Books to Look Forward to from Mulholland and Hodder and Stoughton

Banks is back and now he’s the one being hunted.  When two boys vanish under mysterious circumstances, the local community is filled with unease.  And when a caravan belonging to one of the youths is burned to the ground, and a bloodstain is discovered in a disused World War Two hangar nearby, things quickly become much more sinister.  Assigned to the case, DCI Banks and his team are baffled by the mystery laid out before them.  But when a motor accident throws up a gruesome discovery, the investigation spins into a higher gear - and in another direction.  As Banks and his team struggle desperately to find the missing boy who holds the key to the puzzle, they find themselves in a race against time where it's their turn to become the prey ... Abattoir Blues is the twenty-second novel in the DCI Banks series by Peter Robinson and is due to be published in July 2014.

Oswald de Lacy was never meant to be the Lord of Somerhill Manor.  Despatched to a monastery at the age of seven, sent back at seventeen when his father and two older brothers are killed by the Plague, Oswald has no experience of running an estate.  He finds the years of pestilence and neglect have changed the old place dramatically, not to mention the attitude of the surviving peasants.  Yet some things never change.  Oswald's mother remains the powerful matriarch of the family, and his sister Clemence simmers in the background, dangerous and unmarried.  Before he can do anything, Oswald is confronted by the shocking death of a young woman, Alison Starvecrow.  The ambitious village priest claims that Alison was killed by a band of demonic dog-headed men.  Oswald is certain this is nonsense, but proving it - by finding the real murderer - is quite a different matter.  Every step he takes seems to lead Oswald deeper into a dark maze of political intrigue, family secrets, and violent strife.  And then the body of another girl is found.  SD Sykes brilliantly evokes the landscape and people of medieval Kent in this thrillingly suspenseful debut entitled The Plague.  The Plague is due to be published in October 2014.

  

In the wake of a failed attack on America's premier theme park, which put his own daughter at risk, Special Forces operator Jad Bell is sent after the man who arranged it.  But it soon becomes clear that capturing him is just the start: his employer, known only as the Architect, has already set something far worse in motion.  At the centre of it all are two women deep under cover.  One is an American spy whose intel is the only hope they have, but who has lived a lie for so long she cannot be trusted.  And the other is a woman as beautiful as she is deadly, already living in the States, and poised to execute the Architect's plans at a moment's notice.  The stakes are even higher, the clock is ticking, and this time the enemies are hiding in plain sight...  Bravo is by Greg Rucka and is due to be published by July 2014.

Hunter-Killer is by Chris Ryan and is due to be published in September 2014.  Following a suicide bombing in central London, series SAS hero Danny Black is recruited to be part of an assassination squad, directed by a joint MI5/MI6/CIA committee and tasked with hunting down and killing the terrorist cells believed to be planning further atrocities.  Early leads take them to a North London mosque and a one-armed hate cleric, whom the Home Secretary repeatedly tries and fails to expel from the country, a sleazy Saudi prince living in a Park Lane Hotel - on the surface a devout Muslim, he devotes himself to booze, drugs and hookers as soon as his family are out of the building - and a grizzled ex-Regiment guy who is spreading rumours that Diana was assassinated by the SAS in the tunnel in Paris because of her Arab lover.  The trail of clues takes Danny to a training camp in the Yemen, but just as he has the enemy in his sights, he discovers that they are somehow one step ahead of him, and he begins to suspect that they are being topped off by someone close to home.

The Secret Place is by Tana French and is due to be published in August 2014.  The photo shows a boy who was murdered a year ago.  The caption says, “I know who killed him”.  Detective Stephen Moran hasn't seen Holly Mackey since she was a nine-year-old witness to the events of Faithful Place.  Now she's sixteen and she's shown up outside his squad room, with a photograph and a story.  Even in her exclusive boarding school, in the graceful golden world that Stephen has always longed for, bad things happen and people have secrets.  The previous year, Christopher Harper, from the neighbouring boys' school, was found murdered on the grounds.  And today, in the Secret Place - the school noticeboard where girls can pin up their secrets anonymously - Holly found the card.  Solving this case could take Stephen onto the Murder squad.  But to get that solved, he will have to work with Detective Antoinette Conway - tough, prickly, an outsider, everything Stephen doesn't want in a partner.  And he will have to find a way into the strange, charged, mysterious world that Holly and her three closest friends inhabit and disentangle the truth from their knot of secrets, even as he starts to suspect that the truth might be something he doesn't want to hear.

Judged: As he watches, her body drifts below the water's surface, forever altered.  Before he disposes of each victim, he takes a trophy.  It's a sign of his power, and a warning - to the one destined to suffer most of all...Condemned In Grizzly Falls, Montana, Detectives Selena Alvarez and Regan Pescoli are struggling with a new commander and a department in the midst of upheaval.  It's the worst possible time for a homicide.  A body has been found, missing a finger.  Alvarez hopes this means a murderer with a personal grudge, not a madman.  But then a second body turns up...Executed: As the clues begin pointing toward a suspect, Pescoli's unease grows.  She senses there's more to this case than others believe.  A killer has made his way to Grizzly Falls, ready to fulfil a vengeance years in the making.  And Pescoli must find the target of his wrath - or die trying...  Deserves to Die is by Lisa Jackson and is due to be published in July 2014.

