MAY 2016 - ADDITIONS TO THE LIBRARY...SOME OF AT LEAST

A lot more in than out with only 4 books read and vanquished from the library, but hey I love books so I'm past worrying.

Some of the additions to the mountain in May.....

Last year's big thing, I reckon my wife might enjoy it, so I'll read it after her. Charity shop buy. (2015)
'Really great suspense novel. Kept me up most of the night. The alcoholic narrator is dead perfect' STEPHEN KING

Rachel catches the same commuter train every morning. She knows it will wait at the same signal each time, overlooking a row of back gardens. She’s even started to feel like she knows the people who live in one of the houses. ‘Jess and Jason’, she calls them. Their life – as she sees it – is perfect. If only Rachel could be that happy.

And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough.

Now everything’s changed. Now Rachel has a chance to become a part of the lives she’s only watched from afar.

Now they’ll see; she’s much more than just the girl on the train…

Not yet tried Peter May, though I have his Lewis Trilogy in the tubs. Another charity shop bargain. (2015)

"Five of us had run away that fateful night just over a month before. Only three of us would be going home. And nothing, nothing would ever be the same again." 

Glasgow, 1965. Headstrong teenager Jack Mackay cannot allow for even the possibility of a life of predictability and routine. The 17-year-old has just one destination on his mind - London - and successfully convinces his four friends and fellow bandmates to join him in abandoning their homes to pursue a goal of musical stardom. 

Glasgow, 2015. Jack Mackay dares not look back on a life of failure and mediocrity. The heavy-hearted 67-year-old is still haunted by what might have been. His recollections of the terrible events that befell him and his friends some 50 years earlier, and how he did not act when it mattered most, are memories he has tried to escape his entire adult life. 

London, 2015. A man lies dead in a one-room flat. His killer looks on, remorseless. What started with five teenagers following a dream five decades before has been transformed over the intervening decades into a waking nightmare that might just consume them all. 

Runaway is a tense crime thriller spanning a half century of friendships solidified and severed, dreams shared and shattered, passions ignited and extinguished, all set against the backdrop of two unique cities at two unique and transformational periods of recent history.

Ditto above. Not mystery or crime. The Black experience in America from someone with first hand experience of less enlightened times. (1961)

"Wright's unrelenting bleak landscape was not merely that of the Deep South, or of Chicago, but that of the world, of the human heart," said James Baldwin, and here, in these powerful stories, Richard Wright takes readers into this landscape one again. Eight Men presents eight stories of black men living at violent odds with the white world around them. As they do in his classic novels, the themes here reflect Wright's views on racism and his fascination with what he called "the struggle of the individual in America."

Accessed  via Edelweiss review site courtesy of the publisher. Out later in 2016.

Patrick Hoffman burst onto the crime fiction scene with The White Van, a bank heist thriller set in the back streets of San Francisco and a finalist for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award. Now he returns with his second novel, Every Man a Menace, the inside story of a ruthless ecstasy-smuggling ring.

San Francisco is about to receive the biggest delivery of MDMA to hit the West Coast in years. Raymond Gaspar, just out of prison, is sent to the city to check in on the increasingly erratic dealer expected to take care of distribution. In Miami, the man responsible for getting the drugs across the Pacific has just met the girl of his dreams - a woman who can't seem to keep her story straight. And thousands of miles away in Bangkok, someone farther up the supply chain is about to make a phone call that will put all their lives at risk. Stretching from the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia to the Golden Gate of San Francisco, Every Man a Menace offers an unflinching account of the making, moving, and selling of the drug known as Molly - pure happiness sold by the brick, brought to market by bloodshed and betrayal.

Courtesy out Pushkin Vertigo. Out later in June, originally in France 1961.

A brilliantly crafted Parisian suspense story from one of the masters of French noir

She seems alone and defenceless when he speaks to her in the busy brasserie, all decked out for Christmas Eve. When she invites him back to her apartment, he can't believe his luck. Later, when her husband's body lies dead at the foot of the Christmas tree he realises his nightmare is only beginning... Take care when unwrapping your presents, they can sometimes contain nasty surprises.

Net Galley this one, courtesy of ECW Press. Third in Canadian crime series. I ought to read the second, I suppose! Out later in 2016.

In the weeks before hosting the 1976 Summer Olympics, the Montreal police are tightening security to prevent another catastrophe like the '72 games in Munich. But it isn't tight enough to stop nearly three million dollars being stolen in a bold daytime Brink's truck robbery. As the high-profile heist continues to baffle the police, Constable Eddie Dougherty gets a chance to prove his worth as a detective when he's assigned to assist the suburban Longueuil force in investigating the deaths of two teenagers returning from a rock concert across the Jacques Cartier Bridge. Were they mugged and thrown from the bridge? Or was it a murder-suicide?

