Books

Best known to crime fiction lovers for his starring roles in the likes of Sherlock and Fargo, Martin Freeman is stepping into very different shoes for The Responder, written by author Tony Schumacher and set in Liverpool, which launches on BBC One at 9pm on 24 January. Freeman plays Chris, described as “…a crisis-stricken, morally

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The American mystery writer Dean Koontz returns, and he’s created an enigmatic new protagonist – but that’s not all we’ve got for you in our new books report this week. Another returnee is British writer Louise Welsh along with her Glaswegian auctioneer Rilke, and there are some new names on our radar too including Danya

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Translated by Mike Mitchell — Basel CID Inspector Peter Hunkeler, first seen in translation in last year’s The Basel Killings, is stuck in traffic on his way to the train station. The Basel police department has received a tip off from their German counterparts that a mule is bringing a cache of diamonds into Switzerland

Gallup has just released the results of the 2021 edition of a reading survey they’ve done since 1990. Last year, U.S. Americans reported reading 12.6 books on average, down from 15.6 in 2016, and lower than any of the previous years. The percentage of respondents who said they had not read at all in the

Welsh crime fiction is looking forward to a big boost in 2022 with the Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival in Aberystwyth at the end of April, and The Engine House by Rhys Dylan is a good choice if you want to be transported to the wet, windswept and moody climate of rural West Wales. The setting

The United States Mint has announced that Maya Angelou will be the first Black woman to be featured on the U.S. quarter. The quarter will be the first issued as part of a program called “American Women Quarters (AWQ) Program” that will honor American women’s contributions to American history. Other women to be honored in

Gold standard Outback noir from the rich opal fields of barren northern Queensland, Australia. Chris Hammer’s new stand alone tale may well be his best writing to date and that’s saying something as it follows his engrossing and original Scrublands trilogy. Like those doorstop novels, Opal Country is epic in scale but it’s also a

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DC This edition of Daily Deals is sponsored by DC. Today’s Featured Deals In Case You Missed Yesterday’s Most Popular Deals Previous Daily Deals She’s Too Pretty to Burn by Wendy Heard for $2.99 The Sisters of the Winter Wood by Rena Rossner for $2.99 Paperback Crush by Gabrielle Moss for $1.99 Darling by K.

If gritty police procedurals are your crime fiction fix, then maybe it’s time to add Marrisse Whittaker to that ever-growing list of authors to explore. Set in the North East of England, The Devil’s Line is her follow up to The Magpie, which was shortlisted for The Lindisfarne Prize for Outstanding Debut Crime Fiction in

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Welcome to our first crime fiction new books roundup of 2022, where we start off with two historical crime novels – one about a girl and one about a boy. Anna Mazzola’s The Clockwork Girl is highly anticipated and looks positively charming… in a creepy kind of way. The Burning Boy by Nicola White, on

Kai Harris’ debut novel is a stirring story of a transformative summer for a Black girl growing up in 1990s Michigan. What the Fireflies Knew drops us directly into the mind of 10-year-old Kenyatta, known as KB, who has discovered her father’s dead body in the garage of their home on a “dead-end street” in

One of the key findings from a new study by the Pew Research Center shows that 30% of Americans now read ebooks, up from 25% in 2019. The number of those who read a print book stayed the same in that time period, while audiobook reading increased from 20% to 23%. The Pew Research Center

Debut fiction author Hiawatha Bray draws on his deep knowledge and experience in writing this highly entertaining techno-thriller set mostly in Boston. Like Bray himself, his protagonist, Weldon Drake, is a technology reporter for a leading newspaper, and both are deacons in an African-American Baptist Church. Late one night, MIT graduate student Astrid Nelson is

Lan Samantha Chang’s fourth book, the terrific novel The Family Chao, draws inspiration from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, in which three brothers struggle against their father’s tyrannical behavior. Instead of 19th-century Russia, Chang’s dialogue-driven novel is set in contemporary Haven, a small town in Wisconsin where larger-than-life patriarch Leo Chao and his wife, Winnie,

A five-year mystery has been (mostly) solved, as the FBI arrested Italian citizen and UK publishing worker Filippo Bernardini yesterday on charges of impersonation and fraud. (Here’s the same story in The Guardian, in case you, too, have reached your NYT article limit.) This is such a bizarre case, and the arrest answers the question

Narrated by Caroline Lennon — Northern Ireland writer Stuart Neville’s domestic noir thriller creeps into your consciousness bit by bit until it becomes an irresistible story of women dominated and abused by the men in their lives. Sara Keane and her rather new husband Damien have moved from England back to his home in Northern

When then-California Senator Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for vice president of the United States, she spoke of a long history of inspiring women, including the impoverished Mississippi sharecropper-turned-human rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer. “We’re not often taught their stories, but as Americans, we all stand on their shoulders,” Harris said. Historian Keisha

Cold weather reading is my favorite reading! The best part of my day is curling up under the covers with my daughter and reading books together. Some days this happens a lot; other days, she doesn’t want to sit still and I read at her while I’m under the covers and she’s playing, but whatever

If Reacher were a spy, not a citizen avenger, he’d be a lot like the Englishman, Dan Raglan, the protagonist of David Gilman’s new globe trotting action series. There’s a comparable level of excitement in this thriller series for Jack Reacher fans to savour and lovers of Gilman’s historical epics will still find much to

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Channel 4’s foreign crime streaming service Walter Presents is throwing all its chips down on Nordic noir for the new year, debuting four Scandinavian crime series between January and March 2022. First up is the Norwegian procedural Outlier, which will air on Channel 4 from 9 January. It will be followed by Cry Wolf (Denmark)

The New York Times Book Review marked their 125 year anniversary by asking readers to nominate the best book of the past 125 years. Those submissions were narrowed down to a list of 25, which were voted on by more than 200,000 readers. The list included classics like The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald,

Translated by Elizabeth Clark Wessel — Oh boy. The new year has barely started and already it seems like I’ve found my top book of 2022. Hans Rosenfeldt is an author putting the ‘noir’ into Nordic noir with a novel that features fallible characters who make bad decisions hoping to better their lives, a deadly

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Baby shower cards are great. I say this as someone who has rarely given, and never received, such a card. But generally, I am a fan of cards. They express care for the person receiving them, and who doesn’t like being cared for? That said, I do believe there is a chance that books could