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!)
Crime, Thriller & Mystery
Her Sweet Revenge by Sarah Bonner
Secrets and lies ruin lives
Two women receive an anonymous note.
For one it’s a threat.
For the other it’s an invitation for revenge.
Helena is beautiful, successful, and living in married bliss in Exeter. But she’s hiding a secret that could tear her perfect life apart. When the notes begin to arrive, she realises someone else must know her secret. But what might her husband and his overbearing family do if they find out the truth?
Thea is reeling from her best friend Helena’s death. But when she starts digging into the circumstances, she receives a threatening note warning her to stop. She knows her friend’s death wasn’t an accident. This was murder. And she is determined to get revenge .
I Know Who You Were by Nick Curran
EVERYONE HAS A PAST. . . YOURS IS COMING TO KILL YOU
Alex and Morven have a pretty perfect marriage. Still madly in love after ten years, they have no secrets from each other and their life in London with daughter Poppy is . . . happy.
Until one day it changes. Morven disappears, her car found abandoned. The police come around to Alex’s house to tell him things about his wife he never knew: her real name, her past life, the secrets she kept from him. And Alex realises he’s been loving a lie. He needs answers . . . and on the shore of a dark and remote lake in Wales he learns that the tragic events which shaped the past now threaten to rip apart the present.
Hazard Night by Laura Vaughan
Cleeve is not for everyone…
When Eve’s husband is appointed housemaster at his old boarding school, Cleeve College, she gives up her life in London to join him. But the isolation and loss of autonomy threaten both her happiness and her marriage.
The arrival of Fen, an enigmatic artist and wife of the new Classics teacher, is a welcome distraction. Fen doesn’t play by the rules, and she and Eve enter into a game of escalating dares, disrupting the delicate balance of school life.
Then, the morning after Hazard Night, a tradition that allows the students to run wild and play pranks for one day, a body is found. Someone has been murdered. And it seems everyone has something to hide…
The Birthday Girl by Sarah Ward
Welcome to Eldey, an island with deadly secrets.
Mona: a carefree artist, staying at the Cloister to work on her illustrations.
Beth: the harried mother of a toddler, on the remote Welsh island for a weekend with her family.
Charlotte: a reluctant stepmother who wanted a romantic getaway with her husband.
One of them is a serial killer who poisoned four of her friends at her eleventh birthday party.
They all fit the profile. Who will risk everything to kill again?
The House of Whispers by Anna Mazzola
Sometimes the secrets of the past are more dangerous than the present…
Rome, 1938.
As the world teeters on the brink of war, talented pianist Eva Valenti enters the house of widower Dante Cavallera to become his new wife.
On the outside, the forces of Fascism are accelerating, but in her new home, Eva fears that something else is at work, whispering in the walls and leaving mysterious marks on Dante’s young daughter.
Soon she starts to wonder whether the house itself is trying to give up the secrets of its mysterious past – secrets that Dante seems so determined to keep hidden.
However, Eva must also conceal the truth of her own identity, for if she is discovered, she will be in greater danger than she could ever have imagined…
General/Contemporary Fiction
A House for Alice by Diana Evans
After fifty years in the wilderness of London, Alice wants to live out her days in the land of her birth. Her children are divided on whether she stays or goes, and in the wake of their father’s death, the imagined stability of the family begins to fray.
Meanwhile youngest daughter Melissa has never let go of a love she lost, and Michael in return, even within the sturdy walls of his marriage to the sparkling Nicole, is haunted by the failed perfection of the past. As Alice’s final decision draws closer, all that is hidden between Melissa and her sisters, Michael and Nicole, rises to the surface . . .
Set against the shadows of a city and a country in turmoil, Diana Evans’s ordinary people confront fundamental questions. How should we raise our children? How to do right by our parents? And how, in the midst of everything, can we satisfy ourselves?
Shy by Max Porter
This is the story of a few strange hours in the life of a troubled teenage boy.
You mustn’t do that to yourself Shy. You mustn’t hurt yourself like that.
He is wandering into the night listening to the voices in his head: his teachers, his parents, the people he has hurt and the people who are trying to love him.
Got your special meds, nutcase?
He is escaping Last Chance, a home for ‘very disturbed young men’, and walking into the haunted space between his night terrors, his past and the heavy question of his future.
Historical
Coronation Year by Jennifer Robson
London, 1953. A new Queen is about to be crowned, and at the historic Blue Lion Hotel, the lives of three residents are about to change in unexpected ways.
Edie Howard, owner of the hotel, needs a miracle to rescue it from closure. Now, it will become a sought after spot as the young Queen’s carriage passes by on Coronation Day, offering Edie the chance to save her business from financial ruin.
Stella Donati, an Italian photographer and Holocaust survivor, lives at the Blue Lion. Her coveted position at Picture Weekly magazine opens a different world, giving her a purpose she thought she had lost with everything else she knew.
James Geddes, a gifted artist, has struggled to make his mark since his return from active service in the war in a world that disdains his Indian heritage. The Blue Lion affords him sanctuary and a welcome. Yet as his friendship with Edie deepens, he begins to suspect that something is badly amiss.
When anonymous threats focus on Coronation Day, Edie, Stella and James are determined to save their home, their livelihoods, and to expose those who seek to destroy them and the joyful promise of Coronation Year.
The Red Bird Sings by Aoife Fitzpatrick
West Virginia, 1897. When young Zona Heaster Shue dies only a few months after her wedding, her mother Mary Jane becomes convinced that Zona was murdered – and by none other than her husband, Trout, the handsome blacksmith beloved in their small Southern town.
But when Trout is put on trial, no one believes he could have done it, apart from Mary Jane and Zona’s best friend Lucy, who was always suspicious of Trout. As the trial raises to fever pitch and the men of Greenbrier County stand aligned against them, Mary Jane and Lucy must decide whether to reveal Zona’s greatest secret in the service of justice. But it’s Zona herself, from beyond the grave, who still has one last revelation to make.
The Misadventures of Margaret Finch by Claire McGlasson
Blackpool, 1938. Miss Margaret Finch – a rather demure young woman – has just begun work in a position that relies on her discretion and powers of observation. Then, her path is crossed by the disgraced Rector of Stiffkey (aka Harold Davidson), who is the subject of a national scandal.
Margaret is determined to discover the truth behind the headlines: is Davidson a maligned hero or an exploiter of the vulnerable? But her own troubles are never far away, and Margaret’s fear that history is about to repeat itself means she needs to uncover that truth urgently.
Romance
The Plus One by Mazey Eddings
Some facts are indisputable:
Gravity exists.
Indira doesn’t like Jude.
Jude doesn’t like Indira.
Indira has everything together: an amazing job, a boyfriend, a car. What more could a late twenty-something want? Well, not walking in on her boyfriend with another woman, for one thing.
Her childhood enemy, Jude, has nothing together. Having spent three years travelling the world to treat emergencies and humanitarian crises, a quick trip home for his best friend’s wedding has him struggling to readjust.
Thrust into an elaborate (and ridiculously drawn out) wedding, Jude and Indira – who can’t seem to escape her ex and his new girlfriend – are both soon at breaking point.
Their solution? A bargain to be each other’s fake dates.
But what happens when the forced proximity and fake displays of affection start to feel a bit too . . . real?
So that’s all for this week.
Happy Reading!
Jill's Book Cafe 