Karin Slaughter is one of the world's most popular and acclaimed storytellers. Published in 120 countries with more than 35 million copies sold across the globe, her nineteen novels include the Grant County and Will Trent books, as well as the Edgar-nominated Cop Town and the instant New 
York Times bestselling novels Pretty Girls, The Good Daughter, and Pieces of Her. 
 
Slaughter is the founder of the Save the Libraries project-a nonprofit organisation established to support libraries and library programming. 
 
For more information visit KarinSlaughter.com 
AuthorKarinSlaughter 
@SlaughterKarin

Karin Slaughter

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David Loyn

Afghanistan has been a strategic prize for more than 200 years. Foreign invaders have continually fought across its beautiful and inhospitable terrain, in conflicts variously ruthless, misguided and bloody. A century ago, the common sneer about how British soldiers treated Afghan tribesmen was that they would 'butcher' them, then 'bolt'. 
 
Butcher and Bolt recounts this violent history, beginning with the very first British mission - an encounter that ushered in two centuries of conflict littered with misunderstandings and broken promises, in which the British, the Russians and later the Americans repeatedly underestimated the ability of the Afghans and the power of the Frontier tribes. 
 
In a new final chapter that brings the book right up to date, David Loyn draws on the unique access he has had to Afghanistan over the past two decades to address the emerging threat of the Pakistani Taliban and the challenges that face those now fighting on the most dangerous frontier in the world.

Butcher and Bolt

Jasmin Darznik

'With this one word, Lili had finally understood many things: that no matter what she promised or sacrificed or gave, she would always be 'broken' to her daughter.' 
 
When Jasmin Darznik finds a photo among her father's possessions shortly after his death, she recognises the child in the veil and bride's clothes as her mother, Lili, but the groom is unfamiliar. 
 
Who had her mother married all those years before? A few months later Lili sends Jasmin ten cassette tapes which reveal the secret history of their family: the true story of the abusive man she married, and the daughter she was forced to leave behind. 
 
This is an unforgettable story of secrets, betrayal and exile, and of an unshakeable mother-daughter bond.

The Good Daughter

My Mother's Hidden Life

Tessa McWatt

‘I think I have found the way to talk to her in the present. The past takes too much language.’ 
 
So much is taken for granted in a long marriage, so much is relied upon, resented, and never spoken of. When Anna begins to mangle her sentences as a result of a brain aneurysm that could kill her at any moment, her husband Mike uses his talent as a graphic artist to draw his way closer to his wife. Trying to communicate with her, and himself too, through signs and symbols, he wants to show his wife that she has been his entire universe. But Mike is deeply flawed, hovering on the knife-edge of a confession, he selfishly looks to the woman he loves for absolution. Not knowing how much time they have left together and incoherent with guilt, will he finally confess all the ways in which he rebelled against her power over him, the way he betrayed her?

Vital Signs

Clemantine Wamariya

Elizabeth Weil

A riveting story of dislocation, survival, and the power of stories to break or save us 
 
When Clemantine Wamariya was six years old, her world was torn apart. She didn't know why her parents began talking in whispers, or why her neighbours started disappearing, or why she could hear distant thunder even when the skies were clear. 
 
As the Rwandan civil war raged, Clemantine and her sister Claire were forced to flee their home. They ran for hours, then walked for days, not towards anything, just away. they sought refuge where they could find it, and escaped when refuge became imprisonment. Together, they experienced the best and the worst of humanity. After spending six years seeking refuge in eight different countries, Clemantine and Claire were granted refugee status in America and began a new journey. 
 
Honest, life-affirming and searingly profound, this is the story of a girl's struggle to remake her life and create new stories - without forgetting the old ones. 
____________________________________ 
'Extraordinary and heartrending. Wamariya is as fiercely talented as she is courageous' JUNOT DIAZ, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao 
 
'Brilliant ... has captivated me for a couple of years' SELMA BLAIR

The Girl Who Smiled Beads

Douglas Coupland

A real-time five-hour story set in an airport cocktail lounge during a global disaster. Five disparate people are trapped inside: Karen, a single mother waiting for her online date; Rick, the down-on-his-luck airport lounge bartender; Luke, a pastor on the run; Rachel, a cool Hitchcock blonde incapable of true human contact; and finally a mysterious voice known as Player One. Slowly, each reveals the truth about themselves while the world as they know it comes to an end. 
 
