Friday 30 August 2013

Books to Look Forward to From Transworld Publishers

The  Excalibur Codex is by James Douglas and is due to be published in August 2013. For countless generations the sword had been kept hidden, ready for a time of need. But not hidden well enough, because on one warm July night in1937 it vanished - its disappearance swallowed up in the storm clouds of war that would soon engulf the world.  1941 - twelve SS generals gather at a castle in East Prussia to re-enact an ancient rite and call on the spirits of Europe’s mightiest warriors to aid them in the coming battle in the East. At the heartof the ritual is a pentagram formed by five swords. One of them is Excalibur, the mythical w eapon pulled from a stone by King Arthur.  2010 - Art recovery expert Jamie Saint Clair laughs when he reads the codex to a German war veteran’s will, the strange ritual it describes and the mention of a sword named Excalibur. But collector Adam Steele is convinced - and if Jamie can find the legendary sword, he will pay a small fortune for it. The hunt for Excalibur takes Jamie from Germany to eastern Poland and a deadly encounter in Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair. The castle has been destroyed down to the last stone and the only clue to the sword’s fate is the strange tale of a wartime partisan unit murdered by its own commander. With a team of international assassins on his trail and the distinction between friend and enemy a blur, Jamie finally makes it back to a Britain under siege, where the last piece of the puzzle falls into place and he discovers that the line between obsession and madness is gossamer thin...

The Kill List: a top-secret catalogue of names held at the highest level of the US
government.  On it, those men and women who would threaten the world's security.  And at the top of it, The Preacher, a radical Islamic cleric whose sermons inspire his followers to kill high profile Western targets in the name of God.  As the bodies begin to pile up in America, Great Britain and across Europe, the message goes out: discover this man's identity, locate him and take him out.  Tasked with what seems like an impossible job is an ex-US marine who has risen through the ranks to become one of America's most effective intelligence chiefs.  Now known only as The Tracker, he must gather what scant evidence there is, collate it and unmask The Preacher if he is to prevent the next spate of violent deaths.  Aided only by a brilliant teenaged hacker, he must throw out the bait and see whether his deadly target can be drawn from his lair.  The Kill List is by Frederick Forsyth and is due to be published in September 2013.

Young policewoman Lacey Flint knows that the Thames is a dangerous place – after all, she lives on it and works on it – but she’s always been lucky.  Until one day, when she finds a body floating in the water.  Who was this woman and why was she wrapped so carefully in white burial cloths before being hidden in the fast-flowing depths?  DCI Dana Tulloch hates to admit it, but she’s fond of the mysterious Lacey.  Even if she keeps on interfering in her investigations, and is meddling with the latest floater case.  But now she's got to break some terrible news to her - news that could destroy Lacey's fragile state of mind.  And Lacey will need to keep her wits about her because there's a killer that's lurking around her boat, leaving her gifts she'd rather not receive.  A Dark and Twisted Tide is by Sharon (SJ) Bolton and is due to be published in May 2014.

A currently yet untitled Liza Marklund novel is due to be published in February 2014.  A young woman has been found dead and covered with snow behind a nursery school in a Stockholm suburb.  She is the fourth murder victim in a short time with the same characteristics: a young mother, stabbed from behind.  The offices of the Evening Post are awash with rumours of a serial killer, but journalist Annika Bengtzon dismisses it as wild fantasy.  As the murder spree continues in Stockholm, the police too begin to think they have a serial killer on their hands.  Meanwhile Annika is dragged into a violent hostage situation in Nairobi that involves her husband – a situation that shakes both Europe and East Africa.  The demands from the kidnappers are impossible and unreasonable.  But when the demands are rejected, the kidnappers begin to execute the hostages, one by one…


High Rollers is by Jack Bowman and is due to be published in August 2013.  When the engine of a 737 tears itself apart at Los Angeles Airport, Tom Patrick is in the wrong place at the wrong time - playing poker at a nearby casino.  He has been losing at cards and probing pipeline leaks ever since his big mouth led to his fall from grace as the National Transportation Safety Board's top air-crash investigator.  Now he cannot wait to come in from the cold.  Sidelined by the official investigation, Tom starts to dig anyway.  Moreover, when another 737 crashes for what looks like similar reasons, it is clear that something could be terribly wrong with the world's most popular passenger jet.  Risking everything, Tom Patrick sets out on a global paper chase, racing against time and ruthless killers - before planes and people start falling out of the sky like bloody confetti.  Brace yourself for high octane, high risk.  High rollers.