Havana in the 1850s is a city as dangerous as it is exotic.  The murder of a humble night watchman at the British Consulate seems to worry neither the Consul nor the police.  But one person cared for the old man.  The enigmatic courtesan Leonarda will not rest until she understands the mystery of his death.  In wintry England, George Backhouse is plucked from obscurity in the Foreign Office and given an unexpected promotion.  His task: to travel to Cuba and take a stand against the illegal slave trade still flourishing there.  But Havana is a tinderbox of intrigue.  As the great powers of the region conspire against each other with increasing ruthlessness for control of the island, Backhouse comes to see that the most innocent of actions could spark a devastating war.  To protect their interests, the powers-that-be in Whitehall are prepared to turn a blind eye to many things. Leonarda will not.  But what of George Backhouse?  Havana Sleeping is by Martin Davies and is due to be published in September 2014.

Who can be trusted, when betrayal is a way of life?  Danny Curnow used to run agents and informers during the Troubles.  Now he lives in quiet isolation in northern France.  The covert world of deception and betrayal he left behind came close to destroying him.  Fifteen years later, when the call comes from his old boss, the stakes are higher, the risks are greater, and if he wants to survive, Danny will have to prove that he has not softened – that he is just as hard and ruthless as before.  Vagabond is by Gerald Seymour and is due to be published in July 2014.

Vendetta is by Dreda Say Mitchell and is due to be published in November 2014.  'If you seek revenge, dig two graves.’  Undercover cop John 'Mac' MacDonagh has been living a double life, infiltrating the network of Reuben Volk, one of London's deadliest criminals.  But the brief definitely didn't include falling in love with a member of Volk's gang: the beautiful and enigmatic Elena Romanov.  Now Elena has been murdered.  Waking in his hotel to discover her battered body in the next room, Mac is left with no clue as to who killed her - or why.  In fact, all the evidence suggests that it was Mac who killed her, but he can't believe that.  Or can he?  With the police on his tail he enters into a race against time.  All he knows is that something is happening at 11pm, something that could help him to uncover the truth.  Was Mac framed?  Or does he really have a dead woman's blood on his hands?

White Lies is by Stephen leather and is due to be published in August 2014.  Dan 'Spider' Shepherd is used to putting his life on the line - for his friends and for his job with MI5.  So when one of his former apprentices is kidnapped in the badlands of Pakistan, Shepherd doesn't hesitate to join a rescue mission.  But when the rescue plan goes horribly wrong, Shepherd ends up in the hands of al-Qaeda terrorists.  His SAS training is of little help as his captors beat and torture him.  Shepherd's MI5 controller Charlotte Button is determined to get her man out of harm's way, but to do that she's going to have to break all the rules.  Her only hope is to bring in America's finest - the elite SEALs who carried out Operation Neptune Spear - in a do-or-die operation to rescue the captives.  White Lies is a fast paced, seat-of-your-pants thriller, which will have you, hooked from the first page until the last.

The Competition is by Marcia Clark and is due to be published in July 2014.  It's every parent's worst nightmare.  A Columbine-style massacre in a crowded high school hall has left the community shocked to the core.  Two students are identified as the killers.  Both are dead, believed to have committed a mutual suicide.  But in the aftermath, as LA Special Trials prosecutor Rachel Knight and Detective Bailey Keller dig deeper, they realise that the pieces don't add up.  Did the shooters really kill themselves?  Or are they still on the loose?  When someone starts dropping clues that another horrific crime is in the works, Rachel and Bailey scramble desperately to identify their suspects.  The question now isn't whether they plan to kill again.  It's whether they can be stopped...

 The Suicide Club is a First World War spy thriller set in Occupied Belgium in 1917, and tells the dark, disturbing and untold story of the shadow espionage battle fought behind the lines.  The Suicide Club is by Andrew Williams and is due to be published in November 2014.  August 1917.  Europe is mired in bloody stalemate at Passchendaele.  Soldier spy Sandy Innes is not best pleased to be summoned from his undercover work in Belgium and seconded to British Army Headquarters.  Field Marshal Haig's intelligence chief wants Innes's expertise - and access to his spy network - in preparation for the Big Push he hopes will win the war by Christmas.  But Innes's boss, the wily Mansfield Cumming, head of the new Secret Service, has his own reasons for securing Innes a place on Haig's Staff - there are, he tells Innes, 'concerns' in government about the army's intelligence operation.  Innes deduces that it must be a great deal more serious than that if Cumming's political masters want him to spy on the senior officers of their own army.  Behind the lines at H.Q., his new boss, Brigadier General Charteris, largely ignores Innes’s briefings on the German defences in Belgium.  Instead he discovers he is to be part of an advance assault group that will prepare the way for the British 'breakthrough'.  The other Intelligence Officers have a name for the group: 'The Suicide Club'.  It is clear they have little faith in Charteris and his schemes, and are deeply suspicious of the advice he is offering Haig.  They tell Innes that one of their number questioned the integrity of Charteris's intelligence reports, but died in mysterious circumstances before he could take it further.  As Innes digs deeper, he discovers that the dead man had begun to investigate Charteris's prized spy network in Belgium, Operation Faust.  In what becomes a race against time, Innes must uncover a traitor, protect his own network, and survive membership of The Suicide Club.

Confessions is by Kanae Minato and is due to be published in August 2014.  When Yuko Moriguchi's four-year-old daughter died in the middle school where she teaches, everyone thought it was a tragic accident.  It's the last day of term, and Yuko's last day at work.  She tells her students that she has resigned because of what happened - but not for the reasons they think.  Her daughter didn't die in an accident.  Her daughter was killed by two people in the class. And before she leaves, she has a lesson to teach...But revenge has a way of spinning out of control, and Yuko's last lecture is only the start of the story.  In this bestselling Japanese thriller of love, despair and murder, everyone has a confession to make, and no one will escape unharmed.

