With overtones of The Handmaid's Tale, the novel takes the unlikely but true history of a religious cult awaiting the Second Coming in the suburbs of 1920s Bedford and fashions from it a poignant tale of misplaced faith and an unexpected love affair. In peering into the claustrophobic world of The Panacea Society, we are forced to consider the relationship between dreams and reality, love and obsession, and blind faith and madness. Dilys is a devoted member of which is almost entirely populated by virtuous single ladies. When she strikes up a friendship with Grace, a new recruit, God finally seems to be smiling upon her. The friends become closer as they wait for the Lord to return to their very own Garden of Eden, and Dilys feels she has found the right path at last. She is wary of their leader's zealotry and suspicious of those who would seem to influence her for their own ends. As her feelings for Grace bud and bloom, the Society around her begins to crumble. Faith is supplanted by doubt as both women come to question what is true and to fear what is real. Based on a true story. 352pp.

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.

Winner of the Betty Trask Award 2019. When a wealthy client visits Mathilde's dressmaking shop, she finds herself drawn into the only surviving circle of luxury left in a barren London. Attending parties offers a welcome escape from life governed by ration cards and a strictly enforced child policy. Here she meets enigmatic government minister George and piano-playing Jaminder, with whom an intense friendship blossoms. As their relationship grows stronger, George's grip on Mathilde tightens, as she tries to discover where the illicit food is coming from, where women disappear to, and what price she must pay to avoid bringing a child into a cruel, ever-changing world. Set in the chillingly plausible post-apocalyptic Britain and written with prose to savour, the novel is about what it means to be human when civilisation has been destroyed. 293pp, paperback.

A magical yet oppressive Moscow is evoked with a young heroine who is foolish, inquisitive and achingly lonely. 'I hear the howling at night. It wakes me sometimes.' Escaping failure as an undergraduate and a daughter, not to mention bleak 1970s England, Martha marries Kit - who is gay. Having a wife could keep him safe in Moscow in his diplomatic post. As Martha tries to understand her new life and makes the wrong friends, she walks straight into an underground world of counter-espionage. Out of her depth, Martha no longer knows who can be trusted. A terrific novel of love and loyalty showing how a place can get inside you and challenge everything you thought you knew about yourself. 294pp.

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.

First published in the UK in 1975 and here in Picador reprint is the hard hitting master stylist of American letters. Lester Ballard, a violent, solitary and introverted young backwoodsman dispossessed on his ancestral land is released from jail and allowed to haunt the hill country of East Tennessee, preying on the population with his strange lusts. The author transforms commonplace brushes with humanity in homesteads, stores and in the woods into stunning scenes of the comic and the grotesque with the anti-hero's deviant and shocking acts, yet the reader still feels a degree of pity for him as society continually rejects him. As the story hurtles toward its unforgettable conclusion, it depicts the most sordid aspects of life with dignity, humour and characteristic lyrical brilliance. By the author of The Road and The Border Trilogy, this is a taut, chilling novel that plumbs the depths of human degradation. 186pp, 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.