This week sees the arrival of an unusual crime fiction character – one who feels no pain. But are they indestructible? Find out in Emma Cook’s You Can’t Hurt Me. Our lead book is followed by two novels set in Scotland, a brutal one set in gangland London in the 1950s, and nice little trip to the Outback. Only thing is, the destination is called Murder Town.
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You Can’t Hurt Me by Emma Cook
Eva Reid made headlines throughout her life: Ever since she was born, she felt no pain — whether it be from a paper cut, a broken limb or even giving birth. Then Eva died in suspicious circumstances in the home she shared with her pain specialist husband, Dr Nate Reid, promoting much speculation. Which brings us to Anna Tate, a down-on-her-luck journalist who jumps at the chance of being Nate’s ghostwriter when he decided to pen his memoirs. Now Anna can look deeper into a mystery that’s become an obsession to her. But what she uncovers shocks her to the core… Find out more when Emma Cook’s thriller You Can’t Hurt Me is published on 5 November.
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The Christmas Stocking Murders by Denzil Meyrick
It’s beginning to look a lot like… Christmas books are hitting the shelves, and The Christmas Stocking Murders by Denzil Meyrick stakes its claim on 7 November. Just before the big day in 1953, in the remote village of Uthley’s Bay, a fisherman is found dead on the beach with a stocking wound tight round his throat. Then hundreds of pairs of stockings, in neat cellophane bags wash up on the shore too and it’s a case of the hosiery and the ivy for Inspector Frank Grasby and his trusty sidekick Juggers. With the weather closing in and no one keen to talk, suddenly everyone in the village is under suspicion.
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The Author’s Guide to Murder by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig and Karen White
Billed as ‘Agatha Christie meets Murder, She Wrote’ there’s a veritable team of writers on the case for The Author’s Guide to Murder – out 5 November for Kindle. Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig and Karen White have got their heads together for a new take on the locked-room mystery trope. When an acclaimed author is found dead in the locked, book-lined study of historic Castle Kinloch in the Scottish Highlands, DCI Euan McIntosh is called upon to find the culprit. But with three American lady novelists in the frame, each of them spinning their own version of the truth, it’s going to be tricky to get to the bottom of things.
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White City by Dominic Nolan
It’s 1952, and gangsters and black-market spivs have the run of post-war London – but it’s a daring midnight heist, the biggest robbery in British history, that’s making news. Behind the sensational headlines, two families are missing their fathers, neither of whom returned home on the day of the robbery. As the years pass, their fates are in the hands of powerful and dangerous men, and in 1958 things come to a violent head as the West Indian community of Notting Hill’s slums comes under attack from thugs and Teddy Boys and old scores are settled. Historical crime fans take note – White City by Dominic Nolan is out on 7 November.
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Murder Town by Shelley Burr
If Aussie crime is your favourite flavour, then it’s time to catch up with Murder Town by Shelley Burr – out now. It was 15 years ago that a serial killer stalked the streets of the tiny Outback town of Rainier, and the community has never recovered. When ‘Murder Town’ is targeted by a copycat killer, Gemma Guillory, the wife of the local policeman, finds herself drawn into the investigation – and so is a prisoner named Lane Holland, a former private investigator who earned a living cracking cold cases before he ran afoul of the law…
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