The Intern’s Handbook, Shane Kuhn

John Lago is twenty five years old and on the eve of his retirement releases The Intern’s Handbook , a document that could get you killed just for possessing it. You see John’s employers, HR Inc are an assassination bureau and this is John’s version of a tell-all.

One of three high powered NY lawyers is selling off witness protection files to the highest bidder, HR Inc task John to discover the partner’s identity and then kill him. Problem is that the FBI is already on the case in the seductive shape of Alice, she’s just John’s type but he’s not sure how far down this particular rabbit hole he’s prepared to go.

John throws his readers plenty of twists, turns and curveballs but will he make it to retirement or is The Intern’s Handbook posthumous? I guarantee you’ll never look at an intern the same way again.

Ruin Falls, Jenny Milchman

Every mother’s worst nightmare is to lose sight of their children even for a second. That nightmare is Liz Daniel’s world right now. Her children are missing and so is her husband Paul. After a fruitless search, Liz returns to their home in Wedeskyull determined to shatter the perfect image that Professor Daniels projected to his students.

Liz starts to look through Paul’s papers, his laptop and what she finds paints a disturbing picture. How long has he been planning this? And then the warnings start, if Liz digs too deep into Paul’s past she will be stopped. Liz is determined to risk everything to get her kids back-even her own life. But Paul has put his entire family in danger, because it wasn’t his plan…

The Collector of Dying Breaths, M J Rose

Jac L’Etoile’s beloved brother Robbie is close to death, the police suspect that the Chinese triads are behind the killing and that puts Jac in danger too. With his dying breath Robbie urges her to complete a project he was working on at a magnificent chateau in Fontainebleau.

When she meets the owner, an eccentric heiress, Jac learns of Rene la Florentine, plucked from a death sentence to become perfumier to Catherine de Medici. The queen didn’t just use him to make perfumes and he pursued the heresy that a person’s soul could be preserved and transferred to another body, just by capturing their last breath. Robbie and Jac’s friend and lover Griffin North were in the midst of recreating that formula.

As Jac watches Rene’s heartbreaking story play out, the heiress becomes increasingly erratic. The woman will do anything to preserve her legacy no matter who is in her way. But as Jac’s time lines criss-cross she learns Rene’s terrible secret and this could cost her Griffin’s life.

Under A Silent Moon, Elizabeth Haynes

Who killed Polly Leuchars?

Operation Nettle; DCI Louisa Smith’s first murder case as lead investigator. Polly was a vital young woman who didn’t know the meaning of the word monogamy. According to the village gossips of Briarstone, Polly had slept with half the population. Did one of them kill her? Complicating Lou’s case is the apparent suicide of Polly’s next door neighbour. Polly’s employer is Nigel Maitland, a crooked farmer with lawyers on tap, his daughter was in a relationship with Polly.

Lou needs a result before the case goes cold and her resources get re-assigned. She’d be happy to lose her DI, Andy Hamilton, the pair have some uncomfortable history, but one of her team is about to get themselves in way over their head.

The Word Exchange, Alena Graedon

A debut novel, set in the near future. Print is dying and language, the very fabric of what makes us human is under attack. Ana Johnson works for her father Doug at one of the only two dictionaries left in print. The night he disappears is the night that Ana begins to fall out of love with the technology that her generation have become so dependent on.

Ana, her friend Bart and the dwindling members of the Diachronic Society are the only obstacles standing in the path of the mighty Synchronic Corporation’s crusade to own language but even Synchronic have no idea of the firestorm they are about to unleash.

Graedon has taken our current technology obsession and extrapolated from there, you might cut down on your smartphone use after reading this.

Murder in Pigalle, Cara Black

Aimee Leduc and Rene her partner at Leduc Detective have plenty of work. With Paris in the sweaty grip of world cup fever and Aimee feeling like a beached whale as she enters her second trimester, everyone keeps telling her to slow down. Aimee is doing the opposite.

A serial rapist is attacking young girls in their own homes and when he escalates to murder and Zazie, the daughter of the proprieter of Aimee’s favourite café goes missing, Aimee isn’t going to wait around like the flics. Zazie is running out of time, it may already be too late.

The Enchanted, Rene Denfeld

An unnamed prison, a death row inmate: who was a lifer before the ‘incident’ and used to spend all his free time in the prison library. He contrasts the brutality of prison life with the ability to roam through the literary images stored in his head.

Not all are prisoners. There are the fallen priest, the warden, the corrupt guard and the lady. The prisoner worries for the lady, her job is to exonerate death row inmates and her latest project is York, who thinks the world would be better without him in it.

The enchanted is a strangely beautiful little novel about life, death and redemption.