BookTalk
Book Talk
with Smiffs book & card store, Nerja
Edited by Lee Child, Match
Up (p) features 22 of the
world’s top thriller authors,
who have paired up to write
11 short stories featuring
their best-loved characters.
Find out what happens when
Lee Child’s Jack Reacher
meets Kathy Reichs’
Temperance Brennan, or
how Val McDermid’s Tony
Hill and Peter James’ Roy
Grace end up working
together on a very unusual
case. These are just some of
the never-before-seen
pairings included in ‘Match
Up’.
Devil (p), by Ian Rankin;
Come Sundown (l), by Nora
Roberts; The Ministry Of
Utmost Happiness (l), by
Arundhati Roy; The
Tobacconist (p), by Robert
Seethaler; Phone (l), by Will
Self; The Boneyard (p), by
Mark Sennen; Beneath The
Surface (p), by Jo Spain;
Persons Unknown (l), by
Susie Steiner; and The Boy
Who Saw (l), by Simon
Toyne.
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
meets The Thorn Birds in
The Woolgrower’s
Companion (l), Joy Rhoades’
gripping wartime story set in the Australian Bush. The story is
inspired by the era of her grandmother, a fifth-generation
sheep farmer and the family’s keeper of stories, who saw
Italian prisoners of war
placed on the family farm
during World War II to
support the key wool
growing industry.
It leads off our latest Hotlist of titles, some entirely new, others
moving into small paperback format for the first time or being
reissued, sometimes after a long time out of print. All are due
for publication on various dates this month and in early July.
The Hotlist helps readers to plan and budget for book
ordering.
Speaking of Lee Child, No Middle Name (l), is the complete
collected Jack Reacher stories. A brand-new novella, Too Much
Time, is included, as are those previously published only in
eBook form.
The Sunshine Sisters (l) is a
moving story of love, loss
and family, by Jane Green,
the bestselling author of
Falling. It was never easy
being one of Ronni
Sunshine’s daughters.
Publicly, she is the
glamorous, successful,
dramatic Hollywood actress.
Privately, she is self-
absorbed, angry, and a
disinterested, narcissistic
mother. Now in her
seventies, Ronni has had strange symptoms for a while, but has
refused to believe her diagnosis: she has ALS, a degenerative
motor neuron disease. There is no cure. Her three adult
daughters are largely
estranged, both for her, and
each other. But Ronnie is
adamant that they must
come home and help her
take her own life.
John Grisham’s latest novel,
Camino Island (l), features
the most daring and
devastating heist in literary
history, which targets a high
security vault. Some of the
most valuable books in the
world, and the gang of
thieves who took them, have
vanished without trace.
Dealing in stolen books is a
dark business, which puts
Bruce Kable right on the
FBI’s Rare Asset Recovery
Unit’s watch list. A struggling
writer burdened by debts,
Mercer Mann is being made
an offer to return to Camino
Island, to write her novel and
get close to a certain infamous bookseller and his interesting
collection of manuscripts.
The Wedding Promise (p), by
Emma Hannigan, centres
around a new start in
beautiful Spain offered to a
grieving widow and her
family. Restoring a Spanish
villa brings Shelly back to the
place she and her husband
once loved. But as plans to
transform the villa into a
romantic wedding venue take
shape, she discovers her
Other thrillers worth a look include: The Fourth Monkey (l), by
JD Barker; Love Like Blood (l), by Mark Billingham; Prague
Nights (l), by Benjamin Black; Defectors (l), by Joseph Kanon;
Betrayal (p), by Martina Cole; The River At Night (p), by Erica
Ferencik; Perfect Prey (p), by Helen Fields; Rooted In Evil (l),
by Ann Granger; Sleep Baby Sleep (l), by David Hewson; Fight
Or Die (p), a thriller set in Spain by James Hilton; Offline (p),
more mayhem in Norway from Anne Holt; Aurore (l), by
Graham Hurley; The Allegations (p), by Mark Lawson; Babylon
Idol (p), by Scott Mariani; Murder Games (l), by James
Patterson; Fierce Kingdom (l), by Gin Phillips; Rather Be The
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