Thursday 12 December 2013

Books to Look Forward to from Penguin and Michael Joseph

The Bootlegger is the seventh of Clive Cussler's bestselling Isaac Bell novels written with Justin Scott.  It is 1920.  Prohibition and bootlegging are in full swing.  When Joseph Van Dorn is shot and nearly killed while in pursuit of a rum-running vessel, his friend and employee, Isaac Bell, swears to him that he will hunt down the lawbreakers.  But Bell doesn’t know what he is getting into.  When a witness to the shooting is executed in a manner peculiar to the Russian secret police, it becomes clear that these were no ordinary bootleggers.  Bell is facing a team of Bolshevik assassins and saboteurs – and they are intent on overthrowing the government of the United States.  The Bootlegger is an adventure laced with secret cargo and assassins and is due to be published in March 2014.  Also due to be published in June 2014 by Clive Cussler with Graham Brown is Ghost Ship, which is the twelfth book in the Numa Files series.

Eeny Meeny is the serial-killer thriller debut from M. J. Arlidge and is due to be published in May 2014.  The girl emerged from the woods.  Traumatised and emaciated; close to death, but alive.  Her story seemed too terrible to be true.  But it was.  Every dreadful word of it.  When, days later, another desperate survivor is found, a pattern becomes clear.  Pairs of victims are being abducted, imprisoned then forced to make a terrible choice.  Which would you sacrifice - your life or your conscience?  For DI Helen Grace there is now an unseen killer to be hunted down.  And it may be the survivors - living calling cards - who hold the key to the case.  Haunted by the past, Grace has found unconventional ways to face down her own demons in her rise to the top.  Now though, there's a new monster to confront.  And unless she succeeds, more innocents will die...

The Hangman's Song is the third novel in James Oswald's Inspector McLean series set in Edinburgh and is due to be published in February 2014.  The body of a man is founding hanging in an empty house.  To the Edinburgh police force this appears to be a simple suicide case.  Days later another body is found.  The body is hanging from an identical rope and the noose has been tied using the same knot.  Then a third body is found.  As McLean digs deeper he descends into a world where the lines of reality are blurred and that the most irrational answers become the only explanations.

Don’t Look Back is by Gregg Hurwitz and is due to be published in September 2014.  After the breakup of her marriage Evie takes the holiday of a lifetime.  A few weeks of hiking, rafting and jungle adventure at an eco-lodge in Mexico sounded ideal.  But what should be the best pick me up soon turns into a nightmare.  Nothing is quite what it seems.  There are secrets hidden that can’t be allowed to leave their jungle hiding place.  And which their keeper will kill to protect.  If she is ever to see her son again, Evie will be forced to find reserves of strength, courage, and ingenuity she never dreamt existed.  Or die trying.

Mirage is the new heart-in-the-mouth adventure thriller in the Oregon Files from Clive Cussler with Jack Du Brul and is due to be published in January 2014.  October 1943.  A US Navy warship vanishes at sea off the coast of Philadelphia.  Its disappearance was rumoured to have been a result of a classified military experiment into the effects of electromagnetic radiation.  The story has long since been considered a hoax.  But Juan Cabrillo and his colleagues aboard the top-secret spy ship Oregon aren't convinced.  Now, a powerful new weapon is for sale - one linked to genius inventor Nikola Telsa, who was working with the Navy when he died in 1943.  Was he responsible for the original Philadelphia experiment?  Are his notes in the hands of his enemies?  As Cabrillo and his crew race to unearth the truth they discover that stakes are dangerously high.  And it may already be too late...

Scarred physically and mentally while serving with the army in Afghanistan, trainee detective Joseph Stark must endure the rigours of a murder investigation while battling his own demons and dealing with the suspicions and jealousies of his new colleagues.  But as it becomes clear that there is a great deal more at stake than the tragic killing of a South London down and out, it seems Stark’s formidable determination, courage and drive may not this time be enough to see him through.  Covenant is the debut novel by Matthew Frank and is due to be published in June 2014.

Guilt is by Jussi Adler-Olsen and is due to be published in February 2014.  1987: Nete Hermansen, a young woman brutally assaulted in her youth, sterilised without her consent by a fanatical surgeon, and banished to Sprogo, the island for outcast women is planning her escape and her vengeance.  And soon people begin to go missing and no one - certainly not the police - knows why, nor that individual cases are connected.  Today: Carl Morck and his assistants Assad and Rose in Department Q are examining old missing persons cases and spot a disturbing pattern from 1987.

