THREE MORE NEW TITLES added pre-Christmas to the Library shelves takes us on another globe-trotting journey encompassing some very different topics.
Peter May’s The Runner begins on the eve of the Beijing Olympics, while Rachael English’s The American Girl starts its journey in 1968 Boston but then takes us across the Atlantic to Ireland and 2013 Dublin in a tale of long-buried family secrets.
Finally, Rhiannon Navin’s Only Child delves into the topical subject of mass shootings in the United States and how a mother and her young son deal with the aftermath in very different ways.
Our DVD spot focuses on the second series of the hugely popular ITV series, Victoria the landmark account of the public and personal life of one of Britain’s greatest monarchs.

The Runner

by Peter May

THE SUFFERER: A prodigious Chinese swimmer kills himself on the eve of the Beijing Olympics. Days later, a champion weightlifter suffers a fatal heart attack prior to competition.

The Listener: Detective Li Yan senses a conspiracy surrounding the fatalities, and finds a female athlete willing to talk. But she will only trust one person: Li’s fiancée, Margaret Campbell.

The Runner: When Campbell’s contact herself vanishes, the gun is fired on a race against time. And Li must now outrun, and outwit, an enemy bent on pushing him beyond endurance.

The American Girl

by Rachael English

IT’S BOSTON IN 1968 and Rose Moroney is 17, smart, spirited – and pregnant. She wants to marry her boyfriend. Her ambitious parents have other plans. She is sent to Ireland, their birthplace, to deliver her daughter in a mother and baby home – and part with her against her will.

In Dublin in 2013, Martha Sheehan’s life has come undone. Her marriage is over and her husband has moved on with unsettling speed. Under pressure from her teenage daughter, she starts looking for the woman who gave her up for adoption more than 40 years before.

As her search leads her to the heart of long-buried family secrets, old flame Paudie Carmody – now a well-known broadcaster – re-enters the frame.

Only Child

by Rhiannon Child

THEY ALL WENT to school that Tuesday like normal. Not all of them went home… When the unthinkable happens, Zach is at school. Huddled in a cloakroom with his classmates and teacher, he is too young to understand that life will never be the same again.

Afterwards, the once close-knit community is left reeling. Zach’s dad retreats. His mum sets out to seek revenge. Zach, scared, lost and confused, disappears into his super-secret hideout to try to make sense of things. Nothing feels right – until he listens to his heart… But can he show the grown-ups how to love again?

DVD Corner

Victoria Season Two

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THIS LANDMARK ACCOUNT of the life of one of history’s greatest monarchs continues as the Queen faces the very modern challenges of balancing a growing family with her marriage to Prince Albert and her work as ruler of the most powerful nation on earth.

As Victoria’s reign continues into the 1840s there are constitutional crises and scandals at court, trips to France and Scotland, the devastating Irish Potato Famine and political machinations ending in tragedy. As the saga unfolds over vital moments in history, the Queen and Prince Albert must meet each public challenge while confronting profound personal changes.

NOVELS set in the rural idylls of Ireland and Devon contrast sharply with one set in the brash city of Houston, Texas, to provide us with three very different stories to feature in our regular look at new titles added to the Library shelves this month.

DVD Corner this time round features an ITV screened earlier this year, Girlfriends, which tells how three middle-aged women, friends since their teenage years, cope with a catalogue of family dramas.

The Girls Of Ennismore

by Patricia Falvey

IN 1900 IRELAND, two girls meet. They are from vastly, different worlds, they will be united in friendship through loves, losses and wars.

In the early years of the 20th century, Victoria Bell and Rosie Killeen are best friends, growing up in rural County Mayo, their friendship forged against the glorious backdrop of Ennismore House.

However, Victoria, born of the aristocracy, and Rosie, daughter of a local farmer, find that the disparity of their class and simmering social tensions in Ireland will push their friendship to the brink…

The Lie Of The Land

by Amanda Craig

QUENTIN AND LOTTIE BREDIN, like many modern couples, can’t afford to divorce. Having lost their jobs in the recession, together they must downsize and move with their three children from London to a house in a remote part of Devon.

Arrogant and adulterous, Quentin can’t understand why Lottie is so angry. Devastated and humiliated, Lottie feels herself to have been intolerably wounded. Sally Verity, happily married but unhappily childless , knows a different side to country life, as both a health visitor and a sheep farmer’s wife; and when the Bredins’ innocent teenage son Xan gets a zero-hours contract at a local pie factory, he sees yet another.

By the end of the year, all their lives will be changed forever.

The Jealous Kind

by James Lee Burke

HOUSTON LIFE IS as you would expect: drive-in restaurants, souped-up cars, juke boxes, teenagers discovering their sexuality. But beneath all this, a class war has begun and against this backdrop Aaron Holland Broussard discovers a world of violence he did not know existed.

When Aaron spots the beautiful and gifted Valerie Epstein fighting with her boyfriend, he inadvertently challenges the power of the Mob and one of the richest families in Texas.

As Aaron undergoes his harrowing evolution from boy to man, he discovers the inspirational and curative power of first love and how far he will go to protect it.

DVD Corner

Girlfriends

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WHEN LINDA IS SUDDENLY WIDOWED, she finds herself on her own for the first time in nearly 30 years. She turns to her old friends Gail and Sue for support. But it seems they may need her support in equal measure as each face up to the problems with being modern women of a certain age.

As the girlfriends come back together it’s clear that although their lives have changed over the years true friendship remains the same no matter how much time has passed.

Starring Phylis Logan, Miranda Richardson and Zoe Wanamaker.

