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Pieces of Me

Natalie Hart

Emma did not go to war looking for love, but Adam is unlike any other.

Under the secret shadow of trauma, Emma decides to leave Iraq and joins Adam to settle in Colorado. But isolation and fear find her, once again, when Adam is re-deployed.

Torn between a deep fear for Adam’s safety and a desire to be back there herself, Emma copes by throwing herself into a new role mentoring an Iraqi refugee family. But when Adam comes home, he brings the conflict back with him.

Emma had considered the possibility that her husband might not come home from war. She had not considered that he might return a stranger.

Shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award

​Prima Magazine Best Books of the Year

The Reading Agency Top Debuts of 2018

'An astounding debut' Nina Pottell, Prima Magazine

The Blackbird Singularity

Matt Wilven

Shortlisted for an Amazon Rising Star Award

Longlisted for the Guardian Not the Booker prize 2016

Selected for WHSmith Fresh Talent 2017

Wilven does a masterful job of keeping his readers as off-balance as his protagonist... an intense and satisfyingly off-beat examination of a man lost in a landscape of unresolved grief and his heroic fight to find his way back home.' -- Melissa DeCarlo, author of The Art of Crash Landing

Vince stops taking his lithium when he finds out about his partner's pregnancy. As withdrawal kicks in, he can barely hold his life together.

Somewhere between making friends with a blackbird in the back garden and hearing his dead son's footsteps in the attic, he finds himself lost and alone, journeying through a world of chaos and darkness, completely unaware of the miracle that lies ahead.

Rain Falls on Everyone

Clár Ní Chonghaile

'As worlds collide, a gripping story of belonging, identity, memory, culpability and forgiveness unfolds, creating a poignant and profound novel for our times.' Deborah Andrews

Theo, a young Rwandan refugee fleeing his country’s genocide, arrives in Dublin, penniless, alone and afraid. Still haunted by a traumatic memory in which his father committed a murderous act of violence, he struggles to find his place in the foreign city.

Plagued by his past, Theo is gradually drawn deeper into the world of Dublin’s feared criminal gangs, plagued by racism, fear and drugs. But a chance encounter in a restaurant with Deirdre offers him a lifeline.

Joined together through survival instincts Theo and Deirdre’s tender friendship is however soon threatened by tragedy. Can they confront their addictions to carve a future out of the catastrophe that engulfs both their lives?

Clar expertly aligns countries and cultures in this spellbinding and tough novel. Drawing on authentic inspiration the tumultuous settings come alive as you are drawn into the multi-faceted lives of Theo and Deirdre.

The Exile and the Mapmaker

Emma Musty

An important novel that is as compassionate as it is eye-opening, The Exile and the Mapmaker is a testament to the triumph of the human spirit.

Theo, an aging Parisian cartographer, is desperately searching for the woman he once loved before Alzheimer’s takes his memories of her.

Elise, his estranged daughter, moves in to take care of him. She still blames him for the tragic loss of her mother and is struggling with this new forced intimacy.

Nebay, an Eritrean refugee, becomes Theo’s carer and friend. Unbeknownst to Elise, Nebay does not have a visa for France and is working illegally in order to support his sister.

Each one is living a life of questions and secrets in a world where Nebay’s very presence in the France of Theo’s maps is steeped in uncertainty.

Burnout

Claire MacLeary

Longlisted for the Hearst Big Book Awards, 2018, Crime Novel of the Year

MAGGIE AND WILMA ARE BACK.

“My husband is trying to kill me.” A new client gets straight to the point, and this line of enquiry is a whole new ball game for Maggie Laird, who is desperately trying to rebuild her late husband’s detective agency and clear his name. Her partner, “Big” Wilma, sees the case as a non-starter, but Maggie is drawn in.

With her client’s life on the line, Maggie must get to the ugly truth that lies behind Aberdeen’s closed doors. But who knows what really goes on between husbands and wives? And will the agency’s reputation – and Maggie and Wilma’s friendship – remain intact?

In the Service of the Shogun

Frederik Cryns

In 1600, English helmsman William Adams washed ashore in Japan, and was interrogated by Tokugawa Ieyasu, Japan’s most powerful warlord and soon-to-be shogun. Far from executing Adams as a pirate, Ieyasu made him one of his most trusted advisers. This biography traces Adams’s rise from humble pilot to a position of immense influence in Japan’s foreign relations. It unravels the subsequent diplomatic manoeuvres of the Western powers in the shogun’s empire, and Adams’s eventual downfall.
This is the first full biography of Adams based on original Dutch, English, Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese sources, and includes much previously unknown information. Frederik Cryns tells the authentic story of Adams’s chequered life in its historical context, taking us on a compelling journey into Adams’s complex inner feelings and cosmopolitan heart.

