Dead Beat Kick Back

Diamond Dagger Award-Winning Author: Two mysteries introducing a Thai boxing, rock-and-roll female private detective from Manchester, England... As a favor to her rock journalist boyfriend, Kate Branningan agrees to track down missing song-writer Moira Pollock, a search that takes her into some of the seediest parts of Leeds and Bradford. But little does she realize that finding Moira is only a prelude to murder. Juggling her other cases, including a search to uncover the source of counterfeit luxury goods, Brannigan finds herself for the first time on the trail of a killer. In Kick Back, Kate Brannigan investigates the bizarre case of the missing conservatories. Before long she’s up to her neck in crooked land deals, mortgage scams, financial chicanery, and murder. But when a favor for a friend puts Kate’s own life in danger, bizarre is not the first word she thinks of... “One of crime fiction’s most eminent writers.”—Entertainment Weekly

When Kate Brannigan agrees to track down a missing songwriter, a search that takes her into the seediest parts of Leeds, little does she realize that finding her is a prelude to murder.

Unmarked graves are found on the grounds of an old orphanage in this “riveting” British crime thriller by an Edgar Award finalist (Publishers Weekly, starred review). With profiler Tony Hill behind bars and Carol Jordan no longer with the police, he’s finding unexpected outlets for his talents in jail and she’s joined forces with a group of lawyers and forensics experts looking into suspected miscarriages of justice. But they’re doing it without each other; being in the same room at visiting hour is too painful to contemplate. Meanwhile, construction is suddenly halted on the redevelopment of an orphanage after dozens of skeletons are found buried at the site. Forensic examination reveals they date from between twenty and forty years ago, when the nuns were running their repressive regime. But then a different set of skeletons is discovered in a far corner—young men from as recent as ten years ago. When newly promoted DI Paula McIntyre discovers that one of the male skeletons is that of a killer who is supposedly alive and behind bars—and the subject of one of Carol’s miscarriage investigations—it brings Tony and Carol irresistibly into each other’s orbit once again in this masterfully plotted novel by “the queen of psychological thrillers” (Irish Independent).

This darkly humorous crime novel set in a Canadian ski town is a “fast-paced thrill ride” (Publishers Weekly). Grey Stevens took over the family business after his uncle passed away, and now grows the best pot in Whistler, British Columbia. It’s called Eight Miles High and the word on the street is it rivals anything on the planet. Happy to fly under the radar in this mountain playground, Grey just wants to take life easy, snowboarding in the cold months and biking in the hot ones. But demand for his pot among the locals and tourists keeps growing. Everybody wants to get their hands on it—including two rival gangs who come to town to take over the dope trade. When Grey steps in and rescues a girl from a beating at the hands of one of the gang members, he finds himself in the middle of a turf war and a new relationship at the same time. After one of his roommates gets attacked and another goes missing, Grey has to decide whether he’s going to take off with the girl and start over someplace new—or stay and fight for what’s his . . . “The dialogue is some of the sharpest and funniest I’ve seen in any book this year.” —National Post “Kalteis will be deservedly compared to Elmore Leonard, but he is an original voice.” —John McFetridge, author of the Toronto Series “A rollicking tour through Whistler after dark, populated by ski bums and scallywags, gang-bangers and lovable losers on both sides of the law, and written with a staccato, snare-drum energy that keeps the pages turning . . . Breaking Bad for the ganja set.” —Owen Laukkanen, author of the Stevens and Windermere series

Deciding what to read next when you've just finished an unputdownable novel can be a daunting task. The Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide features hundreds of authors and thousands of titles, with navigation features to lead you on a rich journey through some the best literature to grace our shelves. This greatly expanded edition includes the latest contemporary authors and landmark novels, an expanded non-fiction section, a timeline setting historical events against literary milestones, prize-winner and book club lists. An accessible and easy-to-read guide that no serious book lover should be without. "The essential guide to the wild uncharted world of contemporary and 20th century writing." Robert McCrum, The Observer

In the new installment to her historical crime series that began with 1979, internationally bestselling author Val McDermid delivers a propulsive new thriller that finds journalist Allie Burns has become an editor, and as the Cold War and AIDS crisis deliver a nonstop tide of news, most of it bad, a story falls into her lap. And then there’s a murder. Hailed as Britain’s Queen of Crime, Val McDermid’s award-winning, internationally bestselling novels have captivated readers for more than thirty years. In her Allie Burns series, she returns to the past—both ours and in some ways her own—with the story of a female journalist whose stories lead her into world of corruption, terror, and murder. It’s 1989 and Allie Burns is back. Older and maybe wiser, she’s running the northern news operation of the Sunday Globe, chafing at losing her role in investigative journalism and at the descent into the gutter of the UK tabloid media. But there’s plenty to keep her occupied. The year begins with the memorial service for the victims of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, but Allie has barely filed her copy when she stumbles over a story about HIV/AIDS that will shock her into a major change of direction. The world of newspapers is undergoing a revolution, there’s skullduggery in the medical research labs and there are seismic rumblings behind the Iron Curtain. When murder is added to this potent mix, Allie is forced to question all her old certainties. Readers are having a great time time-traveling with Val, and 1989 is a seamless, riveting novel that brings us once again face to face with how very much past is prologue, and how history’s sins stay with us.

A Scottish police inspector deals with forgeries and false identities in a new murder mystery in the “superior series” (The New York Times). When a lobster fisherman discovers a dead body in Scotland’s Firth of Forth, DCI Karen Pirie is called into investigate. She quickly discovers that the case will require untangling a complicated web—involving a long-ago disappearance, art forgery, and secret identities—that seems to surround a painter who can mimic anyone from Holbein to Hockney. Meanwhile, a traffic accident leads to the discovery of a skeleton in a suburban garage. Karen has a full plate, and it only gets more stressful as the man responsible for the death of the love of her life is scheduled for release from prison, reopening old wounds just as she was getting back on her feet. From a Diamond Dagger Award winner and multiple Edgar Award finalist, Still Life is a tightly plotted mystery featuring an investigator “whose unwavering confidence is tempered by a strong dose of kindness and sense of justice” (Booklist). “There are few other crime writers in the same league.”—Maureen Corrigan, The Washington Post

In this superb new addition to Val McDermid’s masterful crime series, DCI Karen Pirie returns in a propulsive thriller of deceit and vengeance, set against the disquiet of a global pandemic Britain’s reigning “Queen of Crime” (The Scotsman), Val McDermid is the award-winning, internationally bestselling author of over thirty novels. The long-awaited seventh novel in the acclaimed series that has captivated audiences for twenty years, both on the page and now in the Edgar Award–nominated ITV/BritBox show, Past Lying is a full tilt novel of ego, retribution, deceit, and just how far one will go to settle the score. It’s April 2020 and Edinburgh is in lockdown. It would seem like a strange time for a cold case to go hot—the streets all but empty, an hour’s outdoor exercise the maximum allowed—but a mere pandemic doesn’t mean crime takes a holiday. When a source at the National Library contacts DCI Karen Pirie’s team about documents in the archive of a recently deceased crime novelist, it seems it’s game on again. At the center of it, a novel: two crime novelists facing off over a chessboard. But it quickly emerges that their real-life competition is drawing blood. What unspools is a twisted game of betrayal and revenge, and as Karen and her team attempt to disentangle fact from fiction, it becomes clear that their investigation is more complicated than they ever imagined. A tense, atmospheric page-turner, Past Lying reaffirms McDermid as one of the most talented crime writers of her generation.