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!) – none this week
Crime, Thriller & Mystery
Lost Women by Neil Humphreys
Detective Inspector Stanley Low. Belligerent, bipolar and brilliant. A Chinese-Singaporean, educated in London with a foot in both cities, his mission to eradicate violent crime wherever he finds it. Twelve women are found in the back of a truck, dumped in the Essex marshlands. They all have knives but have nothing to say, except Grace. She will only speak to DI Stanley Low. Brought in to assist with the case Low finds himself dealing with a global trafficking ring and a high-profile billionaire. As one by one his witnesses are killed off, he has no choice but to return to Singapore to examine the darkest corners of the Asian city in his hunt for the traffickers. He must hurry. Another truck is being prepared. Another twelve, vulnerable women are being groomed. Low can only find them if he uncovers the ugliest of truths.
Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward
Writers are monsters. We eat everything we see…
In a windswept cottage overlooking the sea, Wilder Harlow begins the last book he will ever write. It is the story of his childhood companions and the shadowy figure of the Daggerman, who stalked the New England town where they spent their summers. Of a horror that has followed Wilder through the decades. And of Sky, Wilder’s one-time friend, who stole his unfinished memoir and turned it into a lurid bestselling novel, The Sound and the Dagger.
This book will be Wilder’s revenge on Sky, who betrayed his trust and died without ever telling him why. But as he writes, Wilder begins to find notes written in Sky’s signature green ink, and events in his manuscript start to chime eerily with the present. Is Sky haunting him? And who is the dark-haired woman drowning in the cove, whom no one else can see?
No longer able to trust his own eyes, Wilder feels his grip on reality slipping. And he begins to fear that this will not only be his last book, but the last thing he ever does.
The Midnight News by Jo Baker
It is 1940 and twenty-year-old Charlotte Richmond watches from her attic window as enemy planes fly over London. Still grieving her beloved brother who never returned from France, she is working hard to keep her own little life ticking over: holding down a dull typist job at the Ministry of Information, sharing gin and confidences with her best friend Elena, and dodging her difficult father. She has good reason to keep her head down and stay out of trouble. She knows what happens when she makes a nuisance of herself.
On her way to work she often sees the boy who feeds the birds – a source of unexpected joy amidst the rubble of the Blitz. But every day brings new scenes of devastation, and after yet another heartbreaking loss Charlotte has an uncanny sense of foreboding. Someone is stalking the darkness, targeting her friends. And now he is following her.
She no longer knows who to trust. She can’t even trust herself. She knows this; her family have told so her often enough. As grief and suspicion consume her, Charlotte’s nerves become increasingly frayed, and soon her very freedom is under threat . . .
Murder at Down Street Station by Jim Eldridge
Christmas, 1940. A temporary truce between the German and Allied forces is a welcome respite from the relentless air raids over London.
Down Street underground station, in the heart of Mayfair, is now a secret retreat for Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his cabinet. In this supposedly secure location, the body of a woman is found, stabbed in the heart.
Detective Chief Inspector Coburg and Sergeant Lampson are called to investigate. However, whispers of treason as well as the suspicion of insidious Russian plots muddy the waters of the case, and personal resentments strike far too close to home.
Everything is on the line for Coburg and Lampson as the body count steadily rises.
General/Contemporary Fiction
The Sleep Watcher by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
When she is sixteen, Kit suffers a summer of peculiar sleeplessness that isn’t quite what it seems. Her body lies in bed while she wanders through her family home, the streets of her run-down seaside town and into the houses of friends and strangers. Unseen and unheard, she witnesses her parents and their fracturing relationship. Her home thrums with quiet violence that she can no longer ignore. With this secret knowledge it becomes impossible not to react and a single choice soon changes everything.
Intimate, tense and exquisitely observed, The Sleep Watcher is a moving portrait of family, danger and guilt, captured through the strange summer heat of adolescence.
How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney
Meet Jamie, a boy with a big imagination and an even bigger dream, in the most uplifting book of the year
Jamie O’Neill loves the colour red. He also loves tall trees, patterns, rain that comes with wind, the curvature of many objects, books with dust jackets, cats, rivers and Edgar Allan Poe. At age 13 there are two things he especially wants in life: to build a Perpetual Motion Machine, and to connect with his mother Noelle, who died when he was born. In his mind these things are intimately linked. And at his new school, where all else is disorientating and overwhelming, he finds two people who might just be able to help him.
