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Decryption

K.J. Gillenwater

The pods are opening – and their new visitors are all-too-human...

Expert linguist Charlie and her team of NCIS agents are hot on the trail of the mysterious alien pods. But after a new arrival opens to reveal a young child, her investigation is thrown into chaos. Faced with terrifying questions about the true origins of their seemingly extra-terrestrial visitors, Charlie is plunged into a race against time to unscramble a mysterious text before more pods arrive.

But when a budding relationship with her teammate Special Agent Demarco brings shocking new secrets to light, Charlie finds herself torn between her loyalty to her country and her newfound feelings for the handsome yet distant agent.

With a dangerous saboteur lurking behind the scenes, Charlie’s struggle to decipher the pods puts her in the cross-hairs of an unknown enemy. And after a code-red emergency thrusts the team’s true loyalties into the light, Charlie must risk everything to identify the truth and protect humanity...

Inception

K.J. Gillenwater

Aliens have arrived... and this isn’t the first time.

When expert Navy linguist and cryptographer Charlie Cutter is recruited into a shadowy wing of the NCIS, she’s tasked with unravelling a mysterious ancient text that has puzzled researchers for centuries. Charlie isn’t eager to revisit her previous failures... but when she discovers the same strange language in top-secret photographs, she finds herself roped into a job that could make or break her young career.

After a strange pod crashes to earth during a violent storm, Charlie and her small team uncover an incredible truth: aliens have landed on earth – and not for the first time. Catapulted into a thrilling mystery that will carry them from the political swamps of D.C. to the scorching Las Vegas desert, Charlie must race against time to crack the code and save humanity from a possible alien invasion.

Surrounded by a web of secrets and lies, Charlie struggles to track down the origin of the pods – and unmask the hidden motives of their extra-terrestrial visitors. The mystery stretches back centuries... and it leads Charlie to a shocking revelation that will change everything.

When We Were Alive

C.J. Fisher

Shortlisted for the Amazon Rising Star Award

'The wartime mood evokes shades of Michael Chabon's Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay... A complex, well-crafted and absorbing debut that points to a promising future.' --Big Issue

When we first meet Bobby, he is a shy, 12-year-old magician who falls in love with his best friend.

William is consumed with self-hate and drinks to escape the memories of his father's sadness and his mother's death.

Myles is writing letters to a mother he has never met.

Three different people from three different times each explore the dark side of relationships, search for beauty in sadness and try to bear the burden of guilt from living in a world we are powerless to fix.

Wildest of All

P.K. Lynch

'Wildest of All is a sex-and-death struggle spanning generations, portraying three women in search of an authentic life. It's a sharp and compelling tale that doesn't flinch from the big questions.' Thomas Legendre

The Donnelly family are a tight-knit bunch, but when one of their own dies suddenly, the mother, the daughter-in-law, and the daughter, despite being united in grief, are each sent hurtling in wildly different directions.

From the churches of Glasgow to the nightclubs of London, can they find their way back to each other before it's too late? And in the wake of a parent’s death, who exactly is responsible for looking after whom?

Lynch brings us an emotive journey, following Sissy, Anne and Jude as they navigate the roles of motherhood and family in the wake of the loss of a husband, father and son.

The Seaweed Revolution

Vincent Doumeizel

As featured on BBC News and TIME
'The potential of seaweed, or marine algae, to transform our world is huge… excellent book' New Scientist
The seaweed revolution is a fresh hope for tomorrow.

Seaweed develops in water everywhere, from the eternal glaciers to lagoons heated by the sun, from seas saturated with salt to the fresh water of our rivers. Yet we only know how to cultivate a few dozen varieties, at most. Incredibly diverse, seaweed could help to bring back balance in our ecosystems through a wide range of applications. It could allow us to better feed human beings and animals, replace plastic and fertilizers, boost medical innovations, mitigate global warming, repair biodiversity and support economies in coastal communities where fish stocks are declining.

Although seaweed has supported our development for millions of years, we have lost our connection with it and focused our efforts purely on land cultivation. Today a fast-growing global population, combined with climate, social and environmental crises, gives us compelling reasons to reconsider this forgotten treasure.

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?