Their chemistry is criminal . . .

Raised by con artists, Phoebe Graves only knew a life of swindling the rich – until she and her best friend, Hailey Tinrock, decided to leave their life of crime behind, starting over in a wealthy college town in Connecticut. They're determined to live honest lives. But you know what they say about good intentions . . .

While Phoebe is fake-dating the son of an uber-wealthy and influential family, she’s actually falling deeper in love with Brayden 'Rocky' Tinrock, Hailey's older brother. To make matters more complicated, Phoebe’s mother shows up out of the blue with conniving matchmaking plans of her own.

Her mother’s arrival threatens everything Phoebe has planned. To keep her love, her friends and her newfound happiness, Phoebe will have to return to her old games . . . and win.

Sometimes the only way to recover a stolen masterpiece is to steal it back …

Gabriel Allon has been awarded a commission to restore one of the most important paintings in Venice. But when he discovers the body of a mysterious woman floating in the waters of the Venetian Lagoon, he finds himself in a desperate race to recover a lost masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci.

The painting, a portrait of a beautiful young girl, has been gathering dust in a storeroom at the Vatican Museums for more than a century, misattributed and hidden beneath a worthless picture by an unknown artist. Because no one knows that the Leonardo is there, no one notices when it disappears one night during a suspicious power outage. No one but the ruthless mobsters and moneymen behind the theft – and the mysterious woman whom Gabriel found in a watery grave in Venice. A woman without a name. A woman without a face.

You think it will never happen to you: the ring of the bell, the policeman on the doorstep. What he says traps you in a nightmare that starts with the words, 'I'm afraid ...'

Sally Lambert is also afraid, and desperate enough to consider the unthinkable. Is it really, definitely, impossible to escape from this horror? Maybe not. There's always something you can do, right?

Of course, no one would ever do this particular something -- except the Lamberts, who might have to.

No one has ever gone this far. Until Sally decides that the Lamberts will...

Celebrated children’s author and illustrator Annie Blunt has had a dreadful year. Her husband was killed in a tragic accident, then one of her children’s books ignited a major scandal. Desperate for a fresh start, she moves with her young son Charlie to a charming small town in upstate New York where they can begin to heal.

But Annie’s year is about to get worse.

Bored and lonely in their isolated new surroundings, Charlie is thrilled when he finds a forgotten train set in a locked shed in the grounds of their new house. While Annie is pleased to see Charlie happy, there’s something unsettling about his new toy. Strange sounds wake Annie in the night – she’s sure she can hear a train in the middle of the night, although there isn’t an active line for miles. And then bizarre things start happening in the neighbourhood. But even stranger, Annie can’t seem to stop drawing a disturbing new character that has no place in a children’s book…

Grief plays tricks on the mind, but Annie is beginning to think she’s walked out of one nightmare straight into another, only this one is far more terrifying…

Sunday Times bestselling author Linwood Barclay enters new territory with a fiendishly twisted supernatural chiller.

A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.

Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom.

Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic and domestic life of a 45-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectations while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.

The epic conclusion to Camilla Läckberg and Henrik Fexeus' pulse-raising Swedish crime thriller trilogy.

It is December in Stockholm and Sweden's Minister of Justice is under threat. An anonymous note has told him he has four days left to live. At the same time, a human skeleton is found in the Stockholm subway, belonging to a high-ranking financier.

Police inspector Mina Dabiri's team, still recovering from the traumatic incident last summer that ended in the death of a colleague, calls in mentalist Vincent Walder to help with the case. For Vincent, it feels as if the world is increasingly closing in on him.

When another pile of bones is found underground, the group is once again put to the test – what is going on in the tunnels deep under Stockholm? And who taunting the minister?

Maggie Flynn isn't your typical 1960s mum. She's a spy, an unsuspecting operative for MI5, stalking London's streets in myriad disguises.

Widowed and balancing her clandestine career with raising a Beatles-mad teenage daughter, Maggie finds comfort and purpose in her profession – providing a connection to her late husband, whose own covert past only surfaced after his death.

