Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn

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Gone Girl - Gillian FlynnGone Girl
Gillian Flynn

‘What are you thinking, Amy?’

The question I’ve asked most often during our marriage, if not out loud, if not to the person who could answer. I suppose these questions stormcloud over every marriage: ‘What are you thinking? How are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?’

Just how well can you ever know the person you love? This is the question that Nick Dunne must ask himself on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police immediately suspect Nick. Amy’s friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn’t true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they aren’t his. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone. So what really did happen to Nick’s beautiful wife? And what was in that half-wrapped box left so casually on their marital bed?

In this novel, marriage truly is the art of war…

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Rupture – Simon Lelic

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Rupture - Simon LelieRupture
Simon Lelic

‘Find what you were looking for, Inspector?’

Every day the same question. A different uniform but the same question.

They thought Lucia enjoyed being here. They thought that was why she kept coming back. But they were asking the wrong thing. She had found what she was looking for – she had found what she had been sent to discover – but she had found out more besides. The question was what to do about it. The question was whether to do anything at all.

In the depths of a sweltering summer, teacher Samuel Szajkowski walks into his school assembly and opens fire. He kills three pupils and a colleague before turning the gun on himself. Lucia May, the young policewoman who is assigned the case, is expected to wrap up things quickly and without fuss. The incident is a tragedy that could not have been predicted and Szajkowski, it seems clear, was a psychopath beyond help. Soon, however, Lucia becomes preoccupied with the question no one else seems to want to ask: what drove a mild-mannered, diffident school teacher to commit such a despicable crime?

Piecing together the testimonies of the teachers and children at the school, Lucia discovers an uglier, more complex picture of the months leading up to the shooting. She realises too that she has more in common with Szajkowski than she could have imagined. As the pressure to bury the case builds, she becomes determined to tell the truth about what happened, whatever the consequences…

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Cold Hands – John J. Niven

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Cold Hands - John J. NivenCold Hands
John J. Niven

Donnie Miller counts himself lucky. Living in a beautiful, spacious house in the wild and remote landscape of central Canada, he spends his days writing for the local newspaper, working on a film script, and acting as house-husband. After a troubled and impoverished upbringing in Scotland, he now has all he wants: a caring wife, a bright and happy son, a generous father-in-law. As the brutal northern winter begins to bite, he can sit back and enjoy life.

But his peace is soon broken. There are noises in the nearby woods, signs of some mysterious watcher. When the family dog disappears, Donnie makes a horrifying discovery. Is it wolves, as the police suspect, or something far more dangerous, far darker? What secrets has Donnie been keeping? And why does he have the terrible sense that his dream was never going to last?

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The Serpent’s Head: Revenge – Julian Malins

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The Serpent's Head: Revenge - Julian MalinsThe Serpent’s Head: Revenge
Julian Malins

What would happen in a terrorist attack resulted in the death of the loved one of someone who could take revenge?

Set in the near future, The Serpent’s Head is the story of a terrorist bomb destroying one of the City of London’s most iconic buildings and killing the children of parents who decide to extract a dramatic and world changing justice.

Set mainly in China, England, Nigeria, Syria and Saudi Arabia, the plots and sub plots weave the reader around the world, as the flames of a general war between Christianity and Islam ignite in West Africa and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia collapses into chaos. The novel will be the first of several in which the possible future course of the struggle between China, Islam and the West is traced.

The novel is written by Julian Malins, who is a British barrister with a worldwide practice in banking, fraud and money laundering cases especially in the Middle East and the Caribbean. He has had many articles published in legal journals but The Serpent’s Head is his first novel and is packed with insider information and personal knowledge and experience.

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Sara’s Face – Melvin Burgess

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Sara's Face - Melvin BurgessSara’s Face
Melvin Burgess

‘There’s loads of girls prettier than me. Anyone can look good. Talent – that’s not it either. They train you up, they work on your voice. If it’s no good they change it in the studio. Talent’s cheap.’

Sara wants to be famous, and when the legendary rock star Jonathan Heat offers to train her up and pay for her cosmetic surgery, it’s like a dream come true.

But what if there’s a hidden price? And is Sara willing to pay it?

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Witch Hunt – Syd Moore

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Witch Hunt - Syd MooreWitch Hunt
Syd Moore

A chilling, haunting ghost story that delves into the dark past of the 16th century Essex witch trials.

Sadie Asquith has been fascinated by the dark past of Essex’s witch hunts for as long as she can remember. And for good reason: between 1560 and 1680, over 500 women were tried for witchcraft in the county of Essex. But as she researches a book on the subject, Sadie experiences strange, ghostly visions. She hears noises at night, a sobbing sound that follows her, and black moths appear from nowhere. It’s as if, by digging up the truth about the witch hunts, she has opened an unearthly connection to the women treated so cruelly and killed centuries before.

And something else in the modern world is after her too: Sadie is sure she’s being followed, her flat is burgled and she finds clues that reveal her own past isn’t all that she believed. Can she find peace for the witches of Essex’s history and can she find a safe path for herself?

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The Girl on the Stairs – Louise Welsh

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The Girl on the Stairs - Louise WelshThe Girl on the Stairs
Louise Welsh

Jane Logan is a stranger to Berlin and she finds the city alive and echoing with the ghosts of its turbulent past. At six months pregnant, she’s instructed by her partner Petra to rest and enjoy her new life in Germany. But while Petra is out at work, Jane begins to feel uneasy in their chic apartment. Screams reverberate through the walls, lights flicker in the derelict building that looms over the yard, a shadow passes on the stairs…

Jane meets a neighbour’s daughter, a girl whose life she tries to mend, but her involvement only further isolates her. Alone and haunted, Jane fears the worst… but the worst is yet to come.

Louise Welsh, the acclaimed author of The Cutting Room, delivers another masterful suspense novel. The Girl on the Stairs is a powerful psychological thriller packed with twists and turns to keep you reading well into the night. Read it, or be left in the dark.

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