Friday Reads

  Death of a Shipbuilder is historical fiction with an edge – both an immersive exploration of the atmospheric setting of seventeenth century London, and a gripping political mystery. This time, Tyler’s charismatic hero John […]

  OK, so we featured this at the time of hardback publication earlier on this year but we think it’s worth running again, as it’s not only us but the judges of this year’s McIlvanney […]

  After reading only the first few pages of Celia Walden’s debut thriller, I knew I had to publish it. Payday has all the ingredients of the best thrillers – a shocking opening, brilliant characters […]

  One of the things I most love in a crime thriller is a really strong sense of place. Anita Sivakumaran’s Cold Sun has that in spades. The start of a new series, we follow […]

  The promised summer heatwave hasn’t arrived, but you can still cool down by reading a thriller set in an ice hotel in the frozen depths of Swedish Lapland. The author, Hania Allen, paid a […]

  If you’re looking for an unputdownable read, look no further than Laura Marshall’s The Anniversary. Centring her story around a spree of eleven murders, twenty-five years on, Laura uses a tight-knit community to explore […]

  I’ve been a huge Megan Abbott fan for years. She captures intense female friendship and rivalry (and the intertwining of the two) like few other writers. Her previous thrillers mined this theme by exploring […]

  It seems that everyone is escaping to the British coast at the moment, so why not travel to South Devon, with its dramatic cliffs and peaceful countryside, in the new instalment in the bestselling […]

  Cath Staincliffe has been on the Constable list now for over a decade, producing a perfect work of crime fiction every year. Her trademark is to write about ordinary people in extraordinary situations, and […]

Atmospheric and intelligent, Michael Russell’s latest Stefan Gillespie novel is a tense and vivid thriller – the best kind. Set at the breakout of WWII, we follow Gillespie as he is drawn into a complex […]

I love books set on islands – Shutter Island, Lord of the Flies, Wide Sargasso Sea – and I don’t think it’s entirely because of the ‘exotic’ locations, but also because of the ‘closed space’ […]

  It’s the book everyone is buzzing about at the moment – and I can assure you that it’s worth it. Clare Mackintosh is a master of the twist and she doesn’t let up in […]