Little Gold

Allie Rogers

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2018 POLARI PRIZE

'Life affirming and triumphant' Mark A. Radcliffe

'Vivid and touching… this book left me haunted long after I put it down' Umi Sinha

The heat is oppressive and storms are brewing in Brighton in the summer of 1982. Little Gold, a boyish girl on the brink of adolescence, is struggling with the reality of her broken family and a home descending into chaos. Her only refuge is the tree at the end of her garden.

Into her fractured life steps elderly neighbour, Peggy Baxter. The connection between the two is instant, but just when it seems that Little Gold has found solace, outsiders appear who seek to take advantage of her frail family in the worst way possible. In an era when so much is hard to speak aloud, can Little Gold share enough of her life to avert disaster? And can Peggy Baxter, a woman running out of time and with her own secrets to bear, recognise the danger before it’s too late?

Graven Idols

Jessica Dall

Once Palmer Tash and Brier Chastain found out they were the incarnations of Order and Chaos, their lives were turned upside down. Living in a battle-scarred area, they begin to feel that their blessings are more like curses. Reports of cults taking over the countryside begin to filter into their starving city.

But Brier is slowly losing her mind, and Palmer’s abilities are becoming increasingly erratic. The pair must work together to maintain harmony, or their out-of-balance powers could destroy the world.

Decadent Women

Jad Adams

The never-before-told story of the extraordinary women behind a trailblazing British magazine.

During the 1890s, British women for the first time began to leave their family homes to seek work, accommodation, and financial and sexual freedom. Decadent Women is an account of some of these women who wrote for the innovative art and literary journal The Yellow Book. For the first time, and drawing on original research, Jad Adams describes the lives and work of these vibrant and passionate women, from well-connected and fashionable aristocrats to the desperately poor. He narrates the challenges they faced in a literary marketplace, and within a society that overwhelmingly favored men, showing how they were pioneers of a new style, living lives of lurid adventure and romance, as well as experiencing poverty, squalor, disease, and unwanted pregnancy.

The Heights

Kate Birdsall

When Detective Liz Boyle receives an urgent phone call from her lieutenant on her day off, she knows the news won’t be good. She and her partner, Tom Goran, arrive at the new crime scene, which is in a cemetery located on the Cleveland/Cleveland Heights border, and discover that someone has brutally beaten a locally famous defense attorney to death.

As the investigation takes them deeper into the city’s—and the police department’s—seedy underbelly, the case begins to throw the blue wall of silence into question. Liz has a strong desire to do the right thing, but she also must pick her way around the department bureaucracy to avoid being thought a rat, an accusation that could end her career.

Liz’s dance through the gritty city threatens to finish her and her crew, including Tom and Lieutenant Fishner. Once again, Detective Liz Boyle is plunged into a case that will test her personal and professional allegiances.

The Flats

Kate Birdsall

Detective Liz Boyle knows there is no crime more heinous than the murder of a child. When she and her partner, Tom Goran, are called to a new scene in an area of Cleveland known as The Flats, they find that a killer has taken that to new levels.

As the investigation takes them deeper into the city’s seedy underbelly, the case hits frighteningly close to home when someone Liz loves is added to the list of possible suspects. While fighting her personal demons, she must also pick her way around the department bureaucracy to avoid being pulled from the case.

Liz and Tom will need to solve the most mind-bending mystery of their careers, one in which their personal and professional allegiances—and maybe their sanity—will be tested. But Liz vows to bring the killer to justice at any cost.

Aurora’s Winter

K.J. Gillenwater

In the depths of a frigid Alaskan winter lies a tale of greed, rivalry, and the chilling pursuit of truth.

Aurora ‘Rory’ Darling thought she’d left behind the ghosts of her past when she parted ways with her estranged father. But as the winter mining season looms on the desolate Alaskan horizon, her old life comes crashing back when her father launches a rival ice dredging operation with her criminal ex-boyfriend.

A fortune lies buried beneath the treacherous ice – and the clock is ticking. As tempers flare amid the bitter chill, it quickly becomes clear that their battle for the gold is just the tip of the iceberg. Caught up in a fierce struggle and grappling with her growing fear of diving, Rory fights to keep her head above water. But when a shocking death shatters their fragile equilibrium, she’s plunged into a dangerous game to unravel a sinister truth.

And to make matters worse, a mysterious stranger has arrived in town, dead set on tracking her down. As friendships are pushed to their limits and shady figures from her ex-boyfriend's past lurk on the sidelines, Rory must confront the demons that have been haunting her soul and unravel the darkest secrets of Alaska’s frozen underbelly.

The icy depths are waiting to claim their next victim. Will Rory emerge victorious, or will her past mistakes consume her?

Dive into a heart-pounding adventure that expertly weaves together thrilling suspense, intricately woven characters, and a landscape as starkly beautiful as it is perilous. With mysteries as palpable as the shimmering Northern Lights, Aurora’s Winter is a page-turning read that will chill you to the bone and keep you guessing until the very last page.