In the tradition of Kurt Vonnegut and J.G. Ballard, Coupland explores the modern crises of time, human identity, society, religion and the afterlife. The book asks as many questions as it answers and readers will leave the story with no doubt that we are in a new phase of existence as a species - and that there is no turning back.

Player One

Haley Tanner

Funny, heartbreaking, rich and wise, this is a story with the power to cast a spell all of its own. 
 
Vaclav and Lena seem destined for each other. They first meet as children at their English class in Brooklyn. Vaclav dreams of becoming a famous magician with Lena as his lovely assistant. But then Lena disappears; it seems that life can play cruel tricks too. Vaclav says goodnight to Lena every night for seven years to keep her safe, and then discovers why she was taken from him. Is their connection strong enough to survive the truth, or is happily ever after only an illusion?

The Adventures of Vaclav the Magnificent and his lovely assistant Lena

Amy Waldman

A jury gathers in Manhattan to select a memorial for the victims of a devastating terrorist attack. Their fraught deliberations complete, the jurors open the envelope containing the anonymous winner's name – and discover he is an American Muslim. Instantly they are cast into roiling debate about the claims of grief, the ambiguities of art, and the meaning of Islam. 
 
The memorial's designer is Mohammad Khan, an enigmatic, ambitious architect. His fiercest defender on the jury is its sole widow, the mediagenic Claire Burwell. But when the news of his selection leaks to the press, Claire finds herself under pressure from outraged family members and in collision with hungry journalists, wary activists, opportunistic politicians, fellow jurors, and Khan himself. All will bring the emotional weight of their own histories to bear on the urgent question of how to remember, and understand, a national tragedy.

The Submission

Sarah Ridgard

Desiree White was walking through the fields of winter wheat and oilseed rape when she saw it. 
 
She picked the newspaper bundle out of the ditch and took it to the phone box. 
 
Across the baby’s tiny body she could see a faint tattoo of Lady Di’s face where some of the newsprint had rubbed off. It was like finding a featherless bird fallen out of its nest. 
 
No-one had ever bothered much about Desiree but now everyone is interested in her, in what she saw, in who the parents might be and why they’d dump a baby. 
 
As years go by and everyone else moves on with their lives, Desiree feels stuck, unable to forget what she saw that day. But when she starts to make connections which bring the truth dangerously close to home, it seems that some secrets are best left alone.

Seldom Seen

Anna Quindlen

One night a young couple sneak onto the estate of wealthy Lydia Blessing and leave a box in the driveway. In the box is a baby and Skip Cuddy, the caretaker who finds her decides secretly to keep her. When Lydia Blessing discovers this she has choices to make, as she had many years before.

Blessings

Cara Hoffman

'A man can only take so much pretty walking back and forth in front of him.' 
 
When nineteen-year-old Wendy White disappears, the small town of Haeden, New York, is shaken to its core. The police are unable to trace the missing waitress; everyone assumes that she has run away. But, six months later, Wendy's tortured body is found in the nearby woods. She has only been dead for a matter of days. 
 
With no one willing to talk, the investigation slows to a halt. But local reporter Stacy Flynn and high school student Alice Piper have their own reasons for finding out what really happened. 
 
The truth behind Wendy's disappearance has a devastating effect on the town: what was once a rural idyll is now the backdrop to murder, violence and revenge.

So Much Pretty

Lauren Groff

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF FATES AND FURIES AND MATRIX 
 
'Everything a reader might have expected from this gifted writer, and more' Stephen King 
 
'Bold and beautiful' Lorrie Moore 
 
'Pleasurably surreal' Guardian 
 
'Will give you paper cuts from turning pages' Marie Claire 
 
Willie Upton returns to her ancestral home of Templeton, New York after a disastrous affair with her married archaeology professor. 
 
The same day, Willie discovers a hard truth about her long-lost father's identity and a prehistoric monster is discovered in the nearby Lake Glimmerglass, bringing frenzy to the quiet town and her life. 
 
As Willie investigates her family tree, dark secrets come to light, past and present are blurred and old mysteries are finally put to rest. The Monsters of Templeton is an extraordinary novel by literary virtuoso Lauren Groff. 
 
'A vivid tale of unearthing past truths, horrors and lies' Good Housekeeping

The Monsters of Templeton

Tim Pears

May 1944: High above the mountains of occupied Slovenia an aeroplane drops three British parachutists – brash MP Major Jack Farwell, radio operator Sid Dixon, and young academic Lieutenant Tom Freedman. 
 
