Recent Books

A Winter Grave (February 2023)

By Peter May

February 28, 2023

A young meteorologist checking a mountain top weather station discovers the body of a man entombed in ice.

The dead man is investigative reporter, George Younger, missing for three months after vanishing during what he claimed was a hill-walking holiday.  Cameron Brodie, a veteran Glasgow detective, volunteers to be flown north to investigate Younger’s death, but he has more than a murder enquiry on his agenda.  He knows the time has come to face his estranged daughter who has made her home in the remote Highland village.

Arriving during an ice storm, Brodie and pathologist Dr. Sita Roy, find themselves the sole guests at the International Hotel, where Younger’s body has been refrigerated.  But evidence uncovered during his autopsy places the lives of both Brodie and Roy in extreme jeopardy.

Set in the year 2051, when warnings of a climate catastrophe have been ignored, A Winter Grave is May at his page-turning passionate and provocative best.

The Axe Woman (February 2023)

By Hakan Nesser

February 28, 2023

Sweden 2012

When Inspector Gunnar Barbarotti returns to work after a terrible personal tragedy his boss asks him to investigate a cold case, hoping to ease him back gently into his police duties.

Five years previously a shy electrician, Arnold Morinder, disappeared from the face of the earth – the only clue his blue moped abandoned in a nearby swamp.

At the time his partner, Ellen Bjarnebo, claimed that Arnold  had probably travelled to Norway, never to return.  But Ellen is one of Sweden’s most notorious killers, having served eleven years in prison after killing her abusive first husband and dismembering his body with an axe.  And when Barbarotti seeks to interview Ellen in relation to Arnold’s disappearance she is nowhere to be found …

But without a body and with no chance of interviewing his prime suspect, Barbarotti must use all the ingenuity at his disposal to make headway in the case.  Still struggling with his personal demons, Barbarotti seeks solace from God, and the support of his colleague, Eva Backman.  And as he finally begins to track down his suspect and the cold case starts to thaw, Barbarotti realizes that nothing about Ellen Bjarnebo can be taken for granted …

We all want impossible things (February 2023) – Athenaeum Book Club 2023

By Catherine Newman

February 28, 2023

Edi wants an obscure Italian lemon cake.

Ash wants hot sex in a cupboard.

Edi wants to see the stars.

They both want the woman down the hallway to stop singing Fiddler on the Roof.

Edi wants time to go backwards.

And Ash?
Ash just wants a miracle…

Edi and Ash have been best friends for over forty years.  Since childhood they have seen each other through life’s milestones: stealing vodka from their parents, the Madonna phase, REM concerts, unexpected wakes, marriage, children, break-ups and breakdowns.  As Ash notes, ‘Edi’s memory is like the back-up hard drive for mine.’

So when Edi is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Ash’s world reshapes around the rhythms of Edi’s care, from chipped ice and watermelon cubes to weird music therapy; from snack smuggling to impromptu excursions into the frozen winter night.  Because life is about squeezing the joy out of every moment, about building a powerhouse of memories, about learning when to hold on, and when to let go.

Long Shadows (December 2022)

By David Baldacci

December 6, 2022

Memory man FBI agent Amos Decker returns in this action-packed thriller to investigate the mysterious and brutal murder of a federal judge and her bodyguard at her home in an exclusive gated community in Florida.

Things are changing for Decker.  He’s in crisis following the suicide of a close friend and the receipt of a letter concerning a personal issue which could change his life forever.  Together with the prospect of working with a new partner, Frederica White, Amos knows that this case will take all of his special skills to solve.

As darkness falls, evil comes to light…

Judge Julia Cummins seemingly had no enemies, and there was no forced entry to her property.  Close friends and neighbours in the community apparently heard nothing, and Cummins’s distraught ex-husband, Barry, and teenage son, Tyler, both have strong alibis.  Decker must first find the answer to why the judge felt the need for a bodyguard, and the meaning behind the strange calling card left by the killer.

The Pain Tourist (December 2022)

By Paul Cleave

December 6, 2022

This dream doesn’t feel like a dream.  He tries to lift his head.  Can’t do it.  There is a doorway to his left, and beyond it a brightly lit corridor.  Somebody walks past – a nurse…

James Garrett was critically injured when he was shot following his parents’ murder, and no one expected him to waken from a deep, traumatic coma.  When he does, nine years later, Detective Inspector Rebecca Kent is tasked with closing the case.

