Andrea Camilleri
The Snack Thief

When an elderly man is stabbed to death in an elevator and a crewman on an Italian fishing trawler is machine-gunned by a Tunisian patrol boat off Sicily's coast, only Inspector Montalbano suspects the link between the two incidents. His investigation leads to the beautiful Karima, an impoverished house cleaner and sometime prostitute, whose young son steals other school children's mid-morning snacks. But Karima disappears, and the young snack thief's life - as well as Montalbano's - is endangered when the inspector exposes a viper's nest of government corruption and international intrigue.

John MacLachlan Gray
White Stone Day

Victorian London. Fog bound, stinking, sinister. This is journalist Edmund Whitty's world. An habitue of taverns and gaming dens, he has lost fortunes. And he can't find a story. Spiritualism is the new fad. So when an American detective asks Whitty to unmask a fraudulent psychic, Whitty has no other option. But the seance doesn't go to plan and Whitty hears the voice of his dead brother imploring him to right the wrongs of his life. Soon Whitty finds himself on a dangerous adventure that takes him into the highest echelons of society, where the bizarre and the sordid are the everyday currency.

The colleges of Cambridge shimmer beneath the sun of high summer. Beyond the city, the Fens lie quiet in the heat. In an agricultural equipment showroom, the half-consumed body of a young man sticks out grotesquely from the mouth of a shredding machine. Does this death mark the beginning of an unprecedented crime wave in this well-heeled community? Or is it just the latest in a story of corruption and brutal violence stretching back more than 20 years? For Detective Inspector Tom Fletcher, the secrets of the past are just as dangerous as the superbly-trained killer that he faces in the present.