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Water Memory

5/3/2021

Daniel Pyne: Amazon Publishing $6.48 ebook

IF ONLY the pirates had known what they were getting themselves into they might have chosen a different mark.
Now it’s too late: they’re already committed. They’ve singled out their target and closed in, approaching the massive vessel in three battered aluminium fast-boats, intent on capturing the officers and crew and taking control of the bridge.
A haul of this size will be the making of these until-now-smalltime criminals. In the grimy backstreets of Porto Pequeno, a frontier town clinging to no-man’s-land between Venezuela and Guyana, the men holding the mighty Jeddah will be heroes. The ransom its owner will pay will be a literal fortune by local standards.
Aubrey Sentro first learns of the attack when unfamiliar voices fill the corridor outside her cabin.
She certainly hasn’t been expecting this. The voyage started normally enough for Sentro and her companions, a handful of paying passengers aboard a working cargo ship, with a quick call in port in Georgia before heading out across the Caribbean towards South America’s north-easternmost tip.
It’s supposed to be a long-overdue break for Sentro, recently returned from yet another infiltration-and-extraction mission in a scruffy part of the world and experiencing memory lapses courtesy of several concussions too many. Ex-military, Sentro now uses the skills developed in army intelligence to operate covertly for a private firm that specialises in hostage retrieval.
As far as her family knows, however, she works in something called “reinsurance” and travels frequently for a white-collar desk job. Back home in Maryland, Sentro’s adult children think she’s on a leisure cruise, no doubt sipping cocktails by the pool on some 21st-century version of Hollywood’s Love Boat.
Not in their wildest nightmares could they imagine their mother pitting herself against 13 heavily armed mercenaries in a battle for survival.
Little do they know what she’s capable of doing.

Outlawed

26/2/2021

Anna North: Bloomsbury Publishing $US26.00

CAST out of her husband’s home at the age of 17 and labelled a witch, Ada Magnusson is a wanted woman with a bounty on her head.
Her crime? Failing to conceive in her first year of marriage. In 1894 in Fairchild, Wyoming, baby-making is a young bride’s primary role.
Ada should by all accounts be good breeding stock. Her own mother has four healthy offspring and as the respected local midwife assists at all of Fairchild’s births.
Ada hasn’t been similarly blessed, however, and her in-laws’ patience has expired.
Even though Ada knows enough about infertility to be confident that it’s not witchcraft that’s cursed her, there’s nothing she can do or say to defend herself.
No amount of arguing her innocence will save her if Sheriff Branch can track her down – because not only is Ada barren but now it seems she has cost four of her neighbours their unborn children as well. According to the Fairchild elders it’s Ada’s sorcery that has caused a recent string of miscarriages, not the plague of German measles that has swept through the district.
If she’s caught, in all likelihood she’ll be hanged.
Assuming she manages to flee Fairchild she might find safe haven – for a while, at least – with the sisters at a convent that’s known to shelter exiled women.
Long term, though, Ada’s only hope of surviving lies in making her way deep into the mountains and linking up with a band of desperados beyond the reach of the law: the infamous Hole in the Wall Gang, led by a mythical being referred to as ‘the Kid’.
In order to reach the stronghold at Hole in the Wall, Ada must buy passage with a trader willing to smuggle her in the back of his wagon. It’s risky: perhaps he will turn her in instead and collect his reward.

The Driftwood Girls

19/2/2021

Mark Douglas-Home: Michael Joseph $19.99

FOR 23 years Kate and Flora Tolmie have lived as orphans, left parentless in the UK when their mother Christina disappeared from a French ferry port. Now adults, the sisters have never truly recovered from the trauma.
At roughly the same time, in an apparently unrelated incident teenager Ruth Jones went missing in south-eastern England. When Jones vanished it was assumed she had run away from a dysfunctional homelife with her drunken father, Mikey. Days later, when her body washed ashore she was found to have drowned.
On the opposite side of the English Channel, in the Netherlands Sarah Allison and her neighbour Lotte Rouhof have ‘adopted’ itinerant artist Olaf Haugen and given him a creative space of his own in their coastal hamlet. Their community is idyllic but for one sad construction: a beach hut erected to commemorate the discovery of a dead girl on the other-wise postcard-perfect stretch of sand.
Three watery mysteries, each connected in its own way to the sea – and now a new question has been raised. A suitcase once owned by Christina Tolmie has resurfaced, picked up by an English beachcomber decades earlier but then forgotten until after his death.
Oceanographer Dr Cal McGill is determined to trace the luggage’s movements to determine where and when it entered the Channel. Using his understanding of currents, tides and winds, McGill is uncannily skilled at pinpointing the routes taken by individual items held captive by the waves – be they simple flotsam and jetsam or, in the most gruesome of circumstances, human corpses.
McGill can’t afford to turn down this potentially lucrative job, however much he might want to walk away from his unsettling line of business.
The fourth release in Douglas-Home’s Sea Detective series, The Driftwood Girl combines the suspense of criminal investigation with the nebulous balance of relationships strained by grief.