But Maggie's world spins out of control when a chance encounter with a mysterious Russian agent triggers a chilling revelation: he knew her husband. And what's worse, the agent suspects someone on home soil betrayed him.

As Maggie searches for answers, she'll question everyone – and everything – she thought she could trust. In the murky and perilous world of espionage, can she outsmart those determined to keep her silenced?

The long-awaited and highly anticipated conclusion to Philip Pullman’s bestselling The Book of Dust sequence . . .

‘Lyra: what will you do when you find this place in the desert, the opening to the world of the roses?’

‘Defend it,’ Lyra said. ‘Die defending it.’

When readers left Lyra in The Secret Commonwealth she was alone, in the ruins of a deserted city. Pantalaimon had run from her – part of himself – in search of her imagination, which he believed she had lost. Lyra travelled across the world from her Oxford home in search of her dæmon. And Malcolm, loyal Malcolm, too journeyed far from home, towards the Silk Roads in search of Lyra . . .

In The Rose Field, their quests converge in the most dangerous, breathtaking and world-changing ways. They must take help from spies and thieves, gryphons and witches, old friends and new, learning all the while the depth and surprising truths of the alethiometer. All around them, the world is aflame – made terrifying by fear, power and greed.

As they move East, towards the red building that will reunite them and give them answers – on Dust, on the special roses, on imagination – so too does the Magisterium, at war against all that Lyra holds dear.

Marking thirty years since the world was first introduced to Pullman’s remarkable heroine Lyra Belacqua in Northern Lights, The Rose Field is the culmination of the cultural phenomenon of The Book of Dust and His Dark Materials.

YOU'RE HERE BECAUSE OF A STORY . . .

It starts with a class in an old movie theatre. Folklore 517: Local Legends and Urban Myths, taught by a woman called the Professor.

Most students believe the Professor's stories are just fiction, but Holland St. James has always been convinced that magic is real.

Her search for the truth leads her to a dazzling new world, a deadly ultimatum hidden at the heart of Los Angeles, and into the path of a magnetic stranger who claims he's been sent to save her life.

But everyone in this intoxicating new world is lying to her, even this stranger. And if she can't figure out whom to trust, her magical reality could change from a Hollywood dream to a nightmare.

Farah Nosipho Garda leaves her comfort zone in Cape Town to care for her ailing mother in a Johannesburg retirement village. At 27, she’s a perpetual student with no job, no plans, and a deep belief that she’s incapable of real change – stuck in cycles of self-sabotage, anxiety, and longing. But when her mother begins to slip away and the man she thought was her future partner disappears without warning, Farah is forced to ask herself: What if the life she thought she wanted isn’t the one she needs?

Amid the grief, Farah slowly begins to rewrite her story: showing up for herself, caring for her mind and body, trading shame for softness, and learning that self-love isn’t a destination, but a daily decision.

Why Am I Like This? is Eat, Pray, Love for the era of Ozempic, therapy, and situationships – witty, vulnerable, and deeply modern. A love story about coming home to yourself.

Four thirty-something girlfriends navigate the complexities of love and life in upmarket Johannesburg.

Nomzamo yearns to have her own child, but her husband keeps postpo-ning. Is he truly too busy or is something else going on? Kioni is in seventh heaven when Michael finally wants to commit. But does he really? Or is he just trying to get back into her bed? Single mom Jazmine has sworn off love – until a charming new doctor arrives at her hospital, testing her resolve. And Asanda, fiercely independent and at the top of her game, is determined to find the perfect man to match her perfect life.

As their lives twist and tangle in unexpected ways, these four women will discover that love is never simple – but always worth it.

A witty, heartwarming, and deeply relatable South African novel about friendship, romance, and the messy, beautiful journey of figuring it all out.

Good girls deserve a treat.

The House is the most exclusive sorority on campus, and all its alumni are beautiful, high-achieving and respected.

After a freshman year she would rather forget, sophomore Nina Kaur knows being accepted into The House is the first step to the brightest possible future. The House will surely ease her fears of failure and protect her from those who see a young woman on her own as prey.

