Read by Alex Kingston, Adrian Scarborough, Adjoa Andoh, Imogen Stubbs, Alison Steadman, Jodhi May, Chipo Chung, Cathy Tyson, Ramon Tikaram, Tanya Reynolds, Celia Imrie and Miriam Margolyes. At the end of the day, though, it's probably more my problem, not the book's. I love lit that explores dark places, but this was too camp (ha!) for me. Too gratuitous, too unearned. It probably means I'm not into the genre, rather than that the author didn't succeed at his goal. I felt a warm rasping at my throat, then came a consciousness of the awful truth, which chilled me to the heart and sent the blood surging up through my brain." A brand new collection of short stories featuring the Queen of Crime’s legendary detective Jane Marple, penned by twelve remarkable bestselling and acclaimed authors. Finding the battered body of a young boy was not unusual in Bloody Mary’s cruel England. However, the stabbed tongue, a false seal and strange letter implicate Princess Elizabeth, threatening to bring down the Tudor Dynasty.

Twelve students and three chaperones enter the woods for a camping trip and none of them come out alive. That's not a spoiler, that is in the book synopsis. So I knew this wasn't going to be all rainbows and lollipops but this guy took it so far deeper and darker than I was expecting. It was nearly relentless. And they die in the worst imaginable ways. This story is dark and disturbing beyond compare. Gory graphic scenes of the death of children... Courtois' new forest noir of children gone missing in the woods evokes myth, fairytale, and nightmare. The Laws of the Skies begins when a school trip to explore nature leaves a number of students stranded with a murderer, and only gets stranger from there. Also this one wins oddest comparison blurb -- the publisher describes this book as 'Winnie-the-Pooh meets the Blair Witch Project.' In other words, irresistible!" -- CrimeReads, "May's Best International Crime Fiction" The agents don’t know what they’re agents of, but they’re very busy agenting, which means watching endless data feeds in their cubicles, cubicles that are piled one on top of another in a massive tower in which the agents both live and work. Empty floors serve as battlefields where different guilds of agents fight for territory. It seems that defenestration is the only way out, the ‘ballet of suicides.’ This] novel is about how work, as defined by late-stage capitalism, has gradually become the sole purpose of our lives. " – Ian Mond, Locus Magazine

It's no secret and therefore no spoiler that this is a splatter story. Young children are dying and horribly - and all I can say is that it was pretty great. *lol*

The text lives up to the promise, too, but expect it to be more in line with a B-Movie horrorshow that doesn't spare the kids. At all. It’s 1961, and Mary Alice (Tink) Parker lives with her parents in a Vancouver suburb where many fathers are traumatized veterans of the Second World War and almost all the mothers are housewives. They believe they’ve earned secure and prosperous lives after the sacrifices they made during the war. But under the conformist veneer seethe conflicts and secrets that make the serenity of Grouse Valley precarious. Through sheer ambition and force of will, Lin has rebranded her entire existence. She's shrugged off her past to fully embrace a new identity: Linfluencer, the high-end influencer whose Outfits Of The Day are obsessively followed by every budding fashionista with a blossoming social media addiction. Spring Cleaning is Antonio Manzini’s newest installment in the internationally bestselling Rocco Schiavone mystery series. Hiding out in a hotel in northwestern Italy after his best friend’s girlfriend was killed, the Deputy Police Chief, who believes he was the intended target, searches the deep forests for the murderer, but Rocco’s grudge-bearing adversaries in the mafia still haunt Alpine Italy.I would and will read anything this man publishes. Any writer that isn't afraid to take an unflinching high dive off the deep end of an unthinkable cliff is my favorite type and Courtois is a master.

by commentators, guest bloggers, reviewers, and interviewees are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Locus magazine or its staff. What if I told you that sleep was just a habit? What if the third of your life you spend asleep, you could be awake instead? Grafton is a single dad who works in local radio, but he's always dreamt of being a 'real' journalist. When he gets a whiff of a story - a Scottish commune whose residents believe that sleep is a social construct - he decides to investigate... something tells him 'the Sleepless' might finally provide answers about his wife, Liz, who abandoned him and their son Isaac for a similar cult in India. As Grafton is drawn deeper into the extreme world of the Sleepless, Liz reappears, and Grafton has to race to save both himself and his son... Show book Unflinching in its savagery, the nightmarish poetry of this modern Lord of the Flies is undeniable.” – Publishers Weekly starred review on The Laws of the Skies philosophical debut in 1749 reveals the mark of genius. 5. Newtonian Stargazing: “The Splendor of a Single Universal Rule” I stand ready to fight for my people, but the odds are grim. Hunting submarines with a sailing ship is a new one even for me. Guess I’ll be making this up as I go. Should I fail, those bastards will murder everyone, including the children.The beginning of a wonderfully different Tudor crime fiction series’ Alis Hawkins‘A wonderful debut’ Jules Swain‘Absolutely spellbinding… alive with atmosphere and realism’ Chris Lloyd Show book Twelve six-year-olds and their three adult chaperones head into the woods on a camping trip. None of them make it out alive.