"It boiled down to a white cop and black me, and he had the 'difference' in his hand." Toussaint Moore is a college-educated, decorated war veteran. Because he's also a Black man, his employment options are limited, so he ekes out a living as a private eye serving Black clients in and around Harlem where he lives. When he's hired by producers of a television reality show called "You--Detective!" to keep tabs on the whereabouts of an accused child molester until the episode airs, the gig goes quickly south; Touie finds the man murdered, and himself framed for the deed. Needing to flee, he goes to the small Ohio town where the deceased was wanted for his crime, thinking the key to the murder may lie there. As Virgil Tibbs would experience years later in John Ball's IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, Touie encounters a whole new level of resistance and racism as a Black man asking questions in a small-minded, predominantly white town. As Scott Adlerberg states in his Feb. 2019 article for Criminal Element): "What Lacy does in Room to Swing is consider a question Walter Mosely would more fully explore years later in his Easy Rawlins books. Lacy asks whether a black man (in the late fifties) can go everywhere he needs to, with the freedom his job requires, in order to conduct the investigation necessary to crack a case."

"A brilliant and breathtaking debut that captivated readers and garnered critical acclaim in the United Kingdom, " The Tenderness of Wolves "was long-listed for the Orange Prize in fiction and won the Costa Award (formerly the Whitbread) Book of the Year."
The year is 1867. Winter has just tightened its grip on Dove River, a tiny isolated settlement in the Northern Territory, when a man is brutally murdered. Laurent Jammett had been a voyageur for the Hudson Bay Company before an accident lamed him four years earlier. The same accident afforded him the little parcel of land in Dove River, land that the locals called unlucky due to the untimely death of the previous owner.
A local woman, Mrs. Ross, stumbles upon the crime scene and sees the tracks leading from the dead man's cabin north toward the forest and the tundra beyond. It is Mrs. Ross's knock on the door of the largest house in Caulfield that launches the investigation. Within hours she will regret that knock with a mother's love -- for soon she makes another discovery: her seventeen-year-old son Francis has disappeared and is now considered a prime suspect.
In the wake of such violence, people are drawn to the crime and to the township -- Andrew Knox, Dove River's elder statesman; Thomas Sturrock, a wily American itinerant trader; Donald Moody, the clumsy young Company representative; William Parker, a half-breed Native American and trapper who was briefly detained for Jammett's murder before becoming Mrs. Ross's guide. But the question remains: do these men want to solve the crime or exploit it?
One by one, the searchers set out from Dove River following the tracks across a desolate landscape -- home to only wild animals, madmen, and fugitives -- variously seeking a murderer, a son, two sisters missing for seventeen years, and a forgotten Native American culture before the snows settle and cover the tracks of the past for good.
In an astonishingly assured debut, Stef Penney deftly weaves adventure, suspense, revelation, and humor into an exhilarating thriller; a panoramic historical romance; a gripping murder mystery; and, ultimately, with the sheer scope and quality of her storytelling, an epic for the ages.

From the million-copy Sunday Times bestseller comes a breathtaking story of family secrets and forbidden love. Idyllic Cornwall, a lost garden, a love story from long ago . . . A hundred years ago, Lamorna Cove, a tiny, picturesque bay in Cornwall, was the haunt of a colony of artists. Today, Mel Pentreath hopes it will be a place she can escape the pain of losing her mother and a broken love affair, and gradually put her life back together. Renting a cottage in the enchanting grounds of Merryn Hall, Mel embraces her new surroundings and offers to help her landlord Patrick restore the overgrown garden. Soon she is daring to believe her life can be rebuilt. Then Patrick finds some old paintings in the attic, and as he and Mel investigate the identity of the artist, they are drawn into an extraordinary tale of illicit passion and thwarted ambition from a century ago, a tale that resonates in their own lives. But how long can Mel's idyll last before reality breaks in and everything is threatened? Praise for Rachel Hore: 'Compelling, engrossing and moving; a perfect holiday indulgence' SANTA MONTEFIORE 'Fascinating, hugely readable . . . Rachel Hore's research and her mastery of the subject is deeply impressive' JUDY FINNIGAN 'Engrossing and romantic, it's a wonderful story of family secrets and the choices women make' JANE THYNNE 'Another of this year's top offerings' Daily Mail 'Pitched perfectly for a holiday read' Guardian 'A tender and thoughtful tale' Sunday Mirror 'A romantic read' Good Housekeeping 'A perfect escapist treat for your next holiday - if you can wait that long' Eastern Daily Press

