Books to Look Forward to from Quercus Books

The Dordogne town of St Denis may be picturesque and sleepy, but it has more than its fair share of mysteries, as Bruno, chef de police, knows all too well. But when Bruno is invited to the 90th birthday of a powerful local patriarch - a war hero with high-level political connections in France, Russia and Israel - he encounters a family with more secrets than even he had imagined. When one of the other guests is found dead the next morning and the family try to cover it up, Bruno knows it's his duty to prevent the victim from becoming just another skeleton in their closet. Even if his digging reveals things Bruno himself would rather keep buried. Meanwhile, very modern battles are being fought in St Denis between hunters defending their traditions and environmentalists protecting local wildlife. Neither side, it seems, is above the use of violent tactics. At the centre of it all, Bruno must use all his cunning and character to protect his community's future from its present - and its past.  The Dying Season is by Martin Walker and is due to be published in July 2015.

After two years in the Seattle Police Department Detective Alice Madison seems to have found the kind of peace in her private and working life that she has not known before. However when a burglary escalates into an horrific murder she is put in charge of the investigation and finds herself tracking a killer who might have stalked the city for years and whose existence is the stuff of myth in high security prisons. Her own past comes under scrutiny and enemies close to home want her to fail as Madison and her partner hunt down a skillful, determined murderer with a talent for death, and Madison's private life falls apart.  Blood and Bone is by V M Giambanco and is due to be published in August 2015.

Box 21 is by Roslund and Hellstrom and is due to be published in December 2015.  CI Ewert Grens comes face to face with the cruel reality of human trafficking.  Lydia Grajauskas will never forget the face.  The face of the trafficker who brought her to Stockholm: the man responsible for three unrelenting years of forced prostitution and slavery.  DCI Ewert Grens will never forget the name.  The name of the prisoner the day his life was destroyed: the man responsible for twenty-five years of torturous heartache. Sweden will never forget their revenge . . . Box 21 is a steely, airtight thriller containing both the harshest aspects of degradation and retaliation, and the toughest questions surrounding the morality of violent and obsessive reprisal.

Taking Pity is by David Mark and is due to be published in July 2015. They have taken DS Aector McAvoy's family. They have taken DCI Colin Ray's foundation. They have taken DS Trish Pharaoh's fight. Now the ruthless criminal network that has tightened its stranglehold on Hull intends to take everything that remains from those who dare to stand in its way. Taking Pity is a police procedural thriller that pulls no punches. It is the story of three officers who can take no more, and a merciless nemesis that takes no chances, no prisoners and no pity.

The Memory of Evil is the final instalment in Roberto Costantini's internationally bestselling crime trilogy, and revisits Commissario Balistreri in 2011, five years on from the events of The Deliverance of Evil.  It is due to be published in September 2015. Now head of Homicide in Rome, Michele Balistreri is forced again to team up with investigative journalist Linda Nardi, as the pair follow a malevolent trail that stretches from Nairobi to San Francisco, and which will eventually lead Balistreri back to the island of La Moneta, the scene of his mother's apparent suicide in the summer of 1969, where a secret and sinister truth that has evaded him for five decades lies sickeningly in wait.

Dear Elizabeth, I've been watching you. I hope to see you...Soon. Liz Cafferky is on the up. Rescued from her dark past by the owner of a drop-in centre for older men, Liz soon finds herself as the charity's face - and the unwilling darling of the Dublin media. Amidst her claustrophobic fame, Liz barely notices a letter from a new fan. But then one of the Centre's clients is brutally murdered, and Elizabeth receives another, more sinister note. Running from her own ghosts, Liz is too scared to go to the police. And with no leads, there is little Sergeant Claire Boyle can do to protect her. Are You Watching Me is by Sinéad Crowley and is due to be published in July 2015.

Enough Rope is by Barbara Nadel and is due to be published in August 2015.  Private investigator and ex-soldier Lee Arnold and superintendent Paul Venus are by no means friends, but when Venus' son Harry is kidnapped and ransom demands arrive from an address in Arnold's patch in east London, the superintendent doesn't know who else to turn to. Arnold and his partner Mumtaz Hakim soon find themselves chasing leads into several of the East End's uneasily coexisting communities. Mumtaz uncovers a link to one of the area's powerful Bangladeshi families, whose property empire has always seemed suspicious, while Arnold suspects the involvement of more old-fashioned East End gangsters, and wonders if some of the nastier rumours about Venus himself might be true. And neither Mumtaz nor Lee like the look of the children of the super-rich, arriving in droves in the trendy parts of Hoxton and Shoreditch and living in luxury just a stone's throw from grinding urban poverty. The truth, however, is stranger and more dangerous than either Arnold or Hakim imagine. Enough Rope is a powerful and thrilling novel of London's ever-evolving dark side.

