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
Crime, Thriller & Mystery
Eleven Liars by Robert Gold
Journalist Ben Harper is on his way home when he sees the flames in the churchyard. The derelict community centre is on fire. And somebody is trapped inside.
With Ben’s help the person escapes, only to flee the scene before they can be identified. Now the small town of Haddley is abuzz with rumours. Was this an accident, or arson?
Then a skeleton is found in the burnt-out foundations.
And when the identity of the victim is revealed, Ben is confronted with a crime that is terrifyingly close to home. As he uncovers a web of deceit and destruction that goes back decades, Ben quickly learns that in this small town, everybody has something to hide.
Pure Evil by Lynda La Plante
It was supposed to be a simple case: a young man arrested for armed assault.
But it was just the beginning.
As Rodney Middleton awaits trial, Detective Jack Warr is warned by his mentor DCI Ridley that they have only scratched the surface of the man’s crimes.
Then DCI Ridley is suddenly removed from his post. No one is to contact him – and no one will say why.
As Warr digs into Middleton’s past, Ridley calls pleading for help, now accused of a murder he insists he didn’t commit.
To catch a monster and exonerate his friend, Warr must weed out the lies. But what awaits Warr if he uncovers the truth?
Private Lessons by Bernard O’Keeffe
An Autumnal Sunday morning, a hungover jogger stumbles across a dead body, covered in blood, in Barnes Old Common Cemetery, a long-abandoned Gothic graveyard frequented by druggies and drunkards.
The victim has spent the summer working in Italy for the wealthy Rivetti family, who appear to have something to hide, as too do his bosses at the high-end Forum Tutorial Agency. And, why are his old friends, who he’d been partying with the night before, quite so reticent when questioned?
Enter D I Garibaldi, the Met’s only non-driving, country music loving detective. His first step, to unravel the complex workings of the private tuition company, the Forum Agency.
A Pen Dipped in Poison by JM Hall
Retired schoolteachers Liz, Pat and Thelma are back at their usual table at the Thirsk Garden Centre café with a brand-new mystery to solve…
Curious white envelopes have been delivered to friends and neighbours. Inside are letters revealing the deepest secrets they have tried to hide.
As one by one, careers are ended, marriages destroyed and no one is beyond suspicion, the three friends decide enough is enough. They must take matters into their own hands before more damage is done.
But as they work to uncover the truth, they begin to wonder just how far someone will go to silence this poison pen…
Could a murderer be in their midst once again?
Murder Under the Tuscan Sun by Rachel Rhys
An isolated castle, a deadly crime. Is this real or a nightmare?
In a remote castle high up in the Tuscan hills secrets are simmering among its glamorous English residents:
The ailing gentleman art-dealer
His dazzling niece
Her handsome Fascist husband
Their neglected young daughter
The housekeeper who knows everything
and Connie, the English widow working for them.
Every night, Connie hears sinister noises and a terrible wailing inside the walls. Is she losing her grip on reality?
Or does someone in the castle want her gone?
The Favour by Nicci French
A good deed
Can turn deadly…
When Jude’s first love Liam turns up in her life after ten years of no contact, asking her for a favour, she just can’t say no. He will always be someone special to her.
But does she really know what she is getting herself into?
After she does the favour, Jude is contacted by the police. Liam has been found dead, and suddenly she is caught up in a murder investigation.
She realises this one decision could cost her everything – even her life…
The Forgetting by Hannah Beckerman
When Anna Bradshaw wakes up in a hospital bed in London, she remembers nothing, not even her loving husband, Stephen. The doctors say her amnesia is to be expected, but Anna feels cut adrift from her entire life.
In Bristol, Livvy Nicholson is newly married to Dominic and eager to get back to work after six months’ maternity leave. But when Dominic’s estranged mother appears, making a series of unnerving claims, Livvy is sucked into a version of herself she doesn’t recognise.
A hundred miles apart, both women feel trapped and disorientated, and their stories are about to collide. Can they uncover the secret that connects them and reconstruct their fractured lives?
General/Contemporary Fiction
A Secret Garden Affair by Erica James
July 1981. As the country prepares to celebrate Prince Charles’ wedding to Lady Diana, Libby wants to be as far away from royal wedding fever as possible.
Having caught her own fiancé in bed with her best friend just weeks before they were due to marry, she’s fled London for the comfort of the Suffolk countryside.
At Larkspur House, with its magical garden created by renowned garden designer and one-time socialite Elfrida Ambrose, and its comfortingly familiar kitchen presided over by Libby’s great-aunt Bess, she hopes to find a way to put her life back together.
But for lifelong friends Bess and Elfrida, Libby’s arrival has stirred up the ghosts of the past. And before they can help her rebuild her shattered future, they must confront their own unspoken secrets, lost loves, and tragedies…
Dirty Laundry by Disha Bose
Keep your friends close and your neighbours closer…
Ciara has it all – a loving husband, well-behaved children and an immaculate home. But behind the filters, her reality is far from what it seems.
Mishti is stuck in a loveless marriage, raising her daughter in a country that is too cold, among children who look nothing like her.
Lauren is mostly happy, despite being judged for letting her kids run naked, wild and free.
Then Ciara is found murdered in her pristine home and suddenly everyone is a suspect.
