Ready for a thrilling ride? This month’s crime and thriller fiction is the perfect escape into suspense, mystery, and edge-of-your-seat action! Whether you’re a fan of gripping whodunits, pulse-pounding detective stories, or psychological twists that keep you guessing, there’s no shortage of page-turners to keep you hooked. From heart-racing plots to unforgettable characters, this genre is all about excitement, surprises, and the thrill of the chase. So grab your favourite read and dive into the world where every twist could be your next obsession. Trust me, you won’t want to put it down!
The Ghosts of Paris by Tara Moss
VERVE Books | 9780857308733 | PB | £10.99 | 21st November 2024
In post-war London and Paris, the search for a missing husband puts Billie Walker on a collision course with an underground network of Nazi criminals.
It’s 1947. The world continues to grapple with the fallout of WWII, and former war reporter Billie Walker is finding her feet as an investigator. When a wealthy client hires Billie and her assistant Sam to track down her missing husband, the trail leads Billie back to London and Paris, where painful memories of her own husband’s disappearance also lurk. As Billie’s search for her client’s husband takes her from the upper echelons of Paris’ Ritz hotel to the dank basements of the infamous Paris morgue, she’ll need to keep her gun at the ready, because something even more terrible than a few old memories might be following her around the City of Light…
The Stranger in my House by Judith Barrow
Honno Welsh Women’s Press | 9781916821224 | PB | £9.99 | 14th November 2024
A gripping ‘cuckoo in the nest’ domestic thriller.
After the death of their mum, twins Chloe and Charlie are shocked when their dad introduces Lynne as their ‘new mummy’. Lynne, a district nurse, is trusted in the community, but the twins can see her kind smile doesn’t meet her eyes. In the months that follow they suffer the torment Lynne brings to their house as she stops at nothing in her need to be in control. Betrayed, separated and alone, the twins struggle to build new lives as adults, but will they find happiness or repeat past mistakes? Will they discover Lynne’s secret plans for their father? Will they find each other in time? The Stranger in My House is a gripping ‘cuckoo in the nest’ domestic thriller, exploring how coercive control can tear a family apart. Set in Yorkshire and Cardiff, from the 60s to the winter of discontent, The Stranger in My House dramatises both the cruelty and the love families hide behind closed doors.
Of Beasts and Fowls by Pilar Adón
Translated by Kate Wittemore
Open Letter | 9781960385178 | PB | £15.99 | 14th November 2024
A psychological suspense that is impossible to put down.
Summer ends, the season changes, and Coro, an artist frightened off by what her own paintings may represent, gets in her car and drives for hours in the middle of the night until she chances upon Betania, an isolated house existing in a world of its own. It’s an unfamiliar place inhabited exclusively by women who, strangely, all seem to know her. Like adherents of an ancient cult, the women of Betania all dress the same, carry out strange rites and celebrations, and live alongside goats and innumerable dogs against a landscape dominated by an immense, imposing mountain that seems to block out the sunlight. Theirs is a hierarchical, closed, and restless universe where — as the other women tell her and despite her attempts to escape the area — Coro may finally discover what it means to be part of something. A ‘Hotel California’ of the human heart, Pilar Adón’s Of Beasts and Fowls is a novel about the things that we do without knowing why, but that have an explanation that perhaps we will some day come to understand.
Daughter of Ashes by Ilaria Tuti
Translated by Ekin Oklap
Soho Press | 9781641296199 | PB | £9.99 | 19th November 2024
A poignant and irresistible story about the relentless pull of the past on the present against the backdrop of an atmospheric setting of dense woods and sheer cliffsides.
Superintendent Teresa Battaglia, a trail-blazing criminal detective on the Italian police force, is on sick leave, recovering from her recent brush with death in pursuit of a killer. But none of her colleagues, not even her partner, know that her Alzheimer’s is getting worse, and that Teresa is unsure she will ever return to work. Teresa’s plans for retirement are shelved, however, when she is urgently summoned to meet with menacing serial killer Giacomo Mainardi. Refusing to speak with anyone but Teresa, whose investigative work twenty-seven years prior landed him in maximum security prison, Mainardi has disconcerting news: somebody is after him, and only Teresa holds the key to keeping everyone, including herself, safe. To solve the case, Teresa must come face to face with a history she thought she’d buried, back to when Giacomo first began to kill, and Teresa — newly pregnant and married to an abusive man — did everything she could to catch him.
We Three Queens by Rhys Bowen
Berkley – US | 9780593641361 | HB | £25 | 19th November 2024
The eighteenth installment of this NYT bestselling series, packed with tonnes of sleuth action to delight!
It’s late 1936, and King Edward is in turmoil, having fallen in love with the scandalously divorced and even more scandalously American Wallis Simpson. He wants to marry her but knows that doing so will jeopardize his crown. Edward confides in his dear friend Darcy, Georgie’s husband, and the couple agree to hide Wallis in their home while Edward figures out what to do. But unbeknownst to Georgie and Darcy, Sir Hubert, the owner of the estate, has given a film crew permission to shoot a motion picture about Henry the Eighth and Anne Boleyn on the grounds. Trying to keep Mrs. Simpson hidden while raising a newborn baby seems like it couldn’t be any more stressful for the Rannochs, until one of the stars of the film is found murdered on set. Georgie must solve the murder for king and country before scandal threatens to envelop them all.
Silent are the Dead by D.M. Rowell
Crooked Lane Books | 9781639104994 | HB | £30.99 | 19th November 2024
A Kiowa woman faces new threats to her tribe and identity while struggling to keep her Silicon Valley business afloat.
While back on tribal land, Mud Sawpole uncovers an illegal fracking operation underway that threatens the Kiowas’ ancestral homeland. But there’s an even greater threat: a local businessman involved in artifact thefts is murdered, and a respected tribe elder faces accusation of the crime. After being roped in by her cousin, Denny, they begin to investigate the death while also pursuing evidence to permanently stop frackers from destroying Kiowa land, water, and livelihoods. When answers evade her, Mud heeds her grandfather’s and great-aunt’s words of wisdom and embraces Kiowa tribal customs to find the answers that she seeks. But her ceremonial sweat leads to a vision with answers wrapped in more questions. Mud and Denny race against the clock to uncover the real killer and must face the knowledge that there may be a traitor — and a murderer — in their midst. It’s already too late for one victim — and Mud may be next.