Greeted upon arrival by a group of Partisans, the men are led off into the countryside. Despite the distant crackle of gunfire, the war feels a long way off for Tom. The Partisans, too, are not what he was expecting – courageous, kind, and alluring, especially Jovan, their commander, and the hauntingly beautiful Marija. 
 
As the enemy’s net begins to tighten, they find evidence of massacres, of a dark and terrible band of men pursuing them. As they stumble their way towards a final, tragic battle, so the relationships within the group begin to fray, with Tom finding himself forced to face up to his deepest, most secret desires.

In the Light of Morning

Ellen Gulden is a successful, young New York journalist. But when her mother, Kate, is diagnosed with cancer, she leaves her life in the city to return home and care for her. In the short time they have left, the relationship between mother and daughter - tender, awkward and revealing - deepens, and Ellen is forced to confront painful truths about her adored father. 
 
But in the weeks that follow Kate's death, events take a shocking and unexpected turn. Family emotions are laid bare as a new drama is played out, and overnight Ellen goes from devoted daughter to prime suspect, accused of the mercy killing of her 'one true thing'. 
 
One True Thing is the devastating story of a mother and daughter, of love and loss, and of shattering choices.

One True Thing

James Ellroy

Four of James Ellroy's most popular crime novels featuring the infamous Dudley Smith, which include: 'The Black Dahlia', 'The Big Nowhere', 'L.A. Confidential' and 'White Jazz'.

Los Angeles, 15th January 1947. A beautiful young woman walks into the night and meets a horrific destiny. 
 
Five days later, her tortured body is found drained of blood and cut in half. The newspapers call her 'The Black Dahlia'. For two cops, what begins as an investigation becomes a hellish journey that takes them to the core of the dead girl's twisted life. 
 
And soon professional curiosity spirals into obsession... 
__________ 
 
'A mesmerising study of the psycho-sexual obsession... extraordinarily well written' - The Times 
'The outstanding crime writer of his generation' - The Independent 
'A wonderful tale of ambition, insanity, passion and deceit' - Publishers Weekly

The Black Dahlia

The first book in the classic L.A. Quartet crime series

Barry Unsworth

For five hundred years a statue of the Madonna has watched over Venice. Now, dulled by time and pollution, she is prepared for restoration. As Simon Raikes immerses himself in the painstaking task of cleaning and repairing, he is inexorably drawn to the stories of violence and lust which have surrounded this stone virgin. 
 
Simon’s investigations lead him to Chiara Litsov, the wife of a renowned sculptor. A dangerous attraction develops between them and it appears inevitable that once again the stone virgin will bear witness to passion, betrayal and murder.

Stone Virgin

Hannah Pittard

Sixteen-year-old Nora Lindell is missing. And the neighbourhood boys she's left behind are caught forever in the heady current of her absence. 
 
As the days and years pile up, the mystery of her disappearance grows kaleidoscopically. A collection of rumours, divergent suspicions, and tantalising what-ifs, Nora Lindell's story is a shadowy projection of teenage lust, friendship, reverence, and regret, captured magically in the voice of the boys who still long for her. 
 
Far more eager to imagine Nora's fate than to scrutinise their own, the boys sleepwalk into an adulthood of jobs, marriages, families, homes and daughters of their own, all the while pining for a girl - and a life - that no longer exists, except in the imagination.

The Fates Will Find Their Way

Carys Bray

Clover Quinn was a surprise. She used to imagine she was the good kind, now she’s not sure. She’d like to ask Dad about it, but growing up in the saddest chapter of someone else’s story is difficult. She tries not to skate on the thin ice of his memories. 
 
Darren has done his best. He's studied his daughter like a seismologist on the lookout for waves and surrounded her with everything she might want - everything he can think of, at least - to be happy. 
 
What Clover wants is answers. This summer, she thinks she can find them in the second bedroom, which is full of her mother's belongings. Volume isn't important, what she is looking for is essence; the undiluted bits: a collection of things that will tell the full story of her mother, her father and who she is going to be. 
 
But what you find depends on what you're searching for.

The Museum of You

Alonso Cueto

Adrián Ormache, a high-flying lawyer with a beautiful wife and two daughters, leads a privileged and glamorous life in one of Lima’s wealthiest neighbourhoods. But when his mother dies, he discovers a letter amongst her possessions making shocking claims about her now long-dead husband, Adrián’s father – a commander in the army during the Peruvian Civil War of the 1980s. As well as being linked to atrocities committed against the ‘Shining Path’ guerrillas, it appears that he also kidnapped and kept a local girl, whose family now seeks retribution. 
 