Shipped

12/2/2021

Angie Hockman: Gallery Books $US16.00

CRUISING in comfort around one of the world’s most exotic and enticing archipelagos is hardly a tough way to audition for an intra-office promotion, but Henley Evans hasn’t been looking forward to this trip. In fact, she’s been dreading it.
After years of going well above and beyond her pay grade in order to demonstrate her loyalty to her employer and her department head, Henley resents being forced into one-on-one competition with the shiny new boy-wonder on the company block.
In the barely 12 months he’s worked alongside Henley, Graeme Crawford Collins has become her professional nemesis. The rivalry started the day Graeme brazenly accepted credit for material Henley had created and their conversation is now so strained as to consist of single-word emails fired back and forth with the velocity of an ice-hockey puck and copied selectively to third parties in a war of strategic one-upmanship.
It’s an unproductive situation, given that Henley and Graeme are communications colleagues on the marketing team of Seaquest Adventures, an expedition cruise line running small-group experiences in places as varied as Costa Rica, Alaska, Panama and Hawaii.
With a coveted seat at the executive table available, Henley and Graeme are vying to become Seaquest’s first director of digital marketing.
Their immediate manager has announced that the role will go to the candidate who produces the most compelling promotional plan based on the line’s Galapagos Islands offering. While sampling the itinerary, Henley and Graeme must out-manoeuvre each other without revealing their animosity publicly.
With her flirtatious younger sister, Walsh, under foot, can Henley salvage a winning presentation from a voyage that’s threatening to drive her career onto the rocks?
Humorous and heart-warming, Shipped is set against the real-life islands, inhabitants and issues of 21st-century Galapagos – a destination showcased to perfection in Hockman’s cleverly crafted debut novel.

Last Survivor

5/2/2021

Tony Park: Macmillan Australia $32.99

POACHING’S certainly nothing new in Africa, where entire species are being driven fast towards extinction by an ever-intensifying illicit trade in body parts.
Against this backdrop a relic from the age of dinosaurs has been rediscovered. This is the priceless breeding partner that a lone specimen preserved in London has been lacking – the missing link that could kick-start this living fossil’s resurrection.
Throughout South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Mozambique and beyond, the slaughter of animals for their tusks, heads, hides and bones is catastrophic.
Almost entirely unknown is the equally furious targeting of the slow-growing, leather-leafed cycad: the rhinoceros horn of plants. Stripped illegally from the wild, these palm-like throwbacks are being smuggled to collectors around the globe, changing hands for hundreds of thousands of dollars or even more.
In the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew in England, the rarest of all cycads sits in a glasshouse: a single male Encephalartos woodii. Until now it’s been without a mate.
No longer: in Zimbabwe the most remarkable of rarities – a female woodii – has been found.
Almost as suddenly, though, it’s been stolen from the heavily guarded garden of its Kuwaiti owner, Prince Faisal. All evidence suggests the thief is part of the Pretoria Cycad and Firearms Appreciation Society, a club whose members meet every week to discuss horticulture and then fire off a few rounds. Joanne Flack left the country at the same time as the woodii vanished and has been ignoring her friends’ desperate messages.
But when Joanne resurfaces only to find herself in the sights of snipers, it seems there’s more than simple plant envy at play.
Fresh from a shootout with fundamentalist terrorists in Mali, CIA operative Sonja Kurtz is exactly the bodyguard Joanne needs – and perhaps the only person who can save not only this presumed thief’s life but also the future of the irreplaceable woodii.

The Coral Bride

29/1/2021

Roxanne Bouchard: Orenda Books £8.99

FOUR days short of her 10th wedding anniversary, lobster boat captain Angel Roberts has gone missing.
The disappearance is uncharacteristic. After all, it takes enormous strength of character to operate any commercial fishing business, let alone as a woman in this male-dominated industry. It’s always been especially hard for Roberts, with her father and brothers watching over her shoulder and husband Clément competing with her for the pick of the catch.
When her vessel is located, Roberts isn’t on board. It seems clear that she must have been at the wheel when Close Call II motored out of port towards the Gulf of St Lawrence but where is she now? She hasn’t been seen since Clément drove her home from an end-of-season party late on Saturday night; she was gone by the time he returned to their house the following day.
It’s at this point that police Detective Sergeant Joaquin Moralès is called in.
A relatively recent recruit to policing in Canada’s Gaspé Peninsula, Moralès is still finding his feet in this isolated chain of communities where everyone seems to know and/or share blood ties with everyone else. It’s more than merely a few hours’ drive away from Moralès original base in Montréal; this might as well be another planet.
The unexpected arrival of his younger son isn’t helping. Moralès is torn between honouring his duty to search for Roberts and trying to figure out why Sébastien has shown up without warning and horribly drunk.
Weighed down by one colleague who’s at best unco-operative and at worst outright hostile and another who’s a touch eccentric and rather reluctant to leave the comfort of the station, Moralès has little support. Even the fishing fraternity is against him – although Moralès is doing his utmost to find down one of their own, Roberts’ peers certainly aren’t offering any help.

