Miranda’s parents live in a dilapidated house in rural France that they share with two llamas, eight ducks, five chickens, two cats, and a freezer full of food dating back to 1983. This wry, propulsive story about a singularly eccentric family and the sibling rivalry, generational divides, and long-buried secrets that shape them, is a glorious debut novel from a seasoned playwright with immense empathy and a flair for dialogue.

The dead can't speak to us, Professor Madoc had said. But that was a lie. The body Patrick Fort is examining in anatomy class is trying to tell him all kinds of things. But no one hears what he does, and no one understands when he tries to tell them. Life is already strange enough for Patrick - being a medical student with Asperger's Syndrome doesn't come without its challenges. And that's before he is faced with solving a possible murder, especially when no one believes a crime has even taken place.

As a girl, Amane realizes with horror that her parents “copulated” in order to bring her into the world, rather than using artificial insemination, which became the norm in the mid-twentieth century. Amane strives to get away from what she considers an indoctrination in this strange “system” by her mother, but her infatuations with both anime characters and real people have a sexual force that is undeniable.

On the beaches and cliffs of North Devon, lone women have become victims in a terrifying game where only one player knows the rules - and, when those rules change, the new game is murder. But that madman on the loose feels very far from the crumbling, seaside home of 10-year-old Ruby Trick. Instead of living in fear of him, she lives in fear of school bullies, the dark forest crowding her house into the sea, and the threat of her parents' divorce. So when she decides to help her father catch the killer, it seems like a good way to keep her father close.

The island was abandoned for fifty years. So how did the body get there? Three hundred miles from the mainland in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean lies Navigaceo: a tiny island that was hastily abandoned fifty years ago and has been uninhabited ever since. Until now. Tess Macfarlane is a documentary filmmaker tasked with capturing the wild beauty of Navigaceo. Accompanied by a small team of researchers, her job is to film everything she sees. But Tess sees too much: a body. It's clearly a recent murder.

1954: When her former novice’s dependable letters stop, Nora Breen asks to be released from her vows. Haunted by a line in Frieda’s letter, Nora arrives at Gulls Nest, a charming hotel in Gore-on-Sea in Kent. A seaside town, a place of fresh air and relaxed constraints, is the perfect place for a new start. Nora hides her identity and pries into the lives of her fellow guests. But when a series of bizarre murders rattles the occupants of Gulls Nest it’s time to ask if a dark past can ever really be left behind.

Felix Pink is retired. Widowed for more than a decade and a painfully literal thinker, he has led a life of routine. He occupies himself volunteering as an Exiteer - someone who sits with terminally ill people as they die by suicide, assisting with logistics and lending moral support. When Felix lets himself into Number 3 Black Lane, he’s there to keep a dying man company as he takes his final breath. But just 15 minutes later, Felix is on the run from the police. Now he must discover whether what went wrong was a simple mistake - or deliberate, a murder.

Four in the morning, mid-December, and snow blankets St. Andrews School. Student Alex Gilbery and his three best friends are staggering home from a party when they stumble upon the body of a young woman. Rosie Duff has been raped, stabbed and left for dead in the ancient Pictish cemetery. The only suspects are the four young students stained with her blood. Twenty-five years later, police mount a cold case review. Among the unsolved murders they're examining is that of Rosie Duff. But someone else has his own idea of justice.

Twenty-six-year-old Ruth excels at microchip design but decides to get rich the old-fashioned way: robbing banks. She becomes a cybercriminal and devotes five years to siphoning more than $250 million out of the banking system using a hacked firewall chip that she created and only she knows how to access. Then one night an alarm goes off and she realizes she’s been discovered.

John, an impoverished Scottish minister, has accepted a job evicting the lone remaining occupant of an island north of Scotland—Ivar, who has been living alone for decades, with only the animals and the sea for company. Though his wife, Mary, has serious misgivings about the errand, he decides to go anyway, setting in motion a chain of events that neither he nor Mary could have predicted.

Eilean Eadar is a barren, windswept rock best known for the unsolved mystery of the three lighthouse keepers who vanished back in 1919. But when a young man is found dead at the base of that same lighthouse, two detective inspectors are sent from Glasgow to investigate.

Together, Edward and Isabel move to London. They are young and in love, occupied by friends, work and fun. But late on a spring evening when they are thirty years old, their home is invaded by a serial killer. In the wake of this violation, each tries to come to terms with a night that changed everything—and their marriage begins to crumble. Twenty-five years later, their tormentor is caught, and Edward and Isabel reunite for his sentencing. Isabel has waited years for the man who nearly ended her life to be brought to justice. Edward has tried to think about anything else.

In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping. At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground.

When Hester is diagnosed with terminal cancer on her fortieth birthday, she knows immediately what she must do: abandon her possessions and drive to California to kill her estranged father. With no friends or family tying her to the life she’s built in New York City, she quits her wildly lucrative job in corporate law and starts driving west. She hasn’t made it far when she runs into John, an environmental activist in need of a ride to different superfund sites across the United States.

When a grisly murder occurs on the Isle of Lewis that bears similarities to a brutal killing on the mainland, Edinburgh detective Fin Macleod is dispatched to the Outer Hebrides to investigate, embarking at the same time on a voyage into his own troubled past. As Fin reconnects with the people and places of his tortured childhood, the beautiful island and its ancient customs once again begin to assert their grip on his psyche. Every step toward solving the case brings Fin closer to a confrontation with the dark events of the past that shaped - and nearly destroyed - his life.

