London 1967. Nik Christou has been a rent boy since he was 15. He knows the ins and outs of Piccadilly Circus, how to spot a pretty policeman and interpret a fleeting glance. One summer night his life is turned upside down, first by violence and then by an accusation of murder. Anna Treadway, fleeing the ghosts of her past, works as a dresser in Soho's Galaxy theatre. Experience has taught her never to put too much faith in the law, so, convinced Nik is innocent, she determines to find him an alibi. Merrian Wallis, devoted wife to an MP whose career has already been tarnished by sandal, just wants proof that her husband couldn't have been involved. As Anna searches for clues amongst a cast of MPs, actors, members of gentlemen's clubs and a hundred different nightly clients, will anyone be willing to come forward and save Nik from his fate? Emmerson portrays summer nights in the city with all their 'distemper and discretions' and a cruel, surprisingly small world in which privilege and prejudice quash any compassion, a world where actors need 'lead stomachs, steel minds and loose knickers.' A pitch-perfect evocation of 60s London, well-plotted, engrossing and moving particularly in that the novel gives voice to the marginalised and disdained. Written by a well-regarded dramatist. 280pp, paperback.

After an extremely violent first chapter, the book, set in Norway, is the story of one family and how their lives were ripped apart by the mass murder of children and the search for the body of one of them. Scottish born satirist Cal and his Norwegian wife Elsa had arrived in Oslo for a six month stint with their three young children, before their return to life in Washington DC. Their eldest daughter Licia is away at a summer camp on a small island off the coast of Oslo. A bomb ripping through a building in the town centre sends shockwaves through the city, but it is what follows that truly horrifies a nation. Gunmen alight on the island where the camp is being hosted, and mercilessly open fire on the teenagers. The death toll is staggering and a community mourns. Bodies are repatriated onto the mainland and families grieve, but for Cal and Elsa their horror is only just beginning. Did Licia survive the shooting or is she gone forever? 424pp.

Samuel Browne is set adrift when his marriage to the mysterious Sarah falls apart, and with his life and career in banking at a crossroads, he answers an enigmatic advertisement to act as a volunteer archivist in a private library. He meets Arnold Comberbache and so begins 17 weeks of an adventure that will change his perception of life forever. In a wonderfully atmospheric country house, Samuel is instructed to search for a lost letter which could be hidden in any of the books in Arnold's magnificent library. The cold but characterful old house is remote and encircled by hills, the setting for a story about books, reading, birds and climbing, opening the reader to reflections on life and death with reflections on the sciences as well as the arts by this clearly well read bibliophile author. 293pp.

From the popular Harry Bosch series. In 1993, Marie Gesto disappeared after walking out of a supermarket in Hollywood, and the case has haunted Harry ever since. Fearing for the worst, the case is elevated by LAPD commanders from the Missing Person Squad to the Homicide Division and it was a case that Harry couldn't crack. 13 years later he is in the Open-Unsolved Unit where he still keeps the Gesto file on his desk when he gets a call from the DA's office. A man accused of two heinous killings is willing to come clean in regard to several other murders in a deal to avoid the death penalty. One of those murders he says is the killing of Marie Gesto. Harry is now assigned to take Raynard Waits' confession and to make sure the killer is not scamming authorities to avoid a date with death. Meanwhile Harry's whole being as a cop begins to crack when he comes to realise that he and his partner missed a clue back in 1993 which could have led them to Waits and stopped the nine murders that followed. We are kept guessing until the exciting conclusion. 392pp, paperback.

Defense Attorney Mickey Haller returns with a haunting case. He receives a text, 'Call me ASAP - 187', and the California penal code for murder immediately gets his attention. Murder cases have the highest stakes and the biggest paydays, and they always mean Haller has to be at the top of his game. When he learns that the victim was his own former client Gloria Dayton, a prostitute he thought he had rescued and put on the straight and narrow, far from saving her, he may have been her downfall and the one who put her in danger. Haunted by the ghosts of his past he must work tirelessly and bring all his skill to bear on a case that could mean his ultimate redemption or proof of his ultimate guilt. He must find out who Gloria really was and who was responsible for her death. While the themes of Connelly's LA crime novels are familiar - power, envy, corruption - his plotting is anything but. 465pp, paperback.