Mountain Ghost

1/1/2021

Christoffer Petersen: Aarluuk Press $6.99 ebook

PEOPLE who disapear in the midst of an Arctic winter generally don’t resurface until the spring thaw begins.
When police data analyst Mats Lindström vanishes onto the slopes of Sweden’s highest mountain, Kebnekaise, leaving behind his wife Márjá and their infant son, it’s assumed he has walked off into the wilderness to commit suicide. His body will be found by hikers months from now.
In their home in Gällivare, a mining town above the Arctic Circle, Márjá isn’t convinced, however.
And when Lindström’s social media accounts are suddenly reactivated, she’s not alone in questioning the circumstances and seeking an investigation.
In Québec Inspector Etienne Gagnon recalls that around the time of his unexplained departure from Gällivare, Lindström was applying to join Polarpol, the elite multinational law-enforcement agency of which Gagnon is currently acting commander. Surely taking his own life isn’t the logical act of a man who is at the exact same time pursuing his next career move.
Determined to lead a private search for the missing policeman, the Canadian Mountie prepares to cross the Atlantic.
Meanwhile, in London Gagnon’s senior officer Constable Hákon Sigurðarsson – on leave as he struggles to recover from injuries suffered during a Polarpol operation in Iceland only days earlier – is making use of his time off duty to pursue a ‘ghost’ of his own: notorious assassin-for-hire Byrne Cantrell.
Cantrell has threatened Sigurðarsson’s sister and daughter; he cannot be allowed to remain at large.
On the run since slipping through the Polarpol net in Reykjavík, Cantrell has been exhausted by too many sleepless nights of moving constantly in his desperation to stay one step ahead of his pursuers, both official and otherwise.
This is the second instalment in Christoffer Petersen’s series of Polarpol Arctic thrillers, picking up the storyline immediately after the first novel, Northern Light, ends.

One by One

25/12/2020

Ruth Ware: Harvill Secker $32.99

CORPORATE retreats are divisive. People generally either love them or loathe them – but in the case of music-tech start-up Snoop’s week-long outing to an exclusive French Alps resort, the participants’ loathing is directed more at each other rather than at the bonding exercise itself.
The company’s co-founders, Eva and Topher, are openly feuding, one determined to accept a lucrative buy-out offer while the other is doggedly opposed to relinquishing control. The shareholder group is split exactly down the middle with a single vote still swinging, guaranteeing that the leaders’ time at Chalet Perce-Neige will be spent lobbying and/or bullying in an attempt to sway their former colleague’s decision. With a billion dollars at stake, neither side is going to concede defeat while ever there’s a chance of claiming former personal assistant Liz’s all-important support.
Chef Danny and hostess Erin are the only onsite staff, responsible for catering to their visitors’ every whim – and there are whims aplenty among these privileged millennials with their unfathomable job titles, demanding diets and haute couture skiwear. Not only do the Snoopers arrive with an extra person to be accommodated without warning but now the weather forecast is dire, derailing their plans to spend the first afternoon out skiing.
It’s a scenario that could easily turn murderous – figuratively, at least.
There’s nothing figurative about one woman’s sudden disappearance, however: one minute she’s there in their midst, right among them on the slope, and the next she’s gone. Trying to trace when and how she vanished is thrown further into chaos when an avalanche sweeps down the mountainside, cutting the party off from any chance of seeking help.
Alone, hungry, cold and at loggerheads – and with one of that morning’s breakfast companions now missing, presumed dead – the Snoop team members and their hosts are living an Agatha Christie-like nightmare.

The Runes of Destiny

18/12/2020

Christina Courtenay: Headline Review $22.99

ONE minute Linnea Berger is pitching in to help her father Haakon’s boss at an archaeological dig near their family home in central Sweden, the next she’s waking up on the ground with a stranger standing over her.
Regaining consciousness after an apparent blackout, Linnea is accused of having stolen the local jarl’s silver brooch – the same brooch she had just located with the help of a metal detector and dug out of the soil.
Now she’s surrounded by a group of Swedes dressed as some sort of throwback to the Viking era. It’s clear to Linnea that these people take their role-playing seriously – very seriously.
Not only are they wearing the clothing of ninth-century Svía villagers but they’re actually speaking Old Norse too. History student Linnea is capable of holding her own linguistically but the characters of this make-believe setting are absolutely fluent.
This can’t be happening. Nobody has spoken Old Norse like this since… well, not since it evolved into the group of modern-day Scandinavian languages roughly a millennium ago.
Her captors are taking this fantasy way too far, even referring to her as their “thrall” and discussing plans to sell her in a slave market in Miklagarðr – known in Linnea’s world of 2017 as Istanbul.
Surely they don’t actually believe they’re living in Viking-Age Svíaríki, do they?
If this is real, then she’s somehow been catapulted 1200 years into the past: a past in which expeditioners from this part of Sweden routinely navigate their way across the Baltic, along the rivers of western Russia and Ukraine and across the Black Sea to the heart of the Ottoman Empire and in some cases even to Iran.
Being immersed in a Norse community such as this is every historian’s dream but for Linnea the experience she’s now having feels much more like the worst possible nightmare.