1993: Under deep cover, Nick Stone and a specialist surveillance team have spent weeks in
the jungles and city streets of Colombia.  Their mission: to locate the boss of the world's most murderous drugs cartel - and terminate him with extreme prejudice.  Now they can strike.  But to get close enough to fire the fatal shot, Nick must reveal his face.  It is a risk he is willing to take - since only the man who is about to die will see him.  Or so he thinks...2012: Nick is in Moscow; semi-retired; semi-married to Anna; very much the devoted father of their newborn son.  But when the boy falls dangerously ill and the doctor who saves him comes under threat, Nick finds himself back in the firing line.  To stop his cover being terminally blown, he must follow a trail that begins in Triad-controlled Hong Kong and propels him back into the even more brutal world he thought he had left behind.  The forces ranged against him have guns, helicopters, private armies and a terrified population in their vice-like grip.  Nick Stone has two decades of operational skills that may no longer be deniable - and a fierce desire to protect a woman and a child who now mean more to him than life itself.  The Silencer is by Andy McNab and is due to be published in October 2013.

Morning Frost is by James Henry and is due to be published in November 2013.  It has been one of the worst days of Detective Sergeant Jack Frost's life.  He has buried his wife Mary, and must now endure the wake, attended by all of Denton's finest.  All, that is, apart from DC Sue Clark, who spends the night pursuing a bogus tip-off, before being summoned to the discovery of a human hand.  And things get worse.  Local entrepreneur Harry Baskin is shot inside his nightclub, fake fivers are being circulated, and a famous painting goes missing.  As the week goes on, a cyclist is found dead in suspicious circumstances, and the more body parts appear.  Frost is on the case, but another disaster - one he is entirely unprepared for - is about to strike...

It’s a fresh start for the Met's oddest investigation team, the Peculiar Crimes Unit.  Their first case involves two teenagers who see a dead man rising from his grave in a London park.  And if that's not alarming enough, one of them is killed in a hit and run accident.  Stranger still, in the moments between when he was last seen alive and found dead on the pavement, someone has changed his shirt...  Much to his frustration, Arthur Bryant is not allowed to investigate.  Instead, he has been tasked with finding out how someone could have stolen the ravens from the Tower of London.  All seven birds have vanished from one of the most secure fortresses in the city.  And, as the legend has it, when the ravens leave, the nation falls…  Soon it seems death is all around and Bryant and May must confront a group of latter-day body snatchers, explore an eerie funeral parlour and unearth the gruesome legend of Bleeding Heart Yard.  More graves are desecrated, further deaths occur, and the symbol of the Bleeding Heart seems to turn up everywhere - it’s even discovered hidden in the PCU’s offices.  And when Bryant is blindfolded and taken to the headquarters of a secret society, he realises that this case is more complex than even he had imagined, and that everyone is hiding something.  The Grim Reaper walks abroad and seems to be stalking him, playing on his fears of premature burial.  Rich in strange characters and steeped in London’s true history, this is Bryant & May’s most peculiar and disturbing case of all.  Bryant & May and The Bleeding Heart is by Christopher Fowler and is due to be published in March 2013.
  
For thousands of years we guarded it.  But now it has been found.  This could be the end - for
us; for our organisation; for the world.  You must destroy it, and those who have taken it.  An ancient object is discovered in a Cairo souk.  Hours later, the market trader who sold it is tortured to death.  As the bodies begin to pile up, a request for help is sent to British Museum historian Angela Lewis.  Angela travels to Spain with her ex-husband, undercover police officer Chris Bronson.  There they discover the key to the greatest secret in the history of Christianity.  Their only problem is deciphering it before they are brutally murdered like those before them...  The Lost Testament is by James Becker and is due to be published in November 2013.

'Somebody!’  I half-sob and then, more quietly, ‘Please.’  The words seem absorbed by the afternoon heat, lost amongst the trees.  In their aftermath, the silence descends again.  I know then that I am not going anywhere...  Sean is on the run.  We don't know why and we don't know from whom, but we do know he's abandoned his battered, bloodstained car in the middle of a sweltering, isolated, lonely part of rural France.  Desperate to avoid the police, he takes to the hedgerows and country lanes only to be caught in the vicious jaws of a trap.  Near unconscious from pain and loss of blood, he is freed and taken in by two women - the daughters of the owner of a rundown local farm with its ramshackle barn, blighted vineyard and the brooding lake.  And it's then that Sean's problems really start...  Stone Bruises is by Simon Beckett and is due to be published in January 2014.

