January 2020
The Other You is by J S Monroe. Is he who you think he is? Kate used to be good at recognising people. So good, she worked for the police, identifying criminals in crowds of thousands. But six months ago, a devastating car accident led to a brain injury. Now the woman who never forgot a face can barely recognise herself in the mirror. At least she has Rob. Kate met him just after her accident, and he nursed her back to health, in his high-tech, modernist house on the Cornish coast. When she's with him, the nightmares of the accident fade, and she feels safe and loved. Until, one day, Kate looks at Rob anew. And knows, with absolute certainty, that the man before her has been replaced by an impostor. Is she right? Have her old recognition skills returned? Or is it all in her damaged mind?
... though there is no fixed line between wrong and right, There are roughly zones whose laws must be obeyed. It is New Year's Eve, nearly six weeks into an off-and-on blizzard that has locked Alaska down, effectively cutting it off from the outside world. But now there are reports of a plane down in the Quilak mountains. With the National Transportation Safety Board unable to reach the crash site, ex-Trooper Jim Chopin is pulled out of retirement to try to identify the aircraft, collect the corpses, and determine why no flight has been reported missing. But Jim discovers survivors: two children who don't speak a word of English. Meanwhile, PI Kate Shugak receives an unexpected and unwelcome accusation from beyond the grave, a charge that could change the face of the Park forever. No Fixed Line is by Dana Stabenow.
House on Fire is by Joseph Finder. Nick Heller, private spy, exposes secrets that powerful people would rather keep hidden. At the funeral of his good friend Sean, an army buddy who struggled with opioid addiction, a stranger approaches Nick with a job. The woman is a member of the Kimball family, whose immense fortune was built on opiates. Now she wants to become a whistleblower, exposing evidence that Kimball Pharmaceutical knew its biggest money-maker was dangerously addictive. Nick agrees instantly - but he soon realizes the sins of the Kimball patriarch are just the beginning. Beneath the surface are the barely concealed cabals and conspiracies: a twisting story of family intrigue and lethal corporate machinations.
I am the Night is by Ethan Cross. Marcus Williams and Francis Ackerman Jr. are both killers. But while Williams is tortured by the deaths he has caused, Ackerman takes pleasure in his murders. Williams is a former New York City homicide detective. Ackerman is a serial killer. And both men are about to become unwilling pawns in a conspiracy that reaches to the highest levels of US government. They will be plunged deep into a hellish underworld of murderers and killers. They will find that there is more that connects them than divides them... and that their lives depend on it.
February 2020.
Sean Tennant and Molly Winter are living quietly and cautiously in Houston when a troubled, obsessive stranger shatters the safety they have carefully constructed for themselves. Sean is at a shopping mall when Henry Alan Keen, scorned by a woman he's been dating, pulls out a gun at the store where she works and begins shooting everyone in sight. A former soldier, Sean rushes toward Keen and ends the slaughter with two well-placed shots - becoming a hero with his face plastered across the news. But Sean's newfound notoriety exposes him to the wrath of two men he thought he had left safely in his past. One of them blames Sean for his brother's death. The other wants to recover a treasure that Sean and Molly stole from him. Both men are deadly and relentless enemies, and Sean and Molly will need to draw on all their strength and devotion to each other if they hope to elude them. Thus begins a cross-country chase that leads from Texas to Montana, from Tennessee to New York to Michigan, as the hunters and their prey grow ever closer and, in a heart-stopping moment, converge. The Good Killer is by Harry Dolan.
The Last Drop of Blood is by Graham Masterton. It started with the judge. He was about to sentence five of Cork's most notorious criminals. But his body has just turned up, beaten and broken, on an isolated road in his burned-out car. Now four members of a rival gang have been shot, and in retaliation three civilians have been blown up. To Katie's horror, Cork is becoming a gang battleground like Dublin. Can Katie save the city? Can she save herself?
Robert Ludlum's ™ The Treadstone Resurrection is by Joshua Hood. Operation Treadstone has nearly ruined Adam Hayes. The top-secret CIA Black Ops program trained him to be a nearly invincible assassin, but it also cost him his family and any chance at a normal life. Which is why he was determined to get out. Working as a cabinet-maker in rural Oregon, Adam thinks he has left Treadstone in the past, until he receives a mysterious email from a former colleague, and soon after is attacked by an unknown hit team at his job site. Adam must regain the skills that Treadstone taught him - lightning reflexes and a cold conscience - in order to discover who the would-be killers are, and why they have come after him now. Are his pursuers enemies from a long-ago mission? Rival intelligence agents? Or, perhaps, someone inside Treadstone? His search will unearth secrets in the highest levels of government and pull him back into the shadowy world he worked so hard to forget.
