Ajay Chowdhury, the inaugural winner of the Harvill Secker-Bloody Scotland prize, is a tech entrepreneur and theatre director. His children’s book – Ayesha and the Firefish, was published in 2016 and adapted into a musical which premiered in San Francisco. 
 
 
The Waiter (Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month), was published in 2021, and is the first in his critically-acclaimed crime series about Detective Kamil Rahman, an ex-policeman from Kolkata who has moved to Brick Lane in London. It is being adapted for television by Moonage Pictures.The Cook (Guardian Top Crime Books of the Year) was published in May 2022 to excellent reviews and deals with the issue of homelessness. The third book in the series – The Detective (Sunday Times Top Crime Books of the Year) – is about government surveillance and AI. The Spy (Longlisted Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing), the fourth book, sees Kamil infiltrate a terrorist cell. The Shadow (A Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month) is the latest book in the series.

Ajay Chowdhury

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Newlyweds Adam and Aisha are in an airport lounge in Delhi, their honeymoon abruptly cut short by the murder of Adam’s best friend. While Aisha waits, Adam disappears, leaving only a cryptic message: 'I’m sorry'. 
 
Stranded in India without documents, Aisha is interrogated by RAW, India’s intelligence agency, and the FBI – both of whom seem to know more about her husband’s disappearance than she does. 
 
At the same time Adam’s ex-lover, Sara, receives an urgent message from him: 'Help her'. 
 
Thrown together by circumstance and suspicion, Aisha and Sara decode Adam’s clues, which lead them across the US in a hunt to find Adam before it’s too late. 
 
EDEN FALLS is a high-stakes thriller that spans continents and delves into the shady world of AI and tech billionaires. It is a gripping tale of intrigue, weaponised AI and the relentless pursuit of truth.

Eden Falls

Carys Green

A tense psychological thriller about a desperate mother who gets a clone of herself to help with her baby. For readers of Gillian McAllister, Sarah Pinborough and fans of the TV shows HUMANS and SEVERANCE. 
 
'How would you react to sharing your home with your clone?... Gripping and haunting' Tess Mackey 
 
‘It will be all right,’ Nellie assured her with startling confidence. 
‘I’m here to make things better. You’ll see.’ 
 
Elena and Stu are barely holding it together. Their newborn screams through the night, their nerves are frayed, and their marriage is hanging by a thread. 
 
Then comes More You: a company offering an impossible solution — a clone. For a price, they can have another Elena. One who is fresh. Alert. 
 
At first, it feels like salvation. The clone is calm, capable, perfect. But soon she starts to pick up Elena’s habits. Her voice. Her smile. And in the quiet hours of the night, something in the house begins to shift. 
 
When the cracks finally split wide open, Elena is forced to confront a terrifying question: if someone takes your place, what happens to you? 
 
'Clever and thought provoking...profoundly chilling' Ajay Chowdhury, author of THE WAITER 
 
'Gripping and deeply unsettling' Natalie Chandler, author of THE VOICES

The Other You

Abir Mukherjee

In the Burning Ghats of Calcutta where the dead are laid to rest, a man is found murdered, his throat cut from ear to ear. 
 
The body is that of a popular patron of the arts, a man who was, by all accounts, beloved by all: so what was the motive for his murder? Despite being out of favour with the Imperial Police Force, Detective Sam Wyndham is assigned to the case and finds himself thrust into the glamorous world of Indian cinema. 
 
Meanwhile Surendranath Banerjee, recently returned from Europe after three years spent running from the fallout of his last case, is searching for a missing photographer; a trailblazing woman at the forefront of the profession. When Suren discovers that the vanished woman is linked to Sam's murder investigation, the two men find themselves working together once again - but will Wyndham and Banerjee be able to put their differences aside to solve the case? 
 
From the critically-acclaimed author of HUNTED comes the next instalment in the popular Wyndham and Banerjee series.

The Burning Grounds

Every floor has its secrets.Washed-up American heart-throb George Abercrombie hates India, even from the rarified heights of his apartment on the 68th floor of the Pinnacle, Mumbai’s grandest luxury skyscraper. He hates the noise, he hates the heat and maybe he’s even grown to hate his much younger wife, the newest queen of Bollywood, Sweety Sahota.When George wakes from a drunken stupor to find Sweety murdered in their bedroom, he knows he will be the prime suspect. But where is her computer, her phone – and where has his personal assistant gone?As George scrambles to piece together the night, others in the building are covering their tracks. Sweety’s assistant must find who is blackmailing her, and a servant who knows too much goes on the run.Welcome to the Pinnacle. A place where murder meets luxury and the world’s most privileged depend on the most desperate.From the winner of the 2025 British Book Awards Thriller of the Year comes a pulse-pounding new novel, set in a world of lavish opulence where someone is always watching, because everyone is hiding something.