WOMEN WRITERS take centre stage in the latest selection of new titles added to the Library shelves. We have offerings from Catherine Isaac, Joanna Cannon, and Leila Slimani, together with a joint effort by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen.

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VAL McDERMIND’S latest addition to her series of thrillers featuring DCI Carol Jordan and psychological profiler Tony Hill, characters who featured in the hugely popular ITV1 series, Wire in the Blood, is among the new titles added to the Library shelves this month.

There’s more from the thriller genre, with new offerings from Simon Kernick, Mari Hannah and Jane Corry, while our DVD spot highlights Taboo, an eight-part BBC historical series featuring Tom Hardy, honoured by the Queen in the 2018 Birthday Honours with a CBE for services to drama.

Insidious Intent

by Val McDermind

A QUIET NIGHT on a country road. The stillness shattered by a car engulfed in flames, and a burned body discovered in the driver’s seat. As the investigation unfolds, DCI Carol Jordan and psychological profiler Tony Hill quickly realise that this is more than just a tragic accident.

And so begins the hunt for a truly terrifying killer. Someone who believes he is invisible, untraceable and untouchable. As other victims are found to have met the same terrible fate, and with more women at risk, Tony and Carol are drawn into a dark and twisted web of fear and revenge that will force them to question their own ideas of justice.

The Payback

by Simon Kernick

DENNIS MILNE is a former cop and part-time assassin. He kills the bad guys – people who, in his opinion, deserve to die. Now he’s in Manila, waiting for his next target: a young woman who’s made deadly enemies.

DI Tina Boyd is in Manila, hunting down the man responsible for the death of her lover. She knows he’s dangerous. She knows he’s ruthless. But she’s determined to bring him to justice – even if it kills her.

Two cops with pasts that haunt them – and a present that could see them both dead. They are about to meet. When they do, it’s payback time.

The Lost

by Mari Hannah

ALEX ARRIVES HOME from holiday to find that her ten-year-old son Daniel has disappeared.

It’s the first case together for Northumbria CID officers David Stone and Frankie Oliver. Stone has returned to his roots with 15 years’s experience in the Met. Oliver is local, a third-generation copper with a lot to prove, and a secret that’s holding her back.

But as the investigation unfolds, they realise the family’s betrayal goes deeper than anyone suspected. This isn’t just a missing persons case. Stone and Oliver are hunting a killer.

The Dead Ex

by Jane Corry

VICKI’S HUSBAND DAVID once promised to love her in sickness and in health. But after a brutal attack left her suffering with epilepsy, he ran away with his mistress.

So when Vicki gets a call one day to say that he’s missing, her first thought is ‘good riddance’. But then the police find evidence suggesting that David is dead. And they think Vicki had something to do with it.

What really happened on the night of David’s disappearance? And how can Vicki prove her innocence, when she’s not even sure of it herself?

DVD Corner

Taboo

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JAMES KEZIAH DELANEY (Tom Hardy) is a man who has been to the ends of the earth and comes back irrevocably changed. Believed to be long dead, he returns home to London from Africa in 1814 to inherit what is left of his father’s shipping empire and rebuild a life for himself.

But his father’s legacy is a poisoned chalice and with enemies lurking in every dark corner James must navigate increasingly complex territories to avoid his own death.

FORMER US PRESIDENT Bill Clinton is jointly credited with best-selling author James Patterson in one of the highlighted new titles just added to the Library shelves, along with offerings from Robert Crais, Liz Lawler and Gail Honeyman.

The Promise

by Robert Crais

WHEN ELVIS COLE is hired to locate a woman who may have disappeared with a stranger she met online, it seems like an ordinary case – until Elvis learns the missing woman worked for a defence contractor and was being blackmailed to supply explosives.

Meanwhile, LAPD officer Scott James and his patrol dog, Maggie, enter an abandoned building to, locate a dangerous thief, only to discover far more than they expected. soon, Scott and Maggie find themselves targeted and, as their case intertwines with Elvis and Joe’s, they join forces to find the missing woman, not only before she is killed but before the same fate happens to one of them.

Don’t Wake Up

by Liz Lawler

ALEX TAYLOR WAKES UP tied to an operating table. The man who stands over her isn’t a doctor. The choice he forces her to make is utterly unspeakable but when Alex re-awakens, she’s unharmed – and no one believes her horrifying story.

Ostracised by her colleagues, her family and her partner, she begins to wonder if she really is losing her mind. And then she meets the next victim….

The President Is Missing

by Bill Clinton and James Patterson

‘CLINTON’S INSIDER SECRETS and James Patterson’s storytelling genius make this the political thriller of the decade,’ says Lee Child.

The Presidents disappears. The world is in shock. But the reason he’s missing is much worse then anyone can imagine. When details only a president could know, and the kind of suspense only James Patterson can deliver it’s a ‘bullet train of a thriller.’

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

by Gail Honeyman

ELEANOR OLIPHANT LEADS a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend.

Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled existence. Except sometimes everything…

DVD Corner

Peaky Blinders Series Four

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WHEN TOMMY SHELBY receives a mysterious letter on Christmas Eve he realises that his entire family is in danger of annihilation. As the enemy closes in, Tommy flees his country house and heads to the only safe place he knows…

In May of this year, with this gritty drama series a big winner at the BAFTA TV Awards, series creator Steven Knight confirmed his "ambition of making it a story of a family between two wars, and by ending it with the first air raid siren in Birmingham", which was 25 June 1940. He said it would take another three series, making seven in all) to complete the story up to that point.