Michael Connelly
Echo Park

In 1993 Marie Gesto disappeared after walking out of a supermarket in Hollywood. The case was elevated to the Homicide Division, where Harry Bosch was assigned the case. But the young woman never turned up - dead or alive - and it was a case Bosch couldn't crack. Thirteen years later Bosch 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. Bosch is now assigned to take Raynard Waits' confession and to make sure the killer is not scamming authorities to avoid a date with death. In confirming the confession Bosch must get close to the man he has sought and hated - for thirteen years. Bosch'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 that could have led them to Waits.

Jilly Cooper
Wicked

At Bagley Hall, an independent school crammed with the children of the rich and famous, charismatic headmaster Hengist Brett-Taylor, hatches a plan to share his well-funded facilities with Larkminster comprehensive (known as Larks). His reasons for doing so are purely financial, but he is also encouraged by the opportunities the scheme gives him for frequent meetings with Janna Curtis, the dynamic new head of Larks, who has been drafted in to save the fast-sinking school from closure. Janna is young, pretty, enthusiastic and vastly brave - and she will do anything to rescue her demoralised, run-down and cash-strapped school. Neither parents nor staff of either school are too keen on this radical move. For the students, however, it offers great opportunities for joyous mayhem...

'Simply enjoy the wicked pleasures Cooper does so well'- Observer

In this sequel to Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman, Minty Lloyd struggles to make her life work as Nathan's second wife. Mother to six year-old twins, sidelined at family gatherings by Nathan's hostile family, ostracised by his friends, she is haunted by the shadow of the glowing, successful Rose, Nathan's first wife. The trouble is, she concludes, 'everything I do is second hand: Yet, such is the curious nature of fate, Minty finds herself united in loss with an unexpected ally - the woman she once betrayed. Buchan's signature gift for capturing women's daily joys and struggles is beautifully deployed in The Second Wife, an irresistible story of love, grief and renewal that explores that nature of friendship and the bonds that grow strongest when stretched to breaking.

'Readers who appreciate Buchan's blend o f humour and poignancy will find a trove of it' - Publishers Weekly