The Pinnacle

Nicholas Shakespeare

In a world of lies, proof is power. Ex-journalist John Dyer must take on a dangerous political conspiracy in order to bring his friend's killer to justice in this gripping thriller by an award-winning writer. 
 
John Dyer is living a quiet life when he receives a call that changes everything: an old university friend, Lia, has been killed. Decades have passed since his last heartbreaking conversation with her, but Dyer finds himself driven to investigate. 
 
What Dyer uncovers puts him in the path of a political conspiracy with one man at its heart. A man who forty years ago committed a crime witnessed by just four people. When another of the witnesses dies in suspicious circumstances, Dyer finds himself in danger of his life. To combat the forces arrayed against him, he needs incontrovertible proof – but will he find it in time? 
 
As Dyer chases his leads from Tasmania to Argentina and finally to Michigan, where it all began, he unwittingly pits himself against an adversary more powerful than he could have imagined, in a race as heartstopping as tomorrow’s headlines. 
 
 
PRAISE FOR NICHOLAS SHAKESPEARE: 
 
'A remarkable contemporary thriller... A triumph' William Boyd 
 
'An absorbing thriller with shades of John le Carré' Evening Standard 
 
'One of our best and truest novelists' The Times 
 
'Exciting... A page-turner' Daily Telegraph 
 
‘Wonderfully well written... with an insidious escalation of menace, and paranoia that fairly shimmers off the pages’ Guardian

Frame 37

Erin Kelly

When schoolgirls start fainting one after the other at a convent boarding school, old legends twist into new scandals. From irresistible bestselling storyteller Erin Kelly comes the new compulsive thriller that will leave you craving to read more. 
 
'Had me hooked from page one. . . a twisty, confounding mystery' JENNIE GODFREY 
 
Centuries of tradition are coming to an end at St Cordula's school. Deputy Head, Fiona Fox, is about to preside over a controversial move to save it from ruin. But it’s not easy to change things at a school this old. 
 
Legend has it that the ghost of fifteenth-century nun, Sister Matilda, will keep St Cordula’s safe. But only as long as the words ‘GOD FORGIVE ME’, scrawled by Matilda on a chapel staircase wall before she fell to her death, are repainted every year. The words have only been allowed to fade once, in 2002. But then, fits of vertigo spread through the pupils, and a second girl fell to her death on the night stairs. Only three people know the truth of what happened on the night of the tragedy. 
 
Now the vertigo is back, and Fiona must stem the outbreak before it threatens St Cordula’s future, or worse, another girl loses her life. But when one of her pupils begins a dangerous investigation into the past, old secrets start to twist into new scandals… 
 
'Like falling into a fever dream – enchanting, embroiling, and addictive. An absolute classic from the peerless Erin Kelly' Sarah Hilary 
 
PRAISE FOR ERIN KELLY: 
 
‘So thrilling and unexpected that it made my head spin’ LISA JEWELL 
‘Gripping, twisting, furiously clever’ RUTH WARE 
‘Erin Kelly is supremely skilled at unusual and intelligent suspense plots’ DAILY MAIL 
‘Original, suspenseful, and with complex characters that spring irresistibly to life on the page’ LOUISE CANDLISH 
‘An incredibly atmospheric psychological thriller with a clever, elaborate plot’ GRAZIA 
‘Incomparable…captivating, cleverly constructed’ PAULA HAWKINS 
‘A completely addictive story…Erin Kelly is a genius’ JANE CASEY 
‘Magnificent’ MARIAN KEYES 
‘A gripping tale of secrets, revenge and obsession, masterfully done’ GUARDIAN 
‘A unique storyteller; impossible to predict, impossible to put down’ JOHN MARRS 
‘Propulsive… atmospheric, original’ GILLIAN McALLISTER 
‘A taut chamber-piece of psychological suspense’ FINANCIAL TIMES 
'The worlds she creates are so rich and alive' JANE FALLON

The Night Stairs

Sarah Hilary

'A master of her craft... she makes the words sing' ANN CLEEVES 
‘An astonishingly gifted writer’ MARIAN KEYES 
 
Every place has its ghosts. 
 