Nga-Yee, a librarian, lives a quiet life with her fifteen-year-old sister Siu-Man. After a difficult, impoverished upbringing and the deaths of their parents, they are finally finding a bit of stability. Then one day, Nga-Yee comes home to find her teenage sister has jumped to her death. Was it suicide, or was she pushed? And does it have anything to do with a recent trip on the Hong Kong subway which left Siu-Man silent and withdrawn? Nga-Yee cannot rest until she knows the truth about her sister - even if that means tracking down her sister's friends one by one and making them confess. Part detective novel, part revenge thriller, Second Sister is by Chan Ho-Kei and explores themes of sexual harassment, internet bullying and teenage suicide - and vividly captures the zeitgeist of Hong Kong today.
March 2020
New Year's Eve, London. Outside the Hope & Glory pub, a man has been left to die. A victim of extraordinary violence, he will never walk or speak again. He remains in hospital, nameless, until criminal defence lawyer Sarah Kellerman walks onto his ward. Sarah barely recognises the man she once worked with - he was honourable and kind - what was he involved in? Who wanted him dead? But in her race to uncover the truth, Sarah comes to realise there are two men in her life that she never really knew at all... From one of crime fiction's most compelling voices, One Dark, Two Light is by Ruth Mancini and is where the personal and criminal collide, as Sarah works to bring dark secrets into the light.
The wife of a prominent local judge is shot and killed on Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett's turf. But as Joe investigates, all signs point to the shot having been taken from an impossibly long distance. Joe has seen a lot in his time as warden, but he's never seen a killing like this. How could the shooting have been arranged? And who else is in the cross hairs? At the same time - just as he's adjusting to the arrival of a new baby, his first child - Joe's best friend Nate Romanowski is attempting to decipher a startling grizzly attack in the area. Beset by threats both man-made and natural, the two men must go to great lengths to figure out how to keep their loved ones safe. Long Range is by C J Box.
The Message is by Mai Jia. China, 1941. While war rages in Europe, Japan has established itself as the supreme power in Asia. The beautiful province of Hangzhou has become a stronghold of the Japanese puppet government. One day, five officers from the code-breaking department are escorted to an isolated mansion outside the city. One of them has been sharing secrets with the communists. No-one is leaving until the traitor is uncovered. It should be a straightforward case of sifting truth from lies. But as each code-breaker spins a story that proves their innocence, events are re-framed, and what really happened is called into question again and again. Part revisionist history, part playful meta-fiction, The Message is at once an absorbing and cerebral spy thriller.
Crooked River is by Preston & Child. Before he can return to New York from Miami, Special Agent A.X.L. Pendergast is called to investigate something very strange that has happened on the west coast of Florida. Dozens of human feet, identically clad in blue have washed up on beaches. All exhibit unmistakeable signs of violence. Beyond that, nothing is known about the feet, except that they are fresh and haven't been in the water long. Pendergast reluctantly makes his way to the barrier islands off South Florida to investigate a case he believes to be outside his area of expertise and his interest. Once there, he finds the case both disturbing and intriguing, and is drawn into the mystery almost against his will. A preliminary pathology report indicates the feet were chopped, torn, or even wrenched from their bodies in the crudest of ways. Over the next few days, still more continue to wash in, until the number tops one hundred. Soon the case begins to take a most surprising and complex turn, and Pendergast finds it necessary to call in Special Agent Armstrong Coldmoon for a risky and very specific undercover assignment. And when, at last, the true origin of this awful gift from the sea becomes clear, the former partners are forced to confront an enemy, and a horror, more powerful and deadly than any they have faced before.
April 2020
Mortmain Hall is by Martin Edwards. 1930. A chilling encounter on London's Necropolis Railway leads to murder. At the Old Bailey, a man accused of a 'blazing car' killing escapes the gallows after a surprise witness gives sensational evidence. And journalist Jacob Flint finds himself framed for murder.To save himself, Jacob needs to discover what links these strange events to a remote estate on a northern coast, Mortmain Hall. At Mortmain Hall, an eccentric female criminologist hosts a gathering of people who have narrowly escaped the consequences of miscarriages of justice. But the house party culminates in tragedy when a body is found beneath the crumbling cliffs. Is the death an accident or the result of an ingenious plot to get away with murder? An eclectic mix of suspects and victims includes a radical publisher risen from the grave, a fake medium with a sinister past, and a cricketer mauled to death by an escaped lion. Jacob sets out to uncover the labyrinthine secrets of Mortmain Hall, alongside a woman whose relentless quest for the truth might just bring down the British establishment...Who can we turn to, if justice betrays us?
