Here’s my pick of forthcoming publications. 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. This harks back to my library days when the arrival of the biannual The Bookseller heralded a weekend of filling in reservation cards for my forthcoming reading.
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. Also in keeping with my support for the #RespectRomFic campaign I’ve added a Romance category. This might be hit and miss as to whether I categorise correctly but hope it helps.
(NB This post features Affiliate links from which I earn a small commission on qualifying purchases)
Index
Historical (I tend to take this as pre 1960’s ie not in my lifetime!)
Romance – none this week
Crime, Thriller & Mystery
The White Lady by Jacqueline Winspear
1947. Elinor White, known locally as ‘the White lady’, is living a solitary, quiet life in a grace-and-favour cottage in the Kent countryside. Unbeknownst to her neighbours, she is the veteran of two world wars, a trained killer and former intelligence agent.
Yet Elinor’s private and seemingly tranquil existence conceals a past trauma that comes to the fore when she is drawn into the predicament of a local man entangled with one of the most dangerous crime families in London.
A treacherous path lies ahead, but it may be one that ultimately leads Elinor to a future unshackled from her own painful history.
The Girl by the Bridge by Arnaldur Indridason
When a young woman known for drug smuggling goes missing, her elderly grandparents have no choice but to call the retired Detective Konrád.
Still looking for his own father’s murderer, Konrád agrees to investigate the case.
But digging into the past reveals more than he set out to discover, and a strange connection to a little girl who drowned in the Reykjavík city pond decades ago recaptures everyone’s attention.
A brilliant, chilling tale of broken dreams and children who have nowhere to turn.
What the Shadows Hide by MJ Lee
To love and to cherish, till death did them part…
Two desiccated bodies are found in each other’s arms in the bricked up room of a derelict Victorian warehouse. After six months of work, the police have nothing and Ridpath is finally called in to investigate. Dubbed the Romeo and Juliet murders by the press, so many questions remain unanswered.
Who are they? Why were they there? Who killed them? And why was the coroner so keen for him to work on this particular case?
Ridpath is plunged into his most difficult investigation yet, in a race against time to discover the truth. Has an unknown serial killer been operating in Manchester for the last twenty years?
A Bitter Remedy by Alis Hawkins
Amongst the scholars, secrets and soporifics of Victorian Oxford, the truth can be a bitter pill to swallow…
Jesus College, Oxford, 1881. An undergraduate is found dead at his lodgings and the medical examination reveals some shocking findings. When the young man’s guardian blames the college for his death and threatens a scandal, Basil Rice, a Jesus College fellow with a secret to hide, is forced to act and finds himself drawn into Sidney Parker’s sad life.
The mystery soon attracts the attention of Rhiannon ‘Non’ Vaughan, a young Welsh polymath and one of the young women newly admitted to university lectures. But when neither the college principal nor the powerful ladies behind Oxford’s new female halls will allow her to become involved, Non’s fierce intelligence and determination to prove herself drive her on.
Both misfits at the university, Non and Basil form an unlikely partnership, and it soon falls to them to investigate the mysterious circumstances of Parker’s death. But between corporate malfeasance and snake-oil salesmen, they soon find the dreaming spires of Oxford are not quite what they seem…
General/Contemporary Fiction
Last Summer on State Street by Toya Wolfe
State Street Chicago, 1999. One summer that changes everything.
An unlikely trio: Felicia ‘Fe Fe’ Stevens, daughter of fiercely protective mother; Precious Brown, daughter of a prominent church Elder; and Stacia Buchanan, daughter of a Gangster Disciple Queen-Pin.
They have a simple friendship, whiling away sunny days with games of Double Dutch. But when Fe Fe invites mysterious Tonya into their fold, life as they know it will never be the same again.
Last Summer on State Street is a profound coming-of-age story about the restorative power of community, the claiming of one’s own past, and the defining friendships which form the heartbeat of our lives.
Historical
A Complicated Matter by Anne Youngson
I used to believe the world had been created for me; every stone and grain of sand. As I grew older, I began to think of myself as something tacked on to the edge.
1939, London: From McPhail’s Passage to Kensington’s Grand Palace Hotel, Rose Dunbar is evacuated from her humble home on the Rock of Gibraltar and dropped into a chaotic city of falling bombs, perplexing class rules and bad weather. Despite being ‘flagrantly foreign’ to the locals, she becomes an efficient go-between for the upper-class ladies helping out with the war effort and her own tribe of noisy displaced families.
It is only when she is shifted to the countryside to become secretary to the plain-speaking and sightless Major Inchbold that Rose’s dizzying journey to womanhood will become more surreal than ever, as she drinks tea at the vicarage, shields her best friend from abuse and stands up for the lower orders. But Rose’s greatest dilemma is yet to come, as she must decide where her home – and her heart – really lies.
In Anne Youngson’s wry and sublimely understated prose, this unique and beautiful story of love, class and belonging is also a profound and intimate meditation on what it takes to find our place in the world.
So that’s all for this week.
Happy Reading!
Jill's Book Cafe 
Great to see The White Lady at the top of your list Jill. I really enjoyed it! x
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That’s good to know, makes it look as though I know what I’m doing lol x
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