Hushed whispers, secret rendezvous and bloody betrayals . . .
Everyone has their dirty laundry, but this goes beyond gossip.
This is all-out war.
The Anniversary by Stephanie Bishop
Novelist J.B. Blackwood is on a cruise with her husband, Patrick, to celebrate their wedding anniversary.
Her former professor, Patrick is much older than J.B.. But when they met, he seemed somehow ageless, as all new gods appear in the eyes of those who worship them. He is a film director. A cult figure. But now his success is starting to wane and J.B. is on the cusp of winning a major literary prize. Her art has been forever overseen by him, now it may overshadow his.
For days they sail in the sun. They lie about drinking, reading, sleeping, having sex. There is nothing but dark water all around them.
Then a storm hits and Patrick falls off the ship. J.B. is left alone, as the search for what happened to Patrick – and the truth about their marriage – begins.
Electricity by Angus Peter Campbell
‘In pencil-written and drawing-spattered notebooks intended for her Australian granddaughter, an elderly woman, now in Edinburgh, remembers and relives her Hebridean childhood. The community thus recreated is one where modernity – its emblem the Electricity of Angus Peter Campbell’s title – collides and overlaps with all sorts of linguistic, cultural and other continuities. But this is no sentimental or elegiac excursion into a long-gone past. What’s evoked here is a powerful sense of what it was, and is, to grow up amid family, neighbours and surroundings of a sort providing, for the most part, both security and happiness.’
Romance
The Little Venice Bookshop by Rebecca Raisin
A bundle of mysterious letters. A trip to Venice. A journey she’ll never forget.
When Luna loses her beloved mother, she’s bereft: her mother was her only family, and without her Luna feels rootless. Then the chance discovery of a collection of letters in her mother’s belongings sends her on an unexpected journey.
Following a clue in the letters, Luna packs her bags and heads to Venice, to a gorgeous but faded bookshop overlooking the canals, hoping to uncover the truth about her mother’s mysterious past.
Will Luna find the answers she’s looking for – and finally find the place she belongs?
Gigi, Listening by Chantel Guertin
Gigi Rutherford loves love stories. She reads them, she sells them at her romance bookstore, and she could spend hours imagining the meet-cutes of every couple she encounters. But when it comes to her own love interests, Gigi is out of stock. Instead of enduring bad date after bad date, these days she’d rather curl up with her favorite audiobook and the only man who makes her heart skip a beat: Zane Wilkenson, the smooth-voiced narrator Gigi is convinced is her soulmate.
Then, she’s presented with the chance of a lifetime: a ten-day bus tour through the English countryside, an ocean away from her bookstore—all in the presence of Zane, in person, as he leads the tour.
But when Gigi arrives at the bus terminal in London, Zane is nowhere to be found. Until he shows up, she’s stuck with an eclectic group of fellow travelers: recently widowed and chatty Charlotte;
trivia-obsessed Francis; Jenny, a true-crime-makeup YouTuber documenting every detail for her subscribers; and Sindhi and Roshi, a long-married couple who can’t stop bickering. Then there’s the brooding bus driver, Taj, who Gigi finds infuriating yet also incredibly alluring . . .
The Love Algorithm by Claudia Carroll
True love is only just a swipe away? Right?
Iris lives by numbers. The only thing missing from her perfectly calibrated life is a partner – and not for lack of trying. After decades of disappointment, Iris practically has a PhD in online dating. But something still eludes her: that unquantifiable spark.
Kim is too busy being the life of the party to look for love. Her terrible dates make great stories for her friends and co-workers, as long as she’s not caught by her tyrannical boss, Iris.
Connie, Kim’s recently widowed mum, is single for the first time since the 1970s. The dating game has changed a lot since her day . . .
Sick of being let down, Iris takes matters into her own hands – using her analytical skills to create the first real formula for love. With Kim and Connie on board, they launch Analyzed, a dating app like no other.
As Analyzed takes the world by storm, are the three women in over their heads? Is love really just a numbers game?
Sounds like Fun by Bryan Moriarty
Meet Eoin. Eoin is doing great. He’s 27, gainfully employed and in a long-term relationship with his boyfriend Rich.
Okay, so his best friend Jax is diving into yet another disastrously bad relationship and Eoin’s going to be the one dealing with the eventual fallout. And his boss at the café, Rebecca, seems to have vanished, so somehow Eoin’s left managing the place. And to be honest, he’s not got much else going on.
But still, he’s got his boyfriend Rich – steady, sensible and dependable Rich. That is, until Eoin’s world is turned upside down when Rich announces that he wants an open relationship. Terrified of losing the man he loves, Eoin reluctantly agrees to this new arrangement, and stumbles into the world of dating with no strings attached.
What could go wrong?
Maybe Next Time by Cesca Major
Emma is having the worst day of her life. Frustrating. Chaotic. And the only person who could make it better is gone by the
end of the day.
Yet even worse than all of that: Emma keeps waking up to the same day, over and over again.
But what if this is a sign things could be different? Can Emma change the heartbreaking end to this love story?
So that’s all for this week.
Happy Reading!
Jill's Book Cafe 
I read Maybe This Time in one day over the weekend. It’s wonderful!
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I really fancy this one, it’s on my tbr list x
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