Lots of treats in store if you live in the UK and want some good paperback holiday reading in August. I spent a frustrating time trying and failing to find an online picture to post here of Natasha Cooper's first "relaunch" title, No Escape: new publisher, new theme (not Trish Maguire but "a dark, psychological thriller set in the Isle of Wight"), new name: N. J. Cooper. Unfortunately the pictorial evidence is nowhere that I can find on the Internet, but there's a minipic in the August paperback preview of the 24 April Bookseller (page 31). See this Euro Crime blog post for more details of N. J. Cooper's transition. The paperback is published by Pocket Books and out on 3 August, list price £6.99.
Other exciting novels due for August paperback release are the excellent Burial, by Neil Cross (Pocket, £6.99); Bombproof, Michael Robotham's fifth thriller, this one featuring Vincent Ruiz (Sphere, £6.99). I've read the first two in this series so far (The Suspect and The Drowning Man), and enjoyed them. The core cast of characters is the same, but the main character changes in each book (so far). Perhaps the biggest seller will be Ian Rankin's Doors Open (Orion, £7.99), the author's first post-Rebus novel. Close behind will be Ruth Rendell's Portobello (Arrow, £7.99) and Tess Gerritsen's Keeping the Dead (Bantam, £6.99), an author who is very popular but with whom I have parted company after enjoying the first few of this loosely connected series.
On the translated front, the big treat is Jo Nesbo's The Redeemer (Vintage, £6.99): I don't expect I'll have managed to read Nemesis before August but you never know. Here's the Nesbo expert's view, at Crime Scraps. Apart from The Angel Maker by Stefan Brijs (Phoenix, £7.99) and Mehmet Murat Sommer's Gigolo Murder (Serpent's Tail, £7.99), third in the Turkish transvestite detective series , there aren't any other translations that I can spot in the Bookseller preview feature.
Among the other books to look forward to in paperback in August are The Good Thief's Guide to Paris by Chris Ewan (Pocket, £6.99), Darkness Rising by Frank Tallis (Arrow, £7.99), Magdalen Nabb's final novel, Vita Nuova (Arrow, £7.99), Death Trip by Lee Weeks (Avon, £6.99) and Geezer Girls by Dreda Say Mitchell (Hodder, £6.99). This list is by no means comprehensive!
Thanks for "the Nesbo expert" booster Maxine!
Posted by: Norm | 30 April 2009 at 17:38