Spring, 1648. When Thomas Hill, a bookseller living in rural Hampshire, publishes a political pamphlet he has little idea of the trouble that will follow. He is quickly arrested, forced on a boat to Barbados and condemned to life as a slave to two of the island's most notoriously violent brothers. In England war has erupted again, with London under threat of attack. When news of the king's execution reaches the island, political stability is threatened and a fleet commanded by Sir George Ayscue arrives to take control of the island for Cromwell. The threat of violence increases. Thomas finds himself witness to abuse, poison, rape and savage brutality. When a coded message from Ayscue to a sympathiser on the island is intercepted, Thomas is asked to decipher it. A disastrous battle seems inevitable. But nothing turns out as planned. And as the death toll mounts, the escape Thomas has been relying on seems ever more unlikely.  The King’s Exile is the second book in the Thomas Hill series by Andrew Swanston and is due to be published in August 2013.

A violent robbery has killed an entire family on the Costa Del Sol. Annika Bengtzon is
assigned to cover the story for the Evening Post.  However, when she arrives in Spain she discovers there was a third child - a teenage daughter - who is unaccounted for.  Annika makes it her mission to find the missing girl.  But as she delves into the mystery, she becomes embroiled in a far darker side of Spanish life than she had envisioned, as she begins to piece together a terrifying story of violence, abuse and murder.  The Long Shadow is by Liza Marklund and is due to be published in September 2013.

Easter Quillby: Wade disappeared on us when I was six, and I never saw him again until I turned twelve, after Mom was buried.  She always said he was a loser, even if he was our dad, but it turns out, he was much more than that.  He was also a thief.  Like he was on the day, he stole me and my little sister.  Bobby Pruitt: Wade screwed me.  He took everything.  My career.  My health.  My freedom.  He screwed me and then he put me in jail.  But now I’m out and I’ve got a new reason to find him.  Because Wade made a big mistake, and now someone wants him dead.  And that’s where I come in . . .  The Hearts of Small Children is by Wiley Cash and is due to be published in January 2014.  It powerfully explores the nature of love, and evil.

Wolf the seventh Jack Caffery novel by Mo Hayder is due to be published in February 2014

The Dangerous Game is by Mari Jungstedt and is due to be published in March 2014.  When Jenny, an ordinary schoolgirl on the island of Gotland, is discovered by a modelling agency, her life changes overnight.  Soon she is considered one of their hottest stars and is thrown into a world of VIP parties and glamour.  While Jenny is enjoying her new, exciting life in Stockholm, Agnes, a few years her junior, has been hospitalised due to a serious eating disorder.  She too dreamt of living in the limelight, but is now fading away.  Watching at Agnes' bedside is her worried father.  Since Agnes' mother and brother were tragically killed in a car accident a few years previously, his daughter is all he has.  But tragedy also lies in wait for successful Jenny.  During a lavish fashion photo shoot on Gotland's barren, isolated peninsula, Furillen, her new boyfriend, the fashion photographer Markus, falls victim to a murder attempt.  He is found in an isolated spot, covered in blood and brutally assaulted - but alive.  Will he be able to tell police inspector Anders Knutas anything that will lead the police to the perpetrator before it's too late?  For a long time, Jenny and Agnes remain unaware that their lives are entwined.  But someone is keeping an eye on them.  Someone with plans to intervene in their lives and deliver their own kind of justice.

He Who Kills The Dragon is by Leif G W Persson and is due to be published in October 2013.  In this second instalment of Persson's trilogy of police procedurals featuring the "small, fat and primitive" Evert Backstrom, the grand master's most appallingly repulsive (and funniest) character is finally given his fifteen minutes of fame by way of his patented combination of laziness, luck, and an unbelievable sense of timing.  A seemingly ordinary murder puzzles Backstrom, who is struggling with strict orders from his doctor to lead a healthier life.  His gut feeling proves him right: within days, his team has another murder linked to the first on their hands, and reports of alleged ties to a Securicor heist gone out of control, killing two.  The nation needs a hero, and the newly appointed head of the Vasterort police force Anna Holt needs somebody to kill the dragon for her.  Who better to heed to the task than Evert Backstrom: self-sufficient, ostentatious, devoid of moral, Hawaii shirt-clad, and, latterly, armed?

A Beginners Guide to Gunslinging by Belinda Bauer is due to be published in March 2014.
'Call your mother.’  In the Devonshire countryside, a killer is preying on young women - luring them into his car, taking them to a place they can never be  found, and then ordering them to call home.  At first, he doesn't kill.  His motive for terrifying the women seems  unclear.  But every killer has to start somewhere, and soon enough he will get a taste for something even more sinister.  Meanwhile 10-year-old Ruby Trick, living with her parents in a damp, crumbling house by the sea, is about to come of age in the most terrifying way possible .  .

