SEASON HIGHLIGHTS August


Vintage, 5 August, pb, £8.99, 9781784705497


Stephen King Billy Summers Hodder & Stoughton, 3 August, hb, £20, 9781529365726


Adventure, crime & horror


Stephen King with his thriller hat on.


Contract killer Billy Summers, an ex-marine, has one last payday before retirement—but everything is about to go horribly wrong. Part war story, part love letter to small town America, says Hodder, with a “brilliantly suspenseful” ticking clock to the hit…


Joanne Harris A Narrow Door Orion, 4 August, hb, £20, 9781409170815


General fiction An “explosive” psychological


thriller about a woman who, having carved out her own path to power, is now intent on tearing apart the elite world that tried to hold her back. A feminist whodunit with a modern Agatha Christie twist, says the publisher.


Elif Shafak


The Island of Missing Trees Viking, 5 August, hb, £14.99, 9780241434994


General fiction Latest from the Booker Prize-


shortlisted author of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in the Strange World, this tells of two star-crossed lovers in Cyprus who meet in secret (one is Greek Cypriot, the other Turkish Cypriot) until war breaks out. Decades later Kostas, now a botanist, returns to look for Defne.


Anna Whitehouse Underbelly Orion, 5 August, hb, £14.99, 9781398702462


General fiction First novel from the


husband-and-wife writing team (a.k.a. Mother Pukka and Papa Pukka) behind Parenting the Shit Out of Life. Lo is a middle- class mother with a carefully cultivated Instagram feed, whereas Dylan is just about surviving in the gig economy. When the two meet at the school gates, there will be devastating consequences.


General fiction A Book of the Month for me in


hardback, this explores the lives of three women across four centuries in the shadow of the Bass Rock, off the coast of Scotland. Written with blistering force and righteous anger, this illuminates the violence and control levelled against women by men through the ages. An outstandingly good novel which deserves to be massive in paperback.


Adventure, crime & horror


Private investigator Daniel


Hawthorne is invited to a literary festival on the island of Alderney to talk about his new book, and writer Anthony Horowitz travels with him. Then the festival’s wealthy sponsor is found brutally murdered… Third in the Hawthorne & Horowitz series follows The Word is Murder and The Sentence is Death.


Polygon, 2 September, hb, £10, 9781846975677


Adventure, crime & horror


On the evening of 9th March 1566, David


Rizzio, the private secretary of Mary, Queen of Scots, was dragged from her chambers in Holyrood Palace and stabbed 56 times by multiple assassins. A dark tale of sex, secrets and lies seen through a modern lens and alive to modern sensibilities, says Polygon.


Claire Askew A Matter of Time Hodder & Stoughton, 2 September, hb, £16.99, 9781529327403


Adventure, crime & horror


At 8 a.m., the first shots are fired. At 1 p.m.,


Bernice McFadden Sugar Vintage Classics, 5 August, pb, £8.99, 9781784877316


General fiction First UK publication for


this story of friendship and forgiveness set in small-town Arkansas, where Sugar, a young prostitute, moves next door to Pearl, who is still grieving for the daughter who was murdered 15 years earlier. McFadden is the author of nine novels and is widely acclaimed in her native US.


Charles Yu Interior Chinatown Europa Editions (UK), 5 August, pb, £8.99, 9781787703445


General fiction This Hollywood satire won the


prestigious National Book Award 2020 in the US, with head judge Roxane Gay commenting: “By turns hilarious and flat-out heartbreaking, Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown is a bright, bold, gut punch of a novel.” Now in paperback.


Belinda Bauer Exit Black Swan, 5 August, pb, £8.99, 9781784164133


Adventure, crime & horror


An Editor’s Choice for me in hardback,


don’t miss this thriller about good-hearted pensioner Felix Pink, who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her first since the Booker Prize-longlisted Snap, it is as cleverly plotted as all of Bauer’s thrillers, also touching and very funny. Now in paperback.