Shocked out of his comfortable existence, Adrián becomes obsessed with finding the girl at the heart of the mystery, and sets out to face the harrowing realities of Peru’s recent past, and uncover the truth about his father.

The Blue Hour

Robert Goolrick

A stranger. A small town. The wife of the town's richest man. There’s no stopping what’s about to happen in this searing new novel from million copy bestseller, Robert Goolrick. For fans of The Help, Tigers in Red Weather and The Great Gatsby. 
 
It is the summer of 1948 when a handsome, charismatic stranger, Charlie Beale, back from war in Europe, shows up in the sleepy town of Brownsburg, Virginia. All he has with him are two suitcases: one contains a fine set of butcher knives; the other is full of money. Charlie should have turned around and walked back the other way, for what follows – the most passionate and tragic story of a forbidden love affair – will threaten to destroy everything and everyone in its path. 
 
Told through the eyes of Sam, a young boy in the town whose world is changed forever by the events of that single year, Heading Out to Wonderful is a suspenseful masterpiece, a haunting, heart-stopping novel of obsession and love gone terribly wrong in a place where once upon a time such things could happen.

Heading Out to Wonderful

John Niven

***Now available for preorder: KILL 'EM ALL, the stunning sequel to KILL YOUR FRIENDS*** 
 
The viciously funny novel by John Niven, bestselling author of Kill Your Friends and Straight White Male. 
 
What do you do when a homeless man knows your name? 
 
How about when he turns out to be a friend you haven’t seen in twenty years? 
 
Do you treat him to a hot meal and see him on his way? 
Give him a wad of middle-class guilt money? 
Or take him in and get him back on his feet? 
 
For Alan, there’s no question – only natural that he’d want to see his old mate Craig off the streets, even if only for a few nights, and into some clean clothes. 
 
But what if the successful life you’ve made for yourself – good job, happy marriage, lovely kids, grand Victorian house (you did well out of the property boom, thank you very much) – is one that that your old pal would quite like to have too? 
 
Even if it means taking it from you? 
 
Following the divergent lives of two childhood friends, No Good Deed is a funny and painful examination of friendship, the strange currents of ambition, loathing, pity and affection that flow between people over the decades, and of men getting older as they fail and succeed.

No Good Deed

A startling panorama of Los Angeles in the fifties. New Year's Eve as 1949 turns to 1950, Los Angeles: The City of Angels has becomes the city of the Angel of Death. 
 
Communist witch-hunts and insanely violent killings are terrorising the community. Three men are plunged into a maelstrom of violence and deceit when their lives become inextricably linked as each one confronts his own personal darkness. The second of the LA Quartet, the epigraph for The Big Nowhere is a passage from a novel; "It was written that I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice- Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness."

The Big Nowhere

Matthew Sullivan

'Not for the faint-hearted.' Scotsman 
 
What do you do when the life you’ve carefully built for yourself comes apart? 
 
Lydia Smith lives a quiet life, spent in the company of her colleagues and customers at the bookstore where she works. But when Joey Molina, a young and mysterious regular, hangs himself in the bookstore and leaves Lydia secret messages hidden in the pages of his books, her world starts to unravel. 
 
Why did Joey do it? 
 
What did he know? 
 
And what does it have to do with Lydia?

Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore

Susan Frobisher and Julie Wickham are turning sixty. Susan has just discovered that her recently deceased husband was not only a swinger but had run up a fortune in debts in pursuing his extravagant double life. Julie's not faring better: living in a council house and working in an old people's home, she's desperate for excitement. 
 
When the bank threatens to take Susan's beloved home to clear the debt, the women seek the help of an octogenarian gangster named Nails. Rather than let the bank take everything Susan has, they're going to take the bank. With the help of Nails and a thrill-crazy, wheelchair-bound friend they pull off the daring robbery, and discover that getting away with it is not so easy and that the adventure is only just beginning.

The Sunshine Cruise Company

GARY is a sweet and decent man. Only two things would improve his life - having children with his gorgeous wife Pauline, and a lower golf handicap. Both are unlikely. 
 
PAULINE is wondering how she ended up living in an ugly little house, driving a second-hand car and making a living dressing up as Tinkerbell. She's planning to leave Gary for a self-made carpet millionaire. 
 
FINDLAY, the Carpet King of Scotland, wants to trade in his obese wife for a younger model. But if he goes for a divorce she'll take him to the cleaners. If only there was some way she could be made to disappear... 
 