To shed light on a recent murder in Duluth, Jonathan Stride is forced to relive the darkest days of his and the city's past. NINE YEARS- It is almost a decade since Duluth said goodbye to its innocence. The city creeps ever closer to the tenth anniversary of the year in which it found itself both gripped by murder and united in terror; and during which the pillar of its community, DS Jonathan Stride, had his home and heart torn to ribbons by the claws of cancer.  NINE LIVES - Cat Mateo, an orphan with a knack of landing on her feet, has bid farewell to a life on the streets. This once-stray teenager owes her rescue to Detective Stride, the father figure she holds close to her heart. But Cat holds something else to her chest - a secret: the sheer power of which she could not possibly comprehend.  A secret that, once out of the bag, will not just viciously scratch at Duluth's still-healing wounds, but will make DS Jonathan Stride wave goodbye to his convictions about the events nine years before, and say hello to his darkest fears.  Goodbye to the Dead is by Brian Freeman and is due to be published in October 2015.

Smoke and Mirrors is by Elly Grifiths and is due to be published in November 2015. Brighton, 1951.  Pantomime season is in full swing on the snowy pier with Max Mephisto starring in Aladdin. But Max's headlines have been stolen by the disappearance ­­of two local children. With fairy tales in the air, it's not long before the press have found a nickname for the case: 'Hansel and Gretel'.  DI Edgar Stephens has plenty of leads to investigate. The missing girl, Annie, used to write plays and perform them with her friends. Does the clue lie in Annie's unfinished - and rather disturbing - last script? Or might it lie with the eccentric theatricals who have assembled for the pantomime?  For Stan (aka the Great Diablo), who's also appearing in Aladdin, the case raises more personal memories. Back before the Great War, he witnessed the murder of a young girl while he was starring in another show, an event which has eerie parallels to the current case.  Once again Edgar enlists Max's help in penetrating the shadowy theatrical world that seems to hold the key. But with both distracted by their own personal problems, neither can afford to miss a trick. For Annie and her friend, time is running out.

Unexplained bloodstains appear in a young couple's apartment; a disembodied hand is found in a rubbish dump; political prisoners resort to horrific measures in order to make a point. In this brilliant new collection of stories, Alberto Barrera Tyszka casts an eye on the violence that afflicts Latin America, and in particular its intimate effects on the individuals who suffer and inflict it. Mixing the surreal with the quotidian, the banal with the unspeakable, Tyszka has created a fragmentary panorama of man's misdeeds against his own kind. These windingly elliptical stories are ceaselessly surprising, and will bury themselves into your subconscious long after the final page is turned.  Crimes is due to be published in August 2015.

Pen 33 is by Roslund and Hellstrom and is due to be published in November 2015.  Bernt Lund harbours a sickness. He is a monster: in the mind of society, in the mind of his two nine-year-old victims' parents, and in the mind of his fellow inmates.  Lennart Oscarsson harbours a secret. Yet he is seen as dependable: in the eyes of his family, in the eyes of colleagues, and in the eyes of the prisoners he oversees.  These men's weaknesses will soon hand DCI Ewert Grens the most profoundly sickening and impossibly sensitive case of both his career and Stockholm's history.  Pen 33 is both an unforgiving collision between a time-hardened policeman and a truly heinous crime, and an unflinching exploration of what people - whether criminals or victims - are capable of when they choose to relinquish self-control.

The First Man is by Xavier-Marie Bonnot and is due to be published in July 2015.  Commandant Michel de Palma, known by his colleagues as 'the Baron', has chosen early retirement and plans to travel the world. But he is dragged back into the force when a case that has haunted him for a decade erupts once more. Resurfacing from Le Guen's Cave, a prehistoric grotto thirty-eight metres below sea level outside Marseille, an experienced diver mysteriously gets into difficulties. Meanwhile, Thomas Autran, a serial killer with a peculiar interest in the supernatural, suffering from a dangerous form of schizophrenia, is once again on the run. Ancient cave paintings, savage murders committed according to a precise ritual: a return to the first ages of humanity, the era of the great Palaeolithic hunters. And despite the gory trail left at each crime scene, de Palma must first understand the child, the secrets of a family, a story of exploitation - and revenge - before he can track down the First Man