  

On the rain-drenched, wave-lashed, wind-battered Banffshire coast, tiny fishing villages perch on ledges which would make a seagull think twice and crumbly mansions cling to crumblier cliff tops while, out in the bay, the herring drifters brave the storms to catch their silver darlings.  It's nowhere for a child of gentle Northamptonshire to spend Christmas.  But when odd things start to turn up in barrels of fish - with a strong whiff of murder most foul - that's exactly where Dandy Gilver finds herself.  Enlisted to investigate, she and her trusty cohort Alec Osborne are soon swept up in the fisherfolk's wedding season as well as the mystery.  Between age-old traditions and brand-new horrors, Dandy must think the unthinkable to solve her grisliest case yet.  Dandy Gilver and the Reek of Red Herrings is by Catriona McPherson and is due to be published in July 2014.

Also due to be published is a currently untitled Ali Knight novel and is due to be published in November 2014.  Shy and gentle Darren Sears was only eleven when his sister Jodie and six other girls disappeared, presumed murdered by notorious killer Alicia Duvall.  Ten years later, Darren's mother, now sick with cancer, demands Alicia reveal where Jodie's remains are, but her plea ends in humiliation and failure.  Desperate to alleviate his mum's heartbreak, Darren gets a job as a cleaner in the psychiatric hospital where Alicia is committed, hoping he can find out the truth.  But trying to play a serial killer is a very dangerous game... 

There is also a currently untitled book by Fergus McNeill.  Nigel never meant for it to happen.  At first, he just wanted to be Matt's friend.  But when he discovers he can hear what is going on in the flat below him, his fascination with his new neighbour drifts into obsession.  Rearranging his furniture to recreate the layout of the rooms downstairs.  Buying the same clothes, going through his post, his things.  Becoming Matt without him ever knowing.  And it would have been all right, if Matt hadn't brought the girl home.  When things spiral out of control, Detective Inspector Harland has to unravel the disturbing truth.  But there's far more to the case than meets the eye . 

Hayes Bannock is a Texas Ranger, a natural "lawman" who is tough, taciturn, perceptive, and guarded.  Several years ago, his life was derailed by a tragic chain of events, including the death of his wife in a car accident.  Now he's trying to regain custody of his five-year-old daughter, Georgia, who has been living with his in-laws for the past four years.  Judge Emory Charbonneau is the presiding judge at Georgia Bannock's custody hearing.  Smart and ambitious, she wants to keep the bench to which she was temporarily appointed, which means winning the upcoming election.  But just as she is about to render her decision in Georgia's custody hearing, a man dressed in painter's coveralls and a mask barges into the courtroom and opens fire.  A beloved bailiff is fatally shot and Hayes rushes to Emory, shielding her with his own body and saving her life -- sparking a dangerous attraction between the two.  A chase ensues, and the shooter is eventually cornered and killed.  But after seeing the dead body in the morgue, Hayes realizes that the man killed was not the same man who opened fire in the judge's courtroom.  The actual shooter is still at large and Emory's life is still in danger.  Who was the shooter's actual target and why?  As Hayes and Emory attempt to track him down, they realize that everyone in the courthouse that day is a suspect, and that nobody is who they seem.  Mean Streak is by Sandra Brown and is due to be published in September 2014.

Death in The Tuscan Hills is by Marco Vichi and is due to be published in October 2014.  Spring, 1967.  The trail of tragedy and destruction that followed the previous winter's flood seems to have died down; Florence is beginning to recover.  But Inspector Bordelli does not feel the same sense of relief - he has not had a moment's peace since his investigation of a young boy's murder went disastrously wrong.  Unsettled and embittered, Bordelli resigns from the force and leaves the city.  He could not continue to work as a policeman while the perpetrators of such a terrible crime were still at large.  Now, in the solitude of his new home in the Tuscan hills, he spends his days cooking, going for long walks, and learning to grow his own vegetables.  But the thought of that case - of justice not served - is constantly with him.  Until fate, in which he has never believed, unexpectedly offers him the chance of retribution.

Everyone keeps telling me I have to move on.  And so here I am, walking down the road where he died, trying to remember him the right way.  A year after her husband Zach's death, Lizzie goes to lay flowers where his fatal accident took place.  As she makes her way along the motorway, she thinks about their life together.  She wonders whether she has changed since Zach died.  She wonders if she will ever feel whole again.  At last she reaches the spot.  And there, tied to a tree, is a bunch of lilies.  The flowers are addressed to her husband.  Someone has been there before her.  Lizzie loved Zach.  She really did.  But she's starting to realise she didn't really know him.  Or what he was capable of ...  Remember Me This Way is by Sabine Durrant and is due to be published in July 2014.

After a hazardous stint in the US law enforcement, Valentine Pescatore is trying to start over in Buenos Aires.  But everything changes when an old friend reappears – just before a terrorist attack.  A call placed to Pescatore’s phone makes him a suspect, and he knows there is only one possible connection.  To clear his name, he must join agents from three countries to track the suspected terrorist who was once his closest confidant.  From the jungles of South America to the streets of Paris, from the mansions of the Spanish Riviera to the compounds of Baghdad The Convert’s Song leads Pescatore on a high-speed chase to stop the deadly convert before he strikes again.  The Convert’s Song is by Sebastian Rotella and is due to be published in December 2014.

Criminal Splatterings!!!!

The Broadcast Press Guild Awards have been announced and according to the BBC crime dramas The Fall, Broadchurch and Top of the Lake have all been nominated.  They are all up for four prizes including best drama.  The winners will be announced at a ceremony in London on 28 March.

According to the BBC crime writer Lynda La Plante is writing a prequel to her incredibly successful series Prime Suspect.  The book will be published in 2015 and the TV adaptation will air in 2016, the 25th anniversary year of Prime Suspect and will start when Tennison joins the force in the late 1970s or early 1980s.  More information can be found on the Guardian website.

