And ​Only to Deceive

Tasha Alexander - A ​Crimson Warning
Secrets ​prove deadly in this new novel featuring Lady Emily Hargreaves. Some very prominent people in London are waking up to find their doorsteps smeared with red paint, the precursor to the revelation of a dark secret – and worse – by someone who enjoys destroying lives. Newly returned to her home in Mayfair, Lady Emily Hargreaves is looking forward to enjoying the delights of the season. The delights, that is, as defined by her own eccentricities—reading The Aeneid, waltzing with her dashing husband, and joining the Women’s Liberal Federation in the early stages of its campaign to win votes for women. But an audacious vandal disturbs the peace in the capitol city, splashing red paint on the neat edifices of the homes of London’s elite. This mark, impossible to hide, presages the revelation of scandalous secrets, driving the hapless victims into disgrace, despair and even death. Soon, all of London high society is living in fear of learning who will be the next target, and Lady Emily and her husband, Colin, favorite agent of the crown, must uncover the identity and reveal the motives of the twisted mind behind it all before another innocent life is lost.

Loretta Chase - Miss ​Wonderful
Due ​to his history of expensive romantic entanglements, Alistair Carsington now has six months to find either a useful occupation or a wealthy heiress to wed. To prove he is not an idle fop only concerned with sartorial pleasures, Alistair agrees to help his old friend, Lord Gordmor, by traveling to the wilds of Derbyshire to convince Gordmor's neighbors to support the nobleman's proposal to build a canal. Upon arriving, Alistair, a famous war hero and eligible bachelor, finds everyone couldn't be nicer, everyone except for respectable, practical, spinsterish Mirabel Oldridge. The last thing Mirabel wants is for her tranquil little corner of England to be destroyed by a noisy, nasty canal, and she is prepared to use every weapon at her disposal--including her disheveled coiffure and unstylish wardrobe--to stop Alistair. RITA Award-winning Chase presents a splendidly written tale of two people trying desperately not to fall in love. Chase's beguiling blend of deliciously complex characters, potent sexual chemistry, and sparkling wit give this superb romance a richness and depth readers will treasure. John Charles

Philippa Gregory - The ​Red Queen
Heiress ​to the red rose of Lancaster, Margaret Beaufort never surrenders her belief that her house is the true ruler of England and that she has a great destiny before her. Her ambitions are disappointed when her sainted cousin Henry VI fails to recognize her as a kindred spirit, and she is even more dismayed when he sinks into madness. Her mother mocks her plans, revealing that Margaret will always be burdened with the reputation of her father, one of the most famously incompetent English commanders in France. But worst of all for Margaret is when she discovers that her mother is sending her to a loveless marriage in remote Wales. Married to a man twice her age, quickly widowed, and a mother at only fourteen, Margaret is determined to turn her lonely life into a triumph. She sets her heart on putting her son on the throne of England regardless of the cost to herself, to England, and even to the little boy. Disregarding rival heirs and the overwhelming power of the York dynasty, she names him Henry, like the king; sends him into exile; and pledges him in marriage to her enemy Elizabeth of York's daughter. As the political tides constantly move and shift, Margaret charts her own way through another loveless marriage, treacherous alliances, and secret plots. She feigns loyalty to the usurper Richard III and even carries his wife's train at her coronation. Widowed a second time, Margaret marries the ruthless, deceitful Thomas, Lord Stanley, and her fate stands on the knife edge of his will. Gambling her life that he will support her, she then masterminds one of the greatest rebellions of the time - all the while knowing that her son has grown to manhood, recruited an army, and now waits for his opportunity to win the greatest prize. In a novel of conspiracy, passion, and coldhearted ambition, number one bestselling author Philippa Gregory has brought to life the story of a proud and determined woman who believes that she alone is destined, by her piety and lineage, to shape the course of history.

Diana Gabaldon - Drums ​of Autumn
The ​fourth book in a time-travel series about a 1960s woman and an 18th-century Scottish rebel. Jamie goes to seek refuge in the mountains knowing his daughter Brianna is safe in the future. When Brianna enters the past in search of him, Jamie learns that love is the only thing worth fighting for.

Robert Galbraith - The ​Cuckoo's Calling
After ​losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his long-time girlfriend and is living in his office. Then John Landry walks through his door with an amazing story. His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, fell, famously, to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rockstar boyfriends, desperate designers, and every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man. You may think you know detective novels, but you've never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know the world of the wealthy and famous, but you've never seen it investigated by a detective like this one.