She is the girl with the dragon tattoo. Lisbeth Salander. An uncompromising misfit whose burning sense of injustice and talent for investigation will never respect boundaries of state or status. He is a campaigning journalist. Mikael Blomkvist. A lone wolf whose integrity and championing of the truth bring him time and again to the brink of unemployment - and prosecution. The call comes in late at night: a superhacker has gained access to critical, top secret U.S. intelligence. Blomkvist knows only one person who could crack the best security systems in the world. This case has all the hallmarks of Salander. She is accused of acting without reason, taking risks just because she can, but though they have lost touch, Blomkvist knows Lisbeth better than that. There must be something deeper at the heart of this - maybe even the scoop that Millennium magazine so desperately needs for its survival. A tangled web of truth that someone is prepared to kill to protect...  The Girl in the Spider’s Web is by David Lagercrantz and is due to be published in August 2015

The Great Swindle is by Pierre Lemaitre and is due to be published in November 2015.  1918. The war on the Western Front is all but over. Wanting to impress his superiors, an ambitious officer, Lieutenant Henry D'Aulnay Pradelle, sends two soldiers over the top and shoots them in the back to incite their comrades to attack the German lines.  When Albert Maillard reaches the bodies and realises how they must have died, the Lieutenant pushes him into a shellhole in the hope of silencing him for good. But Albert is rescued by a fellow soldier, Edouard Péricourt, who takes a piece of shrapnel in the face for his troubles. In the field hospital, Edouard refuses cosmetic surgery and will not face his family in his current state. Albert finds him a new identity and informs Edouard's wealthy father of his son's "death".  Back in civilian life, Albert becomes Edouard's carer. A young girl, Louise, is Edouard's salvation. In her company his talent for art is rekindled, as is his sense of mischief. He devises a confidence trick that can make them a fortune - taking money for never-to-be-built war memorials from gullible towns. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Pradelle has married Edouard's sister Madeline and is running a scam of his own . . .

Forthcoming books to look forward to from Quercus

A Room full of Bones is by Elly Griffiths and is due to be published in January 2012. It is Halloween night, and the local museum in King's Lynn is preparing for an unusual event - the opening of a coffin containing the bones of a medieval bishop. But when Ruth Galloway arrives to supervise, she finds the museum's curator lying dead beside the coffin. It is only a matter of time before she and DI Nelson cross paths once more, as he is called in to investigate. Soon the museum's wealthy owner lies dead in his stables too. These two deaths could be from natural causes but Nelson isn't convinced.

When threatening letters come to light, events take an even more sinister turn. But as Ruth's friends become involved, where will her loyalties lie? As her convictions are tested, she and Nelson must discover how Aboriginal skulls, drug smuggling and the mystery of The Dreaming may hold the answer to these deaths, and their own survival.

Who do you tell when you wake up to find a severed head on your resort-front beach in the morning? For frustrated ex-crime reporter Jimm Juree it means action. With her former cop grandfather as back up, she sets out to discover how the poor fellow ended up where he did - and why. On their journey, with the rest of their disjointed family in tow, they uncover gruesome tales of piracy and slavery, violence and murder in the Gulf of Thailand. Are the authorities uninterested because they're involved, or because the victims aren't Thai? Whatever the reason, Jimm and her team are going it alone and their lives are under threat.

And who exactly are those two elegant women in cabin three and why has the engine number of their car been filed away? Airport hostages and hand grenades, monkeys and naked policemen - once more the sublime and the ridiculous clash at the Gulf Bay Lovely Resort and Restaurant. Granddad There’s a Head on the Beach is by Colin Cotterill and will be published in March 2012.

The Dark Winter is a debut novel by David Mark and is due to be published in March 2012. Hull, northern England. Two weeks before Christmas, an elderly man - the only survivor of a fishing trawler tragedy 40 years before - is found murdered at sea. In a church, a young girl - the last surviving member of a family slaughtered during the conflict in Sierra Leone - is hacked to death with a machete. A junkie, who fled the burning house where he had set his family alight, is found incinerated on a rundown council estate.

Someone is killing sole survivors in the manner they had escaped death. And it falls to Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy of Humberside CID to find out whom. McAvoy, despite being a six-foot-five, man mountain of a police officer, is not your typical bullish detective. A shy, gentle giant, he is family man obsessed with being a good and decent cop; more dab hand with a database than gung-ho with a gun - traits that have seen him become increasingly isolated from his colleagues in the force. Desperate to prove his worth, McAvoy knows he must establish the motive behind the killings if he is to have any chance of pinning the perpetrator. And he must do so quickly, as this twisted yet ingenious killer appears to have an appetite for murder.