"The story I now commence is rich in vicissitudes, grim with warfare, torn by civil strife, a tale of horror even during times of peace".  (Tacitus, "The Histories" AD 68).  The Emperor Nero's erratic and bloody reign is in its death throes when Gaius Valerius Verrens is dispatched to Rome on a mission that will bring it to a close.  With Nero dead, the city holds its breath and awaits the arrival his successor, Servius Sulpicius Galba, governor of Hispania.  The Empire prays for peace, but it prays in vain.  Galba promises stability and prosperity, but his rule begins with a massacre and ends only months later in chaos and carnage.  This will become known as the Year of the Four Emperors, a time of civil war, which will tear Rome apart and test Valerius' skills and loyalties to their very limit.  Fortunate to survive Galba's fall, Valerius is sent on a mission by Rome's new Emperor, Otho, to his old friend Vitellius, commander of the armies of the north.  Vitellius' legions are on the march, and only Valerius can persuade him to halt them before the inevitable confrontation.  In an epic adventure that will take him the length and breadth of a divided land, the one-armed Roman fights to stay alive and stave off a bloodbath as he is stalked by the most implacable enemy he has ever faced.  The Sword of Rome is by Douglas Jackson and is due to be published in August 2013.

The Day before You Came is by Paula Daly and is due to be published in April 2014.
Natty and Sean Wainwright are happily married.  Rock solid in fact.  So when Natty’s oldest friend, Eve Dalladay, appears – just as their daughter’s appendix explodes on a school trip in France –  Natty has no qualms about leaving Eve helping Sean out at home.  Two weeks later and Natty finds Eve has slotted into family life too well.  Natty’s husband has fallen in love with Eve.  He’s sorry, he tells her, but their marriage is over.  With no option but to put a brave face on things for the sake of the children, Natty embarks on building a new life for herself.  And then she receives the note.  Eve has done this before, more than once, and with fatal consequences...

Never Go Back is by Lee Child and is due to be published in August 2013.  After an epic and interrupted journey all the way from the snows of South Dakota, Jack Reacher has finally made it to Virginia.  His destination: a sturdy stone building a short bus ride from Washington D.C., the headquarters of his old unit, the 110th MP.  It was the closest thing to a home he ever had.  Why?  He wants to meet the new commanding officer, Major Susan Turner.  He liked her voice on the phone.  However, the officer sitting behind Reacher's old desk is not a woman.  Why is Susan Turner not there?  What Reacher doesn't expect is what comes next.  He himself is in big trouble, accused of a sixteen-year-old homicide.  And he certainly doesn't expect to hear these words: 'You're back in the army, Major.  And your ass is mine.’  Will he be sorry he went back?  Or - will someone else?

There are no other women on earth like Angela Lassey.  That’s not her real name, of course.  In her purse, there are six different drivers’ licenses and twelve different passports, each with a different name and photograph.  Over the course of twenty years, she's pulled robberies on five continents and stolen things more valuable than many people could even imagine.  She speaks four languages with the clarity and confidence of a native speaker and racks up stratospheric shopping bills wherever she goes.  She's been a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead.  She's been dark-skinned and light, blue-eyed and brown, young and old.  She's gained weight and lost it again, she's worn platform shoes and slouched to conceal her height, and she's smoked like a chimney and bleached her teeth.  She’s never the same woman from one week to the next.  She doesn’t call any place home.  There's no real term for what Angela Lassey does for a living.  She is a bank robber, sure, and a crook and a thief and a heister, but Angela's particular talent has no proper, accepted name.  In Sweden, someone had called her a skyggemannen.  In the Netherlands, they'd called her a spook.  In South America, she was a desaparecido.  In America, she was simply a ghostman.  She is the master of the disappearing act.  She can make anything or anyone disappear, for the right price.  She has worked with some of the best crooks in the world, the best box men and jug markers and hacks, but she's never met anyone better at disappearing then she was.  Angela Lassey is like human mist.  So she’s the perfect person to call when you need to hide.  Like Sabo Park does after unexpectedly stumbling across treasure during a sapphire heist on the China Sea.  What he has is so valuable that those who know of its existence will never stop their search.  He has to vanish, like a ghost.  Because now he has it, he is the richest criminal in the world.  Vanishing Games is by Roger Hobbs and is due to be published in May 2014.

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