Recent Books

The Burnout (October 2023)

By Sophie Kinsella

October 29, 2023

Sasha is well and truly over it all: work (all-consuming), friendships (on the back burner), sex-life (non-existent).  Sasha has hit a brick wall.

Armed with good intentions to drink kale smoothies, try yoga and find solitude, she heads to the Devon resort she loved as a child.  But it’s off-season, the hotel is falling apart, and now she has to share the beach with someone else: a grumpy, stressed-out guy called Finn.  How can she commune with nature when he’s sitting on a rock, watching her?  Especially when they don’t agree on burnout cures.  (Sasha: manifesting, wild swimming, secret chocolate bars; Finn: drinking whisky.)

But when curious messages start appearing on the beach, Sasha and Finn are forced to begin talking – about everything.  What’s the mystery?  Why are they both burned out?  What exactly is ‘manifesting’, anyway?

They might discover that they have more in common than they think…

The Last Devil to Die (October 2023)

By Richard Osman

October 29, 2023

Shocking news reaches The Thursday Murder Club.

An old friend in the antiques business has been killed, and a dangerous package he was protecting has gone missing.

As the gang spring into action, they encounter art forgers, online fraudsters and drug dealers, as well as heartache close to home.

With the body count rising, the package still missing and trouble firmly on their tail, has their luck finally run out?  And who will be the last devil to die?

Past Lying (October 2023)

By Val McDermid

October 29, 2023

Karen Pirie Returns…

Edinburgh, haunted by the ghosts of its many writers, is also the cold case beat of DCI Karen Pirie.  So she shouldn’t be surprised when an author’s manuscript appears to be a blueprint for an actual crime.

Karen can’t ignore the plot’s chilling similarities to the unsolved case of an Edinburgh University student who vanished from her own doorstep.  The manuscript seems to be the key to unlocking what happened to Lara Hardie, but there’s a problem: the author died before he finished it.

As Karen digs deeper, she uncovers a spiralling game of betrayal and revenge, where lies are indistinguishable from the truth and with more than one unexpected twist..

The Night House (October 2023)

By Jo Nesbo

October 29, 2023

In the wake of his parents’ tragic deaths, fourteen-year-old Richard Elauved has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle in the remote town of Ballantyne.

Richard quickly earns a reputation as an outcast, and when a classmate named Tom goes missing, everyone suspects the new, angry boy is responsible.  No one believes him when he says the telephone booth out by the edge of the woods sucked Tom into the receiver like something out of a horror movie.

No one, that it, except Karen, a beguiling fellow outsider who encourages Richard to pursue clues the police refuse to investigate.  He traces the number from the phone booth to an abandoned house in the woods.  There he catches a glimpse of a terrifying face in the window.  And then the voices start…

When another classmate disappears, Richard must find a way to prove his innocence as he grapples with the dark magic that is possessing Ballantyne.

You Will Never Be Found (September 2023)

By Tove Alsterdal

September 15, 2023

When a dead man is found locked in the basement of an abandoned house, deep in the woods, there is no evidence of what happened beyond his name – scratched into the wall before he died.  The regional police can’t find anyone who knew him.

But no one knows the locals like Detective Eira Sjodin.  When her expert knowledge of her hometown is again called in, she knows one of them must have seen something.  Then, a shock: before she can uncover the truth, someone close to her disappears.

Has he fallen victim to the same criminal they’ve been chasing?  And can Eira put the pieces together in time to save him.

Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? (September 2023)

By Agatha Christie

September 15, 2023

A dying man’s cryptic last words provide the spark for this beloved Agatha Christie mystery.

While playing an erratic round of golf, Bobby Jones slices his ball over the edge of a cliff.  His ball is lost, but on the rocks below he finds the crumpled body of a dying man.  The man opens his eyes and, with his last breath, says,’Why didn’t they ask Evans?’

Haunted by those words, Bobby and his vivacious companion, Frankie, set out to solve a mystery that will plunge them into mortal danger.

The Librarianist (September 2023)

By Patrick deWitt

September 15, 2023

Bob Comet is a retired librarian passing his solitary days surrounded by books.

One morning on his daily walk, Bob encounters a confused elderly woman and returns her to the senior centre that is her home.  Hoping to fill the void he’s known since retiring, he begins volunteering there.

Here, as a community of strange peers gathers around him, and following a brush with a painful complication from his past, the story of Bob’s life is revealed: the story of an unhappy child’s runaway adventure during the last days of the Second World War, of true live won and stolen away; of the purpose and pride found in the librarian’s vocation.

The Fine Art of Uncanny Prediction (September 2023)

By Robert Goddard

September 15, 2023

Umiko Wada never set out to be a private detective, let alone become the one-woman operation behind the Kodaka Detective Agency.  But so it has turned out, thanks to the death of her former boss, Kazuto Kodaka, in mysterious circumstances.

Keen to avoid a similar fate, Wada chooses the cases she takes very carefully.  A businessman who wants her to track down his estranged son offers what appears to be straightforward assignment.  But she should have known that the simplest cases are never really simple at all.  Soon she finds herself pulled into a labyrinthine conspiracy with links to a twenty-seven-year-old investigation by her late employer and to the chaos and trauma of the dying days of the Second World War.

As Wada uncovers a dizzying web of connections between then and now, it becomes clear that someone has gone to extraordinary lengths to keep the past buried.  And the deeper Wada digs, the more danger she finds herself in.  Soon those she loves most will be sucked into the orbit of one of the most powerful men in Tokyo.  And he will do whatever it takes to hold on to his power…

A Change of Circumstance (September 2023)

By Susan Hill

September 15, 2023

It’s midwinter and a body is discovered in a flat just outside Lafferton.

It’s a drug overdose but something doesn’t feel right.  The place is entirely empty.  Damp walls, bare floorboards.  Not even a bed.

And then there’s the man known as Fats.  Preying on young children to run errands for him.  Burner phones with instructions messaged through.  Bribes followed by threats.

Can Serrailler finally break the drugs network that’s spreading through the area or it just too powerful for him?

Reykjavik (September 2023)

By Ragnar Jonasson and Katrin Jakobsdottir

September 15, 2023

What happened to Kara Marteinsdottir?

Iceland, 1956.  Fifteen-year-old Lara spends the summer working for a wealthy couple on the small island of Videy, just off the coast of Reykjavik.

In early August, the girl disappears without a trace.

The mystery becomes Iceland’s greatest unsolved case.  What happened to the young girl?  Is she still alive?  Did she leave the island, or did something happen to her there?

Thirty years later, in August 1986, as the city of Reykjavik celebrates its 200th anniversary, journalist Valur Robertsson begins his own investigation into Lara’s case.  But as he draws closer to discovering the secret, and with the eyes of Reykjavik upon him, it soon becomes clear that Lara’s disappearance is a mystery that someone will stop at nothing to keep buried…