The BBC Two have also announced that they have commissioned London Spy a new 5 part spy thriller by author Tom Robb Smith.  Shooting will start this year with transmission taking place on BBC Two in 2015.  More information can be found here.  The is also a really interesting interview by Jake Kerridge in the Telegraph with Tom Rob Smith and he explains about writing his latest novel The Farm  off the back of his mother’s serious illness which resulted in her being admitted to an asylum for a period of time.

For those that enjoy watching the legal drama Silk the BBC have announced a third series. More information can be read here.

Shetland the drama series based on the novels of Ann Cleeves is set to return to the BBC for a second series.  The three two part series will be based on the novels Raven Black, Dead Water and Blue Lightning.

The 2014 Northern Crime Writing Competition is open for submissions.  Entry fees for the competition are: £25 for the novels and £10 for short stories. To find out more about the competition go to the Moth Publishing website.  The winning novels will be published in print and as e-books in 2015. The winning writers will receive a standard publishing contract, a £1,000 advance, and support to editorially develop their work. They will also enjoy a marketing and PR campaign to support the publication of their books. Short story winners will get £100 and their story published in the very first Northern Crime Short Story Anthology.

The finalists for the 34th annual L.A. Times Book Prizes were announced on Wednesday 19 February.  The full list can be found here but the Mystery /Thriller nominations are as follows –

Hour of the Red God by Richard Crompton (Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (Mulholland Books/Little, Brown & Co.)
Sycamore Row by John Grisham (Doubleday Books)
The Rage by Gene Kerrigan (Europa Editions)
The Collini Case by Ferdinand von Schirach, (Viking)

Huge congratulations to (one of my favourite author’s) Italian Crime Writer Andrea Camilleri who was recently awarded the Pepe Carvalho Prize for lifetime work at the BCNegra noir literary festival in Barcelona.  The Pepe Carvalho prize is named after the protagonist of the Spanish writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s detective novels. Camilleri named his protagonist after Montalbán. See here for more information from the L.A. Times.

The winner of the £5,000 Telegraph Harvill Secker crime writing competition for an unpublished manuscript is Abir Mukherjee. His novel, A Rising Man, is set in Calcutta in the dying days of the Raj and opens with the brutal murder of a British burra sahib. Mukherjee's submission was picked from a pool of 400 submissions.

Crime Story a new festival for crime fiction lovers, is coming to Newcastle at the University of Northumbria on May 31st. The organizers have added a fun twist: they've commissioned author Ann Cleeves to invent a fictional crime which will then be investigated by various experts including forensic scientists, police detectives and legal eagles.  Authors Louise Welsh, Margaret Murphy (A D Garrett) and Peter Guttridge will also be in attendance.  More information can also be found here.

According to Deadline.Com Dennis Lehane is adapting the Douglas Perry's new biography, Eliot Ness: The Rise And Fall Of An American Hero, for WGN America. The project chronicles the two decades of the famed prohibition agent following his take-down of Al Capone.

Jada Pinkett Smith has also signed up to be the villain in the Batman prequel Gotham.  According to Deadline.com Gotham which has a series commitment is based on DC characters from the Batman universe and explores the origin stories of Commissioner James Gordon (McKenzie) as an idealistic rookie detective in Gotham City, along with Bruce Wayne and the villains who made Gotham City famous. Smith will play Fish Mooney, an imposing, hotheaded and notoriously sadistic gangster boss and nightclub owner with street smarts and almost extra-sensory abilities to read people like an open book who is not one to be crossed.

According to Deadline.Com Debra Messing who is best known in the UK for the comedy Will and Grace is set to star in the NBC pilot The Mysteries of Laura which is  based on the popular Spanish series Los Misterios De Laura, The Mysteries Of Laura follows the life and relationships of Laura Diamond (Messing), a female homicide detective who can handle murderous criminals — but not her hell-raising twin children.

Deadline is also reporting that Rose Rollins is set as one of the leads in TNT's legal drama pilot Guilt By Association, based on the novels by former prosecutor Marcia Clark, while Jamey Sheridan, (Homeland) has been cast in TNT's action-drama pilot Agent X, starring Sharon Stone.

ITV has commissioned an eighth series of Inspector Lewis with Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox reprising their roles as Oxford detectives. This series will find Hathaway (Laurence Fox) has been promoted to Inspector after an extended break from the force, with the retired Lewis (Kevin Whately) drafted back to renew their partnership.

In the Independent Boyd Tonkin interviews Eva Gabrielsson about Stieg Larsson’s legacy and the announcement that there is to be a fourth book written by David Lagercrantz.

Books to look forward to from Mulholland Books

Gun Machine is by Warren Ellis and is due to be published in January 2013.  This morning Detective John Tallow was bored with his job.  Then there was this naked guy with a shotgun, and his partner getting killed, and now Tallow has a real problem: an apartment full of guns.  Old guns.  Modified guns.  Arranged in rows and spirals on the floor and walls.  Hundreds of them.  Each weapon is tied to a single unsolved murder.  Which means Tallow has uncovered two decades' worth of homicides that no one knew to connect and a killer unlike anything that came before.  Tallow's bosses don't want him to solve the case.  The murderer just wants him to die.  But there's a pattern hiding behind the deaths, and if Tallow can figure it out he might even make it out alive.

