Barty, arise queen of Oz

Ron Reed
In this new edition of the top seller, award-winning sports writer Ron Reed and journalist Chris McLeod pay tribute to the Australian champion and women’s tennis World No. 1.

With up-to-date statistics and analysis of all her games including her Wimbledon win, Tokyo Olympics campaign and the 2021 US Open, Barty celebrates the Australian Champion’s extraordinary career right up to her retirement.

Beyond Alice

Tayna Heaslip
A humorous and inspiring story of strength, resilience and the realities of Australian outback life. In 1975, twelve-year-old Tanya leaves her isolated home in outback Australia and is sent sixteen hundred kilometres south to a girls’ boarding school for an education the bush can’t provide. The freedom of her young life gives way to an unfriendly world of stone and concrete, high walls, small skies, dress uniforms, and endless rules that make no sense.

In common with many children of the outback, Tanya has little experience of life beyond the bush, stockmen and horses. She struggles to adjust to this cold place, run by harsh, authoritarian figures, where every moment is controlled by bells, timetables and stern words. Yet, over time, her fellow boarders become her new family and Tanya survives both by writing, and by telling her stories of family, race meetings, gymkhanas, campdrafts and stock camps to enthralled friends.

She emerges strong and resilient, ready to face whatever comes next. Warm, humorous and uplifting, this is the story of a small girl who triumphs.

Still life

Val McDermid
From internationally bestselling author Val McDermid comes a propulsive new Karen Pirie thriller that delves into a historic missing persons case, fake identities, and art forgery.

When a lobster fisherman discovers a dead body in Scotland’s Firth of Forth, Karen is called into investigate. She quickly discovers that the case will require untangling a complicated web—including a historic disappearance, art forgery, and secret identities—that seems to orbit around a painting copyist who can mimic anyone from Holbein to Hockney. Meanwhile, a traffic crash leads to the discovery of a skeleton in a suburban garage. Needless to say, Karen has her plate full. Meanwhile, the man responsible for the death of the love of her life is being released from prison, reopening old wounds just as she was getting back on her feet.

Fair warning

Michael Connelly
Veteran reporter Jack McEvoy has taken down killers before, but when a woman he had a one-night stand with is murdered in a particularly brutal way, McEvoy realizes he might be facing a criminal mind unlike any he’s ever encountered.

McEvoy investigates – against the warnings of the police and his own editor-and makes a shocking discovery that connects the crime to other mysterious deaths across the country. But his inquiry hits a snag when he himself becomes a suspect.

As he races to clear his name, McEvoy’s findings point to a serial killer working under the radar of law enforcement for years, and using personal data shared by the victims themselves to select and hunt his targets.

Called “the Raymond Chandler of this generation” (Associated Press), Michael Connelly once again delivers an unputdownable thriller that reveals a predator operating from the darkest corners of human nature—and one man courageous and determined enough to stand in his way.

The return

Nicholas Sparks
In the romantic tradition of Dear John and The Lucky One, #1 New York Times bestselling author Nicholas Sparks returns with the story of an injured Navy doctor — and two women whose secrets will change the course of his life.

Trevor Benson never intended to move back to New Bern, NC. But when a mortar blast outside the hospital where he worked as an orthopedic surgeon sent him home from Afghanistan with devastating injuries, the dilapidated cabin he inherited from his grandfather seemed as good a place to regroup as any.
Tending to his grandfather’s beloved bee hives while gearing up for a second stint in medical school, Trevor isn’t prepared to fall in love with a local . . . and yet, from their very first encounter, his connection with Natalie Masterson can’t be ignored. But even as she seems to reciprocate his feelings, she remains frustratingly distant, making Trevor wonder what she’s hiding.

Further complicating his stay in New Bern is the presence of a sullen teenage girl, Callie, who lives in the trailer park down the road from his grandfather’s cabin. Claiming to be 19, she works at the local sundries store and keeps to herself. When he discovers she was once befriended by his grandfather, Trevor hopes Callie can shed light on the mysterious circumstances of his grandfather’s death, but she offers few clues — until a crisis triggers a race that will uncover the true nature of Callie’s past, one more intertwined with the elderly man’s passing than Trevor could ever have anticipated.

In his quest to unravel Natalie and Callie’s secrets, Trevor will learn the true meaning of love and forgiveness . . . and that in life, to move forward, we must often return to the place where it all began.