A gripping thriller set in the Derbyshire Peak District, a novel about family and betrayal, injustice and violence, fear and love, resilience, kindness and hope. A missing schoolgirl, a middle-aged recluse, an exploited teenager. Lives thrown into chaos and set on a collision course, with the police in hot pursuit. Scarlett is dancing in the school talent show tomorrow. Nana, who Scarlett lives with since Mum died, reckons Scarlett will be on Strictly at this rate except Scarlett doesn't make it home from school. She's abducted by a man she never imagined she would see again, a man on the police's most wanted list - her dad. Ron had made a living as a house and pet sitter since quitting his career on the front line in the fire service. He's currently looking after a place deep in the Derbyshire Peaks. The solitude suits him, and managing animals is so much simpler than coping with other people. Dylan's a 'cuckoo', dealing drugs on the county line, moving from nest to nest, picking out people who daren't say no. Keeping his head down, one step ahead of the law so far, but now everything's falling apart. DS Laura O'Neil is running on empty after nights dealing with her teething toddler, but she is driving the hunt for Scarlett and knows that every minute counts. PC Ahmed Ali discovers a seriously injured man in a drug den and chases his suspected attacker across the hills. He is determined to bring him to justice, but fate has other plans in store. A race against time played out in the brooding wilderness, the limestone gorges and gritstone edges of the Peak District with themes of escape and entrapment, shifting loyalties and new alliances. 262pp, paperback.

Rich, beautiful, they are back with a vengeance. Ambitious, young, smart and lethal, whatever the Hollywood wives don't have, they want, and whatever these women want, they get. Meet Lissa Roman, mega movie and singing star, her wild daughter Nicci, Michael Scorsinni, the handsome private investigator with an edge, and Taylor Singer, a sometime actress married to a Hollywood mogul. Into their lives comes Eric Vernon, a dangerous psychopath with kidnapping on his mind. A reprint of the 2001 original with all the mix of erotic, salacious gossip, romance and crime we come to expect from Jackie Collins. Expect some crude language. 490pp, paperback.

Every ardent bookworm will devour this powerful novel which celebrates the power of books and libraries to change people's lives. In the darkness of war, the light of books, the novel is about how librarians defied the Nazis. In Paris 1939, Odile Souchet has her dream job at the American Library in Paris, with its thriving community of students, writers and book lovers. It is a dream come true, but when war is declared, the Library is determined to remain open. But then the Nazis invade Paris and everything changes. In Occupied Paris, choices as black and white as the words on a page become a murky shade of grey - choices that will put many on the wrong side of history, and the consequences of which will echo for decades to come. Montana, 1983 and Lily is a lonely teenager desperate to escape small-town America. She grows close to her neighbour Odile, discovering they share the same love of language, but Lily uncovers more about Odile's mysterious past, and discovers a dark secret, closely guarded and long hidden. Based on the true WW2 story of the heroic librarians at the American Library in Paris, this is an unforgettable novel of romance, friendship, family and of heroism found in the quietest of places. Heart-breaking and heart lifting in turn, this is an utterly charming worldwide bestseller. 422pp, paperback.

Janet is caught between care work and caring for herself. Her life revolves around Sean, a talented fine art student, living and working with cerebral palsy. Both Janet and Sean are new to London and far from their families and both are finding a means of escape through pushing their bodies to the limit. When Sean is faced with an unexpected and deeply personal tragedy, his carer Janet must let her guard down at last and discover what she's prepared to fight for. The whole concept of Sean's art he is able to produce with Janet's help is deeply moving, drawing attention to his body and disability but on his own terms in his own highly original and powerful ways. Shocking and different, this a raw and rather beautiful and unflinching look inside the life of a disabled person and their relationship with their carer, a novel about dignity and intimacy, tenderness and brutality. 259pp, fairly large print.

A powerful novel which brings to life the Bauhaus Movement. Luise Schilling wants to tear down the past and build a new future. At the beginning of the turbulent 1920s, she leaves her father's conservative household in Berlin for Weimar's Bauhaus University, with dreams of studying architecture. But when she arrives and encounters a fractured social world of mystics and formalists, communists and fascists, the dichotomy between the rigid past and a hopeful future turns out to be a lot more muddled than she thought. Luise becomes involved with a cult-like spiritual group, looking for community, and falling in love with elusive art student Jakob. Surrounded by luminaries like Gropius and Kandinsky, Luise throws herself into the dreams and ideas of her epoch. While her art school friends retreat into a world of self-improvement and jargon, her home city of Berlin is embroiled in street fights. Amid the social upheaval, she has to decide where she stands. From technology to art, romanticism to the avant-garde, populism to the youth movement, Luise encounters themes, utopias and ideas that still ring familiar today. Told in the first person, a coming-of-age story to immerse yourself in the atmosphere and setting, first in the Weimar and in the second in Dessau, both reflecting the political and cultural shifts in the schools' movement across Germany and its director Walter Gropius, depicted as a distant, imposing figure. 224pp. One illus.