Snap, by Belinda Bauer ( paperback)
£8.99
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2018.On a stifling summer's day, eleven-year-old Jack and his two sisters sit in their broken-down car, waiting for their mother to come back and rescue them. Jack's in charge, she'd said.
I won't be long. But she doesn't come back. She never comes back.
And life as the children know it is changed for ever. Three years later, Jack is still in charge - of his sisters, of supporting them all, of making sure nobody knows they're alone in the house, and - quite suddenly - of finding out the truth about what happened to his mother. .
. 'Snap is the best kind of crime novel. It gives you chills, it makes you think and it touches your heart.
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Silverview, John Le Carre ( hardback October 2021)
£20.00
Julian Lawndsley has renounced his high-flying job in the City for a simpler life running a bookshop in a small English seaside town. But only a couple of months into his new career, Julian's evening is disrupted by a visitor. Edward, a Polish emigre living in Silverview, the big house on the edge of town, seems to know a lot about Julian's family and is rather too interested in the inner workings of his modest new enterprise.When a letter turns up at the door of a spy chief in London warning him of a dangerous leak, the investigations lead him to this quiet town by the sea . . .
Silverview is the mesmerising story of an encounter between innocence and experience and between public duty and private morals. In this last complete masterwork from the greatest chronicler of our age, John le Carre asks what you owe to your country when you no longer recognise it. 'The finest, wisest storyteller' Richard Osman 'A towering writer' Margaret Atwood 'A literary giant' Stephen King
Ascension, Oliver Harris ( hardback October 2021)
£18.99
One of our finest thriller writers...First-class' Daily Telegraph
A BBC2 BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOK CLUB PICK 2021'
Three friends from a mission many years ago reconnect when one of them dies in mysterious circumstances on remote Ascension Island. Rory Bannatyne had been tasked with tapping a new transatlantic data cable, but a day before he was due to return home he is found hanged. When Kathryn Taylor, on the South Atlantic MI5 desk, begs ex-spy Elliot Kane to go over and investigate, he can't say no, but it's an uneasy reintroduction to the intelligence game.
Entirely isolated from the world, the disappearance of a young girl on the island at the same time as Rory's death means local tensions are high. Elliot needs to discover what happened to her as well as to Rory. But the island contains more secrets than even the government knows, and it's not going to give them up without a fight.
Sixteen Horses, Greg Buchanan (hardback, April 2021)
£16.99
FEATURED ON BBC TWO'S BETWEEN THE COVERS Summer Reading Recommendations
Near the dying English seaside town of Ilmarsh, local police detective Alec Nichols discovers sixteen horses' heads on a farm, each buried with a single eye facing the low winter sun. After forensic veterinarian Cooper Allen travels to the scene, the investigators soon uncover evidence of a chain of crimes in the community - disappearances, arson and mutilations - all culminating in the reveal of something deadly lurking in the ground itself.
In the dark days that follow, the town slips into panic and paranoia. Everything is not as it seems. Anyone could be a suspect.
And as Cooper finds herself unable to leave town, Alec is stalked by an unseen threat. The two investigators race to uncover the truth behind these frightening and insidious mysteries - no matter the cost. Sixteen Horses is the debut literary thriller from an extraordinary talent, Greg Buchanan.
Crow Court, Andy Charman (hardback Jan 2021)
£16.99
LONGLISTED FOR THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE 2021 - a prize awarded to best debut novel.
As gripping as Hilary Mantel and as convincing as Sarah Perry ... debut novels shouldn't be this perfectly formed' Ben Myers'
Spring, 1840. In the Dorset market town of Wimborne Minster, a young choirboy drowns himself. Soon after, the choirmaster-a belligerent man with a vicious reputation-is found murdered, in a discovery tainted as much by relief as it is by suspicion.
The gaze of the magistrates falls on four local men, whose decisions will reverberate through the community for years to come. So begins the chronicle of Crow Court, unravelling over fourteen delicately interwoven episodes, the town of Wimborne their backdrop: a young gentleman and his groom run off to join the army; a sleepwalking cordwainer wakes on his wife's grave; desperate farmhands emigrate. We meet the composer with writer's block; the smuggler; a troupe of actors down from London; and old Art Pugh, whose impoverished life has made him hard to amuse.
Meanwhile, justice waits...