Winterkill

11/12/2020

Ragnar Jónasson: Orenda Books $6.64 ebook

INSPECTOR Ari Thór Arason’s picture-perfect Easter is about to implode.
With his former partner and their son due to fly in for a short visit, Ari Thór has been anticipating a few days of happy family downtime. Since the dissolution of the couple’s on-off relationship, Kristín and little Stefnir have been living in Sweden. Ari Thór has waited for months for this reunion with Stefnir and is determined to make the most of their too-few days together.
Woken well before dawn, however, he’s now in the early stages of opening an enquiry into the death of a teenage student whose body has been found lying in an iced-over street.
Siglufjörður is not normally a hotbed of crime – in fact, it’s anything but. In Ari Thór’s six years in this remote fishing town on the north coast of Iceland he’s had to deal with only a handful of serious incidents.
This is his first real challenge as head of the local police team of two. With his former boss now comfortably settled in Reykjavík, the newly promoted Ari Thór has only an impertinent junior officer, Ögmundur, for backup.
Leaving a potential murder investigation in Ögmundur’s inexperienced hands isn’t ideal, but if he’s to have the bonding time he desperately wants with his son, Ari Thór will need to insist that this young upstart shoulders his share of responsibility while his boss is off-duty.
But, with a blizzard looming and a past lover resurfacing, the planned break is fast becoming far more complicated than any simple long-weekend at home should be.
Winterkill is the sixth and final book in Ragnar Jónasson’s Dark Iceland series of crime thrillers, translated into English by David Warriner. It features characters and storylines established in Snowblind, Nightblind, Blackout, Rupture and Whiteout but can easily be read in isolation.

Dark Tides

4/12/2020

Philippa Gregory: Simon & Schuster Australia $32.99

TWENTY-ONE years have elapsed since Alinor Reekie and her teenage daughter Alys left Foulmire in a hurry – both pregnant and both deeply in disgrace.
Alinor has never fully recovered from her very public near-drowning as a suspected witch at the hands of Foulmire’s elders. Plagued by poor health, in 1670 she is a frail impersonation of the woman she was during her time as a healer and midwife on the south coast of England.
Now the pair support themselves as wharfingers: mistresses of a ramshackle little warehouse on the River Thames on the eastern fringe of London. Their clients are the second-tier traders whose goods aren’t required to go directly to the government wharves closer to the city centre for official customs inspection.
Alinor’s son Rob has been working as a doctor in Venice and her brother Ned – the one-time ferrymaster at Foulmire – is making a fresh life for himself as a New World settler, having been forced to flee their hamlet after the king he had opposed was restored to the throne and embarked on a purge of all known adversaries.
Suddenly an inordinately attractive young Venetian woman arrives by ship in Southwark claiming to be Rob’s widow Livia, the Nobildonna da Ricci. Her husband, she says, has drowned in a lagoon in Venice, leaving her all alone with their newborn baby to raise. Her only remaining family are Alinor, Alys and Alys’s adult twins.
When the vivacious Livia crosses paths with a man from Alinor’s past, the aristocratic landholder Sir James Avery, her prospects start to look brighter – but her desires are the polar opposite of her inlaws’ wishes.
Dark Tides is the sequel to Tidelands, the novel that introduced the Reekies and James Avery (then a Catholic priest travelling under the assumed name ‘Summers’) during King Charles’ exile on the Isle of Wight.

Invisible Touch

27/11/2020

Christoffer Petersen: Aarluuk Press $6.99 ebook

WITH the nightmarish killing sprees of the previous Christmas and New Year now behind her, Police Commissioner Petra ‘Piitalaat’ Jensen is looking forward to spending this festive season unwinding quietly at home in Nuuk.
In the year 2043 Petra’s Greenland is finally independent of Denmark thanks to the successful referendum of almost 12 months earlier and starting to make its own way in the world. Nuuk is a peaceful, well-balanced, multicultural city with its distinct Dutch, Chinese and US quarters living in harmony to forge a prosperous and progressive future for the country.
There’s cause for much celebration for members of the Greenlandic police in particular, operating for the first time as a fully self-determining force answerable to no-one beyond its own borders.
Petra’s assistant Aron is recovering from injuries suffered in the course of intercepting a former colleague bent on disrupting Greenland’s self-government vote and Petra is once more contemplating the possibility of taking early retirement. Since the death of her long-time partner Constable David Maratse she hasn’t had her usual passion for enforcing the law. A low-key December is exactly what she needs as she weighs up her options.
Someone has other plans, however. Someone – it will be up to Petra’s officers to discover who – sees Advent not as a time of preparation, anticipation and relaxation but as an opportunity to settle old scores.
As the long dark nights envelop Nuuk, suddenly the run-up to Christmas starts to seem eerily familiar for Petra and her team.
Invisible Touch is the third in Christoffer Petersen’s series of Dark Advent literary ‘calendars’: stories written in distinct parts designed to be enjoyed one chapter at a time over in this case the first 24 days of December, allowing the reader to experience the action as it unfolds in Nuuk in real time.