With tensions running high in the city and his future career at stake, Dougherty faces the limits of the force and of his own policing, and has to decide when to settle and when justice is the only thing that should be obeyed.

From publisher Seventh Street Books, due later this year. 

Autumn, 1565: When an actor's daughter is murdered on the banks of Kyoto's Kamo River, master ninja Hiro Hattori and Portuguese Jesuit Father Mateo are the victim's only hope for justice. 

As political tensions rise in the wake of the shogun's recent death, and rival warlords threaten war, the Kyoto police forbid an investigation of the killing, to keep the peace--but Hiro has a personal connection to the girl, and must avenge her. The secret investigation leads Hiro and Father Mateo deep into the exclusive world of Kyoto's theater guilds, where they quickly learn that nothing, and no one, is as it seems. With only a mysterious golden coin to guide them, the investigators uncover a forbidden love affair, a missing mask, and a dangerous link to corruption within the Kyoto police department that leaves Hiro and Father Mateo running for their lives.

New from 280 Steps later this year. A prequel to Rumrunners, something I hope to read soon! Accessed via Edelweiss review site.

The McGraws return in this prequel to Rumrunners.

It's 1971, and outlaw driver Calvin McGraw is grooming his 19-year-old son Webb to uphold the family name. Drugs, money, people - the McGraws drive anything and everything.

When a delivery goes wrong, Calvin steps knee deep in a turf war between his employer, the Stanleys, and a rival Midwestern crime syndicate, but his week gets a whole lot worse when Webb-on his first solo job-loses the cargo.

Another one from Seventh Street Books. Fourth in the Ellie Stone series. Due out soon!

In the waning days of a lazy August holiday, Ellie Stone is enjoying a bright Adirondack-lake morning. Nearby, two men plummet to their deaths on the rocks below, just a few feet short of the water of a dangerous diving pool. A tragic accident, it seems. But the state police quickly establish that the two victims--one, a stranger to the lake and, the other, a teenaged boy from a nearby music camp--surely didn't know each other. That anomaly is strange enough, but what really perplexes Ellie is the out-of-place station wagon parked twenty yards from the edge of the cliff.

Wading into a slippery morass of fellow travelers, free-love intellectuals, rabid John Birchers, and charismatic evangelicals, Ellie must navigate old grudges and Cold War passions, lost ideals and betrayed loves. She sticks her nose where it's unwanted, rattling nerves and putting herself in jeopardy. But this time, it's her heart that's at risk.

Courtesy of Blog friend Moira at Clothes in Books. Recently published. Ewan already has his place in the tubs, I've ignored him to date.

 “Action-packed, twist-laden and full of heart. Long Time Lost builds on Chris Ewan's reputation as one of the most exciting and original crime writers around.' EVA DOLAN

The must read new thriller from the bestselling author of Safe House

Nick Miller and his team provide a unique and highly illegal service, relocating at-risk individuals across Europe with new identities and new lives. Nick excels at what he does for a reason: he's spent years living in the shadows under an assumed name.

But when Nick steps in to prevent the attempted murder of witness-in-hiding Kate Sutherland on the Isle of Man, he triggers a chain of events with devastating consequences for everyone he protects - because Nick and Kate share a common enemy in Connor Lane, a man who will stop at nothing to get what he wants, even if it means tearing Nick's entire network apart.

Courtesy of the author who got in touch. I saw it locally, read the prologue, enjoyed it, so said  - "Yeah Man!" (2016)

Three years and eleven months. That's how long Lizzie Wells has been banged up inside Holloway prison, serving time for a crime she didn’t commit.

Six months. That's how long it’s taken Lizzie to fall in love with her fellow inmate, Scar.

Now they are both finally free and, together, they are about to embark on a vengeful search to find those who framed Lizzie . . . and to make them pay.

THE BUSINESS MAN. THE COPPER. THE MADAM.

Just for a change, I thought I'd buy a book for myself! (2016) 

A madcap new novel from the one-of-a-kind author of The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden

IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO START AGAIN. AND AGAIN.

It’s always awkward when five thousand kronor goes missing. When it happens at a certain grotty hotel in south Stockholm, it’s particularly awkward because the money belongs to the hitman currently staying in room seven. Per Persson, the hotel receptionist, just wants to mind his own business, and preferably not get murdered. Johanna Kjellander, temporarily resident in room eight, is a priest without a vocation, and, as of last week, without a parish. But right now she has two things at her disposal: an envelope containing five thousand kronor, and an excellent idea . . .

Featuring one violent killer, two shrewd business brains and many crates of Moldovan red wine, Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All is an outrageously zany story with as many laughs as Jonasson’s multimillion-copy bestseller The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared.