Here are my picks of this months new books...I hope you'll find something you like!
If there is anything else you'd like me to add next month, eg. the publishers name, please let me know and I'll add it.The House on Willow Street by Cathy Kelly
Published: 1 Mar 2012 - UK & USA
Format (UK): Hardcover, Audio, Kindle …...........Paperback 13 Sept 2012
Genre: Romance
Tess used to be happy with her lot: she lives in the idyllic Irish coastal village, Avalon, with her teenage son, Zach and nine-year-old Kitty, and works in the local antiques shop. Her only regret in life is that everything went so horribly wrong with her first love. Then her marriage falls apart and her first love returns to Avalon.
Suki, Tess's sister, fled Ireland years ago to marry politician Kyle Richardon, but when Suki discovers that a biographer is planning to tell all, there is only one place she can go to ensure that her secrets stay hidden.
Danae is the village post mistress in Avalon and she's worked very hard to make sure nobody knows where she came from or who she is. Her past is her business and that's the way she would like to keep it.
In Galway, Mara sits with a smile glued to her face at a wedding; she only wants to ask the groom one thing: why did he tell her he loved her? Needing to put her past behind her, Mara packs up her life and gets ready for a fresh start.
Can these four women lay their pasts to rest? Or do they need to look back before they can begin to live for the future?
The warm and wonderful new novel from the natural heir to Maeve Binchy.
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The Black Rose of Florence by Michele Giuttari
Published: 1 March 2012 - UK & USA
Format (UK): Hardcover, Paperback & Kindle
Genre: Mystery
A beautiful young woman, a member of the Florentine jet set, is found dead - choked to death - in her apartment. She has been left naked on her bed, a black rose on her body.
Chief Superindendent Michele Ferrara, just back from Rome, is all too familiar with the dark side of Florence. But he is up against a mysterious, powerful enemy who would do anything to hide his identity, and manages to controls events at every turn. As more violent deaths occur, Ferrara has to face the most insidious investigation in all his career and must confront deadly secrets from his own past.
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Recipe for Love by Sasha Wagstaff
Published: 1 March 2012 - UK & USA
Format (UK): Hardcover, Kindle …..... Paperback 10 May 2012
Genre: Romance
Summer in a luxurious Italian villa should be a taste of heaven, shouldn't it? Talented, passionate and notoriously private, Italian chef Rocco Disanti never talks to journalists. So why, when Cassia Blake has just three months to organise her wedding, has he suddenly granted her magazine an exclusive, all-access interview?
Against Cassia's better judgement, she hands the wedding planning over to her frosty mother-in-law, and flies out to Italy to spend time with Rocco. But Rocco isn't exactly looking forward to Cassia's arrival. Persuaded to do the interview to help publicise his business, he has enough on his plate with his fiery girlfriend, wedding-obsessed sister and fiercely protective grandmother. And now it seems as if someone is trying to sabotage his restaurants too... Cassia's summer in Sorrento is shaping up to be a recipe for disaster. But could it also be a recipe for love?
You can find out more about Sasha Wagstaff at her official website here
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Master and God by Lindsey Davis
Published: 15 Mar 2012 - UK …........ 5 June 2012 - USA
Format (UK): Hardcover …....... Paperback - 27 Sept 2012 & Audio 15 May 2012
Genre: Historical
Set in the reign of the Emperor Domitian in first-century Rome, Master and God is Lindsey Davis's meticulously researched epic novel of the life and times surrounding the last of the Flavian dynasty of emperors.
Gaius Vinius is a reluctant Praetorian Guard - the Emperor's personal guard - and a man with a disastrous marriage history. Flavia Lucilla is also in the imperial court and she is responsible not only for having created the ridiculous hairstyle worn by the imperial ladies but for also making toupees for the balding and increasingly paranoid emperor. The two of them are brought together in an unlikely manner - a devastating fire in Rome - which then leads to a lifelong friendship.
Together they watch Domitian's once talented rule unravel into madness and cruelty, until the people closest to him conspire to delete him from history. As an imperial bodyguard, Vinius then faces a tough decision.
Master and God is a compelling novel of the Roman Empire - from the height of power to the depths of madness - told from the perspective of two courtiers and unlikely friends who together are the witnesses to history.
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Beyond A Misty Shore by Lyn Andrews
Published: 15 March 2012 - UK & USA
Format (UK): Hardcover ….... Paperback - 30 Aug 2012
Genre: Sagas/Fiction
It is 1945 and the war is finally over.
