What the books are about

Bad Luck and Trouble

You do not mess with the Special Investigators! The events of 9/11 changed Jack Reacher’s drifter life in a practical way. In addition to his folding toothbrush, he now needs to carry photo ID to get around. Yet he is still as close to untraceable as a human being in America can get. So when a member of his old Army unit manages to get a message to him, he knows it has to be deadly serious. The Special Investigators always watched each other’s backs. Now Reacher must put the old unit back together. Someone has killed one of them, and he can’t let that go.

The Ghost

The moment I heard how McAra died I should have walked away. I can see that now...’ The narrator of Robert Harris’ gripping new novel is a professional ghostwriter — cynical, mercenary, and with a nice line in deadpan humour. Accustomed to working with fading rock stars and minor celebrities, he jumps at the chance to ghost the memoirs of Britain’s former prime minister, especially as it means flying to the American resort of Martha’s Vineyard in the middle of winter and finishing the book in the seclusion of a luxurious house. But it doesn’t take him long to realise he has made a terrible mistake. His predecessor on the project died in circumstances that were distinctly suspicious, and the ex-premier turns out to be a man with secrets in his past that are returning to haunt him — secrets with the power to kill. The Times has called Harris ‘the leading current exponent of the intelligent literary thriller’. The Ghost is his most compelling novel yet.

Borderlands

The corpse of local teenager Angela Cashell is found on the Tyrone-Donegal border, between the North and South of Ireland, in an area known as the borderlands. Garda Inspector Benedict Devlin heads the investigation: the only clues are a gold ring placed on the girl’s finger and an old photograph, left where she died. Then another teenager is murdered, and things become further complicated when Devlin unearths a link between the recent killings and the disappearance of a prostitute 25 years earlier a case in which he believes one of his own colleagues is implicated. As a thickening snow storm blurs the border between North and South, Devlin finds the distinction between right and wrong, vengeance and justice, and even police-officer and criminal becoming equally unclear. A dazzling and lyrical debut crime novel, Borderlands marks the beginning of a compelling new series featuring Inspector Benedict Devlin. “Brian McGilloway’s command of plot and assurance of language make it difficult to believe that Borderlands is his debut.”

At a Time Like This

Four women gather to celebrate their friendship. A quarter-century of intimacies shared, betrayals survived, differences reconciled. There is Claire, with her unsuitable men; she knows that life will never give her the one thing she has always wanted. Nora, the perfect housewife, has kept something hidden from her friends for over 25 years. Maggie has been unhappily married to Ray for longer than she cares to remember. And then there is Georgie, feisty and opinionated, who has had her own way more than is good for her. But tonight, the complex web of spouses, lovers and secrets that has bound them all together is about to unravel. And one of the four women plans not to be there. At a time like this, things can never be the same again ...”Dunne is such a gifted storyteller that she credibly recreates a world that pulls the reader in deep ...”

Three Cups of Tea

Here we drink three cups of tea to do business; the first you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third, you join our family, and for our family we are prepared to do anything — even die.’ — Haji Ali, Korphe Village Chief, Karakoram mountains, Pakistan. In 1993, after a terrifying and disastrous attempt to climb K2, a mountaineer called Greg Mortenson drifted, cold and dehydrated, into an impoverished Pakistan village in the Karakoram Mountains. Moved by the inhabitants’ kindness, he promised to return and build a school. Three Cups of Tea is the story of that promise and its extraordinary outcome. Over the next decade Mortenson built not just one but 55 schools — especially for girls — in remote villages across the forbidding and breathtaking landscape of Pakistan and Afghanistan, just as the Taliban rose to power. His story is at once a rivetting adventure and a testament to the power of the humanitarian spirit.