Meanwhile, adjunct professor Dr Sloane Hartley is struggling. After eighteen months at home with her newborn daughter, Sloane’s clothes don’t fit right; her girl-dad husband isn’t as present as he thinks he is; and even the few hours a day she’s apart from her child fill her psyche with paralyzing ennui. When invited to be The House’s academic liaison, Sloane enviously drinks in a level of collective perfection that Sloane desperately craves.

As Nina and Sloane each get drawn deeper into the arcane rituals of the sisterhood, they learn that living well comes with bloody costs. And when they are finally invited to the table, they will have to decide just how much they can stomach in the name of solidarity and power.

A FLINT MINER WITH A GIFT

Seft, a talented flint miner, walks the Great Plain in the high summer heat, to witness the rituals that signal the start of a new year. He is there to trade his stone at the Midsummer Rite, and to find Neen, the girl he loves. Her family lives in prosperity and offers Seft an escape from his brutish father and brothers, within their herder community.

A PRIESTESS WHO BELIEVES THE IMPOSSIBLE

Joia, Neen's sister, is a priestess with a vision and an unmatched ability to lead. As a child, she watches the Midsummer ceremony, enthralled, and dreams of a miraculous new monument, raised from the biggest stones in the world. But trouble is brewing among the hills and woodlands of the Great Plain.

A MONUMENT THAT WILL DEFINE A CIVILISATION

Joia's vision of a great stone circle, assembled by the divided tribes of the Plain, will inspire Seft and become their life's work. But as drought ravages the earth, mistrust grows between the herders, farmers and woodlanders - and an act of savage violence leads to open warfare . . .

Walter Nash is a mild-mannered, happy and successful businessman with a loving family. He has never lifted a weight or fired a gun in anger, and he has no special physical or investigatory skills. The dark world is not a place he knows – until the FBI comes calling on the very day of his estranged Vietnam veteran father’s funeral. They tell him that the company he works for is actually a criminal organization. And they need his help in a risky endeavour to bring it all down.

In doing so, Nash’s perfect world is destroyed. And in seeking justice and revenge, Nash must become someone else: a man of violence and physicality who must find traction and purpose in the same dark world that invaded and crushed everything near and dear to him. Can Walter Nash reinvent himself into a weapon of righteousness and justice? The odds are not with him.

But bet against Walter Nash at your peril . . .

Hell of a Country is a creative reimagining of a true crime story from early-1970s South Africa. The novel tells the story of teenager Lorraine van Niekerk who despises the fact that her boss and lover, middle-aged André Bekker, won’t leave his wife Sunette and marry her instead. When Lorraine’s life fatefully intersects that of Alfie Geemooi, a recent amputee, she comes up with a hell of a plan. Is murder an adequate price to pay for love?

When he is eight years old, Alfie Logan discovers the magical ability to get a second chance at everything. He can undo any moment and live it again. The one catch: he must accept the consequences of his second try - for better or worse.

He grows up correcting his mistakes and saving himself from adolescent embarrassments. He even takes foolishly dangerous risks, just to see what it's like to come close to death, before tapping back to safety. Eventually, Alfie turns his gift to his love life, studying his crushes and going back to make himself more appealing. In time, he falls deeply in love with Gianna, the woman he believes is the one. He seems to find contentment.

But as the years pass, Alfie's eye begins to wander. Which is when he learns a lone caveat to his power: once he undoes a love, that person can never fall in love with him again. Knowing if he gives into to temptation, he will risk losing what he has with Gianna, Alfie makes a choice that changes his life forever.

The book begins many years later, after an ailing Alfie is arrested for allegedly cheating and winning millions at a casino roulette wheel. As a curious detective interrogates him, he slowly uncovers Alfie's incredible story, and its most unlikely conclusion.

In Twice, America's favourite storyteller, Mitch Albom, is at the top of his powers. A love story that is enchanting, probing, and clairvoyant in matters of the heart, Twice will make you think, weep, and overflow with love from beginning to end.

Naomi Cranston's five years in jail for something she didn't do were the worst of her life. Now the former NOPD cop is being targeted again by the people who framed her for stealing evidence. If she doesn't comply with their demands to deliver drugs, they'll hurt her teenage son, Everett.