 

 To escape her awful life, Luz plans carefully. She quits the drugs. She pretends everything is normal. She takes only the clothes on her back, a gun and the money in her husband's safe. The corpses in the hallway weren't part of the plan. Luz needs to find the daughter she left behind years ago, but she knows she may die trying. Her husband, El Principe, is a key player in a drug cartel, and betrayal will not go unpunished. In this powerful story of revenge and redemption, one woman's desperate break for freedom will change the lives of criminals and cops on both sides of the border.  Angel Baby is by Richard Lange and is due to be published in May 2013

Lexicon is by Max Barry and is due to be published in June 2013. Two years ago, something terrible was unleashed in an Australian mining town called Broken Hill. Thousands died. Few people know what really happened. Emily Rikkard is one of them. She belongs to an elite organisation of 'poets': masters of manipulation who use language to warp others to their will. She was one of their most promising recruits until she made a catastrophic mistake: she fell in love. Wil Jamieson knows the truth too, only he doesn't remember it. And he doesn't know why he's immune to the poets' powers. But he knows he needs to run. As their stories converge, the past is revealed, and the race is on for a deadly weapon: a word. Because the poets know that words can kill...

A series of attacks all over the globe are linked by a single, deadly intent: someone is gathering everything they need to make a dirty bomb.  The terrorists behind it are shadows; their targets unknown.  Navy SEAL Commander Thomas Crocker and his elite team need answers.  They need to go to the source: to track down the material the terrorists are searching for, and stop it falling into the wrong hands.  The hunt takes them through the Yemen, to a hijacked boat off the Somali coast, and into the chaos of post-revolutionary Libya...where their mission becomes terrifyingly personal.  Hunt the Scorpion is by Don Mann and Ralph Pezzullo and is due to be published in February 2013.  It combines his real-life insight with pulse-pounding action and non-stop thrills.

 

At Black Arts, everyone lives and breathes video games.  Including Douglas, who doesn't have much else to talk about.  Then he gets promoted to creative lead on Black Arts's flagship franchise, Realms of Gold, a convoluted fantasy game, and things start going wrong.  Is it corporate espionage?  Internal sabotage?  Can there really be a ghost in the machine?  Douglas has only ever had to worry about on screen danger before, but that is about to change.  You is by Austin Grossman and is due to be published in March 2013.

 This morning, I found a body.  Soon the police will arrest me for murder.  And after that, my life will fall apart.  Who can I trust? Who can I believe? How can I make them see I’m innocent?   Gaby Mortimer is the woman who has it all. But everything changes when she finds a body on the common near her home. Because the evidence keeps leading back to her. And the police seem sure she's guilty...Under Your Skin is an unpredictable, exquisitely twisty story, which proves that there are only three rules in life that mean anything: Assume nothing Believe no one Check everything. Under Your Skin is by Sabine Durrant and is due to be published in April 2013.

Murder As A Fine Art is by David Morrell and is due to be published in May 2013.  43 years after the Ratcliffe Highway murders brought London to a panic in 1811, Thomas De Quincey, the infamous author of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, wrote a notorious essay about the murders.  That much is historical record.  In the brilliantly suspenseful Murder As A Fine Art De Quincey's essay becomes the blueprint for a new killer's "masterpiece.”  Newly arrived in London, the author becomes the prime suspect.  Soon, however, it becomes clear that De Quincey himself is the murderer's ultimate target.  Aided by his daughter and a young Scotland Yard detective, De Quincey must learn the killer's identity to save them all from a horrible fate.

Killer Ambition is by Marcia Clark and is due to be published in June 2013.  Would you kill to protect your career? Los Angeles DA Rachel Knight is about to find out just how far - and how deadly - Hollywood ambition will go in her latest harrowing case. When the daughter of big-time producer Russell Antonovich is kidnapped and later killed, Rachel is pitted against Hollywood's biggest power players as well as her own boss, who is desperate to stay on the industry's good side. Killer Ambition takes us on a thrilling ride through the darker side of Hollywood and into a court case that could make or break Rachel's career.

The Saint is back! Between January and August 2013 Mulholland Books will be republishing all thirty-five books starring the debonair outlaw.  Simon Templar is the Saint – daring, dazzling, and just a little bit disreputable.  On the side of the law, buts standing just outside it, he dispenses his own brand of justice one criminal at a time, standing up against crooks, swindlers, arms dealers and anyone he considers a worthy opponent…… The Saint books will come with new introductions and extra content.

Forthcoming books to look forward to from Mulholland Books and Hodder &Stoughton

Kind of Cruel is by Sophie Hannah and is due to be published in February 2012. When Amber Hewerdine consults a hypnotherapist as a desperate last resort, she doesn't expect that anything much will change. She doesn't expect it to help with her chronic insomnia ...She doesn't expect to hear herself, under hypnosis, saying words that mean nothing to her: 'Kind, cruel, kind of cruel' - words she has seen somewhere before, if only she could remember where ...She doesn't expect to be arrested two hours later, as a result of having spoken those words out loud, in connection with the brutal murder of Katharine Allen, a woman she's never heard of ...

In Broken Harbour, a ghost estate outside Dublin - half-built, half-inhabited, half-abandoned - two children and their father are dead. The mother is on her way to intensive care. Scorcher Kennedy is given the case because he is the Murder squad's star detective. At first he and his rookie partner, Richie, think this is a simple one: Pat Spain was a casualty of the recession, so he killed his children, tried to kill his wife Jenny, and finished off with himself. But there are too many inexplicable details and the evidence is pointing in two directions at once. Scorcher's personal life is tugging for his attention. Seeing the case on the news has sent his sister Dina off the rails again, and she's resurrecting something that Scorcher thought he had tightly under control: what happened to their family, one summer at Broken Harbour, back when they were children. The neat compartments of his life are breaking down, and the sudden tangle of work and family is putting both at risk ... Broken Harbour is by Tana French and is due to be published in June 2012.

