December Book Competition 2015

Career of Evil, by Robert Galbraith

The third book in the highly acclaimed crime fiction series by J.K. Rowling, writing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. When a mysterious package is delivered to Robin Ellacott, she is horrified to discover that it contains a woman’s severed leg. Her boss, private detective Cormoran Strike, is less surprised but no less alarmed. There are four people from his past who he thinks could be responsible – and Strike knows that any one of them is capable of sustained and unspeakable brutality.

With the police focusing on the one suspect Strike is increasingly sure is not the perpetrator, he and Robin take matters into their own hands, and delve into the dark and twisted worlds of the other three men. But as more horrendous acts occur, time is running out for the two of them. A fiendishly clever mystery with unexpected twists around every corner, Career of Evil is also a gripping story of a man and a woman at a crossroads in their personal and professional lives.

You will not be able to put this book down. Robert Galbraith is a pseudonym for J.K. Rowling, bestselling author of the Harry Potter series and The Casual Vacancy. Career of Evil is the third book in the highly acclaimed Cormoran Strike crime fiction series, following 2013’s The Cuckoo’s Calling and 2014’s The Silkworm.

Author Website: www.robert-galbraith.com

Kill Switch, by James Phelan

A roller-coaster terrorist thriller from Australia’s answer to a post-Osama Tom Clancy.

Jed Walker has 48 hours to save the world. The countdown has begun. The world is under cyber-attack. The terror outfit known as Zodiac, has activated another terrorist cell.

Chaos will be unleashed at six-hour intervals, with each event more catastrophic than the last, culminating in a devastating global catastrophe within 48 hours. The options for the hackers are endless: remote detonate explosives at an army base in Virginia; cause Amtrak’s signals to fail; collapse air traffic control in US airspace.

Consequences are unthinkable. The US President has the power to enact the Internet Freedom Act – the ‘Kill Switch’. Turning off the Net will stop the attacks, and give the CIA and the Pentagon time to track down those responsible. But it’s not that simple. Fourteen people with the key to restart the Internet are missing. The US will plummet into pandemonium if electronic communications cease. Jed Walker, ex-CIA-operative, has thwarted Zodiac twice before. But, this time, nothing will prepare him for what he uncovers.

James Phelan is the bestselling author of twenty-three novels and one work of non-fiction. He has published five thrillers in the Lachlan Fox series: Fox Hunt, Patriot Act, Blood Oil, Liquid Gold and Red Ice, as well as the Alone trilogy of young adult post-apocalyptic novels and a thirteen-book series for Scholastic. The Spy was his first Jed Walker thriller, followed by The Hunted.

The Revelation Code, by Andy McDermott

The brilliant new Wilde & Chase novel from bestseller Andy McDermott. For millennia, many have tried to decipher Revelations: the final book of the Bible.

Now, one man believes he has found the answer that will bring about the end of days. Long ago, a series of meteorites ravaged the Middle East that brought more than fire and earthquakes – they also brought a deadly plague. To contain the source, surviving pieces of rock were sealed inside sculptures of angels. Now, the angels are about to be liberated.

A pregnant Nina Wilde is kidnapped by an extremist group in an attempt to force her to locate the angels and fulfil the prophecy of Revelations. Struggling against her captors, Nina must work with an old enemy, Victor Dalton, the corrupt ex-President of the United States. To save Nina, Eddie Chase is also forced to seek help from a past adversary – Professor Maureen Rothschild. Together they mustfind the angels to prevent the apocalypse.

Can Eddie save what is most important to him? Andy McDermott works as a freelance writer and ‘occasional cartoonist’ and in a previous incarnation was magazine editor for, amongst others, DVD Review and the iconoclastic film magazine Hotdog.

Andy was born in West Yorkshire. Author Website: www.andy-mcdermott.com

Eden Gardens – by Louise Brown

For fans of Victoria Hislop and Rosie Thomas, the story of Maisy – who was never going to grow up a good British colonial girl.

Calcutta, the 1940s. In a ramshackle house, streets away from the grand colonial mansions of the British, live Maisy, her Mam and their ayah, Pushpa. Whiskey-fuelled and poverty-stricken, Mam entertains officers in the night – a disgrace to British India. All hopes are on beautiful Maisy to restore their good fortune.

But Maisy’s more at home in the city’s forbidden alleyways, eating bazaar food and speaking Bengali with Pushpa, than dancing in glittering ballrooms with potential husbands. Then one day Maisy’s tutor falls ill. His son stands in. Poetic, handsome and ambitious for an independent India, Sunil Banerjee promises Maisy the world.

So begins a love affair that will cast her future, for better and for worse. Just as the Second World War strikes and the empire begins to crumble. This is the other side of British India. A dizzying, scandalous, dangerous world, where race, class and gender divide and rule. About The

Author: Louise Brown has lived in Nepal and travelled extensively in India, sparking her enduring love of South Asia. She was a Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Asian Studies at the University of Birmingham, where she worked for nearly twenty years. In research for her critically acclaimed non-fiction books she’s witnessed revolutions and even stayed in a Lahore brothel with a family of traditional courtesans. Eden Gardens is her debut novel. Louise has three grown-up children and lives in Birmingham.

This competition is now closed.