SOLVE THE MURDER TO SAVE WHAT''S LEFT OF THE WORLD
THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
''A mind-bending, genre-blending, boy-that-ending mystery unlike any I''ve ever read'' A. J. FINN
''I loved it'' C. J. TUDOR
''An absolute blast'' BENJAMIN STEVENSON
''Wildly inventive'' M. W. CRAVEN
''Believe the hype'' ALICE BELL
''Extraordinary'' WILL DEAN
An Observer Thriller of the Month
Outside the island there is nothing: the world destroyed by a fog that swept the planet, killing anyone it touched. On the island: it is idyllic. 122 villagers and 3 scientists, living in peaceful harmony. The villagers are content to fish, farm and feast, to obey their nightly curfew, to do what they''re told by the scientists.
Until, to the horror of the islanders, one of their beloved scientists is found brutally stabbed to death. And they learn the murder has triggered a lowering of the security system around the island, the only thing that was keeping the fog at bay.
If the murder isn''t solved within 107 hours, the fog will smother the island - and everyone on it.
But the security system has also wiped everyone''s memories of exactly what happened the night before, which means that someone on the island is a murderer - and they don''t even know it.
Readers love The Last Murder at the End of the World:
THE BEAUTIFUL DEBUT NOVEL THAT'LL STEAL YOUR HEART
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2024
'So beautiful ... Simply, it must be read' LISA TADDEO
'This feels like reading an Oscar-winning film' AISLING BEA
'Heart-shatteringly visceral and precise' WIZ WHARTON
'Compulsive, engrossing, and gorgeous ... Read it now' STEPHANIE SCOTT
Mei loses her Japanese mother at age six. Growing up in suburban Surrey, she yearns to fit in, suppressing not only her heritage but her growing desire for her best friend Fran.
Yuki leaves the Japanese countryside to pursue her dream of becoming a concert violinist in London. Far from home and in an unfamiliar city, she finds herself caught up in the charms of her older teacher.
Haruka attempts to navigate Tokyo's nightlife and all of its many vices, working as a hostess in the city's sex district. She grieves a mother who hid so many secrets from her, until finally one of those secrets comes to light . . .
Shifting between three intertwining narratives, Mongrel reveals a tangled web of desire, isolation, belonging and ultimately, hope.
5 Star Reader Reviews: 'Utterly captivating' | 'Achingly real' | 'Moving and unforgettable' | 'Stunning yet heartbreaking' | 'Devastating, powerful' | 'Easily one of the best books I've ever read'
From Clare Sestanovich, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize nominee whose short stories received instant acclaim (''Sparingly told, evoked with lacerating intimacy . . . Extraordinary'' - Esquire), Ask Me Again is a debut novel about a young woman''s coming of age, in parallel with a renegade male friend who challenges her beliefs and the course of her life.At sixteen, Eva meets Jamie by chance. She lives in middle-class South Brooklyn; he comes from the super-rich of upper Manhattan. She''s observant, cautious, eager to seem normal; he''s curious, bold, full of mysteries. She keeps a keen intelligence under wraps; his eccentric brilliance is all but impossible to repress.While Eva welcomes Jamie into her family''s embrace, he avoids going home; with little in common, they are drawn together in a deep friendship. As Eva goes off to an elite college and falls in and out of love, Jamie drops out of school and joins the Occupy Wall Street movement. Eva, so often trapped by self-doubt, is both awed and repelled by the strength of Jamie''s convictions.Carried forcefully along by Sestanovich''s highly observant, butterfly-pinning prose, these two characters, pulled into separate spheres, circle the same questions: how to define their values and find their purpose, how to create a sense of self while discovering what they owe to society and to the cause of justice. The geometry of their platonic love leads us on a surprising journey of intimacy across time - exposing the alchemy of connection, of the relationships that can define who we are and can even change us, and the possible futures we might not have imagined for ourselves.
Grace lives alone in Ballybrady, a little village on the sublimely beautiful east coast of Northern Ireland. She fills her days with swimming, fishing, quilting, and baiting the tourists who arrive from the city with more money than sense. She hasn''t left the village since a traumatic stay in London as a young woman at the end of the 1980s.
One of the tourists is Evan, taking an enforced holiday from his family and work in Belfast after breaking down after the death of his daughter in infancy. He has come to try to process his grief and make himself desirable again as a husband, a father and a business partner.
But he hasn''t been there a week until he gets trapped by lockdown. When Grace saves his life in a kayaking accident - if it was an accident - and Evan''s troubled son arrives to stay, all three are drawn together in a way that forces a reckoning with their personal traumas and draws them back into society.
This is a moving and funny debut novel set in a quirky coastal community you will be desperate to visit after reading. It will appeal to readers of Elizabeth Strout, Maggie O''Farrell and Alice Munro.
The Final Curtain brings the story of Detective Kaga to a surprising conclusion in a series of rich, surprising twists with a confounding murder in Tokyo connected to the mystery of the disappearance and death of Detective Kaga''s own mother.
A decade ago, Tokyo Police Detective Kyoichiro Kaga went to collect the ashes of his recently deceased mother. Years before, she ran away from her husband and son without explanation or any further contact, only to die alone in an apartment far away, leaving her estranged son with many unanswered questions.
Now in Tokyo, Michiko Oshitani is found dead many miles from home. Strangled to death, left in the bare apartment rented under a false name by a man who has disappeared without a trace. Oshitani lived far away in Sendai, with no known connection to Tokyo - and neither her family nor friends have any idea why she would have gone there.
Hers is the second strangulation death in that approximate area of Tokyo - the other was a homeless man, killed and his body burned in a tent by the river. As the police search through Oshitani''s past for any clue that might shed some light, one of the detectives reaches out to Detective Kaga for advice. As the case unfolds, an unexpected connective emerges between the murder (or murders) now and the long-ago case of Detective Kaga''s missing mother.
Praise for the Detective Kaga series
''Clever and charming'' The Sunday Times
''Keigo Higashino combines Dostoyevskian psychological realism with classic detective-story puzzles reminiscent of Agatha Christie and E.C. Bentley'' Wall Street Journal
''Keigo Higashino again proves his mastery of the diabolical puzzle mystery with Malice, a story with more turns, twists, switchbacks and sudden stops than a Tokyo highway during Golden Week'' New York Times Book Review
From death to danger and malice to mystery, Samson and Delilah have weathered many storms. Finally, things should be going smoothly. Except life''s never that simple in Bruncliffe, is it?
As the couple are beset with worries about their upcoming wedding, a charismatic celebrity comes knocking on the Dales Detective Agency''s door, seeking their services. Samson is initially reluctant to help, for many reasons. But things quickly escalate following a shocking murder at Fellside Court and, as a friend comes under suspicion, Samson and Delilah must set aside their personal problems to catch a killer.
In a case that will bring so many of Bruncliffe''s secrets out into the open, this final investigation for the Dales Detectives may be the one that breaks them for ever . . .
