Sunday 16 March 2014

Books to look forward to from Faber and Faber

In nineteenth-century Istanbul, a Polish prince has been kidnapped.  His assassination has been bungled and his captors have taken him to an unused farmhouse.  Little do they realize that their revolutionary cell has been penetrated by their enemies, who use the code name La Piuma (the Feather).  Yashim is convinced that the prince is alive.  But he has no idea where, or who La Piuma is - and has become dangerously distracted by falling in love.  As he draws closer to the prince's whereabouts and to the true identity of La Piuma, Yashim finds himself in the most treacherous situation of his career: Can he rescue the prince along with his romantic dreams?  The Baklava Club is by Jason Goodwin and is due to be published in June 2014.

All Day and a Night  is by Alafair Burke and is due to be published in July 2014.  When psychotherapist Helen Brunswick is murdered in her Park Slope office, the entire city suspects her estranged husband - until the District Attorney's Office receives an anonymous letter.  The letter's author knows a detail that police have kept secret: the victim's bones were broken after she was killed, echoing a signature used twenty years earlier by Anthony Amaro, a serial killer serving a life sentence.  Now, Amaro is asking to be released from prison, arguing that he was wrongly convicted, and that the true killer is still on the loose.  Ellie Hatcher and her partner JJ Rogan are tapped as the 'fresh look' team to reassess the original investigation that led to Amaro's conviction.  The case pits them against both their fellow officers and a hard-charging celebrity defence lawyer with a young associate named Carrie Blank, who has a personal connection to the case.  As both the NYPD and Amaro's legal team search for certainty in years of conflicting evidence, their investigations take them back to Carrie's hometown, and to deadly secrets left behind.  In her first series book for Faber, the author returns to one of the most memorable characters in contemporary US crime writing, NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher.

When Claire Cooper was eight years old her mother mysteriously vanished during Hop-tu-naa, the Manx Halloween.  At fourteen, Claire is still struggling to come to terms with her disappearance when she's befriended by a group of five teenagers who mark every Hop-tu-naa by performing dares.  But Claire's arrival begins to alter the group's dynamic until one year a prank goes terribly wrong, changing all their futures and tearing the friends apart.  Six years later, one of the friends is killed on Hop-tu-naa in an apparent accident.  But Claire, now a police officer, has her doubts.  Is a single footprint found near the body a deliberate taunt?  As another Hop-tu-naa dawns, bringing with it another death and another footprint, Claire becomes convinced that somebody is seeking vengeance.  But who?  And which of the friends might be next?  If she's to stop a killer and unlock the dark secrets of her past, Claire must confront her deepest fears, before it's too late.  Dark Tides is by Chris Ewan and is due to be published in October 2014.

The White Crocodile is fate.  Tess Hardy thought she had put Luke, her violent husband, firmly in her past.  Until he calls from Cambodia, where he is working as a mine-clearer, and there's something in his voice she hasn't heard before.  Fear.  Two weeks later, he's dead.  Was it really an accident, or was Luke murdered?  Against her better judgment, Tess is drawn to Cambodia, taking a job at the same humanitarian mine clearance charity Luke had been working for.  The White Crocodile is judgement.  What greets her is a country full of strange beliefs, where danger is all around.  Teenage mothers are disappearing from villages around the minefields, while others are being found mutilated and murdered, their babies abandoned.  The White Crocodile is death.  Tess hears whispers of the White Crocodile, a mythical beast that brings death to all who meet it.  Caught in a web of secrets and lies that stretches all the way from Cambodia to another murder in England, and a violent secret twenty years old, Tess must find out the truth, and quickly - because the crocodile is watching...  White Crocodile is by K T Medina and is due to be published in August 2014.

Smoke and Mirrors  is by James Carol and is due to be published in September 2014.  A Dead Lawyer, Eagle Creek, Louisiana.  Lawyer Sam Galloway is burned alive in an apparently motiveless attack.  The local sheriff's department calls in former FBI profiler Jefferson Winter to consult on the case.  A Serial Killer So far there's just one body, but there are going to be more.  A deadline has been set, the clock is ticking, and Winter has just thirteen and a half hours to track down the killer, before he strikes again.  A Dark Secret Winter knows all about secrets.  His father, one of America's most notorious serial killers, had everyone fooled for years.  Winter also knows that the problem with secrets is that they have a nasty habit of turning against you when you least expect it. 

Blood Whispers is by John Gordon Sinclair and is due to be published in June 2014.  'Truth
is, it's all lies.’  Teresa Gow is under arrest for a string of offences ranging from prostitution to attempted murder.  Lawyer Keira Lynch wants the charges dropped and her client taken into protective custody.  The CIA and a Serbian drug trafficker by the name of Fisnik Abazi, want Teresa dead.  Keira's cool head and laid-back approach has earned her the respect of most of the big-time players on the Glasgow crime scene.  She doesn't tell lies, she 'stylises the truth', and they trust her with their darkest secrets.  In a room full of murder suspects, Keira will finger the culprit every time.  They put her uncanny ability down to luck, but there's a more sinister explanation.  Keira has a dark secret of her own - when she was eight years old she killed a man.  It takes one to know one.  In a deadly game where nothing is what it seems and no one is who they say they are, Keira Lynch finds herself facing the biggest challenge of her life.  The question is not will she kill again, but when...

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