City of Spies

20/11/2020

Mara Timon: Zaffre $29.99

NATHALIE Lafontaine’s luck has just run out. A neighbour in Paris, offended by her rebuffing of his unwanted advances, has made a complaint against her to the occupying Germans and now she is being hunted by the dreaded Gestapo.
After a desperate flight south through the countryside she is fortunate to escape onto a fishing boat that delivers her to Spain. There she is received by the British Consul-General in Madrid as Elizabeth de Mornay, codename ‘Cécile’, a highly trained member of the Special Operations Executive who has been working behind enemy lines in France.
Rather than send her home to London, however, her superiors assign Elizabeth yet another alias and divert her to theoretically neutral Portugal. The Portuguese ruler, António de Oliveira Salazar, is maintaining a delicate balancing act, welcoming refugees from both sides of the war and maintaining regular contact with the Allied countries while hedging his bets by turning a blind eye to Axis actions within his own border.
In Lisbon Elizabeth emerges with a new identity: that of Solange Verin, a French widow in need of safe shelter far from the dangers of the Nazi occupation of her homeland. Her brief is to meld into the expat German community – a relatively easy assignment for an attractive 20-something woman guaranteed to catch the attention of any number of German intelligence officers.
Lisbon, she quickly finds, is a city in which watching one’s neighbours is an everyday obsession. People appear – and, all too often, disappear – suddenly and without explanation.
Everywhere she goes brunette Solange is being observed – so much so that with the help of a wig she disguises herself as blonde Veronica Sinclair on occasion in order to evade the bufos who constantly monitor her movements on behalf of various parties, some more or less friendly, some definitely not.
Under such close scrutiny, can she actually achieve anything worthwhile?

Deadly Waters

13/11/2020

Dot Hutchison: Amazon Publishing $29.99

DEATH by alligator is rare in Florida – so rare that when a college student’s mauled remains are discovered decomposing in a lake in the centre of Gainesville, the news creates a tidal wave of panic on the local university campus.
At first it is assumed to have been a case of misadventure: the result of stumbling drunkenly off the footpath into dangerous territory at the height of the reptiles’ breeding season.
When a second young man dies in similar circumstances, however, and then two more, it starts to look like more than simple bad luck. Is a pattern emerging and, if so, what is the link between the victims?
Flatmates Rebecca, Ellie, Delia, Hafsah, Susanna, Keiko and Luz share accommodation but are decidedly individual in character.
Conscientious Rebecca is a journalism major, intent on making a career for herself reporting on legal issues.
Ellie, on the other hand, seems to be far more focused on self-destruction. Under-age drinking and brawling in bars are her two priorities – that and kneeing her male counterparts in the groin. Ellie has zero tolerance for the type of brazen, boorish misbehaviour that has left dozens – perhaps hundreds – of girls in Gainesville emotionally and physically scarred by sexual assault. The more Ellie stands up for the sisterhood, the more worried her friends become that one day soon she will destroy not only someone else’s life but also her own.
Detective Patrick Corby – ‘Det Corby’ to the group – is an ever-present knight-in-shining-armour – or shining police department badge in this case: a trustworthy law enforcer whose steady presence and gentlemanly manners ensure they have a safe escort home at night and a level head to turn to for support and advice as the tally of attacks by both male students and alligators continues to build.

The Survivors

6/11/2020

Jane Harper: Macmillan Australia $32.99

KIERAN Elliott’s return to Evelyn Bay is confronting, challenging and confusing.
After years of living happily in Sydney – most recently with his girlfriend Mia and their baby daughter Audrey – Kieran is back in Tasmania to help his mother finish packing up a lifetime’s worth of everything that made the family’s house a home. Kieran’s father has advanced dementia and has been booked into a care facility, leaving Verity to prepare to face the future on her own.
Kieran’s reality is vastly different from that of his former schoolmates, almost all of whom have stayed in the area and feel absolutely no desire to leave. For most, little has changed in the time he’s spent away.
His best mate from childhood, Ash, is now dating their old friend Olivia, and the same neighbours stand chatting in the main street and cooing over “the Elliott boy’s” little Audrey.
The one exception is a new arrival, Bronte: a fine-art university student from Canberra who’s spending the holidays adding to her savings by working as a waitress in the bistro of the local pub. Bronte shares a cottage with Olivia – or, at least, she did.
Now her body has been found on the beach.
Even more distressingly, it appears she didn’t drown. Rather, the police are investigating an assumed homicide.
As their questioning escalates the case opens up wounds that are far from healed, causing Kieran, Ash and Olivia to revisit a hot and stormy summer an eternity ago that was both the best and the worst for all three then-teenagers and whose events have left permanent scars on the small community.
Regrets are replayed and recriminations swirl.
As more and more confidences are shattered, the group members starts to realise that their beliefs about the darkest period of their lives are not at all accurate.

The Evening and the Morning

2/10/2020

Ken Follett: Macmillan $17.99 ebook

THERE’S a first time for everything, so the saying goes – and in the case of unfortunate Combe, the ‘first’ this season is its first Viking attack.
Although a terror of pillaging Norsemen has hung over the settlements of western England for many years, never before has Combe been targeted. Finally, however, in mid 997 the village’s luck runs out.
At 17 Edgar is already a fully grown man, the youngest of three brothers apprenticed to their master-boatbuilder father.
When the marauders arrive, he is away from his parents’ home, waiting desperately at dawn on the far shore of the bay for his beloved Sungifu to join him. Edgar has constructed a sturdy wooden vessel to carry the young couple away together and can already imagine the happiness they will soon share. Today’s elopement will be the start of a new life for them both.
On the opposite side of the English Channel, the high-spirited Lady Ragnhild is ensconced safely inside Count Hubert and Countess Ginnilaug’s castle at Cherbourg.
Themselves the descendants of Viking conquerors, the Norman nobles are proud of their Norse heritage and feel no need to turn away the longships that visit their port en route to rich, undefended pastures nearby.
They are on friendly terms with the English at the same time and often welcome delegations led by clergymen.
As the fallout from the Viking plundering of Combe begins to solidify, the ruling families of the two communities are drawn closer together.
Wilwulf, ealdorman of Shiring, needs help. His coastline is being ravaged and Combe’s destruction has left its mark on his finances.
Gaining the co-operation of Cherbourg could be an important step towards stemming the flow of aggressors from the north but in order to forge an alliance he must be able to offer something to the Normans in return.