When she arrives at the Burke Broussard Investigation Agency asking for help, Burke is reluctant to assist a convicted cop. But her story and her courage in standing up to the criminals touch him to the core. Even if taking on the case puts him and the rest of his team in grave danger.

As they try to work out who is responsible for framing Naomi, they must do all they can to keep their families safe. There might be something far more sinister at play than a drugs enterprise - and someone would do anything to stop Burke and the team finding out what. And there's one question they all need to grapple with: why was Naomi targeted in the first place?

Jesse is 15. She loves her friends, her little brother and her parents - even when they're arguing, which feels like constantly these days. But most of all, she loves playing video games. Even from her hospital bed.

Alex is 29. He doesn't love a lot of things. To be honest, he's not really sure he knows how to. His desk at work, as VR games designer, is empty, much like his life feels sometimes.

Then Jesse makes a wish. A simple one: a video experience made of her life, something to be there, just in case she isn't.

One loving teenager.
One lonely adult.

Which one will get the happy ending?

In Cornwall, a man suffers a violent death – and the killer may lurk within the community . . .

Featuring Detectives Thomas Lynley and Barbara Havers, A Slowly Dying Cause is an atmospheric, gripping crime thriller from bestselling author Elizabeth George.

Amid the beauty of Cornwall’s coastline, the death of a local man shatters the peace with its violence. The body of Michael Lobb is discovered in his family’s tin and pewter workshop, and Detective Inspector Beatrice Hannaford is brought in to investigate. Suspicion quickly develops when it emerges that a mining company had been trying to buy the man’s land, and Lobb was the only remaining obstacle to the deal going through.

But every step of Bea’s investigation provokes more questions than answers, and the complexity of the case develops further as Lobb’s family life, rife with mistrust and deception, comes to light. With cryptic alibis and shifting motives, the tangled web of intrigue soon draws in her colleagues Thomas Lynley and Barbara Havers, who must search for a killer in a community that has very little trust in outsiders . . .

OF ALL THE CREATURES IN THE WORLD, ONLY HUMANS HAVE THE CAPACITY FOR EVIL…

Small animals – a rat, a rabbit, a squirrel – have been turning up throughout Charlotte, North Carolina, mutilated and displayed in the same bizarre manner. But one day, as Tempe is relaxing at home alongside her aimless, moody great-niece Ruthie, she’s diverted by a disturbing call. Now, it seems, the perp is upping the ante. This find is larger. Could the remains be human?

Tempe visits the scene and discovers that the victim is a dog. Someone’s pet. As someone who has always found animal cruelty deeply abhorrent, she vows to help apprehend the person responsible for the killings. With her layered knowledge of animal behaviour, Ruthie becomes a valuable ally in the hunt for answers, as does semi-retired homicide detective Erskine ‘Skinny’ Slidell, who is equally outraged and committed.

Needing a better understanding of possible motives, Tempe and Skinny seek input from a forensic psychologist, who has no definitive answer but offers several possibilities. The escalating pattern of aggression suggests even more macabre discoveries – and that the perp’s focus may soon shift to humans.

And then it happens. A woman is found disfigured and posed in a manner that mimics the earlier killings. As Tempe and Slidell follow the horrifying clues to a shocking conclusion, they find themselves force to confront an increasingly terrifying question.

What is pure evil?

NO ONE IS SAFE FROM THE SERIAL KILLER
 
NOT EVEN SCARPETTA…
 
During the early hours of Christmas morning, chief medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta receives a chilling call. The Phantom Slasher has struck again.

The serial killer has terrorized Northern Virginia for months. His pattern is to stalk with a sophisticated technology that enables him to invade his victims' homes and watch their every move. They wake up to a ghost-like hologram before being murdered in their beds.
 
Scarpetta is summoned to Mercy Island, the site of a notorious psychiatric hospital where two people have been brutalized, one of them from Scarpetta’s past. It soon becomes apparent that she could be next…

Arthur Oakes is a reader, a dreamer, and a student at Rackham College, Maine, renowned for its frosty winters, exceptional library, and beautiful buildings. But his idyll—and burgeoning romance with Gwen Underfoot—is shattered when a local drug dealer and her partner corner him into one of the worst crimes he can imagine: stealing rare books from the college library.