For sisters Sophie and Maria, though, the upheaval is just beginning. For they have no choice but to leave their beloved home on the Isle of Man. It is a huge wrench for eighteen-year-old Maria, who can't forget Hans Bonhoeffer, a young Austrian, interned on the island during the war. For widowed Sophie, Liverpool offers a new beginning with her daughter Bella. She has no room for distractions - until she falls in love with Frank Ryan, a man married to a woman who, although she doesn't love him, has no intention of letting him go.
Without the men they love, will the sisters ever find happiness?
Lyn Andrews is one of the UK's top 100 paperback bestselling authors, whose vibrant, heart-rending novels have won her millions of fans. Her last paperback was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller for many weeks.
Lyn
Andrews was born and raised in Liverpool. She now lives in Ireland
although she regularly returns to Liverpool. The daughter of a
policeman, she also married a policeman and, after becoming the mother
of triplets, took some years off from her writing whilst she brought up
her family.
Her books are always set in Liverpool.
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Cavanaugh’s Bodyguard (Book 21 in the Cavanaugh Justice Series) by Marie Ferrarella
Published: 20 March 2012 - UK & USA
Format (UK): Paperback
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Being a Cavanaugh had advantages for Detective Bridget Cavelli—the Cavanaughs practically ran the department. But this sudden identity crisis left Bridget off balance and vulnerable. Perhaps that explained the uncomfortable attraction she suddenly felt for her partner, consummate ladies' man Josh Youngblood.
Then the Lady Killer struck again. With no time to deal with her chaotic emotions, Bridget had to catch the vicious serial killer before he claimed more victims.
But when the smoldering lust beneath Josh and Bridget's breezy banter ignited into irresistible passion, their feelings couldn't be denied. She'd always been a cop first, but with Josh's help, Bridget was discovering how to be a woman….
My mum absolutely loves this series and she can’t wait to get her hands on this book!
Marie Ferrarella is a popular and prolific American writer of over 150 romance novels....her website is here
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The Uninvited Guests by Sadie Jones
Published: 22 March 2012 - UK …........... 1 May 2012 - USA
Format (UK): Hardcover, Paperback and Kindle
Genre: Fiction
It's rural England, just after the turn of the last century. Charlotte married Edward Shift after the sudden death of her first husband, Horace Torrington. They live at Sterne, the home they are in danger of losing due to a financial crisis, with Charlotte's 3 children: Emerald, Clovis and Smudge.
On the day of Emerald's birthday party, a terrible train wreck occurs on a branch line and the stranded passengers seek refuge at Sterne. Among these passengers is Charlie Traversham-Beechers, a sketchy figure from Charlotte's past.
This unusual guest list makes for an unforgettable birthday celebration for Emerald and an evening of the past literally coming back to haunt Charlotte.
The Uninvited Guests is the bewitching new novel from number one bestseller Sadie Jones. The prizewinning author of The Outcast triumphs in this frightening yet sinister drama of dark surprises - where social codes are uprooted and desire daringly trumps propriety - and all is alight with Edwardian wit and opulence.
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Malice in the Cotswolds (10th book in the Thea Osborne series) by Rebecca Tope
Published: 26 March 2012 - UK …....... 15 June 2012 - USA
Format (UK): Hardcover
Genre: Mystery
Thea Osborne and her canine companion Hepzie travel to the isolated village of Snowshill for their next assignment, house-sitting Hyacinth House for the mysterious Yvonne Parker. Something doesn't feel right to Thea, who is ill at ease in the village, and soon her intuition is proved to be right. A local boy, Stevie Horsfall, is found brutally strangled, with his mother as prime suspect. Thea, believing in her innocence, embarks on a mystery, taking her through the maliciously entangled lives of the village residents, to London and beyond.
Rebecca Tope is the author of three popular murder mystery series, featuring Den Cooper, Devon police detective, Drew Slocombe, Undertaker and Thea Osborne, house sitter in the Cotswolds. Also "ghost writer" of the novels based on the ITV series Rosemary and Thyme.
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Dead in the Dog by Bernard Knight
Published: 28 March 2012 - UK …..... 1 July 2012 - USA
Format (UK): Hardcover
Genre: Murder Mystery
Arriving in Singapore, newly-qualified pathologist Tom Howden is still questioning his decision to sign on for three years in Her Majesty's Far East Land Forces. As he settles in, he discovers that his new home is a hotbed of scandal and intrigue.