Winter Magic: A Bitter Creek Novella

25/9/2020

Joan Johnston: Joan Mertens Johnston Inc $4.13 Kindle ebook

A BATTERED woman. A fatherless child. A man with features mutilated years earlier by the jaws of a grizzly bear.
It’s an unconventional combination, yet these disparate characters find themselves forced to wait out a blizzard together after cattle rancher Mike Sullivan finds a vehicle broken down on the roadside near Whitefish in north-western Montana. Inside the rusty old pickup truck Mike discovers Joanne Henderson and her daughter Daisy, a sweet-natured, kitten-loving four-year-old.
In the rural high country, with snowdrifts rising ominously Mike’s only option is to open his home to the pair as shelter until the storm has passed and it is safe for them to continue their journey.
But welcoming two strangers into his cabin is an uncomfortable experience for the unmarried former navy SEAL whose near-fatal mauling has left him with the type of hideous scarring that startles children and makes adults flinch. Mike has had little social interaction since suffering his run-in with the bear and is pitifully awkward in the presence of his unintended house guests.
Joanne is exquisitely attractive: small, delicate, dainty and blonde. Pragmatist Mike knows himself to be hulking, shaggy, deformed. Any attraction he might feel towards this bruised and broken young mother is futile.
Yet, as brief as their time under the same roof is destined to be, it is nevertheless a cosy taste of domestic bliss that Mike can’t help but relish. If only his face and his confidence weren’t so terribly disfigured perhaps this could be his reality.
Winter Magic is the fifth release in the ‘King’s Brats’ series of Bitter Creek stories, adding to the Grayhawk family saga explored in Sinful, Shameless, Surrender and Sullivan’s Promise.
For Southern Hemisphere readers celebrating Christmas in July it is a perfectly themed shot of escapism into a world of generosity, acceptance and unlikely love.

One To Watch

18/9/2020

Kate Stayman-London: Hachette Australia $29.99

LOVE comes in all shapes and sizes – or does it? Certainly not in the highly unrealistic world of ‘reality’ TV, where contenders on the top-rating Main Squeeze bear absolutely no resemblance to LA-based fashionista Bea Schumacher and her social media followers.
As 25 single women or men vie on screen for the attention of a potential husband or wife, Bea is frustrated to see that season after season the line-up is all but identical: tall, swimsuit-sculpted, white.
When a series of tequila-fuelled comments catches the eye of the Main Squeeze production team, the studio decides to turn the program on its head by introducing its first ever plus-sized romantic heroine. Can Bea be convinced to step into the role?
It’s horrible timing for the self-employed blogger, who has been in emotional freefall since her one-time best friend and love interest decided to ghost her.
Now, faced with having to choose a possible life partner in front of a national prime-time viewing audience, she is all but paralysed by self-doubt and indecision. Could any one of these so-called suitors truly be attracted to Bea or are they more likely merely going through the motions with a view to boosting their own public profiles?
Is chef Luc, professor Asher, farmer Wyatt or soccer coach Sam really Bea’s ideal match? All four men are physically perfect – and the reflection Bea sees in her mirror is not that of someone whose natural place is standing beside one of these god-like figures. After all, she reasons, there never has been a fat fairytale princess.
Will Bea’s lack of trust in the process derail this opportunity to find love?
Far from being a froth-and-bubbles glimpse into the world of The Bachelorette et al, One To Watch is a thought-provoking conversation starter that questions societal attitudes to weight, femininity and appetite.

Echoes of the Runes

4/9/2020

Christina Courtenay: Hachette Australia $22.99

CURVING possessively around the index finger of Mia Maddox’s right hand, the delicate serpent-head ring is exquisite. As an heirloom inherited from her late grandmother Elin it has special significance for British Museum conservator Mia.
The ring in the display case is equally impressive, if significantly bigger; in fact, the size disparity notwithstanding, it is all but identical. This one, however, is part of an exhibition of Viking-era jewellery in Stockholm, where Swedish-born Mia is spending a few hours before attending Gran’s funeral.
As she stares in astonishment at the thousand-year-old twin bands of gold, Mia is interrupted by a stranger who has also noted the similarity.
Archaeologist Haakon Berger’s head is swirling with questions. Is this Englishwoman wearing an unauthorised replica, or is it an unreported – and therefore stolen – piece of Norse heritage?
Inspired to try to trace the origins of Mia’s ring, the pair decide to embark on an excavation of her family’s land on the shore of Lake Mälaren, an area known for its rich seafarer roots.
The physical signs suggest this could have been the site of a settlement presided over by a chieftain: a man powerful enough to have raided kingdoms far afield in search of precious metals and human slaves.
Unbeknown to the research team, one such local jarl, Haukr Erlendrsson, did indeed set out a-viking from this waterfront stronghold, returning many weeks later with a valuable hostage among his spoils. As the sister of a high-ranking Welshman, Ceridwen – Ceri – was destined to spend winter in the Norse community before being ransomed by her people.
The further Mia and Haakon investigate, the more clues to Haukr and Ceri’s long-ago presence emerge from the soil.
But, as Mia becomes increasingly invested in uncovering the stories of these past generations, her life in London recedes in importance. Could her future lie in rural Sweden instead?

