Puzzle compiler and former Christmas sceptic Edie O’Sullivan returns in the newest seasonal mystery from bestselling author and ‘Queen of the Christmas Mystery’ Alexandra Benedict.
When Edie O’Sullivan wins a two-day Christmas break in a hotel on a remote Scottish island, she’s looking forward to a picture-perfect Christmas full of winter walks, roaring fires, good books and even better whisky.
But when a guest dies under mysterious circumstances, Edie realises that there is a killer amongst them. As more guests begin to die, it’s up to her to solve the strange riddles found in the victims’ Christmas crackers and stop the killing spree. But as she gets closer to the truth, she puts herself in the way of a devious and clever murderer.
Can Edie solve these Christmas killings before she becomes the next victim?
London, Christmas 1999. The world is on edge. With the new millennium just days away, fears of the Millennium Bug are spiralling – warnings of computer failures, market crashes, even global catastrophe. But fifty miles east, on the frozen Blackwater Island, a different kind of mystery unfolds. A child’s body is discovered on the bracken, untouched by footprints, with no sign of how he died. And no one has come forward to claim him.
At the International Tribune, reporter Jonny Murphy senses something is off. Police are appealing for relatives, not suspects. An anonymous call led officers to the scene, but no one knows who made it. While the world fixates on a digital apocalypse, Jonny sees the real disaster unfolding closer to home. With just twenty-hour hours before the century turns, he heads to Blackwater – driven by curiosity, desperation, and the sting of rejection from his colleague Paloma.
But Blackwater has secrets buried deep in the frozen ground. More victims – some dead, others still paying for past sins. And when Paloma catches up to him, they stumble onto something far bigger than either of them imagined. Something that could change everything. The millennium is coming. The clock is ticking. Can Jonny stop it? Should he?
And what if Y2K wasn’t a hoax, but a warning…?
An unforgettable new novel from the author of the modern classic I Love Dick — a witty, probing journey into a fractured America, culminating in the investigation of a teenage murder.
On the Iron Range of northern Minnesota, at the end of the last decade, three teenagers shot and killed an older acquaintance after spending the day with him. In a cold, rundown town, the three young people were quickly arrested and imprisoned. No one knows why they did it.
At the time of the murder, Catt Greene and her husband, Paul Garcia, are living nearby in a house they’d bought years earlier as a summer escape from Los Angeles. Undergoing a period of personal turmoil, moving between LA and Minnesota — between the urban art world and the rural poverty of the icy Iron Range — Catt turns away from her own life and towards the murder case, which soon becomes an obsession. In her attempt to pierce through the mystery surrounding the murder and to understand the teenagers’ lives, Catt also finds herself travelling back through the idiosyncratic, aspirational lives of her parents in the working-class Bronx and small-town, blue-collar Milford, Connecticut.
A mesmerising and unsettling novel from a powerful new voice Seeking release from their small-town existence, two teenagers drive north on a vaguely plotted road trip.
Adam and Teddy hope to leave boyhood behind. But they carry with them all the upsets and resentments they have accrued in their unhappy lives to date.
As the pair’s journey progresses, the mood fluctuates as each of them sets out to prove himself. The dynamics of their friendship begin to unravel, culminating in an act of devastating – and all too familiar – violence.
In taut and stylish prose, The Passenger Seat examines how men learn and perform masculinity. Rejecting easy answers, it keeps our eyes trained on the vanishing point where vulnerability edges into violence, alienation into aggression.
Meet Goldie and Vee: sisters, dreamers, grafters. In their forties, both appear to have it all…
Until Goldie finds the courage to leave Benedict. Once upon a time their faux marriage worked, but when the magnetic Wolfie comes on the scene, her world of pretending falls apart.
Vee’s neat world is spiraling, too. Since her ex-husband Jamie started dating Julia her cruel school bully, Vee’s long-buried insecurities are out of control. She needs to get away, and fast.