The wild one

James Pattinson
Hector Langdon volunteered for the army in World War I when he was no more than seventeen-years-old, though he gave his age as twenty. It was the kind of reckless action he was to take all his life, much to the regret of his solicitor father, who wished him to follow in the same profession.

That would have been far too boring for Hector’s taste, so he drifted from one occupation to another after the war. It seemed he had to be forever on the move – until he met Eva Gray. And even that meeting was to lead to tragedy.

A perfect Cornish escape

Phillipa Ashley
Escape to Cornwall this summer… The new book in the Porthmellow Harbour series, following A Perfect Cornish Summer and A Perfect Cornish Christmas, is available to pre-order now!

Summer in Cornwall is the perfect time for a fresh start…
Seven years ago, Marina Hudson’s husband was lost at sea. She vowed to love Nate for the rest of her life – but when kind-hearted Lachlan arrives in Porthmellow, should she deny herself another chance at happiness?

Tiff Trescott was living life to the full as a journalist in London – until her boyfriend’s betrayal brought it all crashing down. Fleeing to her cousin Marina’s cottage, Tiff feels like a fish-out-of-water. And when brooding local Dirk wins a day with her in a charity auction, she’s thrown headfirst into Cornish life.

This summer promises new beginnings for both Tiff and Marina. But are they too good to be true?

Tombland

C.J. Samsom
Spring, 1549. Two years after the death of Henry VIII, England is sliding into chaos… The king, Edward VI, is eleven years old. His uncle Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, rules as Protector. Radical Protestants are conducting all out war on the old religion, stirring discontent among the people.

The Protector’s prolonged war with Scotland is proving a disastrous failure. Worst of all, the economy is in collapse, inflation rages and rebellion is stirring among the peasantry.

Since the old King’s death, Matthew Shardlake has been working as a lawyer in the service of Henry’s younger daughter, the Lady Elizabeth. The gruesome murder of the wife of John Boleyn, a distant Norfolk relation of Elizabeth’s mother – which could have political implications for Elizabeth – brings Shardlake and his young assistant Nicholas Overton to the summer assizes at Norwich. There they are reunited with Shardlake’s former assistant Jack Barak. The three find layers of mystery and danger surrounding the death of Edith Boleyn, as more murders are committed.

During their investigation, a peasant rebellion breaks out across the country. Yeoman Robert Kett establishes a vast camp outside Norwich and leads a force of thousands to overthow the landlords. Soon the rebels have taken over the city, England’s second largest.

Barak throws in his lot with the rebels; Nicholas, opposed to them, becomes a prisoner in Norwich Castle; while Shardlake has to decide where his ultimate loyalties lie. As government forces in London prepare to march north and destroy the rebels, he discovers that the murder of Edith Boleyn may have connections reaching into both the heart of the rebel camp and of the Norfolk gentry…

Tombland is both a thrilling murder mystery and a vivid and engaging portrait of a divided nation.

Lamentation

C.J. Samsom
As Henry VIII lies on his deathbed, an incendiary manuscript threatens to tear his court apart. Summer, 1546. King Henry VIII is slowly, painfully dying. His Protestant and Catholic councilors are engaged in a final and decisive power struggle; whoever wins will control the government.

As heretics are hunted across London, and radical Protestants are burned at the stake, the Catholic party focuses its attack on Henry’s sixth wife – and Matthew Shardlake’s old mentor – Queen Catherine Parr.

Shardlake, still haunted by his narrow escape from death the year before, steps into action when the beleaguered and desperate Queen summons him to Whitehall Palace to help her recover a dangerous manuscript. The Queen has authored a confessional book, Lamentation of a Sinner, so radically Protestant that if it came to the King’s attention it could bring both her and her sympathizers crashing down. Although the secret book was kept hidden inside a locked chest in the Queen’s private chamber, it has inexplicably vanished. Only one page has been recovered – clutched in the hand of a murdered London printer.

Shardlake’s investigations take him on a trail that begins among the backstreet printshops of London, but leads him and his trusty assistant Jack Barak into the dark and labyrinthine world of court politics, a world Shardlake swore never to enter again. In this crucible of power and ambition, Protestant friends can be as dangerous as Catholic enemies, and those with shifting allegiances can be the most dangerous of all.

Heartstone

C.J. Samsom
Summer, 1545. England is at war. Henry VIII’s invasion of France has gone badly wrong. Meanwhile Matthew Shardlake is given an intriguing legal case by an old servant of Queen Catherine Parr.

He is asked to investigate claims of ‘monstrous wrongs’ committed against a young ward of the court, which have already involved one mysterious death.

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