The Governess

28/8/2020

Wendy Holden: Welbeck $39.99

ONE minute Marion Crawford is turning down a marriage proposal from a long-time friend in Edinburgh and preparing to complete her final year of teacher training, the next she is being whisked by train to London as the newly appointed governess to the world’s most famous siblings: the ‘little princesses’ Elizabeth and Margaret Rose.
King George V and his formidable consort Mary occupy the English throne when Crawford is introduced to royal circles as a favour to her college principal in the summer of 1932. Recommended to ‘Bertie’ and Elizabeth, the Duke and Duchess of York, by relatives in Scotland, she agrees to work an initial four weeks’ trial as the sole tutor of six-year-old ‘Lilibet’ and toddler ‘Bud’.
One month becomes several, then those several transition into 1933. As the Yorks move between their weekday residence within walking distance of Buckingham Palace and their country home in Windsor, ‘Crawfie’ travels with them. Hers is far from the glamorous fairytale existence observers on the outside assume it to be, however, as she struggles to add a degree of normalcy to the girls’ cosseted lives.
An overflowing schedule of competing activities means classes are often abandoned without notice, leaving Crawford frustrated that educating the princesses seems to be the least of the family’s priorities. At this point Lilibet is, after all, merely the daughter of a second son and the niece of the dashing playboy who will be the British Empire’s next king; Margaret ranks even lower in intellectual importance. Deportment and grooming are essential attributes; an ability to read, write and reason is irrelevant.
A work of fiction with historical figures and events at its core, The Governess imagines Crawford’s 16-year career within the royal household in an era of political and social upheaval set against a backdrop of abdication, blanket bombing, betrayal and romance.

Dragon in the Snow

21/8/2020

Lexie Conyngham: The Kellas Cat Press £12.99

FEW things of note ever happen on quiet little Shapinsay, one of the lesser islands of the Orkney group off the north-eastern tip of Scotland, known for the quality of its sheep and little else.
This lack of genuine news doesn’t prevent Beinir, the community’s designated scribe, inundating Earl Thorfinn with detailed accounts of Shapinsay’s trivial comings and goings, however. As one of the few fully literate men in Orkney, Beinir is exceedingly proud of his ability to present handwritten parchment records to his master at the Norse stronghold on Birsay.
Now Beinir is about to have something of true interest occur in his otherwise-routine life: Thorfinn has despatched the widow Sigrid, a renowned wool-worker, to Shapinsay on a reconnaissance mission. Her assignment is to weigh up whether she can see herself settling there as Beinir’s wife.
The timing of Sigrid’s arrival is unfortunate: no sooner has she unpacked in her temporary residence than a neighbour’s longhouse catches alight.
Fire is one of the worst things that can happen to an 11th-century dwelling, constructed from timber clad with strips of turf and fitted out with wooden furniture, furs and straw. So careful are householders in Orkney that a single blaze is unusual; that a second hut should burn less than 24 hours later is unthinkable.
And as two bodies are being pulled from the smouldering remains, assuming themselves to be under attack, the surviving residents do not hesitate to trigger the signal beacon that summons help from Birsay – help in this instance in the form of Sigrid’s childhood friend Ketil, newly engaged without his consent to Thorfinn’s only daughter, Asgerdr, and thankful for the hastily forced separation.
What – or who – could be responsible for such a rash of ill-luck in a small out-of-the-way hamlet where the half-dozen households are all closely inter-linked?

You Deserve Each Other

7/8/2020

Sarah Hogle: Piatkus $29.99

NAOMI Westfield has an idyllic life – or, rather, she will have just a few short months from now when her wedding day finally dawns. To the outside world, Naomi is blissfully happy.
Nicholas Rose is the man of any sane woman’s dreams: a handsome, caring, career-focused dentist earning a generous income and with an open, welcoming family behind him.
By contrast, Naomi’s own parents are distant – both physically and emotionally – and she has little in common with her siblings.
However, appearances can be dangerously deceptive – particularly in the case of this engaged couple as they’re shepherded towards mother Rose’s vision of ever-after togetherness.
Naomi and Nicholas are in fact dreading marriage yet neither is willing to be the one who has to bear the shame of breaking their engagement. Instead they’re locked in the ultimate game of intimacy chicken, each daring the other to be the first to blink and walk away from an impending avalanche of lifelong disaster.
So intent are they on maintaining the façade that they’re willing to go to almost any lengths to conceal their true fears. After all, in this age of social media obsession, appearing to have the ideal bond in public is far more important than actually feeling respected, supported and understood in private – isn’t it?
“Knowing that our relationship looks enviable from the outside is the only thing we’ve got going for us,” Naomi admits to herself.
Unwilling to confide in her friends and workmates and seek their advice, she begins finding convert ways to undermine Nicholas’ plans for their future – ways that to the outside world seem increasingly off-balance and bizarre. The result for onlookers is hilarious and thought-provoking.
Will one or other of the engagees realise their mistake and call off the wedding before it’s too late or will they simply continue freewheeling towards marital misery?