"Jack's in charge," said his mother, as she disappeared up the road to get help. "I won't be long." So 11-year-old Jack and his two sisters wait on the hard shoulder in their stifling, broken-down car, bickering and whining and playing I-Spy until she comes back. But their mother doesn't come back. She never comes back. And after that long hot summer day, nothing will ever be the same again. Three years later, Jack's 15 and still in charge.

The dead can't speak to us, Professor Madoc had said. But that was a lie. The body Patrick Fort is examining in anatomy class is trying to tell him all kinds of things. But no one hears what he does, and no one understands when he tries to tell them. Life is already strange enough for Patrick - being a medical student with Asperger's Syndrome doesn't come without its challenges. And that's before he is faced with solving a possible murder, especially when no one believes a crime has even taken place.

Felix Pink is retired. Widowed for more than a decade and a painfully literal thinker, he has led a life of routine. He occupies himself volunteering as an Exiteer - someone who sits with terminally ill people as they die by suicide, assisting with logistics and lending moral support. When Felix lets himself into Number 3 Black Lane, he’s there to keep a dying man company as he takes his final breath. But just 15 minutes later, Felix is on the run from the police. Now he must discover whether what went wrong was a simple mistake - or deliberate, a murder.

A woman gets involved with a psychic who may be able to find her missing son. Five footprints are the only sign that four-year-old Daniel Buck was ever here. Every day, Anna Buck guards the little prints in the cement. Polishing them to a shine. Keeping them safe. Spiraling toward insanity. Anna is desperate for hope, which she's not getting from the police or her husband, James. So when a woman tells her she's found a true psychic, a "shut eye", she grasps at it. Maybe he can tell her what happened to her son.

Debut author Belinda Bauer crafts an incredibly moving first novel in Blacklands. Twelve-year-old Steven is determined to put an end to his family’s misery and find the remains of his uncle, who was believed to be murdered as a child by a local pedophile. Steven spends his days digging for clues around his grandmother’s home, but when his search fails to unearth anything new, he reaches out to the only person with answers—the accused murderer now serving life in prison.

On the beaches and cliffs of North Devon, lone women have become victims in a terrifying game where only one player knows the rules - and, when those rules change, the new game is murder. But that madman on the loose feels very far from the crumbling, seaside home of 10-year-old Ruby Trick. Instead of living in fear of him, she lives in fear of school bullies, the dark forest crowding her house into the sea, and the threat of her parents' divorce. So when she decides to help her father catch the killer, it seems like a good way to keep her father close.

For fans of Megan Collins with the taut character study of Angie Kim comes a searing mystery that follows three siblings as they reckon with the darkness hidden within their family after multiple graves are discovered behind their childhood home.

Florence, 1557. Le peintre Pontormo est retrouvé assassiné au pied des fresques auxquelles il travaillait depuis onze ans. Un tableau a été maquillé. Un crime de lèse-majesté a été commis. Vasari, l’homme à tout faire du duc de Florence, est chargé de l’enquête. Pour l’assister à distance, il se tourne vers le vieux Michel-Ange exilé à Rome.

My name is Al. I live in wealthy people's second homes while their real owners are away. I don’t rob them, I don’t damage anything… I’m more an unofficial house-sitter than an actual criminal. Life is good. Or it was - until last night, when my friends and I broke into the wrong place, on the wrong day, and someone wound up dead. And now…now we’re in a great deal of trouble.

1954: When her former novice’s dependable letters stop, Nora Breen asks to be released from her vows. Haunted by a line in Frieda’s letter, Nora arrives at Gulls Nest, a charming hotel in Gore-on-Sea in Kent. A seaside town, a place of fresh air and relaxed constraints, is the perfect place for a new start. Nora hides her identity and pries into the lives of her fellow guests. But when a series of bizarre murders rattles the occupants of Gulls Nest it’s time to ask if a dark past can ever really be left behind.

Jessamyn St. Germain is meant to be a star. Not an actor who occasionally books yogurt commercials and certainly not a lowly usher at one of Vancouver’s smallest regional theaters. No, she is bound for greatness, and that’s why the part of Maria in the theater’s upcoming production of The Sound of Music is hers. Or it’s going to be.

Katie seems to have the perfect life—a great husband, a precocious and winning ten-year-old son; and a glamorous job as writer for the long-running TV series, Spy Guys, based on her own surprisingly successful novel. But for Katie, writing about the spy business isn’t as satisfying as working in it.

In pursuit of peace and family ties, American tourist Megan goes on a road trip around Ireland. When she becomes stranded deep in the mountains, the Brogan family come to her rescue. But is it luck, or is Megan's nightmare just beginning? The Wicklow Mountains offer breathtaking beauty to all who venture in. Where nature abounds. Where solitude beckons. Where no one can hear you scream.

It's 1900, and Louise Wilk is taking her dying husband home to Buffalo, where he grew up. Dr. Edward Wilk is wasting away from an aggressive and debilitating malady. But it's becoming clearer that his condition isn't exactly a disease but a phase of existence that seeks to transform and ultimately possess him.

Edinburgh, 1948. Welfare Officer Helen Crowther has enough on her plate between her hectic job, her complicated love life, and her growing reputation as a troublemaker. Last year's scandal did nothing to help with the disapproval she already gets as a woman in her line of work. All she wants now is to focus on doing what she loves: helping the poor of the Fountainbridge ward in the city of Edinburgh. The last thing she needs is another string of murders to distract her . . .