The Devil’s Workshop is by Alex Grecian and is due to be published in July 2014.  Spring, 1890, and the escape of four prisoners casts a long shadow of fear over London.  The escapees are all convicted murderers who have vowed to return to their grisly work.  Walter Day and the Scotland Yard Murder Squad now face a desperate race to re-capture these vicious men before they vanish into the dark alleyways of London’s criminal underworld overnight.  And in the midst of this mayhem and fear, the city’s worst nightmare is realised: Jack the Ripper haunts the streets of London once more.

When Detective Petra Westman finds an unconscious child in an undergrowth, and shortly after stumbles upon the mother’s dead body hidden inside a grit bin, the Hammarby Police team is shocked by the gruesomeness of this case.  And the strangest thing is that nobody seems to missing the victims….  But just an investigation is launched; chief Investigator Conny Sjøberg is faced with yet another murder.  A teenage girl has been killed aboard the cruise ship Cinderella and her younger sister will be next if Sjøberg can’t uncover the killer.  Cinderella Girl is by Carin Gerhardsen and is due to be published in April 2014.

Also due to be published in April is Thursday’s Children by Nicci French.

Last Judgement is the debut novel by John Carter and is due to be published in June 2014.  In a dark chamber a single decision is taken.  After almost three hundred years, a protocol is sent to the leadership of secluded collectives all across Europe.  Groups shrouded in mystery are united by a force older than them all: a fellowship with an almost unfathomable aim: the fall of an empire, and the creation of another.  University student Katie Languerac’s research has taken a remarkable turn – she has found a man willing to break the silence and secrecy that has marked out the Guilds for centuries.  But Katie is soon drawn into a deeply powerful world and going any further could mean the end of her life.

Retired Army Ranger turned historian John Holliday has thwarted the plots of Rex Deus, the twenty-first-century incarnation of the Templars, all over the world.  Now, the lost journal of explorer Percy Fawcett leads Holliday deep into the South American jungles on a quest to uncover the greatest mystery of the Middle Ages...Trailed by an infamous tomb raider and menaced by a tribe of hostile natives, Holliday and his crew uncover a five-hundred-year-old society hidden in the cauldron of the Amazon.  Descendants of the Templar Knights, they exist for one reason: to hide and protect the holy artefact taken from the original Temple of Jerusalem by the first Templars: the legendary Ark of the Covenant.  Will Holliday's obsession with the truth finally kill him?  Lost City of the Templars is by Paul Christopher and is due to be published in January 2014.

Garrett Reilly has a rare talent.  He discerns the patterns in large amounts of information.  He understands what's happening before others.  He's ahead of the game.  This makes Reilly very good at his Wall Street job, but it also makes him immensely valuable to the secretive government agencies charged with keeping America safe.  Mourning the death of his brother in a pointless overseas war, Reilly doesn't want anything to do with them.  And in any case, his gifts can only help pull the world back from the brink of annihilation if he can stay alive long enough to figure out what's going on . . . As a result he is a wanted man.  The trouble is knowing who wants him alive and who wants him dead.  And, inducted into a secret world of deception and misdirection where nothing is what it seems, Reilly is forced to trust his own abilities or die.  Because numbers don’t lie but governments do.  The Pattern of Fear is the debut novel by Andrew Chapman and is due to be published in March 2014.

After the Silence is the debut novel by Jake Woodhouse and is due to be published in April 2014.  A murdered policeman, a dead businessman hanging from a hook, a building burnt to the ground in an arson attack and a missing girl – identity unknown.  It’d up to damaged, world-weary Inspector Jaap Rykel of Amsterdam’s finest to piece it all together.  Alongside him he’s got an inexperienced female detective wrestling with the ghosts of her past, and a Sergeant with a drugs habit.  And then there’s the internal affairs investigation.

When ex-SF operator Sam Dryden instinctively protects a young girl fleeing a squad of well-armed pursuers, he gets a lot more than he bargained for.  The girl, suffered from drug-induced amnesia, is at the centre of a conspiracy that reaches some of the government’s most powerful, secretive organisations.  And as her memory returns, so do the qualities that have made her so precious.  And powerful.  On the run, Dryden has to employ every trick he learned in his career to try and save himself and his charges.  But against overwhelming odds, even his considerable skills may not be enough.  Runner is by Patrick Lee and is due to be published in June 2014.

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