Louise Allen - Practical ​Widow to Passionate Mistress
From ​servants' quarters to master's bedroom Meg eloped to escape her reverend father's iron rule. Now widowed, she's desperate to return to her sisters. When Major Brandon is left unconscious on the Bordeaux docks, Meg grabs her chance--posing as his wife, she boards a ship to England. Meg might have saved his life, but does she have to be so bossy--or downright irresistible? Years of killing weighing heavily on his soul, Ross has nothing to offer as a husband, but he can make Meg his housekeeper--with access to the master's bedroom.

Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe's ​Trafalgar
The ​seventeenth Sharpe novel sees Sharpe returning from India to London to join the newly formed Green jackets. Sharpe, though a little more comfortable with his new officer rank, is sure that this new unit is of lower status, and that he has failed. His ship home is shipwrecked: he is captured by pirates but fighting free with a few companions, finds himself on a British Navy ship heading to join Nelson's fleet. And there, in October 1805, he finds himself involved in the great sea battle, and discovers new skills in fighting on sea.

Jane Austen - Lady ​Susan (angol)
Lady ​Susan is the only full novel written by Jane Austen that was not published in her lifetime. Composed in the epistolary form that was popular at the time, the novel is a series of letters primarily between Lady Susan, Mrs Vernon, Mrs Vernon's mother (Lady de Courcy), Lady Susan and Mrs Johnson. The central character is remarkable in Austenian terms as she has nearly no redeeming features. A gorgeous, clever and witty woman, Lady Susan uses her talents for thoroughly selfish ends as she scrupulously scours society searching for "appropriate" husbands for herself and for her daughter.

Peter May - The ​Blackhouse
A ​brutal killing takes place on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland: a land of harsh beauty and inhabitants of deep-rooted faith. A MURDER. Detective Inspector Fin Macleod is sent from Edinburgh to investigate. For Lewis-born Macleod, the case represents a journey both home and into his past. A SECRET. Something lurks within the close-knit island community. Something sinister. A TRAP. As Fin investigates, old skeletons begin to surface, and soon he, the hunter, becomes the hunted.

Peter May - The ​Lewis Man
A ​MAN WITH NO NAME An unidentified corpse is recovered from a Lewis peat bog; the only clue to its identity being a DNA sibling match to a local farmer. A MAN WITH NO MEMORY But this islander, Tormod Macdonald - now an elderly man suffering from dementia - has always claimed to be an only child. A MAN WITH NO CHOICE When Tormod's family approach Fin Macleod for help, Fin feels duty-bound to solve the mystery.

Peter May - The ​Chessmen
A ​new start has brought new optimism for Fin Macleod. Now permanently re-settled on his Hebridean childhood home of the Isle of Lewis, the ex-Detective Inspector has been employed by a local landowner to oversee security on his estate: ostensibly a simple task for a man of Fin's experience. When an investigation into illegal activity on the land brings Fin into contact with elusive local poacher and former school friend Whistler Macaskill, Fin is afforded an opportunity to connect with the happier days of his teenage years. But as Fin catches up with Whistler, the two witness a freak natural phenomenon - a 'Bog Burst' - which spontaneously drains a Lewis loch of its water, revealing a mud-encased light aircraft with a sickeningly familiar moniker on its side. Both men know what they will find inside - the body of friend and musician Roddy Mackenzie, whose flight disappeared more than seventeen years before. But when Whistler's face appears to register something other than shock at the sight of Roddy's remains, Fin feels an icy chill of apprehension. As he closes in on Whistler's secret, Fin is unprepared for how the truth about the past will alter the course of the future.

Celia Rees - Sovay
England, ​1783. When the rich and beautiful Sovay isn't sitting for portraits, she's donning a man's cloak and robbing travelers in broad daylight. But in a time when political allegiances between France and England are strained, a rogue bandit is not the only thing travelers fear. Spies abound, and rumors of sedition can quickly lead to disappearances. So when Sovay lifts the wallet of one of England's most powerful and dangerous men, it's not just her own identity she must hide, but that of her father. A dazzling historical saga in which the roles of thieves and gentry, good and bad, and men and women are interchanged to riveting effect.

Robert Galbraith - The ​Silkworm
When ​novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, she just thinks he has gone off by himself for a few days - as he has done before - and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home. But as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine's disappearance than his wife realises. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were published it would ruin lives - so there are a lot of people who might want to silence him. And when Quine is found brutally murdered in bizarre circumstances, it becomes a race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer, a killer unlike any he has encountered before . . .

