We’re packing as many books as we can into our suitcase …

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… no work and plenty of time to read. Bliss.

Whether she’s writing romantic suspense as Nora Roberts or about Detective Eve Dallas in the Death series under the pseudonym JD Robb, we’re massive fans. This time it’s Dallas and hunky billionaire husband Roarke, in Shadows in Death. What starts off as a pleasant evening at the theatre ends, as it so often does for this couple, in murder. But it’s not the body of the young woman in Washington Square Park that bothers Roarke as much as the shadow from his past he sees in the crowd. Dallas is used to being the hunter, but in this thriller, the tables are turned and sees her and her team heading to Roarke’s home town in Ireland to stop the killer before he gets too close. So enjoyable, the perfect holiday read. • Karen Rose was introduced to suspense and horror at the tender age of eight when she accidentally read Poe’s The Pit and The Pendulum and was afraid to go to sleep for years. She now enjoys writing books that make other people afraid to go to sleep. Books like Say No More – book two in the Sacramento series (if you haven’t already, first read Say You’re Sorry). With crime, cults, and obsession, it’s a complete page-turner … and good luck getting to sleep!

 

Oh gosh. Get the tissues out. When a happily married young mum is told she doesn’t have much longer to live, she starts to write her husband a handbook … with notes about how to raise their wild, loving son, and what to give their daughter for her 18th birthday. Filled with memories of their lives, and a secret she saves for the last page, For When I’m Gone is Rebecca Ley’s debut novel and it’s a complete heartbreaker. •Things aren’t going fabulously for Jane Tennison in Lynda La Plante’s Blunt Force. Unceremoniously kicked off the adrenalin-fuelled Flying Squad, she’s now based in a small police station in London’s affluent Knightsbridge, where there’s a little petty crime but not much else. Then the discovery of the most brutal murder she’s ever seen has her working a proper case again … a big time theatrical agent is found viciously beaten to death, his body dismembered and disembowelled. Tennison, with old friend DS Spencer, explores the world of show business to find the killer. La Plante’s not known as the queen of crime drama for nothing!

 

 

After the murder of her parents, 10-year-old Sara Carter – nicknamed at the time ‘the Angel of Death’ – spent eight years in a children’s secure unit. Now, 21 years later, a documentary team tracks down her older sister, who breaks two decades of silence with a headline-grabbing interview … one that forces the sisters, along with a journalist who was a friend of the girls when they were young, to confront what really happened that night. Childhood crimes, dark secrets, twists to surprise, When I Was Ten is a chilling, creepy read by Fiona Cummins. • John Grisham first introduced readers to Jake Brigance in A Time to Kill in 1998, then he popped up again in Sycamore Row. Now he’s starring for a third time in A Time for Mercy. Set in 1990, Jake has to decide whether to take on the case of a teenage boy charged with the murder of his mum’s police officer boyfriend. A seemingly impossible case to win … loads of court scenes as always, exactly what fans of legal fiction, and Grisham, love.

 

One message, sent to every one of 158 names. James Chiltern boards a sleeper train with a couple of pork pies, half a dozen beers and a packet of chocolate digestives. Oh … and a plan to end his life. He sends out his farewell to all his phone contacts – ex-best friends, his mum, the woman who broke his heart. Loneliness, kindness, suicide, mental health … Mark Watson’s Contacts is moving and serious, hugely funny and heartbreaking and so much more … it’s just lovely. • Norway’s National Criminal Investigation Service, Kripos, reports that five people are reported missing in that country every day. The outcome is always suicide, an accident, abduction, or they simply left. In Heine Bakkeid’s Scatter Her Ashes, a former police officer investigates the disappearance of two schoolgirls for a best-selling crime writer, but discovers her interest in the case is not, as claimed, research for her latest novel. A creepy thriller.

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