Sorry. Are we keeping you up? We hope so, because here at Crime Fiction Lover we like to bring you books that will keep you turning the pages late into the night. So when midnight guests arrive, you’ll awake to receive them. And that’s the title of the first book in this week’s news roundup, folks. Plus, this week we’ve got six more for you to enjoy. Let us know which, if any, you end up reading.
The Midnight Guests by Alex Hay
Let’s turn back time 100 years for Alex Hay‘s The Midnight Guests, making an appearance on 10 September. It’s 1926 and they’re pulling out all the stops as the most opulent new hotel in London opens its doors. Impresario Diana Gold is owner of Hotel Artemis and everything must be perfect as she welcomes millionaires and gamblers, film stars and royalty. But at midnight Diana’s past comes back to haunt her with the arrival of two guests who taught her all she knows and now want to cash in. Then, a body is discovered in the hotel’s finest suite and the staff and guests of the Artemis find out why they are really there.
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Lie to Me by DS Butler
It’s been 35 years since a boy vanished at a seaside fairground. Now Damon has been found… murdered, with a strange symbol branded into his chest. DS Arnie Hodgson was among the group of friends out with Damon back then, and now he returns to the coastal town of Humberston with DS Karen Hart to track down old pals and find answers. But as the body count rises and a driver tries to run Arnie down, it becomes clear that someone will stop at nothing to keep their secrets buried. Lie to Me by DS Butler is the 12th novel in the Karen Hart series of police procedurals and is out on 8 September.
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The Agatha Christie Cure by Cathy Rentzenbrink
What can the Queen of Crime teach us about life today? Plenty – as you’ll discover within the pages of Cathy Rentzenbrink’s The Agatha Christie Cure, published on 10 September. One Christmas, Rentzenbrink is devoid of the festive spirit. Feeling drained by life’s upheavals and needing comfort and an escape, she turns to her first literary love, Agatha Christie, in search of solace. But a deep dive into Christie’s back catalogue unearths plenty about the woman who created the books. Christie set aside personal crisis and started life again, and with her as a role model, Rentzenbrink soon begins finding answers to questions she hadn’t even realised she was asking…
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Threefold Death by Victoria Dowd
Investigative journalist Charlotte Blood is chasing the scoop of the century. A team of archaeologists claim to have found the 2,000-year-old tomb of Boudica, the Celtic warrior queen who fought the Romans, and Charlotte is after the inside story. But she’s not the only one, and there’s a pack of reporters on the trail too. Once the tomb is opened, the archaeologists are shocked by what’s inside – another body, bearing all the hallmarks of a legendary Threefold Death, a unique sacrificial killing involving murder by drowning, stabbing and hanging. As Charlotte begins to piece the facts together, she’s in danger of becoming the third victim. Threefold Death by Victoria Dowd is out on 8 September.
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Those Who Are Gone by Laurie R King
SFPD Homicide Inspector Raquel Laing has finally pushed her luck too far, and she finds herself working cold cases in Laurie R King’s Those Who Are Gone, out 8 September in the US. Meanwhile, her adoptive sister, Dee, an online investigator who works all over the world, is discovering more than she bargained for via a simple search into the family’s ancestry. Cold case work gives Raquel the chance to take a closer look at what Dee has unearthed – until the pair attract some unwanted attention from a powerful and vicious international cartel and things begin to unravel in an alarming fashion.
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The Wellness Retreat by Dawn Kurtagich
Jaimie Vane was an acclaimed cellist until chronic illness stopped her career in its tracks. Her problem younger sister, Sybil, has found a job as a live-in staffer at an ultra-exclusive wellness retreat and all seems well until Sybil’s messages stop and an intriguing invitation to Talamh Dhubh arrives. Jaimie decides to go the Scottish island to find her sister – and the lure of mineral baths, therapeutic art classes and healthy smoothies could be playing their part too. But as her health improves, Jaimie begins to realise that things are not all that they seem in paradise. The Wellness Retreat by Dawn Kurtagich is published on 8 September in the US, and 8 October in the UK.
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Pictures of You by Josh Malerman
There’s more than a touch of Hitchcock about Josh Malerman’s psychological thriller Pictures of You, arriving on 10 September. After a wonderful night out on the town with her fiancée, Jack, Emily wakes in a huge bed in a beautiful, well-lit room. This is definitely not the hotel they booked, Jack is nowhere to be seen and she has no memory of arriving there. Most disturbing of all is the empty canvas standing on an easel at the end of the bed, the silhouette of an unknown woman inside it demanding that Emily stay still. It’s like Emily herself is the painting, and it soon becomes clear that her actions will determine whether she and her partner live or die.
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