Death and the Olive Grove is the second book in the Inspector Bordelli series by Marco Vichi and is set in 1960s Florence. April 1964, but spring hasn't quite sprung. The bad weather seems suited to nothing but bad news. And bad news is coming to the police station. First, Bordelli's friend Casimiro, who insists he's discovered the body of a man in a field above Fiesole. Bordelli races to the scene, but doesn't find any sign of a corpse. Only a couple of days later, a little girl is found at Villa Ventaglio. She has been strangled, and there is a horrible bite mark on her belly. Then another little girl is found murdered, with the same macabre signature. And meanwhile Casimiro has disappeared without a trace. The investigation marks the start of one of the darkest periods of Bordelli's life: a nightmare without end, as black as the sky above Florence. Death and the Olive Grove is due to be published in January 2012.

Summertime Death is the second book in the Malin Fors series by Mons Kallentoff and is due to be published in May 2012. As the temperature in Sweden reaches a record-breaking 45-, forest fires break out. All those who have failed to escape Linkoping for the summer take shelter indoors, shocked and paralysed by the heat.However, when a teenage girl is discovered naked and bleeding in the local park, it is clear that the raging heat is not the only plague affecting the town. Then a second girl is found dead. Alarmed by the fact that the victims are the same age as her daughter, Tove, detective Malin Fors will work round-the-clock to capture the perpetrator. But as every lead comes to nothing, it is as though the oppressive heat is clogging up the wheels of her investigation. And time is not on Malin's side ...

It feels like the safest place on earth. A family-friendly, floating palace. But, as Anya Crichton soon discovers, cruise ships aren't all that they seem...Statistics tell us that a woman is twice as likely to be sexually assaulted on a cruise ship than on dry land. Customers aren't screened, so the ships are a haven for sex offenders and paedophiles. With no policing, and floating in international waters, sexual assaults and passengers 'disappearing' are uncommonly frequent...So when a teenage girl is discovered, dead on the deck of the ship that she is holidaying on, Anya feels compelled to get involved. There's no apparent cause of death, but Anya's forensics expertise uncovers more than the ship's doctors can...or want to. With the killer still on board, and subsequently a crew-member found shot, it becomes clear that the safe haven of the cruise-ship is actually anything but. And, as Anya comes under increasing pressure to abandon her investigations, will she continue? Or do whatever it takes to keep her own family safe? Cold Grave is by Kathryn Fox and is due to be published in March 2012.

AD81. The Roman Emperor Domitian seizes power. Afflicted by classic paranoia, the self-styled Master and God sees enemies everywhere - and he is right. The Senate loathes him, his advisers are terrified, he cannot trust his wife and barbarians menace the frontiers. As he vents his suspicions, no one is safe...Gaius Vinius Clodianus survives physical and mental scars to reach high rank in the Praetorian Guard. Flavia Lucilla tends the privileged women at court; when Domitian's inherited talent unravels into madness, she loses her patron cruelly. In the haven of their shared apartment, Gaius and Lucilla find solace together, yearning for normality while living in a Reign of Terror. Moves against Domitian are begun by his own household. Lucilla has to watch Gaius choose between love for her and risking death; between his sworn duty to protect the Emperor and killing Domitian for the good of Rome. The plot careers close to exposure. Rome teeters on the brink of its Golden Age. A group of unlikely conspirators must now act with decency and courage, whatever the personal cost. Master and God is the epic story of a despot whose contemporaries wrote him out of history. Told in Lindsey Davis' sardonic style, it is an intimate portrait of resilience, friendship and love. Master and God is due to be published in March 2012.

Point and Shoot is the final book in the Charlie Hardie trilogy by Duane Swierczynski. On a day like any other day, Kendra Hardie picks up the phone. A voice says, 'leave the house and you're dead'. Then the line is cut. Kendra hasn't seen her husband Charlie for nearly a decade. He hasn't forgotten about her - but neither have his enemies. And he has a lot of enemies. Charlie thought he could protect her by staying away. But now he has access to secrets his enemies will kill to keep hidden, and they're planning to start with his family. After years in exile, Charlie's arming up...and heading home. Point and Shoot is due to be published in March 2012.

The Leopard Sword is by Anthony Riches and is due to be published in April 2012. Britannia has been subdued - and an epic new chapter in Marcus Valerius Aquila's life begins. The murderous Roman agents who nearly captured Marcus have been defeated by his friends. But in order to protect those very friends from the wrath of the emperor, he must leave the province which has been giving him shelter. As Marcus Tribulus Corvus, centurion of the second Tungrian auxiliary cohort, he leads his men from Hadrian's Wall to the Tungrians' original home in Germania Inferior. There he finds a very different world from the turbulent British frontier - but one with its own dangers. Tungrorum, the center of a once-prosperous farming province, a city already broght low by the ravages of the eastern plague that has swept through the empire, is now threatened by an outbreak of brutally violent robbery. A bandit chieftain called Obduro, his identity always hidden behind an iron cavalry helmet, is robbing and killing with impunity. His sword - sharper, stronger and more deadly than any known to the Roman army - is the lethal symbol of his unstoppable power. And now he has moved beyond mere theft and threatens to destabilize the whole northern frontier of the empire ...

Guilt by Degrees is by Marcia Clark and is the second book in the series to feature Deputy DA Rachel Knight. It is due to be published in May 2012. Rachel Knight has never been one to let justice slide from the grip of the law. So when a deputy district attorney mishandles a murder case and then shrugs it off - the victim was a homeless guy, so who cares? - she decides to take the case on herself. With the help of Detective Bailey Keller, Rachel soon finds a missing piece of the puzzle. And a new mystery: the homeless man's death is somehow connected to the vicious murder of a LAPD cop a year earlier. The prime suspect in the murder was acquitted - but now Rachel and Bailey are hot on the trail of new leads. What Rachel doesn't know is that she's being watched. Someone is following her every move, and just waiting for a chance to strike...