How to Build a Boat is the story of how one boy and his mission transforms the lives of his teachers, Tess and Tadhg, and brings together a community. Written with tenderness and verve, it’s about love, family and connection, the power of imagination, and how our greatest adventures never happen alone.
The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller
Neffy is a young woman running away from grief and guilt, and the one big mistake that has derailed her career. When she answers the call to volunteer in a controlled vaccine trial, it offers her a way to pay off her many debts and, perhaps, to make up for the past.
But when the London streets below her window fall silent, and all external communications cease, only Neffy and four other volunteers remain in the unit. With food running out, and a growing sense that the strangers she is with may be holding back secrets, Neffy has questions that no one can answer. Does safety lie inside or beyond the unit? And who, or what is out there?
While she weighs up her choices, she is introduced to a pioneering and controversial technology which allows her to revisit memories from her life before: a childhood divided between her enigmatic mother and her father in his small hotel in Greece. Intoxicated by the freedom of the past and the chance to reunite with those she loves, she increasingly turns away from her perilous present. But in this new world where survival rests on the bonds between strangers, is she jeopardising any chance of a future?
Alone by Adrian Carlota Gurt
An intoxicating story of collapse and survival
Mei is a forty-two year-old editor living in Barcelona. After years of unsuccessfully trying to become pregnant, and having grown apart from her husband, she decides to escape her crude reality when she’s made redundant from her job at a publishing house.
When she moves to the cottage where she grew up, hidden in a remote forest of Catalunya, she believes this to be the perfect opportunity to finish the novel she’s been obsessing over. But as she begins writing, or trying to, tragedy hits her and solitude possesses her, forcing her to face her past, an unsolicited present and a future that is adrift.
As Mei’s chance encounters and new relationships with figures from her childhood seem to keep her grounded, the forest and its inhabitants take over her as she fights to finish her novel and attempt to escape solitude unscathed.
Romance
Somewhere in the Crowd by Katrina Logan
Four friends. Twelve years. One Eurovision . . .
Eurovision is always the highlight of Millie‘s year. So when she and her best friend James get the chance to see the final live in Oslo, it’s a dream come true – until they get swept up the excitement and try to break backstage, along with carefree German singer Ingrid and charismatic Australian backpacker, Noah.
Getting thrown out of the stadium wasn’t exactly the plan, but it might just spark the friendship – and the pact – of a lifetime. The four of them are going to reunite for every final, every year, every Eurovision.
Over the years, the unlikely four celebrate iconic Eurovision moments all across Europe – and, most importantly, are there for each other during all their highs and lows, heartaches and triumphs. But real life takes them down increasingly different paths, their promise becomes harder and harder to keep. Can the magic of Eurovision bring them together one last time…?
Always You by Caroline Khoury
Is it ever too late to rewrite the past?
When Lina and Ash were at school, they buried a time capsule containing letters about their hopes and dreams, and predictions for each other’s futures.
Twenty years later, their realities couldn’t be further from what they’d expected. And as for Lina and Ash? They’re not in each other’s lives anymore.
When a reunion brings Lina and Ash back together, they agree to give the dreams they walked away from another chance and embark on a trip that could change everything.
And if they can overcome what happened in the past, then maybe the end of their love story was really just the beginning…
The Fiancée Farce by Alexandria Bellefleur
‘Marry me and no one has to know none of this was real’
Tansy‘s greatest love is her family’s bookstore. But when it comes to actual romance, she can’t get past the first chapter. Tired of questions about her love life, she invents a fake girlfriend, inspired by the stunning cover model on a bestselling book. But when the real-life Gemma crosses Tansy’s path, her white lie nearly implodes.
Gemma is a wild child, the outcast of her wealthy family, and now the latest heir to Van Dalen Publishing. But the title comes with one tiny condition: she must be married in order to inherit. When Gemma discovers a beautiful stranger has been pretending to date her for months, she decides to take the charade one step further – and announces their engagement.
But as Tansy and Gemma play the role of affectionate fiancées, unexpected sparks start to fly and suddenly the line between convenient arrangement and real feelings begins to blur . . . But the scheming Van Dalen family won’t give up the company without a fight, and Gemma and Tansy’s newfound happiness might just get caught in the fallout.
So that’s all for this week.
Happy Reading!
Jill's Book Cafe 