Trapped and desperate, Arthur turns to his closest friends for comfort and help. Together they dream up a wild, fantastical scheme to free Arthur from the cruel trap in which he finds himself. Wealthy, irrepressible Colin Wren suggests using the unnerving Crane journal (bound in the skin of its author) to summon a dragon to do their bidding. The others—brave, beautiful Alison Shiner; the battling twins Donna and Donovan McBride; and brainy, bold Gwen—don’t hesitate to join Colin in an effort to smash reality and bring a creature of the impossible into our world.

But there’s nothing simple about dealing with dragons, and their pact to save Arthur becomes a terrifying bargain in which the six must choose a new sacrifice for King Sorrow every year—or become his next meal.

Scotland, 2025. When torrential winter rain causes a landslide on a  motorway, it dislodges more than mud and asphalt – it reveals a skeleton, concealed when the road was built eleven years prior.

Sam Nimmo, an investigative journalist who’d been poking his nose into the murky politics of the Scottish independence referendum, had become the prime suspect in the brutal murder of his girlfriend when he vanished. Now he’s reappeared, buried under the motorway.

It’s the perfect cold case for DCI Karen Pirie, chief of Police Scotland’s Historic Cases Unit. What was Nimmo investigating that was worth killing over? Or was it revenge for murdering his girlfriend? Meanwhile, an allegation of murder has surfaced over the supposedly accidental death of a hotel manager. It may have links to another accident on a remote Highland road. It’s a series of puzzles that tests Karen and her team to their limits. And possibly beyond . . .

A darkly propulsive thriller of secrets hidden at the core of a Scottish Highlands town, Silent Bones reaffirms Val McDermid as a crime writer of inimitable power.

When two people find out their online crushes are actually their IRL enemies, they must figure out a way to work with each other in this charming and geeky enemies-to-lovers romcom perfect for fans of Olivia Dade.

When your favorite player turns out to be your very real boss, the rules are a lot more complicated.

Elizabeth Gordon-Bettencourt is rebuilding her life on her own terms, starting with a new internship, a shot at her dream job as a civil engineer, and a whole lot of distance from her family’s drama. With her life full of change, the one constant is @theanswerisno, a charming gamer who seems to just . . . get her. Even if he has no interest in meeting her in real life.

Elizabeth would feel a lot more confident about her job if her new boss wasn’t so hard to read. Lincoln Carden is quiet, demanding, and adamant about avoiding small talk—especially in the office. What she doesn’t know is that online, he’s someone else entirely: quick, confident, and a little bit flirty. And his favorite player to team up with is @pancakesareelite, the one person who never makes him feel like he has to try so hard. As their two worlds start to collide, Elizabeth and Lincoln start to wonder: with their careers on the line and their online friendship at risk, is a romance IRL worth it?

Waarheen sal die donker spoor hom lei?

Hulle kry haar lyk in ’n veld. ’n Tienermeisie – verkrag, gemartel, vermoor. En sy’s nie die eerste een nie.

Adjudant-offisier Jan Magson moet die reeksmoordenaar vang. Hy moet die slagoffers se ma’s en pa’s in die oë kyk en hul vrae beantwoord, maar hy kan nie. Hy kan nie eens sy eie vrae beantwoord nie. Want agter hom lê daar ook ’n donker spoor ...

Kort voor lank haal die moorde hoofopskrifte en die gemeenskap eis antwoorde:

Hoekom trek die polisie nie die boosaard vas nie? Toe ’n ma ’n brief vir die koerant skryf en ’n pa ’n beloning uitloof, word dinge op ’n mespunt gedryf. Bevind Magson hom op nóg ’n dwaalspoor of is hy uiteindelik op die donker spoor wat hom na die ware antwoorde sal lei?

Donker spoor was blitsverkoperskrywer Martin Steyn se bekroonde debuutroman.

In dié splinternuwe heruitgawe met ’n treffende nuwe omslag kan lesers weer saam met Jan Magson in die duistere psige van die moordenaar delf.