When an English planter is attacked one night, the finger of suspicion naturally points at local bandits, rather than a fellow Englishman. It soon becomes clear, however, that the situation is rather more complicated - and deadly - than it first appeared. Tom Howden's newly-acquired forensic skills are about to be put to the ultimate test.
A fifties murders mystery set in Malaya from author of the ‘Crowner John’ books.
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Stay Close by Harlan Coben
Published: 29 Mar 2012 - UK …......... 20 Mar 2012 - USA
Format (UK): Hardcover, Audio …............... Paperback - 3 Jan 2013
Genre: Thriller
Megan is a suburban soccer mom who once upon a time walked on the wild side. Now she's got two kids, a perfect husband, a picket fence, and a growing sense of dissatisfaction. Ray used to be a talented documentary photographer, but at age forty he finds himself in a dead-end job posing as a paparazzo pandering to celebrity-obsessed rich kids.
Jack is a detective who can't let go of a cold case - a local husband and father disappeared seventeen years ago, and Jack spends the anniversary every year visiting a house frozen in time, the missing man's family still waiting, his slippers left by the recliner as if he might show up any moment to step into them.
Three people living lives they never wanted, hiding secrets that even those closest to them would never suspect, will find that the past doesn't recede. Even as the terrible consequences of long-ago events crash together in the present and threaten to ruin lives, they will come to the startling realization that they may not want to forget the past at all. And as each confronts the dark side of the American Dream - the boredom of a nice suburban life, the excitement of temptation, the desperation and hunger that can lurk behind even the prettiest facades - they will discover the hard truth that the line between one kind of life and another can be as whisper-thin as a heartbeat.
With his trademark combination of page-turning thrills and unrivaled insight into the dark shadows that creep into even the happiest communities, Harlan Coben delivers a thriller that cements his status as the master of domestic suspense.
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The Sin Eater by Sarah Rayne
Published: 29 March 2012 - UK …........... 1 July 2012 - USA
Format (UK): Hardcover
Genre: Supernatural Suspense/Thriller
When Benedict Doyle finds himself the owner of his great-grandfather's north London house, he is dismayed. For it was in that house, as a frightened eight-year-old, that the strange glimpses into his great-grandfather's life began: eerie shutter-flash images that have gradually revealed sinister darkness in his family's past.
Through that darkness runs the grisly thread of an old legend about a chess set - 32 carved figures believed to possess a dark power, but shut away in the forgotten library of a tumbledown Irish castle for many decades.
When Michael Flint, meeting Benedict in Oxford, starts to research his story, chilling facts begin to emerge - facts that suggest the old legend contains a disturbing reality.
And when Nell West, no stranger to the eeriness of old properties, begins to compile an inventory of Holly Lodge's contents for her antique business, it seems that the chess set's malevolence might be reaching out to the present . . .
An intriguing tale of supernatural suspense ... Fans of haunted house fiction should particularly enjoy the final twist. -- Library Journal
An inventively plotted, goose-bumps inducing ghost story. -- Booklist
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The Tintern Treasure (Book 21 in the Roger the Chapman series) by Kate Sedley
Published: 29 March 2012 - UK …........ 1 July 2012 - USA
Format (UK): Hardcover
Genre: Historical Mystery
An important discovery puts Roger the Chapman's life in danger . . . -
In the autumn of 1483, Roger goes on an errand of mercy to Hereford, where he is caught up in the Duke of Buckingham's rebellion against the new king, Richard III. Roger takes refuge in Tintern Abbey, but on his return to Bristol, a murder and a series of house robberies lead him to the eventual discovery of the treasure stolen from the abbey on the night he was there. It also means great danger, not only for himself, but a member of his family . . .
The full list of the Roger the Chapman series is here
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Fault Line by Robert Goddard
Published: 29 Mar 2012 - UK …............22 May 2012 - USA
Format (UK): Hardcover, Kindle ….........Paperback - 13 Sept 2012
Genre: Thriller
A search for missing documents in an international mining company becomes a voyage into dangerous waters.
A dead friend, a lost lover and a clutch of mysteries from Jonathan Kellaway's youth in Cornwall and Italy in the late 1960s come back to haunt him when he is tasked with discovering why there is a gaping hole in his employer's records - and to tempt him with the hope that he may at last learn the truth about the tragedies of those years. It is a truth that has claimed several victims before. If he pursues it hard and long enough, he may only add himself to the list.
But pursue it he will. Because the truth, he comes to realize, is the secret that has consumed his life. This time he will not stop ... until he has found it.
The new race-against-the-clock thriller from the master of the triple cross.
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