Nine Lessons: Some Wounds Never Heal

Author: Nicola Upson Publisher: Faber & Faber Copyright Year: 2017 Synopsis Josephine Tey is in Cambridge, a town gripped by fear and suspicion as a serial rapist stalks the streets, and in the shadow of King’s College Chapel, Detective Chief Inspector Archie Penrose faces some of the most horrific and audacious murders of his career. …

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We Go Around In the Night and Are Consumed by Fire

Author: Jules Grant Publisher: Spinifex Press, Australia Copyright Year: 2017 Synopsis This stunning literary debut, voiced by a lesbian gangster Donna and her streetwise daughter Aurora, is steeped in the gang and gun culture of Manchester’s criminal underworld. It is both an unforgettable love story and an unputdownable revenge thriller. Donna and Carla run the …

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She Be Damned

Author:  M.J. Tjia Publisher:  Pantera Press Copyright Year:  2017   Synopsis London courtesan or professional sleuth? London, 1863: Women in Waterloo are turning up dead, their sexual organs mutilated and removed. When another girl goes missing, fears grow that the killer may have claimed their latest victim. The police are at a loss and so it …

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The Barrier

Author: Shankari Chandran Publisher: Macmillan Copyright Year: 2017 Synopsis Twenty years ago an Ebola epidemic brought the world to the edge of oblivion. The West won the war, the East was isolated behind a wall, and a vaccine against Ebola was developed. Peace prevailed. Now Agent Noah Williams is being sent over the barrier to …

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The Exit

by Helen Fitzgerald Publisher: Faber and Faber Copyright Year: 2015 Synopsis Some people love goodbyes. 23-year-old Catherine is mainly interested in Facebook and flirting, but she reluctantly takes a job at a local care home after her mother puts her foot down – and soon discovers that her new workplace contains many secrets. One of …

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Need to Know

Author: Karen Cleveland Publisher: Bantam Press Copyright Year: 2018 Synopsis When CIA analyst Vivivan Miller pursues a Russian sleeper cell on American soil, she discover a secret that tests her loyalty to both the agency and to her family. What do you do when you discover your husband could be a sleeper agent? Reviewer: Kate …

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Poison Ivy

by Stella Kinsella Publisher:  Lulu Publishing Copyright Year: 2017 Reviewer: Cheryl Fairclough Poison Ivy begins with a blizzard of cutting humour in a scene set at a baby shower (yummy mummies beware) as Stella Kinsella introduces us to her main character and narrator, Ivy Mason.  Ivy is fortyish, single and childless, with no responsibilities and …

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See What I Have Done

by Sarah Schmidt Publisher: Hachette Australia Copyright Year: 2017   Synopsis Lizzie Borden took an axe. Or did she? On 4 August 1892 Andrew and Abby Borden were murdered in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts. During the inquest into the deaths, Lizzie Borden was arrested and charged with the murder of her father and …

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The Portrait of Molly Dean

by Katherine Kovacic Publisher: Echo Copyright Year: 2018 Synopsis An unsolved murder comes to light after almost seventy years… In 1999, art dealer Alex Clayton stumbles across a lost portrait of Molly Dean, an artist’s muse brutally slain in Melbourne in 1930. Alex buys the painting and sets out to uncover more details, but finds …

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The Rùin (Cormac Reilly #1)

by Dervla McTiernan Harper Collins Australia Published 2018 Synopsis DS Reilly returns to small-town Galway after stepping down from his high-ranking Dublin job to support his partner’s career. When a body surfaces in the icy River Corrib, he is plunged back into a cold case that has haunted him for twenty years – the death …

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