peter James takes us to the heart of a murder case that shocked the nation. Both gripping police procedural and an insight into the motivations of a truly evil man, it is a unique account of what became a thirty-two year fight for justice. nnOn 9 October 1986, nine-year-olds Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway went out to play on their Brighton estate. They would never return home; their bodies discovered the next day concealed in a small clearing in a local park. This devastating crime rocked their close-knit community and the whole country. Following the investigation moment by moment, drawing on exclusive interviews with officers charged with catching the killer, former senior detective Graham Bartlett and bestselling author Peter James tell the compelling inside story of the murder hunt and the arrest of local man Russell Bishop. The trial that followed was one of the most infamous in the history of Brighton policing - a shock result sees Bishop walk free. 'Not guilty.' Three years later, Graham is working as a junior detective in Brighton CID. A seven year old girl is kidnapped and found wandering naked on the freezing South Downs. When Bishop's name comes up as a suspect, it's clear history had come close to repeating itself. With the law and science against them, the police are frustrated that, still, he would escape justice for the double murder. Decades later detectives are handed a surprise second chance. Can Bishop finally be made to answer for his horrendous crimes?
The crazy girls, they called them - or at least, Elizabeth liked to think they did. As a teenager in the late 1970s, she was clever, overweight and a perfect victim for the bullies. Then Rachel and her family arrived in town and, for Elizabeth, it was as if a light had been switched on. She was drawn to the bright and beautiful Rachel like a moth to a flame. Rachel had her own reasons for wanting Elizabeth as a friend, and although their relationship was far from equal, Elizabeth would do anything for Rachel.Then the first body was discovered. Twenty years on, Elizabeth wants nothing more than to keep the secrets of her teenage years where they belong: in the past. But another body has been found, and she can't keep running from what happened. Can she? Our Dark Secret is by Jenny Quintana
March 2020
You are not Alone is by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen. Shay Miller has three strikes against her: no job, no apartment, no love in her life. But when she witnesses a perfectly normal looking young woman about her age make the chilling decision to leap in front of an on going subway train, Shay realizes she could end up in the same spiral. She is intrigued by a group of women who seem to have it all together, and they invite her with the promise: "You are not alone." Why not align herself with the glamorous and seductive Moore sisters, Cassandra and Jane? They seem to have beaten back their demons, and made a life on their own terms - a life most people can only ever envy. They are everything Shay aspires to be, and they seem to have the keys to getting exactly what they want. As Shay is pulled deeper and deeper under the spell of the Moore sisters, she finds her life getting better and better. But what price does she have to pay? What do Cassandra and Jane want from her? And what secrets do they, and Shay, have that will come to a deadly confrontation? You are not alone: Is it a promise? Or a threat?
April 2020
Vigata is bustling as the new filming location for a Swedish television series set in 1950. In the production frenzy, the director asks the locals to track down movies and vintage photos to faithfully recreate the air of Vigata at that time. Meanwhile, Montalbano is grappling with a double mystery, one that emerges from the past and another that leads him into the future . . . Engineer Ernesto Sabatello, rummaging in the attic of his house, finds some films shot by his father between 1958 and 1963, always on the same day, 27 March, and always the same shot: the outside wall of a country house. Montalbano hears the story and, intrigued, begins to investigate its meaning. Meanwhile, a middle school is threatened by a group of armed men, and a closer look at the case finds Montalbano looking into the students themselves and delving into the world of social media. The Safety Net is by Andrea Camilleri.
Could the courts really order the death of your innocent baby? Was there an illegal immigrant who couldn't be deported because he had a pet cat? Are unelected judges truly enemies of the people? Most of us think the law is only relevant to criminals, if we even think of it at all. But the law touches every area of our lives: from intimate family matters to the biggest issues in our society. Our unfamiliarity is dangerous because it makes us vulnerable to media spin, political lies and the kind of misinformation that frequently comes from loud-mouthed amateurs and those with vested interests. This 'fake law' allows the powerful and the ignorant to corrupt justice without our knowledge - worse, we risk letting them make us complicit. Thankfully, the Secret Barrister is back to reveal the stupidity, malice and incompetence behind many of the biggest legal stories of recent years. In Fake Law, the Secret Barrister debunks the lies and builds an hilarious, alarming and eye-opening defence against the abuse of our law, our rights and our democracy.
May 2020
A Brighton gangster is on trial for conspiracy to murder, following the death of a rival crime family boss. As the jury file into Lewes Crown Court, twelve anonymous people selected randomly from fifty, there is one person sitting in the public gallery observing them with keen interest, and secretly filming them. Later, a group of the accused's henchmen sit around a table with the full personal details of each of the twelve jurors in front of them. They need to influence two of them - a jury can convict if directed on a 10-2 majority verdict but no less. But which two? When Roy Grace is called in to investigate a murder that has links to the accused and the trial, and the suspicion that an attempt has been made to intimidate jurors, he finds the reach and power of the accused's tentacles go higher than he had ever imagined. Find Them Dead is by Peter James.
She had lived a lie for thirteen years, and the perfect life as she had known it was about to change forever. Everyone remembered Sara and Shannon Carter, the little blonde haired sisters. Their Dad was the local GP and they lived in the beautiful house on the hill. Their best friend, Brinley Booth, lived next door. They would do anything for each other but everything shifted on that fateful day when Dr Richard Carter and his wife Pamela were stabbed fourteen times with a pair of scissors in what has become the most talked about double murder of the modern age. The girls were aged ten and twelve at the time. One, nicknamed the Angel of Death, spent eight years in a children's secure unit accused of the brutal killings. The other lived in foster care out of the limelight and prying questions. Now, on the anniversary of the trial, a documentary team has tracked down one of the sisters, persuading her to speak about the events of that night for the first time. Her explosive interview sparks national headlines and Brinley Booth, now a journalist, is tasked with covering the news story which brings to light fresh evidence and triggers a chain of events which will have devastating consequences. When I was Ten is by Fiona Cummins.
Arriving at her new exclusive school at sixteen, all Alia wants to be is accepted. Sent to live in India with her grandparents by her nomadic parents, she knows that happiness will come if she can befriend the two most popular girls in her year, Sabah and Noor. Before she knows it Sabah and Noor’s intoxicating world of excitement and privilege is open to her, and for the first time Alia feels she where she belongs. But with the excitement comes jealousy, and privilege resentment, and Alia finds that it only takes one night for her bright new world to shatter around her. Now fifteen years later, Alia is a young minister in the Indian Government, trying to broker alliances with her party’s enemies and keeps her secrets in the past. But that fateful night is always there and now someone is determined to reveal the truth about her role in what happened that night. All the can see is how far Alia has come and how much she has to lose. And some secrets are too important to stay. Can You See Me Now is by Trisha Sakhlecha.
For Ruth, a new mother recovering from postpartum psychosis, every day is difficult and, after months spent hearing voices in the walls and trusting no one, she's no longer confident in her own judgement. Neither, it seems, is anyone else. So, when she hears a scream from the local petrol station one night, she initially decides it must be her mind playing tricks again. The police, too, are polite but firm: she must stop calling them every time she thinks she hears something. And her husband is frustrated: he'd hoped Ruth was getting better at last. Ruth can't quite let it go . . . What if there was a scream? What if it was someone in trouble? Someone who needs Ruth's help? The Hidden Girls is by Rebecca Whitney.
The Last Trial recounts the final case of Kindle County's most revered courtroom advocate, Sandy Stern. Already eighty-five years old, and in precarious health, Stern has been persuaded to defend an old friend, Pavel Pafko. A former Nobel Prize-winner in Medicine, Pafko, shockingly, has been charged in a federal racketeering indictment with fraud, insider trading and murder. As the trial progresses, Stern will question everything he thought he knew about his friend. Despite Pafko's many failings, is he innocent of the terrible charges laid against him? How far will Stern go to save his friend, and--no matter the trial's outcome--will he ever know the truth? Stern's duty to defend his client and his belief in the power of the judicial system both face a final, terrible test in the courtroom, where the evidence and reality are sometimes worlds apart. Full of the deep insights into the spaces where the fragility of human nature and the justice system collide, Scott Turow's The Last Trial is a masterful legal thriller that unfolds in page-turning suspense--and questions how we measure a life.
June 2020
From the brothels and gin-shops of Covent Garden to the elegant townhouses of Mayfair, Laura Shepherd-Robinson's Daughters of Night follows Caroline Corsham, as she seeks justice for a murdered woman whom London society would rather forget . . . Lucia's fingers found her own. She gazed at Caro as if from a distance. Her lips parted, her words a whisper: 'He knows.' London, 1782. Desperate for her politician husband to return home from France, Caroline 'Caro' Corsham is already in a state of anxiety when she finds a well-dressed woman mortally wounded in the bowers of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. The Bow Street constables are swift to act, until they discover that the deceased woman was a highly-paid prostitute, at which point they cease to care entirely. But Caro has motives of her own for wanting to see justice done, and so sets out to solve the crime herself. Enlisting the help of thieftaker, Peregrine Child, their inquiry delves into the hidden corners of Georgian society, a world of artifice, deception and secret lives. But with many gentlemen refusing to speak about their dealings with the dead woman, and Caro's own reputation under threat, finding the killer will be harder, and more treacherous than she can know . . .
