Forbidden
by Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee (Hodder & Stoughton, R150)
It is a world where there is no disease, no passion, no hate, no war.
Perfect order reigns and humanity’s greatest threats have been silenced by the totalitarian government.
Then Rom discovers a secret journal – a journal that holds the truth.
The human heart has been stripped of emotion and exists in a kind of living death.
When Rom exposes himself to the vial of blood in the journal he is filled with unbridled passion and only he can now reawaken humanity.
It is a dangerous and forbidden mission that he has to undertake.
Daughter of Smoke and Bone
by Laini Taylor (Hodder & Stoughton, R150)
Karou lives a double life – she’s a 17-year-old art student in Prague and also an errand girl for a monster who is the closest thing to family she has.
She has been raised half in our world and half in “Elsewhere” where Brimstone is her master.
She’s never felt whole as much as she’s tried to keep a sense of balance between her two lives.
But now, as “Elsewhere” is closing, she is being forced to make a choice between the two worlds she inhabits. Our world is safe, but the war-torn “Elsewhere” holds the answers to her existence.
Across the Bridges
by Morag Joss (Alma Books, price not available)
A bridge collapses in the Highlands of Scotland and many lives are lost.
A tourist’s car is seen on the bridge just before it collapses, so she is presumed dead or missing as well.
But for this woman, it is a chance to start life anew – to reinvent herself and leave behind a terrible secret.
This is a novel about identity and reinvention, loss and reparation and how fate causes life to converge in unexpected ways.
Prague Fatale
by Philip Kerr (Quercus, R194.95)
This is the next instalment in Philip Kerr’s detective Bernie Gunther series.
It’s September 1941 and Bernie returns to Berlin from the Eastern Front.
Things have changed for the worse. But he settles down to investigating a murder and starting a “relationship” with a good-time girl.
Then his old boss, Reichsprotector Reinhard Heydrich, orders him to Prague to spend a weekend at his country house. Bernie knows there will be senior SS and SD people there as well and it is a weekend away he can do without.
A body is discovered and everyone looks to Bernie to solve the mystery.
It’s a race to save his reputation as well as that of Heydrich – a man who does not like to be embarrassed.