But between that, and hunting for a murderer on a spree, she’ll need the help of Theodore Tate … especially when they learn that James has lived out another life in his nine-year coma, and there are things he couldn’t possibly know.

Dawnlands (December 2022)

By Philippa Gregory

December 6, 2022

In a divided country, power and loyalty conquer all…

Ned Ferryman, inspired by news of a rebellion against the Stuart kings, returns from America with his Pokanoket servant to join the uprising against Roman Catholic King James.  As Ned swears loyalty to the charismatic Duke of Monmount, he discovers a new and unexpected love.

Meanwhile, Queen Mary summons her friend Livia to a terrified court.  Recklessly, Livia drags her son Matthew and his foster mothers Alinor and Alys into a plot to save the queen form Monmouth’s invasion, and Matthew is rewarded with the manor of Foulmire: on the tidelands where Ned, Alinor and Alys had once scraped a poor living.

Suddenly, Alinor is lady of the manor, as Ned marches into the last battle between the royalists and commoners, hoping for a new dawn for freedom.

Bad Actors (December 2022)

By Mick Herron

December 6, 2022

In MI5 a scandal is brewing and there are bad actors everywhere.

A key member of a Downing Street think tank has disappeared without trace.  Claude Whelan, one-time First Desk of MI5’s Regent Park, is tasked with tracking her down.  But the trail leads straight back to Regent’s Park HQ itself, with its chief, Diana Taverner, as prime suspect.  Meanwhile her Russian counterpart has unexpectedly shown up in London but has slipped under MI5’s radar.

Over at Slough House, the home for demoted and embittered spies, the slow horses are doing what they do best: adding a little bit of chaos to an already unstable situation.

In a world where lying, cheating and back-stabbing are the norm, bad actors are bending the rules for their own gain.  If the slow horses want to change the script, they’ll need to get their own act together before the final curtain.

Act of Oblivion (December 2022)

By Robert Harris

December 6, 2022

1660

Colonel Edward Whalley and his son-in-law, Colonel William Goffe, cross the Atlantic.  They are on the run and wanted for the murder of Charles I.  Under the provisions of the Act of Oblivion, they have been found guilty in absentia of high treason.

In London, Richard Nayler, secretary of the regicide committee of the Privy Council, is tasked with tracking down the fugitives.  He’ll stop at nothing until the two men are brought to justice.  A reward hangs over their heads – for their capture, dead or alive.

The Tilt (December 2022)

By Chris Hammer

December 6, 2022

A man runs for his life in a forest.  A woman plans sabotage.  A body is unearthed.

Newly-minted homicide detective Nell Buchanan returns to her home town, annoyed at being assigned a decades-old murder – a ‘file and forget’.

But this is no ordinary case, as the discovery of more bodies triggers a chain of escalating events in the present day.  As Nell starts to join the pieces together, she begins to question how well she truly knows those closest to her.  Could her own family be implicated in the crimes?

The nearer Nell comes to uncovering the secrets of the past, the more dangerous the present becomes for her, as she battles shadowy assailants and sinister forces.  Can she survive this harrowing investigation and what price will she have to pay for the truth?

A World of Curiosities (December 2022)

By Louise Penny

December 6, 2022

A Chief Inspector Gamache mystery

It’s spring and Three Pines is re-emerging after the harsh winter.  But not everything buried should come alive again.  Not everything lying dormant should return.

But something has.

As the villagers prepare for a special celebration, Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir find themselves increasingly worried.  A young man and woman have reappeared in the Surete du Quebec investigators’ lives after many years.  The two were young children when their troubled mother was murdered, leaving them damaged, shattered.  Now they’ve arrived in the village of Three Pines.

But to what end?

Gamache and Beauvoir’s memories of that tragic case, the one that first brought them together, come rushing back.  Did their mother’s murder hurt them beyond repair?  Have those terrible wounds, buried for decades, festered and are now about to erupt?

As Chief Inspector Gamache works to uncover answers, his alarm grows when a letter written by a long dead stonemason is discovered.  In it the man describes his terror when bricking up an attic room somewhere in the village.  Every word of the 150-year-old letter is filled with dread.  When the room is found, the villagers decide to open it up.

As the bricks are removed, Gamache, Beauvoir and the villagers discover a world of curiosities.  But the head of homicide soon realizes there’s more in that room than meets the eye.  There are puzzles within puzzles, and hidden messages warning of mayhem and revenge.

In unsealing that room, an old enemy is released into their world.  Into their lives.  And into the very heart of Armand Gamache’s home.