Upcoming books for August

New crime fiction due to be published in the UK in August includes Beneath the Bleeding by Val McDermid (HarperCollins), one of her Tony Hill series; Written in Bone by Simon Beckett (Bantam), a follow-up to the well-received Chemistry of Death; The Draining Lake by Arnaldur Indridason (Harvill Secker), the "next but one" (for me) Erlendur book;  and The Pool of Unease by Catherine Sampson (Macmillan), a welcome third book by this excellent author.  I'll probably read all the books previously mentioned (eventually, when in paperback). Some other August releases which will be big sellers but which I'm less sure I'll read are Still Waters by Niel McCrery (Quercus), a new detective for the author of Silent Witness (I assume this means the TV series);  Denise Mina's Slip of the Knife (Bantam), the next Paddy Meehan outing (I liked the author's first four books but did not enjoy the first Paddy Meehan book, Fields of Blood, very much) ; The Burnt House by Faye Kellerman (HarperCollins); The Face of Death by Cody McFadyn (Hodder & Stoughton); and probably the biggest seller of all of this lot, Heart Sick by Chelsea Cain (Macmillan). This prediction is based partly on the subject matter and partly on the huge amount of imaginative marketing that is being devoted to this title, in which the detective has to turn to the psychopathic female murderer who once held him captive in order to solve the case. See what I mean? Can't miss (and it is first in a series).
My final pick of the vast August selection listed in the Bookseller is Black Tide by Peter Temple -- Quercus is reissuing the second Jack Irish book.  I have ordered a three-in-one volume of the first three Jack Irish books from Amazon,  which is a good deal price-wise, but as availability is the infamous "4 to 6 weeks", I don't know if I'll ever actually receive it.

Comments

[Jenny]

Good luck getting hold of the Temple volume. Those books are astonishingly good...

I will be interested to hear what you think of the "Chemistry of Death" sequel. I found the first one very thin, with the manner rather than the substance one hopes for from a serial-killer thriller. But tens (hundreds?) of thousands of readers can't be wrong...

congrats on 1000+ blog posts!

[Iain@Quercus]

I'm afraid you won't get the Temple omnibus until at least 2008, when it is published. Sorry if Amazon's listings are wrong - that is part of my job and I should really resign on the spot. I won't though.

[Maxine]

Thanks for the tip, Iain. Can't say I'm surprised about Amazon's listings.