New books for June in the UK

According to the 5 March Bookseller, June is looming! Lots of books will be published for the first time this month, leading to images of sitting in the sunshine with a good read, a floppy hat and a glass of iced water....

There does not seem to be too much on offer on the translated fiction front. Anne Zouroudi has a fourth in her Greek Detective series, this one called The Lady of Sorrows (Bloomsbury). I am afraid I haven't even read the first yet, so I must rectify that omission as soon as I can. Apparently each novel is based on one of the seven deadly sins, and this one is the turn of Wrath. However, as there is no mention of a translator at the author's website, and she was born in England, I assume the books are originally written in English.

Zoe Ferraris has a second novel coming out, City of Veils (Little Brown), a sequel to her debut The Night of the Mi'raj (US title Finding Nouf) which won the LA Times first fiction award. The new novel features a murder of a young woman on a Jeddah beach. The author is US American, so again I assume the original language of her books is English. And there is a strong-sounding debut on offer, The Priest by Gerard O'Donovan (Sphere), in which the daughter of a prominent Spanish politician is attacked. The case is given to DI Mike Mulcahy, recently returned to Dublin from Spain.

Andrea Camilleri, though, can be said with some certainty to write his books in Italian. His latest Inspector Montalbano mystery, The Wings of the Sphinx (Picador) involves the death of a young Russian immigrant, and is doubtless translated by Stephen Sartarelli with his customary elegance and erudition. Apparently August Heat, the previous novel in the series, will be published in mass-market paperback simultaneously.

Just picking out a few of the remainder, Harlan Coben has a new novel coming out, Play Dead (Orion), which seems to be a standalone about a woman whose husband goes for a swim on their honeymoon and disappears. Michael Robotham's Bleed for Me (Sphere) is a Joe O'Loughlin series novel about the murder of the father of one of Joe's daughter's schoolfriends. 

Linda Castillo's second novel to feature Amish police chief Kate Burkholder is Pray for Silence (Macmillan). The first book was called Sworn to Silence (or Born to Silence as the Bookseller has it), which bodes ill for my ability to distinguish between future titles and therefore whether or not I have read them. A problem I have with John Sandford, whose 20th prey novel, Storm Prey(Simon and Schuster) is also out in June - this time the bizarrely named Weather (wife of Lucas Davenport, the protag) witnesses a violent drug raid which endangers her life. I usually enjoy these.

Tom Bale, author of the exciting thriller Skin and Bones, has a second book out, Terror's Reach (Preface), about a gang attacking the titular island. The protag is a bodyguard. Peter James's new Roy Grace novel is Dead Like You (Macmillan) - he is always worth reading. Exciting, human, and good detective plots. Christopher Fowler's new novel is Bryant and May off the Rails (Doubleday), about the death of a young woman at Kings Cross tube station. She's probably a commuter who couldn't stand it any more.

Finally for this post (though there are lots of books coming out that I have not mentioned), is the first in an intriguing new series by Michael Ridpath, Where the Shadows Lie (Corvus). The author is moving away from financial thrillers and up north to Iceland, where his protag, a "US-raised homicide detective" called Magnus Johnson, is seconded. I wonder if this series will be as good as the home grown novels of Arnaldur Indridason and Yrsa Sigurdadottir? Good news for readers, if so.

Comments

[Norm]

Maxine, I have The Wings of the Sphinx on my TBR pile and you are correct it is translated by Stephen Sartarelli.

[Maxine]

Thanks Norman! So do I but I was too lazy to go upstairs to check when I wrote this post last night (on timer). That Iceland one looks quite good I think.

[Norm]

A writer author who published financial thrillers now writing about Iceland that has a touch of irony about it. ;o)

[Maxine]

ha ha, Norman, good one.

[Medieval Clothing]

Great news! I'm looking forward of having these books specially
The Wings of the Sphinx.