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Believe Me by J P DelaneyClaire Wright wanted to be an actress, but she was penniless and living in New York. She might have had a scholarship to cover her school fees, but she still had to find the money to live in one of the most expensive cities in the world. There was a solution, although it didn't provide a regular income: she became a decoy for a firm of divorce lawyers. The job was to trap straying husbands and tape them as they propositioned her. There were rules though: she couldn't hit on them directly - they had to proposition her. There was no intention to trap the innocent. Full Review |
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The Gravediggers' Bread by Frederic Dard and Melanie Florence (translator)Blaise is at a loose end, for having left Paris on a wild goose chase for a job, which was his friend's idea, he's stuck outside a call box waiting to report back before he gets the train. The woman in the post office using the payphone finally finishes her business, and leaves him with a strong impression – as well as a wallet dropped to the floor containing several days' good money, and, when he tracks her to the village funeral directors', signs of her infidelity. Lo and behold he is given a job as the woman's husband's assistant, although she also starts to employ him in sending messages to her amour, her childhood love before circumstances changed. Blaise is of course deeply in love with the woman by now, and hates the two obstacles preventing him from being with her. One is the lover, a brutish bloke with little prospects and a bad case of epilepsy. Surely he will not fall by the wayside, and surely the brick wall of fate keeping Blaise from his intended destiny will remain two men tall? Full Review |
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The Captives by Debra Jo ImmergutMiranda Greene, a woman with the world at her feet, is behind bars. Convicted and confined she languishes in a prison of her own making. After signing up for sessions with the prison counsellor, seeking a way to end her misery, Miranda sets in motion a chain of events that will alter the lives of all involved. In a twist of fate, the prison psychologist is a former schoolmate, a schoolmate with a crush not dampened by the intervening years. Faced with the girl of his dreams, how far will Frank go to make her remember him? Full Review |
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A Gathering of Ghosts by Karen Maitland
Witchcraft, the supernatural and the will to survive at all costs collide in a story that never shies away from the darker side of human nature. The land is unhappy, the old spirits want revenge and famine is kindling a resurgence of the old faith. As fear rises, it is increasingly difficult for Prioress Johanne to ignore that something rotten has taken root. The sacred well is tainted, its healing waters run red with blood and strangers are blowing in on a wind of change. Full Review |
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The Aladdin Trial by Abi SilverWhen elderly hospital patient Barbara Hennessy is found dead on the pavement outside the hospital, a police investigation is launched into whether she jumped or was pushed. Having just have surgery on her foot, there is sufficient grounds to think this was no accident, but the only suspect the police can link to the death is the hospital cleaner, a Syrian refugee, Ahmad Qabbani. Solicitor Constance Lamb and barrister Judith Burton reunite to defend Ahmad, but with an uncooperative hospital staff, Barbara's self interested children and Ahmad keeping secrets, it's going an increasingly difficult task to prove to the jury and the media, that he is innocent. Full Review |
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The Story Keeper by Anna Mazzola
Audrey, a complex mix of flights of fancy and seriousness, wanting, needing, to be more than what everyone expects of her, escapes from the straightjacket of her home. Where every action, every thought, every yearning is controlled by her father, who only once in his life threw caution to the wind and married way beneath him for love. Now a widower and remarried, he has rigorously returned to upholding what is right, what is proper, the bastion of doing what is expected. Full Review |
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Silence in the Desert by David LongridgeAs the shadow of the Second World War descends upon the planet, four people are explored in a tale of love and friendship. Henri, fulfilling a family tradition in joining the Foreign Legion, Bill, arriving at Cambridge on an RAF scholarship, Leo, struggling to align his beliefs with those of his upbringing, and Elisabeth, crossing continents and changing names are all brought together by strife and turmoil. As the war rages, these men are tested like never before, with trust, loyalty and love leading to decisions that affect both their lives and those all around them. Full Review |
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The Poison Bed by E C FremantleThe year is 1615 and celebrated couple Robert and Frances Carr have been arrested for murder. She is young, beautiful, and a member of the notorious Howard family. He is one of the most powerful men in the kingdom, risen from nothing yet has the King's ear. Both of them are suspected but the crime is not as black and white as it seems. Is Frances an innocent or is she the witch so many believe her to be? Is Robert telling the truth when he says he knows nothing of the murder? In between all these questions is King James I, for it is his secret that is at stake. One of them is a killer, but who has committed the murder in question? Full Review |
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Hunted by G X ToddDo you not sometimes think a storm is coming? Hunted continues where the Voices series left off, with our heroine on the run without anyone to defend her whilst the world around her is descending into chaos. Lacey, barely escaped with her life after the events of Defender and now she's being hunted. By a boy driven by a voice stealing away his sanity piece by piece and by another incapable of speech. Both are determined to find her at all costs and both are building up an army of followers to track her precise location before the other. Full Review |
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Nightfall Berlin by Jack GrimwoodI have heard it said that the best way to begin to tell a story is to create a multi-dimensional character, imbued with compelling layers of detail - be it backstory, character quirks or behaviours. The point seems to be that in creating a character in such a way you begin to reflect the truth of life wherein people are by definition multi-dimensional and thus, you bring your story to life. In Major Tom Fox, Grimwood has successfully created just such a character. In one man he gifts us an exciting and honourable figure who somehow simultaneously manages to present as damaged and flawed. Grimwood provides some character history for Fox which clearly informs the actions of the character but I would suggest that rather than any written history provided for Major Fox, it is in the way he interacts with the other characters and drives the action of the story that we come to know him. Full Review |
