Fiction - English

Have you ever wanted to bury a secret so deeply that no one will find out about it? With private security firms supplying bodyguards in every theatre of war, who will notice the emergence of a sexual psychopath from the ranks of the mercenaries? Amidst the turmoil of Sierra Leone’s vicious civil war, the brutal murder of five women is of little consequence and no one questions the ‘confessions’ that were beaten out of three child soldiers. Except for Reuters correspondent Connie Burns. After witnessing a savage attack on a prostitute, Connie believes a foreigner’s responsible. She has seen him before, and she suspects he uses the chaos of war to act out sadistic fantasies against women.

When Miranda Cotton finds her boyfriend Brendan reading her diary, she breaks off the relationship. When her sister phones her to tell her about her new boyfriend – Brendan – what began as an embarrassment becomes an infestation, and then even more terrifying than her worst nightmare.

The horror of losing a child is somehow made worse when the case goes unsolved for nearly a decade, reports Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel columnist Jacquelyn Mitchard in this searing first novel. In it, 3-year-old Ben Cappadora is kidnapped from a hotel lobby where his mother is checking into her 15th high school reunion. His disappearance tears the family apart and invokes separate experiences of anguish, denial, and self-blame. Marital problems and delinquency in Ben’s older brother (in charge of him the day of his kidnapping) ensue. Mitchard depicts the family’s friction and torment–along with many gritty realities of family life–with the candor of a journalist and compassion of someone who has seemingly been there. International publishing and movie rights sold fast on this one: It’s a blockbuster.

Paralyzed from the waist down during a shoot-out, Caitlin Brook has moved back to her childhood village overlooking the Fasach Wood. Visited by Martin Thornton, a reporter who witnessed the shooting and ran to protect her, Caitlin initially believes that he is interested only in her “story,” but soon a romance develops. Then Caitlin’s wheelchair is pushed into the river by a strange beast and she nearly drowns. Rescued by Sheila Garvie, a charismatic local healer, Caitlin soon sees that more than her spirits are being restored–so are her legs.

RICH – Rich covers seven explosive, enthralling decades of power and privilege, of passion and pleasure, of pain amidst plenty. In its pages, a masterly bestselling storyteller has created a brilliant, character-filled and compelling believable portrait of what it means to be rich.
SOLITAIRE – Even solitaire as precious as the Natalia Star brings with it a history of greed, tragedy and lust. But the dazzling, flawless stone which Barney Blitz left to the son he never knew represented more that a violet past – it was the symbol of one man’s uncontrollable passion for the woman he loved but could never possess.

A magnificent gyrfalcon, soaring in the air over rocky cliffs, is winged by a hunter and falls to earth wounded. Rescued and taken to a nearby farmhouse, the bird will irrevocably change the lives of her savior, Michael Somers, and the woman and child Somers comes to love. Somers has returned after many years to his hometown of Little River Bend to unlock the secrets from his own past that almost drove him to destroy his family in one night of irrational violence. Released from treatment but shunned by his neighbors, Somers is determined to heal the bird whom he has named Cully, and release her to freedom. Watching from afar as Somers coaxes the bird to fly is a deeply troubled little boy, Jamie Baker. Jamie has lost the power of speech after witnessing his father’s death in a hunting accident, and his mother, Susan, yearns to free her child from his self-made prison.

This is a rollercoaster ride through Texas and Kentucky on the trail of long-buried treasure and desperate hard men.

A minor road accident landed county prosecutor Katie DeMaio in Westlake Hospital. That night, from her window, she thought she saw a man load a woman’s body into the trunk of a car…or was it just a sleeping pill-induced nightmare? At work the next day, Katie began investigating a suicide that looked more like murder. Initial evidence pointed elsewhere, but medical examiner Richard Carroll saw a trail leading to Dr. Edgar Highley. He suspected that the famous doctor’s work “curing” infertile women was more than controversial–that it was deceitful, depraived, and often deadly. But before Richard could tell Katie his fears, she left the office for the weekend and an appointment for routine surgery…in Dr. Highley’s operating room.

After a tragic accident involving his mother, and the disappearance of his father, young Davie flees his hometown of Blackburn, unsure of what the future holds. Devastated, he must escape the haunting memories of the worst night in his young life. With little more than the shirt on his back and a fierce determination to find his father, he sets off on a lonely, friendless road. Back home, those Davie has left behind wait anxiously; Kathleen, his childhood friend who has held a secret close to her heart these past few years, and Joseph, his grandfather whose guilt at the events that dreadful night burns right to his soul. Will they ever see Davie again?

POMPEII by Robert Harris – Ancient Rome is brought vividly to life in the exciting new novel set in AD 79. When the great Augusta aqueduct fails, engineer Marcus Attilius is under pressure to safeguard the water supply to Pompeii and the rest of the Bay of Naples.
SHUTTER ISLAND by Dennis Lehane – In 1954, two US Marshals take a ferry to Shutter Island’s high-security mental hospital, charged with discovering the fate of a missing patient.
THE RUNNER by Peter May – When a weightlifter dies in the arms of his mistress, Detective Li Yan of the Beijing police is ordered to cover up the scandal.
THE CRUELLEST MILES by Gay and Laney Salisbury – In the winter of 1925, a diphtheria epidemic broke out in the gold-rush town of Nome, Alaska, just as supplies of antitoxin were running dangerously low.