“A book is a gift you can open again and again.”
A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee
Desperate for a fresh start after the rigours of WW1 and the death of his wife from influenza, Captain Sam Wyndham arrives in India in 1919 to take up an important post in Calcutta’s police force.
He is soon called to the scene of a horrifying murder. The victim was a senior official and a note in his mouth warns the British to leave India. With the stability of the Empire under threat, Wyndham and Sergeant “Surrender-not” Banerjee must solve the case quickly. But there are some who will do anything to stop them.
A fast-moving, highly entertaining murder mystery, that convincingly evokes Calcutta and the Indian Raj at the time.
The first in a series of exceptional historical crime novels.
I Survived by Victoria Cilliers
Subtitled: I married a charming man. Then he tried to kill me. A true story.
In 2015, Emile Cilliers was jailed for life for the attempted murder of his wife, a story that made headline news partly because of his method: tampering with his wife’s parachute. Now in her memoir, Victoria tells of her toxic marriage, murderous husband and miraculous survival, showing that reality can be as dramatic and gripping as fiction. Paperback, Macmillan, £8.99
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
“At once a murder mystery, a coming -of-age narrative and a celebration of nature”. New York Times
For years, rumours of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast, so in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediatedly suspect the so-called Marsh Girl, Kya Clark. However, Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand, but when two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life. Paperback, LittleBrown, £8.99