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Don't Make a Sound by David JacksonMalcolm and Harriet are a little odd. That much is clear from the start, from the way he is around her, the way he prepares things in such a way as to make her happy. It's a nice sentiment, but something is off. We meet their daughter Daisy and again, it all seems nice enough but there's a vibe, a hint of a feeling that all is not what it seems. Just how bad things are, though, is yet to be revealed. Full Review |
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All These Beautiful Strangers by Elizabeth KlehfothElizabeth Klehfoth's debut novel is a mystery thriller written from the perspective of Charlie Calloway, a teenage girl in her final years at boarding school who is plagued by her mother’s disappearance. As the story progresses she begins to learn more about what happened to her mother, finding out along the way that not everyone was who she thought they were. Titled All These Beautiful Strangers it really makes you question whether you are surrounded by strangers too. Full Review |
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The Industry of Human Happiness by James HallThe Industry of Human Happiness first and foremost is a novel about music. It is about human beings being able to find music and magic in the simplest of places. Max and his younger cousin have realised their dream of opening a gramophone company. However, their ambition and hubris soon puts them on a course towards London's underworld. They will ascend broken and their lives changed forever. Full Review |
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Greeks Bearing Gifts: Bernie Gunther Thriller 13 by Philip KerrSet in Germany in 1957, Greeks Bearing Gifts is a historical crime thriller with everything from dodgy Nazi past histories to insurance fraud. Bernie Gunther is a Berliner, who was a sarjeant during the second world war and now, in this novel, is working in the morgue of a hospital. He finds himself embroiled in a mystery, taking on a new role as an insurance claims investigator. The investigation takes him to Greece, and back into the dark times of the war. With layered plots and double-crossing left, right and centre, there's lots to keep you guessing throughout this story. Full Review |
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The Reckoning by Yrsa Sigurdardottir and Victoria Cribb (translator)Last time, this series opened with a plot that derailed the careers of both its leads – Huldar the policeman, and child psychologist Freyja. Demoted and stuck with a kind of love/hate connection, they are left staring into space for want of something to happen. Huldar can even find some gruesome human remains the police have been tipped off about, but still isn't allowed to investigate them, so he settles for the drudge work involved in a threat found left in a school's time capsule. Even Freyja can be persuaded to stop twiddling her thumbs and help him out. It's the nature of these books that we know both plots will be connected somehow – but how, we will be asking, will either relate to the prologue, where a young girl was snatched ten years ago, and what is a modern family under threat to do with anything? Full Review |
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Everything About You by Heather ChildIn the future, your social feed is your entire existence. A.I. is here and it is all around you. It fills your fridge, it keeps up to date with your friends and fulfils your wishes. It is also stealing your jobs and, possibly, loosening your grip on reality. Freya is unexpectedly given a beta testing version of the latest smart specs, glasses which give her all the information she'll ever need, right in front of her eyes by barely thinking about it, complete with a personality to guide her. The problem is that the personality on the glasses is that of her missing and presumed dead sister. Freya is thrown and unsettled by this. Her mum tells her to stop using them or at the very least to reset them to a different personality. But Freya just can't do this. Hearing her sister's voice again is like she's right there, and although she knows this is just Ruby's data, part of Freya can't believe that it can be this accurate, it can't be this Ruby. Is it just possible that something more is feeding this personality than Ruby's data? Full Review |
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Panic Room by Robert GoddardDon Challenor is a down on his luck estate agent who gets tasked to sell a house in Cornwall and upon meeting the live-in cleaner, Blake, finds his life utterly turned upside down. A simple sales job gets increasingly complex with the addition of a witch, professional heavies and a mysterious panic room. Intrigue builds on intrigue and what started fairly simply becomes something far more complex. Full Review |
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Munich: The Man Who Said No! by David LawsI've played Neville Chamberlain in public, you know – a full one-line in a Beyond the Fringe sketch, where he says he has a piece of paper from Hitler. I then proceeded to prove it was a paper bag, in fact, by blowing it up and immediately bursting it. That is what that paper was to many – the indicator of a lot of hot air, and only leading to an unwelcome noise, when WW2 actually struck anyway. Certainly, not everyone was keen on his appeasement with the Nazis, and this book opens with the first-person reportage of one such man, keen on showing proof to Chamberlain that he should not sign the Sudetenland away. But he only got so far before his story was cut off entirely – leaving a grand-daughter, Emma, at Cambridge but under a cloud of ignominy, to pick the last, barest threads of the story up and see just what did happen to him. Oh, and her help has just come out of prison… Full Review |
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Girl on Fire by Tony ParsonsA drone collides with an air ambulance, the mess falls on a busy shopping centre and we are barely out of the first chapter. DC Max Wolfe's latest adventure looks at religion, radicalisation, hate and paranoia. Without drawing breath we immediately jump to catching those responsible. The rest of the book gradually builds a web of intrigue and a virtual soap opera of family issues. Full Review |
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London Rules by Mick HerronClaude Whelan, Regent Park's First Desk has insurmountable problems. He's charged with protecting a lame duck prime minister, but he's under fire himself. There's the self-publicising MP who orchestrated the Brexit vote and who might just be looking to take the PM's job from him. The MP's wife is a columnist for one of the tabloids who's having a go at Whelan in print and who will do anything to promote her husband's interests. Then there's the PM's favourite Muslim who's running for mayor despite having a very dark secret himself. As if this wasn't enough, Whelan's deputy, Lady Di Taverner is watching for his every stumble - and it's not so that she can catch him and help him to safety. Full Review |
