James Patterson

In this action-packed thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of The Midwife Murders, a mother-to-be sees the women in her social circle start to disappear—and she could be next . . . Emily Atkinson leads a complicated life in New York City. She’s a successful marketing executive who lives in a luxury apartment and enjoys a glamorous existence until she lands in the hospital with a double diagnosis: she parties too much—and she’s pregnant.

Her nurse and new best friend, Betsey, helps Emily rediscover how much she loves morning runs in the park and quiet nights at home. But as a series of women in her wealthy social circles go missing, Emily’s pregnancy becomes decidedly high-risk.

Felix Francis

Theo Jennings is a young auctioneer at the Thoroughbred sales ring in Newmarket. The October yearling sales are where the big money exchanges hands in frenzied millions of Guineas paid for horses that are as yet unnamed, untested, and have never taken a step on the track. It’s the greatest gamble in all of horseracing, and one that can end in ruin.

Theo has just made the biggest sale of his life, when he overhears a secret conversation between the two bidders – can they really have colluded to fix the price of his big sale? When that same horse is found dead the next morning, he has no choice but to investigate, even against the wishes of his boss. But the more he uncovers, the less he can trust the people around him.

The higher the stakes, the greater the risk. And in the bloodstock game, the ultimate price can be murder . . .

Owen King

It begins in an unnamed city nicknamed “the Fairest”, it is distinguished by many things from the river fair to the mountains that split the municipality in half; its theaters and many museums; the Morgue Ship; and, like all cities, but maybe especially so, by its essential unmappability.

Dora, a former domestic servant at the university has a secret desire—to find where her brother went after he died, believing that the answer lies within The Museum of Psykical Research, where he worked when Dora was a child. With the city amidst a revolutionary upheaval, where citizens like Robert Barnes, her lover and a student radical, are now in positions of authority, Dora contrives to gain the curatorship of the half-forgotten museum only to find it all but burnt to the ground, with the neighboring museums oddly untouched. Robert offers her one of these, The National Museum of the Worker. However, neither this museum, nor the street it is hidden away on, nor Dora herself, are what they at first appear to be. Set against the backdrop of a nation on the verge of collapse, Dora’s search for the truth behind the mystery she’s long concealed will unravel a monstrous conspiracy and bring her to the edge of worlds.

Amor Towles

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.

Steig Abell

It began as the project of a lifetime – a group of archaeologists, uncovering the remains of a Roman settlement on a beautiful hill in the glorious English countryside.

A looming threat…

But, the idyll is shattered when they begin receiving threatening letters. Former city detective Jake Jackson, now enjoying a quieter life in the local village, is pulled in to investigate.

A killer closing in…

Soon, threatening letters are the least of their problems, when a murderer strikes. And now the race is on for Jake to find them, before they kill again…

Joanne Harris

Just twenty-one years old, Sylviane arrives in Marseille to start a new life, and charms her way into a job as a waitress in a run-down bistrot. Here, under the guidance of eccentric Guy Lacarrière she discovers the joy of cooking, a secret love affair and, for the very first time, the true magic of chocolate.

Yet as she starts to dream of making a future for herself in the town, she finds herself at the centre of a growing conspiracy that will threaten everything she’s fought so hard for…

M.P.Woodward

It starts with the destruction of a US Coast Guard cutter and the loss of her entire crew. But the USCG Claiborne was on an innocuous mission to open a sea lane between an oil field off the coast of Guyana and the refineries of southern Louisiana. The destruction of the ship, tragic as it is, won’t stop that mission from continuing.

So who would sacrifice twenty-two men and women just to slow down the plan? That’s the question plaguing Jack Ryan Jr. He’s in Guyana to work a deal to get his company, Hendley Associates, in on the ground floor of this new discovery, but the destruction of the Claiborne and the kidnapping of the Guyanese Interior Minister make it clear that there’s a malignant force working to destroy Guyana’s oil industry. It’s up to Jack to identify the killers before they draw a bead on him, but how can he do that when the line of demarcation between friend and foe is constantly shifting?

T.M. Logan

Lauren can’t wait to see her daughter again, to pick her up from university at the end of her first term. But when she arrives at her hall and knocks at room 309, a stranger opens the door.

For a few minutes, Lauren assumes she must have the wrong room, or the wrong floor. Maybe even the wrong building. But she soon discovers the Evie’s not there. She hasn’t been there for weeks. So where is she?

Elvie Woods
Edie Lane left everything behind in Ireland for a once-in-a-lifetime job at a bakery in Paris. Except, thanks to a mistranslation, the bakery is not in Paris, and neither is Edie.

The tiny town of Compiègne, complete with its local bakery on the Rue de Paris, holds many secrets. This might not be where Edie intended to be but it’s not long before she realises it’s exactly where she needs to be…

Gabriel Zuchtriegel
Pompeii reveals a whole world, frozen in time. It is a unique record of the catastrophe that destroyed the city on 24th August, 79 there are unmade beds, dishes left drying, bodies of victims encased in ash. Alongside the remnants of daily life, there are also captivating works of lifelike portraits, exquisite frescos and mosaics, and the sculpture of a sleeping boy curled up, just as children still do today when their blanket is too short. But this is only the beginning of what we know about Pompeii – remarkably a third of the site remains unexcavated.

In The Buried City, the director of Pompeii, Gabriel Zuchtriegel takes us on a behind-the-scenes tour of the city and reveals the new artefacts and remains that are now being unearthed in the biggest dig of the site in a generation. He reconstructs Pompeii as it would have been, revealing who lived here, what mattered to them and what happened in their final hours, while also reflecting on our role as keepers of this heritage.