So when Goldie suggests a holiday in France, Vee leaps at the idea. A curiously well-timed invitation – just as speculations around Goldie’s brilliantly brief pop career back in the nineties are beginning to resurface. Escaping’s one thing, but nothing stays secret forever, and as Vee and Goldie’s unresolved pasts make surprise returns, the stories them girls once told themselves begin to look very different…
It’s the ultimate test of endurance: two-hundred-and-fifty miles in the brutal heat of the Sahara, with only the supplies you can carry on your back.
Adri is ready. Returning to ultra-running in the wake of a scandal, she needs to prove to herself – and her young son – that she’s a winner.
When a fellow runner is badly injured, Adri knows something isn’t right. Yet in a race this extreme, even a dead body can be explained away.
But there’s a killer stalking the hot sand. And the problem with running faster than everyone else, is that you’re miles ahead of anyone who can save you…
It is September 1974 and two men meet by chance in Venice. One is a young English artist, in panicked flight from London. The other is Danilo Donati, the magician of Italian cinema, the designer responsible for realising the spectacular visions of Fellini and Pasolini. Donati is in Venice to produce sketches for Fellini’s Casanova. A young – and beautiful – apprentice is just what he needs.
He sweeps Nicholas to Rome, into the looking-glass world of Cinecittà, the studio where Casanova’s Venice will be ingeniously assembled. Then in the spring, the lovers move together to the set of Salò, Pasolini’s horrifying fable of fascism.
But Nicholas has a secret and in this world of constant illusion, his real nature passes unseen. Amidst the rising tensions of Italy’s ‘Years of Lead’, he acts as an accelerant, setting in motion a tragedy he didn’t intend.
The Silver Book is at once a queer love story and a noirish thriller, set in the dream factory of cinema. It’s a fictional account of real things, and an investigation into the difficult relationship between artifice and truth, illusion and reality, love and power.
Olivia Laing is an internationally acclaimed writer and critic. Their books include The Lonely City, Everybody and the Sunday Times number one bestseller The Garden Against Time. They are represented for books by Rebecca Carter Literary.
A universal story that will resonate far and wide, Love on Sight captures the heat and hope of one summer, and the magic of falling in love for the first time …
Sabrina has her life planned out – she’s going to pass her A levels and go to university. But then she meets Jalaal, a boy trapped on the wrong path, desperate for a way out.
An English Jamaican girl and a Somali Muslim boy being together isn’t straightforward, with cultural expectations, disapproving family and religious differences to overcome.
But is that the struggle you face when you fall in love on sight?
The outstanding debut novel from the Lime New Storyteller 2023 award winner, Asli Jensen.
An uplifting contemporary YA romance, which draws on the author’s experience of growing up in inner-city London.
A modern dual narrative Romeo-and-Juliet story, perfect for fans of Danielle Jawando and Candice Carty-Williams.
Explores themes of family, culture, friendship, redemption, class, faith and different forms of love in a fresh and authentic style, which will resonate universally.
Read less
What if your perfect life was a charade?
It is August, and eight old friends have gathered at a country house for a writers’ retreat. By day, there is reading beside the pool or writing in the shady corners of the estate. In the evenings – drinks, dinner outdoors, games, midnight swimming.
But as temperatures rise in the stifling last days of summer, tensions do too. Old jealousies, new temptations and bitter rivalries bubble to the surface. By the end of the week, friendships – and lives – will have changed forever.
Astute, witty and page-turning, The Book Game is a novel about ambition, competition, regret and desire; about paths not taken and last chances suddenly seized; about the games people play. It asks what it means, in all senses, to be in the middle of life.
‘Glitters with secret agendas, hidden lies and sun-soaked desires’ Emma Stonex
‘Whip-smart and made me laugh out loud. Magnificent’ Joanna Cannon
‘Thorny and sexy’ Beth Morrey
‘Pulsing with heat and intrigue’ Marianne Levy