Evie Wyld The Bass Rock


10


Anthony Horowitz A Line to Kill Century, 19 August, hb, £20, 9781529124309


The Bookseller Buyer’s Guide Fiction


Denise Mina Rizzio


Silvia Moreno-Garcia Velvet Was the Night Jo Fletcher Books, 17 August, hb, £16.99, 9781529417944


Adventure, crime & horror


Set in Mexico City, 1971, this tells of Maite,


unmarried and stuck in a dull secretarial job, who lives for the passion and adventure in “Secret Romance” magazine, until the day her beautiful art student neighbour Leonara disappears. An Editor’s Choice, and a rich slice of Mexican noir.


Pat Barker The Women of Troy Hamish Hamilton, 26 August, hb, £18.99, 9780241427231


Sagas, romance & historical


Sequel to the brilliant The Silence of the Girls. In the aftermath of the


fall of Troy, the Greek victors wait for a good wind to return home. But the gods are offended and there is no wind. As her captors squabble, Briseis remains in the Greek camp and forges alliances—with rebellious Amina, defiant Hecuba and Calchus, the disgraced priest—and begins to envisage revenge…


September


the police establish the gunman has a hostage. By 5 p.m., a siege is underway. At 9 p.m., DI Helen Birch walks into an abandoned Borders farmhouse to negotiate with the killer. From the author of All the Hidden Truths, shortlisted for a CWA Golden Dagger.


Cecelia Ahern Freckles HarperCollins, 2 September, hb, £16.99, 9780008194925


General fiction The story of lonely 25-year-


old Allegra Bird, nicknamed Freckles, who moves to Dublin from rural Ireland to find the mother who left when she was a baby. When a stranger tells her, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”, Allegra decides to find out who her five really are.


Elizabeth Day Magpie Fourth Estate, 2 September, hb, £14.99, 9780008374945


Adventure, crime & horror


Latest from the novelist (The Party) and


podcast host (“How To Fail”) tells of Marisa and Jake, a new-ish couple who decide to try for a baby straight away. Then they take in a lodger, Kate, who seems to have an unhealthy interest in both Jake and the prospective baby.


nephew off at nursery, but she forgot—and Max was left locked in her car for several hours on the hottest day of the year. In the courtroom it becomes clear that there is more to this incident than meets the eye.


Alan Johnson The Late Train to Gipsy Hill Wildfire, 2 September, hb, £16.99, 9781472286123


Adventure, crime & horror


Début thriller from the former Labour MP who


has an award-winning track record with his memoirs. Gary Nelson’s boring commute to his dull City job is enlivened when another regular passenger holds up her make-up mirror with the words “help me” scrawled in mascara. Soon the Russian mafia, the FSB (successor agency to the KGB) and the Met Police are all making their presence felt.


Simone de Beauvoir, Deborah Levy (introduction), Lauren Elkin (trans), Sylvie le Bon de Beauvoir (afterword) The Inseparables Vintage Classics, 2 September, hb, £12.99, 9781784877002


General fiction The first UK publication of a


newly rediscovered novel by the French writer, philosopher and intellectual, written in 1954 but never published in her lifetime. When Andrée joins her school, Sylvie is immediately fascinated and the friends grow close, but then fall apart.


Sebastian Faulks Snow Country Hutchinson, 2 September, hb, £20, 9781786330185


General fiction Sweeping across Europe,


this begins in Vienna, 1914, where aspiring journalist Anton Heideck encounters Delphine and falls in love. In 1927, Lena takes a job at the Scholoss Seeblick sanatorium. In 1933, Anton, now an established writer, is commissioned to write a piece on the mysterious sanatorium.


Kia Abdullah Next of Kin HQ, 2 September, hb, £14.99, 9780008433635


Adventure, crime & horror


Leila Syed was supposed to drop her


William McIlvanney, Ian Rankin The Dark Remains Canongate, 2 September, hb, £20, 9781838854102


Adventure, crime & horror


Scottish crime writer William McIlvanney is


best-known for the trilogy


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