This preview highlights titles to be published in February 2024
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Michael Joseph, 29th, £16.99, hb, 9780241635438 The “wickedly funny” second novel from the author of Everyone in My Family has Killed Someone sees writer- turned-sleuth Ernest Cunningham boarding a famous train alongside Australia’s other finest crime novelists. Murder on the Orient Express meets The Thursday Murder Club, says MJ. BookScan
underbelly of Thatcher’s Britain.
Marie Tierney Deadly Animals Zaffre, 15th, £14.99, hb, 9781804181874
Début A 13-year-old girl with an obsessive
interest in animal decom- position discovers a schoolmate’s corpse and tries to track down a serial killer in this lead début set in 1980s south Birmingham.
Vanessa Walters The Lagos Wife Hutchinson Heinemann, 29th, £16.99, hb, 9781529153262
Début “A brilliantly orig- inal novel about
Ashley Tate Twenty-Seven Minutes Headline, 1st, £16.99, hb, 9781035401512
Début It takes one moment to call
for help, so why did he wait? This question has haunted the small town of West Wilmer since a car crash killed Grant Dean’s sister a decade earlier. A “gripping” suspense novel about what happens when grief becomes unbearable, says Headline.
Joe Thomas Red Menace Arcadia, 1st, £20, hb, 9781529423402 Following White Riot, a Sunday Times thriller of the month and book of the week in the Week, the second instalment in the United Kingdom Trilogy takes us from Live Aid to Broadwater Farm, exposing the seedy
SFF Kelly Link
The Book of Love Ad Astra, 8th, £22, hb, 9781804548455
family, motherhood, iden- tity and diaspora”, says Afua Hirsh of this literary thriller about the disap- pearance of a woman living an apparently charmed expat life in Lagos, having left her troubled past in London behind.
One More Chapter, 1st, £9.99, pbo, 9780008614096 In the fourth thriller from the author of The Lost Wife, the unsolved disap- pearance of a young journalist is dredged up by a true-crime docu- mentary, awakening new dangers. BookScan
the most powerful people in her industry.
Historical crime & thriller
Lucy Ashe
Stewart McDowall The Mind Hack SRL Publishing, 6th, £9.99, pbo, 9781915073310 Forensic psychologist turned private detective McQueen is drawn into the dark world of psycho- logical manipulation in the first book in a new series from the author of The Murder Option.
Sophie Morton-Thomas Bird Spotting In A Small Town Verve Books, 29th, £9.99, pbo, 9780857308535 When a Romany commu- nity arrives and a new teacher starts at the local school, small-town tensions simmer in this literary suspense set on the north Norfolk coast. Morton-Thomas will tour Norfolk and west Sussex bookshops and crime festivals.
Asako Yuzuki Butter 4th Estate, 29th, £14.99, tpb, 9780008511685 This Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer, and the journalist intent on cracking her case, was inspired by true events.
Georgina Lees True Crime
Helen Monks Takhar Nothing Without Me HQ, 1st, £8.99, pbo, 9780008566395 The third novel from the author of Such a Good Mother explores the dark side of the film industry and the high cost of fame. An up-and-coming film- maker finds her leading lady dead and takes justice into her own hands, going up against some of
Rachel Wolf Five Nights Aries, 29th, £9.99, pbo, 9781803287829 Pitched as Agatha Christie meets “Succession”, this thriller unfolds over five nights on a luxury cruise ship carrying super-rich passengers. Under the pen name Rachael Blok, Wolf is also the author of the crime series starring DCI Maarten Jansen.
Crime & thriller short stories
George Pelecanos Owning Up Orion, 8th, £22, hb, 9781398721173 Four novellas linked by themes of strife, violence and humanity, from the author and screenwriter known for “The Wire”.
One to Watch
Début The first novel from a recipient of the MacArthur “Genius” Grant, and an acclaimed short story writer,
whose most recent collection Get in Trouble was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, sees supernatural beings and chaos descend on the small seaside
town of Lovesend, Massachusetts, in the wake of the unexpected reappearance of three missing teenagers. But their return from the immortal realm, and the deal they’ve struck to get back, upsets a delicate balance that has held for millennia. This is a playful, ambitious story of magic erupting in the everyday, so vividly drawn it “seems not just real but unques- tionable”, says Cassandra Clare.
TheBookseller.com
Historical Sarah Marsh
A Sign of Her Own Tinder Press, 1st, £18.99, hb, 9781035401611
The Sleeping Beauties Magpie Books, 15th, £16.99, hb, 9780861548248 The second psychological suspense novel from the trained ballerina and author of Clara & Olivia is a tale of obsession and jealousy set in the ballet world at the end of the Second World War.
Iris Costello The Story Collector Penguin General, 29th, £8.99, pbo, 9780241999110 Following The Secrets of Rochester Place, Costello’s eighth book interweaves the stories of a tarot reader in First World War London, a researcher working in the German prisoner of war camps in 1918, and a widow who discovers a mysterious box in her cottage in contemporary Cornwall.
Claire Coughlan Where They Lie Simon & Schuster Adult Fiction, 1st, £16.99, hb, 9781398521704
Début Set in Dublin between 1943
and 1968, this is the atmospheric story of an actress’ mysterious disappearance and the junior reporter who inves- tigates the case 20 years later.
Thomas Mullen The Rumor Game Abacus, 27th, £21.99, hb, 9781408715055 The award-winning author of the Darktown trilogy is back with a police procedural telling the story of America during the Second World War. An FBI agent and a journalist are separately looking into attacks on the city’s Jewish commu- nity when a dead body catapults them into an investigation.
Historical
John Manuel Arias Where There Was Fire Picador, 22nd, £16.99, hb, 9781035041374
Début Brimming with ancestral spirits
and omens, this novel explores the legacy of American agribusiness in Costa Rica through the story of a family who are collateral damage in a lethal fire at a banana plantation. Twenty-seven years later, they are still trying to come to terms with their loss.
Jacquie Bloese The Golden Hour Hodder & Stoughton, 22nd, £20, hb, 9781529377361 In the second novel from the author of The French House, three women in fin-de-siècle Brighton fight for a different future. BookScan
One to Watch
Illuminating the hidden history of the deaf community’s role in Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone, this is the “empowering” story of a young woman’s journey to accepting her deaf identity. Marsh, daughter of
Henry Marsh, author of Do No Harm, was inspired by her experiences growing up, when she was encouraged to hide her deafness. At university she realised what this concealment was costing her and started learning British Sign Language. She was shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Prize in 2019 and selected for the London Library Emerging Writers programme in 2020.
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Photo © Adrianne Mathiowetz
Photo © Rii Schroer
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