Tom Stoppard - Parade's ​End
Tom ​Stoppard's dramatisation for BBC TV of "Parade's End" by Ford Madox Ford will bring new readers to the novel as well as giving Stoppard's audience much that is original to his inventive version of a masterwork of modernist English literature. This is the story of Christopher Tietjens, the 'last Tory', his beautiful, disconcerting wife Sylvia, and the virginal young suffragette Valentine Wannop who completes this triangle of love among the English upper class before and during the Great War.

Elizabeth Chadwick - The ​Winter Mantle
Fresh ​from his defeat of King Harold at the Battle of Hastings, William of Normandy has returned home in triumph, accompanied by the English nobles he cannot trust to leave behind. For Waltheof of Huntingdon, however, rebellion is not at the forefront of his thoughts. From the moment he catches sight of Judith, daughter of the King's formidable sister, he knows he has found his future wife. When Waltheof saves Judith's life, it is clear that the attraction is mutual. But marriage has little to do with love in mediaeval Europe. William refuses to let the couple wed and Waltheof joins an uprising against him. William crushes the rebellion but decides the best way to keep Waltheof in check is to agree to the marriage. But is the match between Saxon earl and Norman lady one made in heaven or hell? As their children grow, Waltheof and Judith must choose between their feelings for each other and older loyalties. Based on an astonishing true story, THE WINTER MANTLE reaches from the turbulent reign of William the Conqueror to the high drama of the crusades.

Mary Ann Shaffer - Annie Barrows - The ​Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
The ​letters comprising this small charming novel begin in 1946, when single, 30-something author Juliet Ashton (nom de plume Izzy Bickerstaff) writes to her publisher to say she is tired of covering the sunny side of war and its aftermath. When Guernsey farmer Dawsey Adams finds Juliet's name in a used book and invites articulate—and not-so-articulate—neighbors to write Juliet with their stories, the book's epistolary circle widens, putting Juliet back in the path of war stories. The occasionally contrived letters jump from incident to incident—including the formation of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society while Guernsey was under German occupation—and person to person in a manner that feels disjointed. But Juliet's quips are so clever, the Guernsey inhabitants so enchanting and the small acts of heroism so vivid and moving that one forgives the authors (Shaffer died earlier this year) for not being able to settle on a single person or plot. Juliet finds in the letters not just inspiration for her next work, but also for her life—as will readers.

Lindsay Smith - Sekret
An ​empty mind is a safe mind. Yulia's father always taught her to hide her thoughts and control her emotions to survive the harsh realities of Soviet Russia. But when she's captured by the KGB and forced to work as a psychic spy with a mission to undermine the U.S. space program, she's thrust into a world of suspicion, deceit, and horrifying power. Yulia quickly realizes she can trust no one--not her KGB superiors or the other operatives vying for her attention--and must rely on her own wits and skills to survive in this world where no SEKRET can stay hidden for long.

Charles Dickens - A ​Tale of Two Cities
It ​is the latter part of the eighteenth century, France and England are at war. Then the French Revolution begins and some people who were friends become enemies. But strange things happen in such turbulent times.

Isabel Wolff - Ghostwritten
A ​childhood mistake. A lifetime of regrets. Jenni is a ‘ghost’: she writes the lives of other people. It’s a job that suits her well: still haunted by a childhood tragedy, she finds it easier to take refuge in the memories of others rather than dwell on her own. Jenni has an exciting new commission, and is delighted to start working on the memoirs of a Dutchwoman, Klara. As a child in the Second World War, Klara was interned in a camp on Java during the Japanese occupation – she has an extraordinary story of survival to tell. But as Jenni and Klara begin to get to know each other, Jenni begins to do much more than shed light on a neglected part of history. She is being forced to examine her own devastating memories, too. But with Klara’s help, perhaps this is finally the moment where she will be able to lay the ghosts of her own past to rest?

Jaclyn Dolamore - Dark ​Metropolis
Cabaret ​meets Cassandra Clare-a haunting magical thriller set in a riveting 1930s-esque world. Sixteen-year-old Thea Holder's mother is cursed with a spell that's driving her mad, and whenever they touch, Thea is chilled by the magic, too. With no one else to contribute, Thea must make a living for both of them in a sinister city, where danger lurks and greed rules. Thea spends her nights waitressing at the decadent Telephone Club attending to the glitzy clientele. But when her best friend, Nan, vanishes, Thea is compelled to find her. She meets Freddy, a young, magnetic patron at the club, and he agrees to help her uncover the city's secrets-even while he hides secrets of his own. Together, they find a whole new side of the city. Unrest is brewing behind closed doors as whispers of a gruesome magic spread. And if they're not careful, the heartless masterminds behind the growing disappearances will be after them, too. Perfect for fans of Cassandra Clare, this is a chilling thriller with a touch of magic where the dead don't always seem to stay that way.