Michael Connelly – The Crossing The latest in the Harry Bosch series, a brilliant and complex story set against the parched paradise of Los Angeles.
Bernard Cornwell – Fools and Mortals takes us into the heart of the Elizabethan, the world of young Richard Shakespeare,an actor estranged from his older brother,William.
Helen Dunmore – Birdcage Walk It is 1792 and Europe is seized by political and social upheaval. Lizzie Fawkes has grown up in radical circles but has married a man who would curb her independent, questioning spirit.
Ken Follett – A Column of Fire The latest in Follet’s Kingsbridge novels. Christmas 1558, and young Ned Willard returns home to Kingsbridge,a city torn by religious hatred.
Esther Freud – Mr Mac and Me Thomas Maggs, the son of the local publican, lives a quiet life in a Suffolk village. Then one day a mysterious Scotsman arrives – the architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh,and an unlikely friendship develops.
Philippa Gregory – The Last Tudor Jane Grey was Queen of England for nine days. Her younger sister Katherine’s lineage makes her in turn a threat to the throne so when Katherine’s secret marriage becomes known,she too must go to the Tower.
John Grisham – Camino Island An unputdownable beach read and a fast paced thriller, beginning with the most daring heist in literary history and finishing with a cat and mouse duel between a beguiling criminal and the woman set to uncover his guilt.
Robert Harris – Munich September 1938, Hitler is determined to start a war. Chamberlain is desperate to preserve the peace. As the two men prepare to meet, two other men – one of Chamberlain’s private secretaries and a German diplomat-travel with secrets of their own.
Joseph Kanon – Defectors Moscow, 1961: With the launch of Sputnik, the Soviet Union’s international prestige is at an all-time high. And the most notorious of the defectors to the Soviet Union, former CIA agent Frank Weeks,is about to publish his memoirs.
Thomas Keneally – Crimes of the Father A powerful novel about the Catholic Church’s attempts to cover up cases of child abuse,and a priest who decides to help its innocent victims’fight to be heard.
John le Carre – A Legacy of Spies Peter Guillam, staunch colleague and disciple of George Smiley of ‘the Circus’, has retired to his family farmstead in Brittany when a letter summons him to London. His Cold War past has come back to claim him.
Ben MacIntyre–Rogue Heroes ‘Impeccably researched,superbly told-by far the best book on the SAS in World War II’ – Antony Beevor. In the summer of 1941, David Stirling came up with a radical plan: a small undercover unit that would inflict mayhem behind enemy lines. 75 years later, the SAS has finally decided to tell its astonishing story.
Jo Nesbo – Midnight Sun A tightly wound tale of a man running from retribution, looking for a place where he won’t be found by the drug lord he betrayed. But the agonizing wait for his past to catch up with him forces him to question if redemption is at all possible.
Lawrence Osborne – Beautiful Animals During a white-hot summer on an idyllic Greek island, two girls fall into one another’s lives – a young, impressionable American and a Brit with a taste for danger. Their relationship quickly takes on a special intensity as their two worlds collide.
Chris Paling– Nimrod’s Shadow A gripping tale of genius, jealousy, and revenge – with a few twists and turns along the way.
L J Ross – Cragside DCI Ryan is spending the summer with his fiancée within the grounds of Cragside, a spectacular mansion. When they are invited to attend the staff summer party – a Victorian murder mystery evening–it’s all a joke until the lights go out and an elderly man is found dead.
Kamila Shamsie – Home ‘Elegant and evocative . . . A powerful exploration of the clash between society,family and faith in the modern world’ Guardian . Longlisted for the ManBooker Prize 2017.
Adam Thorpe – Missing Fay In a series of differing viewpoints, the book explores a small community in Lincolnshire and how the lives of a disparate group of characters are touched, however tangentially, by the disappearance of 14-year-old Fay.
Barney White-Spunner – Partition, the Story of Indian Independence and the Creation of Pakistan. “Stands out for its judicious and unsparing look at events from a British perspective.’ Sunday Times Review. Don Winslow – the Force Detective sergeant Denny Malone leads an elite unit to fight gangs, drugs and guns in New York.But Malone himself is dirty:he and his partners have stolen millions of dollars in drugs and cash.Now he’s caught in a trap.