Edenscar, a town in the Peak District, has more than most. 17 years ago, its inhabitants were hit by tragedy when a school bus veered off the road and everyone on board drowned. Everyone, that is, except Joseph Ashe. His miraculous survival has haunted him and the town ever since. 
 
Now a Detective Sergeant in the local police, Joe is called to the scene of a brutal and apparently inexplicable crime. The whole town is spooked, but Joe’s new boss, DI Laurie Bower, more used to inner-city police work, has no time for superstition. She just wants to find the very real killer who has left no trace and apparently had no motive. 
 
Joining forces, Joe and Laurie work to uncover the secrets of Edenscar, both past and present. 
 
But when you dig up the dead, expect to get your hands dirty…

The Drowning Place

Ada Moncrieff

**THE COSIEST OF CRIMES FOR THE FESTIVE SEASON** 
 
A SCHOOL REUNION... A PARTY TO DIE FOR. 
 
December 1937. Daphne King is attending the twentieth anniversary reunion at her secondary 
school, Midwinter Academy. It is a weekend of resurrected rivalries and alliances. A string of peculiar incidents prompts Daphne to suspect that she and her friends are being sent messages - or warnings - related to the disappearance of a classmate twenty years ago. 
 
It was a mystery which clouded their final year at the school - and one which Daphne, as a budding 
eighteen-year-old sleuth, solved. But now, the morning after the reunion, another of Daphne's old school friends is found dead; and Daphne finds herself in the role of investigator once more. Are the two cases linked? And has Daphne learned from the mistakes of her past? 
 
Readers LOVE Ada's festive romps 
'Reminds me of PG Wodehouse' 
'Compelling and engaging' 
'A modern rival to Agatha Christie' 
'A festive favourite' 
'Loved it'

Murder At Midwinter

Maureen Johnson

Jay Cooper

November 1933, London. Seven people receive mysterious letters: Someone knows their terrible secrets. They are summoned to an opulent townhouse where one of them is stabbed right in front of the others, but somehow no one saw a thing. Can you help Scotland Yard solve the mystery? 
 
* 
 
Dear Detective, 
 
Surely you have seen the papers and read about the murder of the American novelist Roy Peterson—stabbed while in a room with six other people, and yet no one went near him or saw the murder occur. The crime is so devious, so logistically impossible, that it seems to have been committed not by a person but by a disembodied hand. 
 
I must confess that we are at a loss. Who wrote the poison pen letters that lured these seven people to this deadly gathering? What do a poet, an Earl, an actress, a cook, a telephone operator, and a lothario have in common? And how can a man be stabbed in a room full of suspects when none of them could have done it? 
 
We have had our best people on the case, Detective, and we still can’t make heads or tails of it. We are giving this case file to you. Can you decipher the clues, decode the witness statements, and identify the murderer? You are our last hope. Can you help us crack the Case of the Creeping Hand? 
 
Yours truly, 
 
Detective Chief Inspector of the Metropolitan Police 
 
* 
 
An interactive murder mystery from the bestselling author and illustrator of Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village

You Are The Detective

The Creeping Hand Murder

Anna Kovatcheva

Yana hunts monsters. Anka might be one. They'll need each other to survive. 
 
'This exciting, gorgeous novel reminded me why I love vampire stories... I still have chills' Kate Heartfield, author of The Embroidered Book 
 
Yana, a vampire hunter, rides into Koprivci promising salvation. The village’s curse has endured for many years and rumour has it that Anka – whose parents died on the night of her birth – is to blame. But enduring the villagers’ suspicion is the least of Anka’s worries; now she has reached womanhood, she can no longer avoid the odious marriage that seems to be her only option. 
 
When animal corpses start to appear in the village square and eggs filled with blood are found in the chicken coops, panic rises. The villagers look to Yana for hope. She knows all about the monsters that stalk the night, monsters that only she can vanquish. But Yana is a liar. And monsters come in all different forms. 
 
Yana and Anka become unlikely allies in hatching a plot to save both Koprivci and Anka from their fates. But then their plan takes on a horrifying life of its own... 
 
'[A] tale of dark secrets, unnatural lusts and hidden violence' Annie Garthwaite, author of Cecily 
 
'Poetic, visceral, dark... A terrifying read' Isabelle Schuler, author of Lady Macbethad 
 
'An exquisitely-written feminist vampire story. . . Mesmerising' Anna Mazzola, author of The Clockwork Girl

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