Kamila Shamsie
Burnt Shadows

In a us prison cell a man stands fearfully waiting to be shipped to Guantanamo Bay. How did it come to this? 1945, Nagasaki. Hiroko Tanaka is in love with the man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss. In a split second, the world turns white. In the next, it explodes with the sound of fire and the horror of realisation. Two years later, in search of new beginnings, Hiroko travels to Delhi. There she walks into the life of Konrad's half-sister. As the years unravel, old wars are usurped by new conflicts. But the shadows of history are cast over the entwined worlds of the Burtons, Ashrafs and the Tanakas as they are transported from Pakistan to New York and Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11.

Jessica Stirling
A Kiss and a Promise

Servant girl Betsy Mc Bride thinks she has as much right as any girl to set her cap at Tom Brodie, the most dashing young man in the district. When her master asks her to help out the Brodie family, she jumps at the chance to get a bit closer to him. She doesn't realise that Tom Brodie thinks the only way to save his family's fortune - or at least their farm - is to dazzle his landlord's daughter. There is heartbreak is on the horizon unless Tom's much more down-to-earth brother Henry can catch Betsy's attention.

'One of the best' - Bookseller

Seven years ago, Vivek Rai murdered Ruby Gill in a restaurant in New Delhi because she refused to serve him a drink. Now Vicky Rai is dead, killed at a party he had thrown to celebrate his acquittal. Six of the guests are discovered with guns in their possession and are taken in for questioning. Who are these six, and what were they doing that night? In this elaborate mystery we join Arun Advani, investigative journalist, as the lives of the six unravel: a corrupt bureaucrat, an American tourist infatuated with an Indian actress, a stone-age tribesman on a quest to recover a sacred stone, a Bollywood sex-symbol with a guilty secret, a mobile-phone thief who dreams big and an ambitious politician prepared to stoop low. Each is equally likely to have pulled the trigger.