'A dark gothic delight' JANICE HALLETT, author of THE TWYFORD CODE 'Inventive, lavish, twisty... will keep you guessing until the very end' ALISON LITTLEWOOD, author of MISTLETOE Winter 1954, and in a dilapidated apartment in Brooklyn, Sam Cooper realises that she has nothing left. Her mother is dead, she has no prospects, and she cannot afford the rent. But as she goes through her mother's things, Sam finds a stack of hidden letters that reveal a family and an inheritance that she never knew she had, three thousand miles away in Yorkshire. Begars Abbey is a crumbling pile, inhabited only by Lady Cooper, Sam's ailing grandmother, and a handful of servants. Sam cannot understand why her mother kept its very existence a secret, but her newly discovered diaries offer a glimpse of a young girl growing increasingly terrified. As is Sam herself. Built on the foundations of an old convent, Begars moves and sings with the biting wind. Her grandmother cannot speak, and a shadowy woman moves along the corridors at night. There are dark places in the hidden tunnels beneath Begars. And they will not give up their secrets easily... A chilling read that will keep you turning the pages late into the night, Begars Abbey is a must-read for fans of Laura Purcell, C.J. Tudor and W.C. Ryan.

A dead man at a crossroads. A secret message. A ring with a warning about death . . . Printer's apprentice Lucy Campion is caught up in a strange and puzzling murder case in this twisty historical mystery set in seventeenth-century London. London, 1667. On her way to a new market to peddle her True Accounts and Strange News, printer's apprentice Lucy Campion quickly regrets her decision to take the northwestern road. Dark and desolate, the path leads her to the crossroads - and to the old hanging tree. She doesn't believe in ghosts, but she's not sure ghosts don't believe in her. But before she even reaches the crossroads, she's knocked off her feet by two men in a hurry. What were they running from? To her dismay, she soon discovers for herself: there, dangling from the tree, is the body of a man. Did he commit self-murder, or is there something darker afoot? The more Lucy learns, the more determined she is to uncover the truth. But this time, even the help and protection of magistrate's son Adam, and steadfast Constable Duncan, may not be enough to keep her safe from harm . . .

A cold-blooded killer stalks a sleepy Suffolk town in this pitch-perfect WWII crime mystery. December 1939. Sackwater Police Station feels a million miles from the war effort. Elderly Mr Orchard keeps wandering off in his pyjamas, little Sylvia Satin is having a birthday party, and a bookmark has been reported stolen. Inspector Betty Church - one of the few female officers on the force - is longing for something to get her teeth into... When a bomb is dropped on Sackwater, it seems the war has finally reached them. But Betty can't stop Adolf, however hard she tries. So when a dead man is found on the beach, she concentrates on hunting an enemy much closer to home. 'Eccentric and entertaining with a nicely complex plot'Crime Review. 'A wonderfully gripping old-fashioned murder mystery' The Lady.

Jack Haldean's newly-wedded bliss is disrupted by a series of shocking revelations in this gripping historical mystery. When an old schoolfriend of Jack's wife Betty witnesses a disturbing vision in the garden of a smart suburban house, Jack is intrigued. Just what did Jenny Langton see beneath the cedar tree at Saunder's Green that frightened her so much she fainted on the spot? Jack's subsequent enquiries stir up a hornet's nest of repressed emotions and long-buried secrets. What exactly happened at Saunder's Green almost twenty years before - and why will no one talk about it? As he unearths evidence of a possible murder, how is even a seasoned investigator like Jack supposed to solve a crime that took place two decades before with no tangible clues, no reliable witnesses - and at least one person who is determined to stop him discovering the truth . whatever it takes.