Here’s this week’s list of new fiction titles. These are titles appearing in hardback/paperback for the first time. In some cases the ebook might already be available. All titles are based on the listings found in The Bookseller, so I’m not working from a list of all titles being published.
Another of those very quiet weeks this week, which will be a relief for some bank balances.
Just a reminder I don’t see any advance copies, my choices are based on the blurb, gut instinct and what takes my fancy at the time.
(NB This post features Affiliate links from which I earn a small commission on qualifying purchases)
Index
Crime, Thriller & Mystery
Where I Left Her by Amber Garza
A MISSING DAUGHTER. EVERY MOTHER’S WORST NIGHTMARE.
SHE’S NOT WHERE I LEFT HER
When Whitney drops her teenage daughter, Amelia, off at a sleepover at a friend’s house, she has no idea that her entire life is about to irrevocably change.
Because the next morning, when Whitney returns to pick up Amelia, an elderly woman answers the door. She’s never seen or heard of Amelia and she lives in this house alone with her husband. It’s every mother’s worst nightmare, but this time there’s no waking up from it.
Distraught and terrified, as Whitney tries to get to the bottom of her daughter’s disappearance, she is forced to confront the secrets she thought she had outrun years before. With time running out to find Amelia, Whitney is forced to journey to the darkest parts of her history and piece together a puzzle that will be the difference between Amelia’s life and her death.
The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny
When Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is asked to provide crowd control at a statistics lecture given at the Université de l’Estrie in Quebec, he is dubious. Why ask the head of homicide to provide security for what sounds like a minor, even mundane lecture?
But dangerous ideas about who deserves to live in order for society to thrive are rapidly gaining popularity, fuelled by the research of the eminent Professor Abigail Robinson. Yet for every person seduced by her theories there is another who is horrified by them. When a murder is committed days after the lecture, it’s clear that within crowds can lie madness.
To uncover the truth, Gamache must put his own feelings about the divisive Professor to one side. But with her ideas gaining ground, the line separating good and evil, right and wrong, is quickly blurring – especially when the case leads unexpectedly close to home …
Deep Cover by Leigh Russell
When a sex worker dies in suspicious circumstances in York, Detective Inspector Geraldine Steel struggles to remain focused on the murder investigation: she is distracted by her worries about her colleague and life partner, Ian Peterson, who has disappeared. As Geraldine becomes close to her new DS, Matthew, she is unaware that Ian is working undercover in London, trying to identify a criminal gang who have been targeting her.
As a second victim is discovered in York, and Ian’s life is threatened by a psychopath the tension mounts. If he fails in his mission, both he and Geraldine may die…
Dust Off the Bones by Paul Howarth
Even in the vast outback, the past can’t stay buried for ever
Death follows Tommy McBride everywhere. Five years ago his family was murdered, now a freak accident sends him fleeing into the wilderness of the Australian outback with a man lying dead in his wake. But Tommy is haunted by even worse – as children, he and his brother Billy witnessed the state-sanctioned massacre of the Kurrong people, and they haven’t seen each other since.
When an official enquiry is launched into the massacre, the successful life that Billy has built for himself comes under threat. He desperately needs to find Tommy, long disappeared into the bush. And he’s not the only one – ruthless Inspector Noone, the man with perhaps the most to hide, is on Tommy’s trail as well.
General/Contemporary Fiction
Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt
Susie Boyt writes with a mordant wit and vivid style which are at their best in Loved and Missed.
When your beloved daughter is lost in the fog of addiction and you make off with her baby in order to save the day, can willpower and a daring creative zeal carry you through ?
Examining the limits, disappointments and excesses of love in all its forms, this marvellously absorbing novel, full of insight and compassion, delights as much as it disturbs.
The Women of Troy by Pat Barker
Troy has fallen. The Greeks have won their bitter war. They can return home as victors – all they need is a good wind to lift their sails. But the wind has vanished, the seas becalmed by vengeful gods, and so the warriors remain in limbo – camped in the shadow of the city they destroyed, kept company by the women they stole from it.
The women of Troy.
Helen – poor Helen. All that beauty, all that grace – and she was just a mouldy old bone for feral dogs to fight over.
Cassandra, who has learned not to be too attached to her own prophecies. They have only ever been believed when she can get a man to deliver them.
Stubborn Amina, with her gaze still fixed on the ruined towers of Troy, determined to avenge the slaughter of her king.
Hecuba, howling and clawing her cheeks on the silent shore, as if she could make her cries heard in the gloomy halls of Hades. As if she could wake the dead.
And Briseis, carrying her future in her womb: the unborn child of the dead hero Achilles. Once again caught up in the disputes of violent men. Once again faced with the chance to shape history.
More Than I Love My Life by David Grossman
On a kibbutz in Israel in 2008, Gili is celebrating the ninetieth birthday of her grandmother Vera, the adored matriarch of a sprawling and tight-knit family. But festivities are interrupted by the arrival of Nina: the iron-willed daughter who rejected Vera’s care; and the absent mother who abandoned Gili when she was still a baby.
Nina’s return to the family after years of silence precipitates an epic journey from Israel to the desolate island of Goli Otok, formerly part of Yugoslavia. It was here, five decades earlier, that Vera was held and tortured as a political prisoner. And it is here that the three women will finally come to terms with the terrible moral dilemma that Vera faced, and that permanently altered the course of their lives.
More Than I Love My Life is a sweeping story about the power of love and loving with courage. A novel driven by faith in humanity even in our darkest moments, it asks us to confront our deepest held beliefs about a woman’s duty to herself and to her children.
What Happens at Night by Peter Cameron
An American couple travels to a strange, snowy European city to adopt a baby. It’s a difficult journey that leaves the wife, who is struggling with cancer, desperately weak, and her husband worries that her illness will prevent the orphanage from releasing their child.
The couple check into a cavernous and eerily deserted Grand Imperial Hotel where the bar is always open and the lobby populated with an enigmatic cast of characters ranging from an ancient, flamboyant chanteuse to a debauched businessman, and an enigmatic faith healer. Nothing is as it seems in this baffling, frozen world, and the more the couple struggles to claim their baby, the less they seem to know about their marriage, themselves, and life itself.
So that’s all for this week.
Happy Reading!
Jill's Book Cafe 