Darkness Falls

3/7/2020

David Mark: Amazon £2.99 Kindle e-book

SIMPLE, straightforward everyday murder – a shooting, a knifing, a strangulation – is one thing; the macabre, repellent, debauched torture and dismemberment of bride-to-be Ella Butterworth is quite another.
A decade into his police career Sergeant Aector McAvoy is shell-shocked by the scene he uncovers in a nondescript flat in suburban Hull.
Once the offshore fishing capital of the world, Hull in early 2012 is a city in decay, ravaged by unemployment, disinterest and organised crime.
The abduction and subsequent discovery of Ella is merely the latest in a seemingly endless parade of atrocities. This time, however, the offender has been caught.
For once, opinion in Hull is undivided: the public, the media and the law agree almost to a person that Shane Cadbury – ‘The Chocolate Boy’ – is the despicable pervert who killed this beautiful young woman.
Or is he? McAvoy, as a lone dissenting voice, is not entirely sure.
As the officer whose investigation uncovered the corpse in Cadbury’s bedroom, McAvoy struggles to blot out the heinous scene he witnessed.
Yet, deep within himself he is uneasy. It is undeniable that the lumbering, intellectually awkward social misfit was in possession of the body, but is it possible that by the time he first crossed paths with Ella she was already dead?
Complicating matters, this is not the only case in front of McAvoy and his colleagues.
Press Association journalist Owen Lee could not have chosen a worse time to die. Having driven to a carpark at the northern end of the Humber Bridge, intent on diving into the murky, tempestuous estuary, Lee blunders into the midst of a gangland assassination. In a Sliding Doors moment, an instinctive desperation supplants despair and he reacts without thinking.
Now, his unintended survival is the trigger for a growing trail of missteps that explodes when professional duty draws him into Cadbury’s courtroom.

Camino Winds

19/6/2020

John Grisham: Hodder & Staughton $32.99

RARELY does John Grisham revisit a set of characters, regardless of how successful that cast’s original exploits have been. In Camino Winds, Grisham makes an exception.
The fact readers are served up a second helping of Mercer Mann and Bruce Cable is a gift in itself; that their reinvigorated storyline takes an entirely new direction makes this sequel an intriguing contrast to the original novel, Camino Island, and at the same time a release that deserves to stand independently on merit.
In this instalment bookstore owner Cable is the key to the plot while Mann takes a sideways step into a peripheral role.
Hurricane Leo has just carved its way across Camino, twisting, churning and inflicting on the pretty seaside village of Santa Rosa catastrophic destruction and at least one death.
When Cable is called to the property of lawyer-turned-novelist Nelson Kerr to identify a battered body, it seems his friend has become an unwitting victim of the storm’s ferocity.
However, prompted by local author Bob Cobb and college student Nick Sutton, Cable soon starts to question whether the fatal injuries were indeed inflicted by flying debris. Could at least three separate blows to the head really have been caused by windborne branches? Surely the odds of this having happened must be extraordinarily low, so what – or who – actually did kill Kerr?
In the chaotic aftermath of Leo, Cable, Sutton and Cobb start to examine the circumstances surrounding his demise and workshop credible explanations.
Kerr – a former FBI whistleblower known for focusing on corporate wrongdoing – had just put the final touches to his next best-seller-in-waiting so could its imminent publication have spooked someone into wanting him silenced? In theory nobody has yet seen this freshly completed manuscript and so far the police have not considered it worth investigating. It could well be the motive they’ve been lacking, however.

The Mist

5/6/2020

Ragnar Jónasson: Penguin $12.99 Kindle e-book

CHRISTMAS in Iceland is traditionally a season for giving new-release novels as presents, reading by candlelight and dining on smoked local lamb. It is not a season for finding uninvited visitors on one’s snow-covered doorstep.
When an unfamiliar man arrives at Erla and Einar Einarsson’s farm near Höfn in the east of the country, the couple feel obliged to offer him shelter. A blizzard is brewing and he’s on foot, having lost his way while out shooting ptarmigan with friends from Reykjavík – or so he says. His story is weak, however: he’s not carrying a gun, after all, and he claims not to have noticed their daughter Anna’s house as he approached the Einarsson property even though he followed the main road directly past it.
At the western extremity of the island, Hulda Hermannsdóttir is struggling to corral her own family into celebrating appropriately this year.
Husband Jón refuses to take teenager Dimma’s withdrawn, reclusive behaviour seriously, despite Hulda demanding that they consult a psychologist. It’s just typical adolescence, Jón insists. They’re yet to choose and decorate a Christmas tree, the last few gifts still haven’t been bought and the prospect of having her mother visit is gnawing at Hulda. What should be a happy, peaceful period is anything but.
Away from her chaotic homelife, a day in the office is equally excruciating for police officer Hulda. A young woman has been missing for months and her parents are frantic. Returning a phonecall from the girl’s family is right at the top of Hulda’s to-do list.
The third and final instalment in Jónasson’s Hidden Iceland series (also known as ‘the Hulda triology’), The Mist precedes both The Darkness and The Island chronologically in the saga of Hulda and her family so elaborates on situations only hinted at in the first two releases.

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