Full Back is by Brad Thor and is due to be published in February 2012. Everybody knows that governments engage in activities that are top secret and not always carried out by-the-book. They are knows as 'black ops'. But perhaps less well known is that there is a level beyond this, when the very existence of the state is threatened and the situation needs fixing instantly and utterly secretly and probably violently. Sometimes, it's necessary to go 'full black'. And when the USA is in that position, the man most likely to lead the mission is former Navy SEAL Scot Harvath. FULL BLACK finds Harvath in Sweden, executing in an audacious plan to prevent a massive attack on the Unites States by leading a team to capture a suspected terrorist and infiltrate his cell with a double agent.At the same time, Larry Solomon, one of the most famous film producers in Hollywood, is attacked in his home by a special forces-style group of assassins and only escapes with the help of his friend and former Delta Force operative Luke Ralston.In making a documentary film, Solomon has unknowingly exposed one of the world's wealthiest and highly connected power-brokers as a man determined to plunge the West into deadly chaos. Now, both Solomon and Ralston are living on borrowed time.As the plots rocket to their pulse-pounding conclusions, Harvath will be left with only one means to save his country. Unable to trust anyone, he will be forced to go FULL BLACK.

It is 612 AD and Aelric - senator of the Roman Empire, fresh from a bloodbath in Egypt - is forced to divert the Imperial galley to Athens. He finds a demoralized and corrupt provincial city threatened by an army rumoured to contain twenty million starving barbarians. Not to mention an explosive religious dispute, an unexplained corpse, and hints of something worse than murder ...He will have to call upon all his formidable intellect and lethal ingenuity to survive his enemies inside and outside the city walls ... The Ghosts of Athens is by Richard Blake and is due to be published in June 2012

Things start going wrong the day Johnny Conroy meets Ruth Hynes. He just wants to show his mates that he can pull hard-man Frankie Hynes' daughter, but before he knows it he is part of the Hynes family. And the Hynes family business, which is stealing cars. And there is no way he is ever going to get out of the marriage or the business alive ...The only good thing in their hellhole of a marriage is his daughter Angel, as nice as her name and as innocent. And the only thing keeping Johnny sane is his secret life. But then Angel grows up and meets Johnny's new employee Ryan. He loves Angel - but the family secrets involve him, too. And they are about to explode. Lost Angel is by Mandasue Heller and is due to be published in March 2012.

ALPHA Jonathan 'Jad' Bell has spent a lifetime in the US army. He can be relied on to get the job done, whatever happens, whatever the cost. So when someone needs to go undercover at the nation's biggest amusement park, Jad is the obvious choice. Aside from dealing with fights and missing children, his main responsibility is to prevent the nightmare scenario from coming to pass. This is the nightmare scenario: A group of well-trained, highly motivated terrorists infiltrate the park. They cut off all escape routes. They take hostages. They ensure every camera in the world is trained on Wilsonville...and then they turn it into a bloodbath. And on the day the nightmare becomes real, Jad and his team are all that stands between a band of ruthless killers and thousands of innocent people...including Jad's estranged wife and daughter. Alpha is by Greg Rucka and is due to be published in May 2012.

Agent of Rome: The Imperial Banner is by Nick Brown and is due to be published in May 2012. 272 AD The Roman Emperor Aurelian has defeated Queen Zenobia and crushed the Palmyran revolt. Faridun's Banner, hallowed battle standard of the Persian Empire, has fallen into Roman hands and is to be returned to the Persians as part of a historic peace treaty. But on the eve of the signing the banner goes missing. Recalled to Syria, imperial agent Cassius Corbulo is charged with recovering the flag. Accompanied by his faithful servant Simo and ex-gladiator bodyguard Indavara, Cassius must journey across the dangerous wastes of Syria to the equally perilous streets of Antioch. He and his companions face ruthless brigands, mysterious cults, merciless assassins and intrigue at every turn.

Jack Nightingale was a cop who quit his job over a little girl's death. He's saved his own soul from a devil, and now he's haunted by the cries for help of that same little girl. Is she trapped in eternal torment? Or are demons torturing and deceiving him in order to gain the ultimate prize? Nightingale will have to face down the powers of the police, south London gangs and Hell itself to find out... Nightmare is by Stephen Leather and is due to be published in January 2012.

Also due to be published in May 2012 is The Columbus Affair by Steve Berry, a thriller featuring Christopher Columbus, the last treasures of Jerusalem and much, much more.

No Going Back is by Matt Hilton and is the seventh book in the Joe Hunter series. It is due to be published in February 2012. Jameson Walker approaches Joe Hunter when his daughter Jay and her friend Nicole go missing at a gas station in the Arizona desert while on a cross-country trek across the North American interior. He mentions that a robbery/homicide at the gas station as worrying as the girls were due to be in the vicinity at that time. Joe accepts the job of locating the girls, though not at first convinced there's much to worry about. As Joe picks up the girls' trail he discovers that other young women have also disappeared in the area, and comes across the brutish Logan family.

In the midst of a grueling training exercise, Navy Seal Commander Thomas Crocker unearths a pocket of terrorism that leads straight from the slopes of K2 to the cities of Europe and the Middle East. Crocker and his team, who are trained for the most intense kinds of combat in the most extreme environments, must work their way through a perilous web of terrorist cells. Their goal: to track down the ruthless sheikh behind an international kidnapping ring before his captives pay the ultimate price. Hunt the Wolf is by Don Mann along with Ralph Pezzullo and is due to be published in June 2012.

