Books Archive

The Sleeping and the Dead (June 2022)

By Ann Cleeves

June 14, 2022

North Devon is enjoying a rare hot summer when Detective Peter Porteous is called to Cranford Water, where the body of a teenager has been discovered.  After trawling through the missing persons files, he comes to the conclusion that the corpse is Michael Grey, an enigmatic and secretive young man who was reported missing by his foster parents in 1972.

The news that a body has been found leaves prison officer Hannah Morton in shock.  Michael had been her boyfriend, and she had been with him the night he disappeared.  And now the discovery is bringing back dreaded and long-buried memories from her past…

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The Match (June 2022)

By Harlan Coben

June 14, 2022

He is known as Wilde, the boy from the woods.

Discovered living a feral existence in the Ramapo mountains of New Jersey, he has grown up knowing nothing of his parents, and even less about his own identity.

Until now.

When a match on a DNA database puts him on the trail of a close relative – the only family member he has ever known – Wilde thinks he might be about to solve the mystery of who he really is.

Only this relation disappears as quickly as he’s resurfaced.  Undaunted, Wilde continues his research, becoming caught up in a secret community committed to exposing anonymous online trolls.

Then one by one, people start to die, and it soon becomes clear that a serial killer is targeting this secret community.

And that the next victim could be Wilde himself…

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Booth (June 2022)

By Karen Joy Fowler

June 14, 2022

Six brothers and sisters.  One terrible act that will shatter their bond forever.

In 1822, Junius Booth – disgraced Englishman, celebrated Shakespearean actor and master of the house in all ways – moves his family to a remote cabin outside Baltimore.  Year by year, the country draws closer to the boiling point of civil war.

Of the six Booth siblings who survive to adulthood, each has their own dreams they must fight to realise, and each must fight to emerge from the shadows of their talented but unstable father.  But it is Johnny who makes the terrible decision that will change the course of history – to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.

Vivid, perceptive and troublingly relevant to the world of today, Booth is a profound, sweeping novel focused on the very things that bind, and break, a family.

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The Custom House Murder (June 2022)

By Mike Hollow

June 14, 2022

September, 1940.  With London having endured the Blitz for nearly a month, people are calling for vengeance, but once again the night heralds more destruction.  In Custom House, anxious residents dutifully head to the nearest public air-raid shelter as the warning siren wails.

When dawn brings the all-clear, people disperse, but one man remains – he is dead, stabbed through the heart.  Detective Inspector John Jago discovers that the victim was a pacifist.  But why, then, was he carrying a loaded revolver in his pocket?

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With a Mind to Kill (June 2022)

By Anthony Horowitz

June 14, 2022

The explosive new James Bond novel from the number-one bestselling author of Trigger Mortis and Forever and a Day

It is M’s funeral.  One man is missing from the graveside: the traitor who pulled the trigger and who is now in custody, accused of M’s murder – James Bond.

Behind the Iron Curtain, a group of former Smersh agents want to use the British spy in an operation that will change the balance of world power.  Bond is smuggled into the lion’s den – but whose orders is he following and will he obey them when the moment of truth arrives?

In a mission where treachery is all around and one false move means death, Bond must grapple with the darkest questions about himself.  But not even he knows what has happened to the man he used to be.

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No Less the Devil (June 2022)

By Stuart MacBride

June 14, 2022

‘We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.’

It’s been seventeen months since the Bloodsmith butchered his first victim and Operation Maypole is still no nearer catching him.. The media is whipping up a storm, the top brass are demanding results, but the investigation is sinking fast.

Now isn’t the time to get distracted with other cases, but Detective Sergeant Lucy McVeigh doesn’t have much choice.  When Benedict Strachan was just eleven, he hunted down and killed a homeless man.  No one’s over figured out why Benedict  did it, but now, after sixteen years, he’s back on the streets again – battered, frightened, convinced a shadowy ‘They’ are out to get him, and begging Lucy for help.

It sounds like paranoia, but what if he’s right?  What if he really is caught up in something bigger and darker than Lucy’s ever dealt with before?  What if the Bloodsmith isn’t the only monster out there?  And what’s going to happen when Lucy goes after them?

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Where the Crawdads Sing (June 2022)

By Delia Owens

June 14, 2022

For years, rumours of the ‘Marsh Girl’ have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast.  So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark the so-called Marsh Girl.  But Kya is not what they say.  Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand.  Then the time comes when she yearns to be loved.  When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life – until the unthinkable happens.

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Nine Lives (June 2022)

By Peter Swanson

June 14, 2022

The envelope is unremarkable.  There is no return address.  It contains a single, folded sheet of white paper.

The envelope drops through the mailslot like any other pierce of post.  But for the nine complete strangers who receive one – each of them recognising only their own name on the enclosed list – it will be the most life-altering letter they ever receive.  It could also be the last, as, one by one, they start to meet their end.

But why?

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French Braid (June 2022)

By Anne Tyler

June 14, 2022

When the kids are grown and Mercy Garrett gradually moves herself out of the family home, everyone is determined not to notice.

Over at her studio, she wants space and silence.  She won’t allow any family clutter.  Not even their cat, Desmond.

Yet it is a clutter of untidy moments that forms the Garretts’ family life over the decades, whether that’s a painstaking Easter lunch or giving a child a ride, a fateful train journey or an unexpected homecoming.

And it all begins in 1959, with a family holiday to a cabin by a lake.  It’s the only one the Garretts will ever take, but its effect will ripple through the generations.

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