Old enemies... Francis Ackerman Jr. is one of America's most prolific serial killers. Having kept a low profile for the past year, he is ready to return to work - and he's more brutal, cunning, and dangerous than ever. New threats... Scarred from their past battles, Special Agent Marcus Williams cannot shake Ackerman from his mind. But now Marcus must focus on catching the Anarchist, a new killer who drugs and kidnaps women before burning them alive. Hidden terrors... Marcus knows the Anarchist will strike again soon. And Ackerman is still free. But worse than this is a mysterious figure, unknown to the authorities, who controls the actions of the Anarchist and many like him. He is the Prophet - and his plans are more terrible than even his own disciples can imagine. I am Fear is by Ethan Cross.
Tobias Hawke was the tech genius boss of the British Institute for Deep Learning. Now his body has been found in his lab: he has been brutally murdered. Hawke was on the brink of an astonishing breakthrough in the field of Artificial Intelligence. His creation, 'Syd', a machine-learning device that mimics human thought, promised to change the face of humanity forever. But, in the wake of her creator's murder, Syd has gone into emergency shutdown procedure. What secrets are her neural networks hiding? Michael North, ex-assassin and spy-for-hire, is the man to find out. But he can't work alone. Teenage hacker Fangfang, and Hawke's widow, a prize-winning ethicist, have their own reasons to solve the murder. But can they uncover the truth before it's too late? Curse the Day is by Judith O’Reilly.
May 2020
Freddy left her childhood home in Newhaven twenty-two years ago and swore never to return. But now her parents are dead, and she's back in her hometown to help her brothers manage the family fishmonger. Nothing here has changed: the stink of fish coming up from the marshes; the shopping trolleys half-buried by muddy tides; the neighbours sniffing for a new piece of gossip. It's not what Freddy would have chosen, but at least while she's here she'll get to see her childhood best friends, Toni and Mags. At school, the three of them were inseparable. The teachers called them the Mermaids for their obsession with the sea, and with each other. Then Mags goes missing, and Freddy must decide. Go back home to her new life, or stay in Newhaven and find her friend? Death of a Mermaid is by Lesley Thomson
X Ways to Die is by Stefan Ahnhem. X Ways to Die continues the tense, multi-stranded story which begun with Motive X. It is at once an explosive, high-voltage thriller and a fearless exploration of the darkest side of human nature. To enter Stefan Ahnhem's world, with its interwoven plotlines and sprawling cast of characters, is to put yourself in the hands of a master storyteller.
In Fate: Death Notice 2 by Zhou Haohui a terrifying killer crowd-sourced his victims online. Playing a deadly but ingenious game of cat and mouse with his pursuers. That killer only known by his online handlers as Eumendies, murder civilians and police with impunity. Now Sergeant Zheng Haoming of the Chengdu Police Department is determined to hunt him down and avenge his colleagues.
June 2020
All of Us is by A F Carter. It’s not enough that Carolyn Grand endured a horrific childhood that sent her father to jail for thirty years. It’s not enough that she was given to a foster family who pushed her over the edge. It’s not enough that five Carolyn Grands are forced to share a single body. It’s not enough that she spent years in two psychiatric hospitals, was fed psychotropic drugs that left her little more than a zombie. It’s not enough that all five Carolyns struggle every day to remain independent, to pay the rent, to put dinner on the table. It’s not enough that the unreformed and unrepentant father who destroyed Carolyn’s childhood, newly released from prison, has once again thrust himself into her life. Carolyn Grand now has to defend herself against a charge of murder.
1914: Sixteen-year-old Etterly, running from something, hides inside the trunk of a tree and disappears. The police search but find no trace. Her family and friends wrack their brains, but come up with nothing. And so slowly life returns to normal. The hole in the tree is boarded up and the village of Sackwater moves on. Only Etterly's best friend, Betty, clings to hope, insisting she can hear her friend calling for help. 1940: A skeleton is discovered buried in the woods. Though most clues have long since decayed, it is wearing the necklace Etterly had on the day she went missing. Long haunted by her friend's fate, Detective Betty Church is determined to solve the case once and for all. The Ghost Tree is by M R C Kasasian.
Blood of the Wolf is by Graham Hurley. Berlin, 1942. For four years, the men in field grey have helped themselves to country after country across Western Europe. For Werner Nehmann, a journalist at the Promi - the Ministry of Propaganda - this dizzying series of victories has felt like a party without end. But now the Reich's attention has turned towards the East, and as winter sets in, the mood is turning. Werner's boss, Joseph Goebbels, can sense it. A small man with a powerful voice and coal-black eyes, Goebbels has a deep understanding the dark arts of manipulation. His words, his newsreels, have shaken Germany awake, propelling it towards its greater destiny and he won't let - he can't let - morale falter now. But the Minister of Propaganda is uneasy and in his discomfort has pulled Werner into his close confidence. And here, amid the power struggle between the Nazi Chieftains, Werner will make his mistake and begin his descent into the hell of Stalingrad...