Iraq 2005 Seven mercenaries journey deep into the desert in search of Saddam's gold. They form an unlikely crew of battle-scarred privateers, killers and thieves, veterans of a dozen war zones, each of them anxious to make one last score before their luck runs out. They will soon find themselves marooned among ancient ruins, caught in a desperate battle for their lives, confronted by greed, betrayal, and an army that won't stay dead... Juggernaut is by Adam Baker and is due to be published in February 2012.

Tonight I said Goodbye is by Michael Koryta and is due to be published in May 2012. Investigator and former Marine Wayne Weston is found at home, killed by a single gunshot wound to the head, the gun still lying in his right hand. There is no sign of his wife and six-year-old daughter.The police believe Wayne Weston killed his family before turning the gun on himself. Weston's father is convinced his son was murdered. He turns to Lincoln Perry, former cop, now private investigator, for help.All the evidence supports the police's conclusions, but as soon as he starts asking questions, Lincoln hears rumours of gambling, extortion, and links to Cleveland's Russian mob. When the FBI asks him to back off, followed by a second murder, Lincoln is more determined than ever to uncover the truth, even if that means putting himself in danger ...

Ray and Marie Benson killed thirteen women before they were caught, tried, and imprisoned. Five of their victims were never found. Six years later, psychologist Alice Quentin discovers a woman's body abandoned on the waste ground at Crossbones Yard. The wounds make it clear: someone wants to continue the Bensons' crimes. Alice hates getting involved in police work, but feels she owes it to the victim to help if she can. Soon her feelings don't matter. The murderer isn't going to let her walk away. Because he seems to know everything about Alice. And if she wants to stop him - and survive - she's going to have to find out all about him. The body at Crossbones Yard is just the start... Crossbones Yard is the debut novel by Kate Rhodes and is due to be published in June 2012

Edge of Dark Water is by Joe R Lansdale and is due to be published in March 2012. May Lynn was a pretty girl from a mean family who dreamed of becoming a film star. Now she's dead - her body dredged up from the Sabine River, bound with wire and weighted down. Her best friend, Sue Ellen, has a family meaner than May's and a yearning for something greater than she's been given. She thinks the least she can do for her friend is take her ashes to Hollywood, and place them on her favourite actor's grave. But May Lynn's diary holds a secret: the location of a large sum of money. What seems like a stroke of fortune has disastrous consequences, and Sue Ellen's escape is about to get more complicated than she'd ever imagined.

Two novels by Nick Santora are due to be published in April 2012. Firstly, Slip and Fall - Robert Principe thought it would be a one-time deal. When he graduated from law school, Rob believed his future was set - he was part of the professional world now, far from his impoverished upbringing. But faced with a struggling firm, a pregnant wife, and a sister in trouble, Rob realises the white-collar world isn't as easy as he thought. He needs money...fast. Desperate, he approaches his wiseguy cousin Jackie with an insurance scheme - a way for the Mob to collect from guys who owe but can't pay and a chance for Robert to use his law degree to make a few quick bucks when he needs it most. The scheme works well - too well. The money flows, the violence escalates, and Rob soon learns that getting out of a deal with the Mafia isn't exactly easy...especially when the FBI is onto you. Rob Principe is a good man. But he's made a seriously bad decision. Secondly, Fifteen Digits - 'The benefit of being invisible is that people don't see you when you're robbing them blind ...now how about you and I get rich, Rich?' The men who work in the print and post room at legal firm Olmstead and Taft are far too unimportant for anyone to notice. But the information that passes through their office is a goldmine: bank deals, mergers, acquisitions...everything you need to play the stock market and win big. All of them could use the money. None of them can see how it would hurt anyone. They should have known that when millions of dollars are involved, all bets are off. Each of the five men picks three numbers. Together, they make up a code to an offshore bank account. It seems like a fool-proof system - that way, no-one can access the cash on their own. But what happens when if one of them learns all fifteen digits?

Faster - Stronger – Deadlier! Former SAS Warrant Officer Joe Gardner has fought the Regiment's deadliest enemies, in some of the most desolate places on earth. And he's always won. Now he's about to face his toughest challenge yet. After losing his hand whilst on a covert operation in Afghanistan, Gardner is forced to stand down from active duty. Now he lives off the grid. But trouble finds him in the shape of a phone call from an old friend. Ex-Regiment legend John Bald is trapped in a bullet-ridden favela in Rio de Janeiro and a violent gang is out to kill him. Unless Gardner helps, Bald is a dead man. What begins as a simple rescue mission soon descends into a desperate struggle for survival as Gardner finds himself caught up in a conceit that stretches from the slums of Brazil to the frozen steppes of Siberia. Stalked by elusive MI6 agents and ruthless ex-Blades, Gardner must draw on all his training and instincts to hunt down the hardest target of all - before disaster strikes... Hard Target is by Chris Ryan and is due to be published in January 2012.

Agent of the State is the debut novel by Roger Pearce. A suspected terrorist is frisked for explosives on the Embankment. Operators do this so skilfully he remains completely unaware...In New Scotland Yard a new brand of manager fails to deal with escalating threats - 'aggressive indecision' is what Detective Chief Inspector John Kerr calls it...He discovers that cocaine-fuelled sex parties in Knightsbridge are pulling in businessmen, Russian diplomats and senior members of the British government...When Kerr's investigations are blocked by his bosses in Scotland Yard, he decides to go it alone and begins to expose a cover-up that extends to all levels of the British Establishment. Agent of the State is due to be published in June 2012.