Kelly Ramage pops out to meet a friend on a bitterly cold night – and never comes back. When she’s found murdered in what looks like a sex game gone horribly wrong, detectives believe finding the killer won’t take long. PJ Tracy (pseudonym for the mother-and-daughter team of PJ and Traci Lambrecht) leads readers of Ice Cold Heart on a tantalising trail as the search for Kelly’s sinister lover begins to look like the search for a serial killer – who could kill again. Michael Joseph, R290.
Baby Zephany Nurse hit the headlines when she was kidnapped from beside her mothers hospital bed more than 20 years ago. She hit the headlines again when, by pure chance, her birth parents discovered she’d been living just a short distance away. Now, in Zephany, written by Joanne Jowell, Miché Solomon tells the often harrowing story of the past four years and her struggles to come to terms with living with two sets of parents – those who brought her up, who love her and whom she loves and her birth parents who are strangers. Adding to the trauma is the fact that the woman she believed was her mother, ‘who was there for me every day’ was jailed for the kidnapping. Fortunately, the man she calls Daddy, Michael Solomon, has never wavered in his love and support, which has hugely helped Miché courageously continue to forge ahead in her efforts to make a success of her life. Tafelberg, R260.
Christmas is coming. But for Women’s Murder Club, crime never stops. In James Patterson and Maxine Paetro’s 19th Christmas, Sergeant Lindsay Boxer is looking forward to spending time with her family over the holidays. But then she receives a tip-off that the biggest heist ever to hit San Francisco is being planned for Christmas Day, and the architect of the ambitious attack unleashes chaos across the city, laying traps and false alarms to distract Lindsay and the SFPD from his ultimate goal. Penguin, R290.
Dear Mr Wrexham, I know you don’t know me but please, please, please, you have to help me. Ruth Ware’s The Turn of the Key opens with a young woman begging a barrister for help. Her name is Rowan, and she’s the nanny in the Elincourt case. And, she says, ‘I didn’t kill that child’. A dream job of live-in nanny with a staggeringly generous salary and a picture-perfect family turns into a nightmare for Rowan, one which ends with a child dead and her in a cell awaiting trial for murder. A murder she swears she’s not responsible for. Described as a gripping modern-day haunted house thriller, this is one you shouldn’t read when you’re at home alone! Harvill Secker, R290
In her new home, Brodie’s Watch, Ava thinks she’s found the perfect place to hide from a past she’s ashamed of. But in The Shape of Night it’s not long before Ava begins to suspect she’s not alone in this house full of secrets. If she’s wrong, then maybe she’s losing her mind. Tess Gerritsen cranks up the suspense … it’s all haunted houses and handsome ghosts and (phantom) sex. Bantam Press, R290.
