Welcome to Fethering, where the village gossip is of weddings, parties and a ghastly murder ...

Carole Seddon's son is about to be married. But as plans for the big day get underway, Stephen's future parents-in-law, Marie and Harold, seem desperate to keep the affair as discreet as possible. But after a quiet engagement party, Harold disappears ... only to be found dead the next day, in a burnt-out car in Epping Forest.
As the family deal with their grief, Carole begins to suspect they are hiding secrets that can be traced back thirty years, to the murder of Marie's best friend. It also transpires that the killer has recently been released from prison, and is back in his old stamping ground, near Fethering ...
Are the murders connected? Will the killer make another deadly move? And most importantly, will the wedding day go without a hitch ... ? Simon Brett worked as a producer in radio and television before taking up writing full-time. He is married with three grown-up children and lives in an Agatha Christie-style village on the South Downs. This is Simon's sixth Fethering mystery.

It is 2033 - and the world has changed for ever. The first alien radio transmission has been received on Earth. The signals are impossibly complex, a torrent of encrypted information that no computer - and certainly no human - can crack. The decision to reply is made and messages of goodwill are beamed into space. Humanity waits for an answer.
Thirty years later, the signals suddenly dry up. And then scientists detect a huge space cloud, immense in size, immeasurable in power, hurtling towards the Earth. And so, as one man desperately struggles to decode the initial alien transmissions, a united Earth prepares to launch a nuclear strike against a seemingly unstoppable foe.
But when the first part of the alien code is broken, humanity realises with a growing dread that the enemy may be closer than they knew.

The third in Hewson's stunning crime series set in Rome

For the first time in decades the Eternal City is paralysed by a blizzard. And a gruesome discovery is made in the Pantheon, one of Rome's most ancient and revered architectural monuments ... Covered by softly falling snow is the body of a woman - her back horribly mutilated. And before Nic Costa and Cianni Peroni of the Questura can begin a formal investigation, the US embassy has brought in its own people - FBI agents who want the case closed down as quickly and discreetly as possible.
But Costa is determined to find out why the enquiry is so sensitive - and as the FBI grudgingly admits that this corpse is not the first, the mutilations of the woman's body point to Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man - and to a conspiracy so sinister, and buried so deep, that only two people know its true, crazed meaning ...

David Hewson is a weekly columnist for the Sunday Times. Following A Season for the Dead and The Villa of Mysteries, this is the third in his Italian crime series featuring Detective Nic Costa. The author lives in Kent.

Bestselling thriller writer Peter James is renowned for his brilliant plot twists and his ability to combine chilling suspense with powerfully original storytelling. Dead Simple – his first thriller in the classic crime genre – is no exception. His ingenious plot grabs you from its opening pages right up to its shocking climax.
Set in the shabby streets of Brighton, Dead Simple introduces Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, a loner with a reputation for unorthodox methods, who will soon become as familiar to crime readers as Rebus, Banks and Morse.
It was meant to be a harmless stag night prank. But in a few hours the groom, Michael Harrison, has disappeared and four of his best friends are dead. With only three days to the wedding, Sussex Police Force is contacted by Michael’s beautiful, distraught fiancée to find the missing man.
But the one person who ought to know Michael’s whereabouts is saying nothing because he has a lot to gain – more than anyone realizes. For one man's disaster is another man's fortune – simple. Dead simple… As hope runs out for finding Michael alive, Detective Superintendent Grace – a man haunted by the shadow of his own missing wife – is called in to investigate. But everything about this case is far from straightforward and Grace soon finds himself on the trail of a sadistic and sophisticated killer…
With more twists than a Sussex country road, Dead Simple is not only Peter James’s best book yet, but the beginning of a major new detective series.

A trail of murder leads deep into a chilling underworld of poverty, superstition and the terror of witchcraft

After a child's mutilated body is found in a ditch, detective Harry Mason needs to discover whether this gruesome death is the work of a serial murderer or of a muti killer butchering children to make powerful 'medicine' from their body parts. Mason's police partner Jacob is forced to reconsider his beliefs as both a tribesman and a cop, while becoming increasingly convinced that this time they are dealing with a genuine witch - whose power is sufficient to subvert the whole investigation.
Meanwhile, conducting her own investigation into slave-trafficking, British reporter Nina Reading has put herself in deadly danger. Their discoveries unite and lead them ever deeper into an awesome underworld in the slums of Hillbrow, where criminal money and fear reign supreme. And their enemies will stop at nothing - including the kidnapping of Harry's own child.

Richard Kunzmann is a native South African whose passion has always been African myths and mythologies, and their associated occultism. He majored in criminology and has worked as bookseller in London.

Norman Thorne was found guilty of the murder of Elsie Cameron, but even at the time of his execution there were doubts about his guilt. Still swearing his innocence, Norman Thorne was hanged on 22 April 1925.
Bestselling author Minette Walters brings a thrilling story to life in this gripping new novel.