LEE, Gary's luckless brother, has botched one too many drug deals. Local crime overlord Ranta Campbell gives him one more job - one last chance to get it right. Lee's done some bad things - but murder? 
 
When Gary gets smashed on the head by a golf ball and miraculously develops an absolutely perfect swing, everyone finds their fates rest on the final day of the Open Championship...

The Amateurs

Rachel Heath

In a small English town, everyone is silently struggling to be the person they think they should be. Tacita is pretending to ignore her husband's affair; Theresa is determined to stay so busy she won’t have time to feel guilty; and Stella just wants everything to stay the same. But when Sheila, a widow, mother and grandmother, disappears from the town, their private lives start to collide and change ...

Part of the Spell

Annemarie Neary

'Artful and beautifully ambiguous' Irish Independent 
 
'Captivating and entertaining' RTE 
 
Eight-year-old Jess and her little brother were playing at the water's edge when their parents vanished. 
 
For hours the children held hands and waited for them to return. But nobody ever came back. 
 
Years later, Jess has become a locker of doors. Now a lawyer and a mother, she is determined to protect the life she has built around her. But her brother Ro has grown unpredictable, elusive and obsessive. 
 
When new evidence suggests that their mother might be alive, Ro reappears, convinced that his sister knows more than she claims. 
 
And then bad things start to happen.

The Orphans

David R. Dow

Shortlisted for The CWA Gold Dagger for Non Fiction 
 
David Dow is a leading death row attorney in Texas, where 99% of appeals are rejected.He knows his clients are guilty, but he defends them because he believes murder is wrong. 
 
Henry Quaker is a quiet man, charged with murdering his childhood sweetheart and their two children. All the evidence is against him: he's mentally unstable, his gun is missing, his son's blood was found in his car, and he'd taken out life insurance on his family immediately before their murder. But as Dow painstakingly pieces the case together, he gradually becomes convinced that Quaker - whose execution is just weeks away - is actually innocent. 
 
This is the real story of Death Row; of corrupt lawyers, judges who are hostile to the very idea of justice and executioners who rely on inmates for moral support.Killing Time is a modern classic; both a searing and haunting memoir, and a story that will have you holding your breath until the last page.

Killing Time

One Man's Race to Stop an Execution

Anna Bikont

Winner of the European Book Prize 
 
'A masterpiece' Jan T. Gross 
 
'Terrifying and necessary' Julian Barnes 
 
'Scrupulously objective and profoundly personal' Kate Atkinson 
 
On 10 July 1941 a horrifying crime was committed in the small Polish town of Jedwadbne. Early in the afternoon, the town’s Jewish population – hundreds of men, women and children – were ordered out of their homes, and marched into the town square. By the end of the day most would be dead. It was a massacre on a shocking scale, and one that was widely condemned. But only a few people were brought to justice for their part in the atrocity. The truth of what actually happened on that day was to be suppressed for more than sixty years. 
 
 Part history, part memoir, part investigation, The Crime and the Silence is an award-winning journalist's account of the events of that day: both the story of a massacre told through oral histories of survivors and witnesses, and a portrait of a Polish town coming to terms with its dark past.

The Crime and the Silence

Ray Robinson

Zoë Nielsen was just like any other ten-year-old walking to school, not knowing that a chance encounter with Thurman Hayes would lead to her abduction and imprisonment in a converted nuclear bunker, 4,000 miles away, beneath a remote ranch house in Arizona. Enslaved in her underground tomb, deprived of food and light and water, the girl Zoe once was steadily begins to disappear... But over time Thurman grows tired of the rapidly maturing Zoë, and when he decides it is time to get rid of her, Zoë must finally make her bid for freedom. 
 
Forgetting Zoë is a moving, epic tale of courage, survival, horror and loss, that explores how a bond of affection and intimacy can develop between captive and captor.

Forgetting Zoe

Jeanette Winterson

'Utterly compulsive' Daily Telegraph 
'A gripping gothic read' Sarah Hall, Guardian 
'So seductive ... I was hooked' Independent 
 
The Forest of Pendle used to be a hunting ground, but some say that the hill is the hunter - alive in its black-and-green coat cropped like an animal pelt. 
 
Good Friday, 1612. Two notorious witches await trial and certain death in Lancaster Castle, whilst a small group gathers in secret protest. Into this group the self-made Alice Nutter stakes her claim and swears to fight against the rule of fear. But what is Alice's connection to these witches? What is magic if not power, and what will happen to the women who possess it?

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