Books Publishing Today 4th July 2024

 

I was going to do a spotlight post on one of the fabulous new books being released today. However, there were a few that I just could not choose between so I decided to give you a little taste of all of them.

I'm sure you will agree that they all look awesome.

Does anything here catch your eye?

The Missing Family by Tim Weaver

 One family . . .

On a beautiful summer's day, at a remote lake in the middle of Dartmoor, three members of the Fowler family take a dinghy out onto the water, leaving mother Sarah at the shore.

Less than sixty seconds later, she checks to see where they are.

The boat is drifting in the middle of the lake. It's empty.

Sarah's family have completely vanished.

One killer . . .

At the Skyline Casino in London, the security team have just made a headline-grabbing arrest: they've spotted and detained a man suspected of murdering a high roller.

After locking him in one of their holding cells, the team station themselves outside and wait for the police. But when the cops arrive, they find something impossible.

The killer is no longer inside the cell.

Two detectives . . .

David Raker is an expert at solving missing persons puzzles – but these mysteries are unlike anything he's ever seen.

As he digs into the Fowler's, his long-time ally – ex-detective, Colm Healy – tries to get to the bottom of what happened at the casino.

But the men are in danger. Because, buried in the shadows of both cases, is a deadly secret that was never meant to come out . . .

Darkness Falls in Jakarta by Louise Soraya Black

The death of Claire's parents triggers troubled memories of her past life in Jakarta, a time that Claire has been running away from her whole life. Haunted by guilt and the terrible misunderstandings and accusations that forced her to leave the city as a teenager, she decides to travel back in the hope of finding answers and perhaps forgiveness. Is confronting her past the key to her deliverance? Beautifully written, with sumptuous and enchanting descriptions of Indonesia, this is a novel that completely transports you to a specific time and place and perfectly portrays that shared sense of guilt in all of us about mistakes or inactions of the past.

Old Girls on Deck by Maddie Please

It's never too late to sail a new course... When retired Jill Parker wins an all-expenses paid mediterranean cruise for two she is thrilled! At 63 life in retirement has got a little bit bland for Jill and this might be just the holiday she and husband Eddy need to get the sparks back in their marriage. But when Eddy admits he would much prefer to build his patio and look through the latest DIY magazine, Jill is left with only one other option - her sister Diana. Diana has become rather reclusive since her husband, Caspar died, but perhaps this is the push she needs to bring some excitement back into her life, too? Could this trip be just what both sisters need to reconnect and chart a new path for their futures? Excited to be exploring new horizons and catching up, the sisters soon discover that not everything is smooth sailing on board. And as they enjoy cocktails together at sundown, they discover that they are both actually a little all at sea...

No Country for Love by Yaroslav Trofimov

Seventeen-year-old Debora Rosenbaum, ambitious and in love with literature, arrives in the capital of the new Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Kharkiv, to make her own fate as a modern woman. The stale and forbidding ways of the past are out; 1930 is a new dawn, the Soviet era, where skyscrapers go up overnight. Debora finds work and meets a dashing young officer named Samuel who is training to become a fighter pilot. They fall in love, and begin to mix with Ukraine's new cultural elite.

But Debora's prospects - and Ukraine's - soon dim. State-induced famine rolls through the over-harvested countryside, and any deviation from Moscow-dictated ideology is punished by disappearance. When Samuel is sentenced to ten years' hard labour, Deborah is left on her own with a baby. And this is only the beginning. As advancing Nazi armies move through Ukraine during World War II, its yellow fields of wheat run red with blood. Forced to renounce the man she loves, her identity and even her name, Debora also learns to endure, manipulate and resist.

No Country for Love follows the hard choices Debora makes as Ukraine, caught between two totalitarian ideologies, turns into the deadliest place in the world - while she tries to protect those she loves most.

All His Spies: The Secret World of Robert Cecil by Stephen Alford

Robert Cecil, statesman and spymaster, lived through an astonishingly threatening period in English history. Queen Elizabeth had no clear successor and enemies both external and internal threatened to destroy England as a Protestant state, most spectacularly with the Spanish Armada and the Gunpowder Plot.

Cecil stood at the heart of the Tudor and then Stuart state, a vital figure in managing the succession from Elizabeth I to James I & VI, warding off military and religious threats and steering the decisions of two very different but equally wilful and hard-to-manage monarchs. The promising son of Queen Elizabeth’s chief minister Lord Burghley, for Cecil there was no choice but politics, and he became supremely skilled in the arts of power, making many rivals and enemies.

All His Spies is a wonderfully engaging and original work of history. Many readers are familiar with the great events of this tumultuous time, but All His Spies shows how easily these dramas could have turned out very differently. Cecil’s sureness of purpose, his espionage network and good luck all conspired to keep England uninvaded and to create a new ‘British’ monarchy which has endured to the present day.

Dark Flood by Karon Alderman

Everyone knows the history of the famous Heaton Main coal mine accident - but that's never interested Archie. Why would he bother about the past when he's got more than enough to worry about right now? Like his Granda's health taking a turn for the worse. And the shifty Robson twins from across the street deciding they have it in for him.

With the help of his best-friends Adila and Kyle, Archie goes on a mission to raise money for his Granda's recovery while also avoiding the Robsons at all costs. But when timelines collide during an unexpected storm, Archie is pulled more than two-hundred years into the past, and into an experience that will change his life forever. . .

If he can make it back.

Under a Lightning Sky by Pam Lecky

London is under attack. But within the rubble, a greater danger lurks…

The Luftwaffe has been bombing London continuously since September 1940.

During a bombing raid, Madeline Fairfax is caught in her kitchen whilst cooking for her husband and children. She becomes trapped in the rear of her home, but regains consciousness just in time to see a familiar face, offering hope of rescue. But instead, Madeline is tragically strangled to death.

As a dangerous murderer uses the Blitz to cover their crime, local detective Jamie Barton enlists the help of Madeline’s sister and volunteer firefighter, Penny Miller to help. Now, caught in a web of uncertainty and mistrust, a grieving Penny must find the truth and do whatever it takes to protect those she loves most.

Together, will they unravel this case before it's too late…?

Rosarita by Anita Desai

A young student sits on a bench in a park in San Miguel, Mexico. Bonita is away from her home in India to learn Spanish. She is alone, somewhere she has no connection to. It is bliss.

And then a woman approaches her. The woman claims to recognize Bonita because she is the spitting image of her mother, who made the same journey from India to Mexico as a young artist. No, says Bonita, my mother didn’t paint. She never travelled to Mexico. But this strange woman insists, and so Bonita follows her. Into a story where Bonita and her mother will move apart and come together, and where the past threatens to flood the present, or re-write it.

Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo

Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides to throw her own living wake, her sisters are concerned. What has she foreseen?

Planning the celebration brings further complications for the Marte family, because Flor isn't the only person with secrets: her sisters are hiding things, too. And the next generation, cousins Ona and Yadi, face tumult of their own.

Family Lore traces the intertwining stories of five women: sisters and cousins, mothers and daughters, aunts and nieces, to ask the ultimate question - what does it take to live a good life, for yourself and those you love?