The Lewis Man is by Peter May and is due to be published in January 2012. A perfectly preserved body is recovered from a peat bog on the Isle of Lewis. The male Caucasian corpse - marked by several horrific stab wounds - is initially believed by its finders to be over two-thousand years old. Until they spot the Elvis tattoo on his right arm. The body, it transpires, is not evidence of an ancient ritual killing, but of a murder committed during the latter half of the twentieth century. Meanwhile, Fin Macleod has returned to the island of his birth. Having left his wife, his life in Edinburgh and his career in the police force, the former Detective Inspector is intent on repairing past relationships and restoring his parents' derelict croft.

But when DNA tests flag a familial match between the bog body and the father of Fin's childhood sweetheart, Marsaili Macdonald, Fin finds his homecoming more turbulent than expected. Tormod Macdonald, now an elderly man in the grip of dementia, had always claimed to be an only child without close family. A lie, Fin will soon discover, Tormod has had very good reason to hide behind.

A three-year-old British girl is taken from a Spanish beach while on holiday with her parents. Nobody heard a sound. Nobody saw a thing. Or so they claim. Meanwhile, on the nearby Costa del Sol, Rosie Gilmour is enjoying a well-deserved vacation: one that is cut short when the abduction story breaks and she's sent to cover it.

Rosie's instincts tell her something's wrong. Such a crime, committed in broad daylight, must surely have its witnesses. Moreover, the girl's mother's story just doesn't add up. When Rosie is approached by an illegal sex worker with information about the abduction, she knows these instincts are correct. Key information about the crime is being withheld from the authorities. The reason: corrupt politicians and vicious human trafficking gangs - enemies one would think twice about making. But thinking twice is not in Rosie Gilmour's DNA, especially when a young child's life is at stake. And, as Rosie closes in on the truth, she realises the penalty for missing this particular deadline is just that, death. To Tell The Truth is by Anna Smith and will be published in March 2012.

Holy City is by Guillermo Orsi and is due to be published in March 2012 Buenos Aires, Argentina. A passenger liner runs aground on the muddy banks of the nearby Rio de la Plata. The passengers are reduced to sleeping in the corridors of hotels and fall easy prey to the city's criminal class, who are always willing to take a wealthy tourist hostage. The first to go missing are a Colombian drug baron and his girlfriend, apprehended by Federal Police who may or may not be all they claim to be. But criminal celebrities of this calibre are a valuable commodity, and their abductor soon finds that the couple has been lifted from under his nose. Into the confusion steps Walter Carroza, a weary but honest cop. With his sidekick and confidante, Veronica Berutti, a policeman's widow and crusading lawyer, he embarks on an investigation that will lead him from the shanty markets of Buenos Aires' Bolivian quarter through layer upon layer of corruption towards the 'Holy Land', a theme park based on ancient Palestine, where a killer with a grisly taste for memorabilia lurks.

It is autumn in Parma. Commissario Soneri decides to escape the city to return to his home village in the Appenines for a much-needed holiday. He plans to spend the time hunting for mushrooms on the wooded slopes of Montelupo. The small and isolated village revolves around the fortunes of the Rodolfi family, salami manufacturers for generations. Its patriarch, the gifted Palmiro, runs a tight ship, but behind the scenes, all is not well: his son, Paride, has other plans for his future. And then all of a sudden the family finds itself in the throes of a financial scandal, with worrying implications for the entire community. Soon afterwards a hiker discovers a decomposing body in the woods. After initial protestations, Soneri soon gives up all hope of a peaceful break. The complicated relationship he uncovers between Rodolfi and his son becomes all the more pertinent when he learns that his own father and Palmiro Ridolfi were once friends. The Dark Valley is by Valerio Varesi and is due to be published in February 2012.

The Voice of Spirits is by Xavier-Marie Bonnot and is due to be published in March 2012. When Commandant Michel de Palma follows an anonymous tip-off to a gated mansion by the coast, he finds a body whose face is obscured by a fearsome tribal mask, beneath it a mysterious wound that could not have been caused by a bullet. Surrounded by scores of masks and painted skulls, de Palma hears the haunting strains of a primal flute from the floors above.
With few leads to go on, de Palma delves into an account of the murdered doctor's voyage to Papua New Guinea seventy years earlier, accompanied by a fellow amasser of Oceanic art, Robert Ballancourt. As the doctor's attractive but distant granddaughter offers de Palma further insights into her grandfather's second life as an intrepid collector, he and his team stumble upon an art-smuggling ring working out of Marseilles' dilapidated docks. But when his chief suspect is found dead, killed by the same method as Dr Delorme, even de Palma begins to wonder whether the bodies on his hands are the victims of spirits intent on revenge. The rituals of Papuan warriors and headhunters - whose traditional way of life endured until deep into the twentieth century - form the intriguing backdrop to The Voice of the Spirits, another subtle yet satisfying novel from one of France's most original and thought-provoking crime writers.