On the morning before his headline-grabbing divorce trial is about to begin, multi-millionaire Quentin Wyler is found dead on his kitchen floor. With the heat on Detective Ari Greene, Wyler's ex-wife is soon charged with murder. But there are still many unanswered questions hanging over the apparently straightforward homicide trial.

The Guilty Plea. Robert Rotenberg

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Robert Rotenberg

Thrillers & Suspense

John Murray Publishers

Sugar Island

1859. Unrest is brewing in the South as Emily, an actress from England, arrives in Georgia to begin life with her new husband Charles. On arriving, Emily realises that Charles has been keeping a terrible secret from her - he is a slave-owner. On the surface, Emily appears to reconcile herself to his way of life, whereas in reality she finds herself irrevocably caught up in the lives of the slaves - befriending them, and helping them in secret. But as civil war threatens, Emily's world becomes increasingly divided - and dangerous - and she realises her secret could cost her everything. Set against the brilliantly realised backdrop of the months leading up to the American Civil War, Sugar Island is a story of freedom and of loyalty in a time of chaos.

Sanjida O'Connell

Michael Smith, at the US embassy in Cambodia, has an urgent assignment: do what it takes to help a US oil company secure its contract with the Cambodian government before upcoming elections strengthen a Chinese competitor. His affair with Zainab, the British charge's wife, complicates events. Unaware of Smith's role, Zainab pushes hard for reform, convincing her candidate to tie oil concessions to clean government, and Chinese concessions to the release of a dissident monk. The ruling party works for the monk's release, but insists that Zainab, a Buddhist herself, travels to the remote northern border for the handover. Smith considers a British diplomat's spouse to be a protected species in Cambodia. But does she really qualify?With tension, moral complexity and an authentic feel for modern Cambodia, The End of the Monsoon is a gripping story of love and the struggle for integrity.

End of the Monsoon

Literature & Fiction

John, Lathrop

Literary

HIV/AIDS is more divisive and destructive than any other disease - tearing apart communities and ostracising the afflicted. Award-winning novelist Uzodinma Iweala embarks on a remarkable journey around the African continent meeting individuals and communities that are struggling daily with the disease. He meets people from all walks of life, from sex workers to the truck drivers who frequent them; from the doctors and nurses who tend the sick; to the children orphaned by the illness and their adoptive families. He meets the wives of husbands with HIV and the husbands of wives with the virus. Beautifully written and heart-breakingly honest, Our Kind of People goes behind the headlines of this epidemic to show the real lives affected by it, illuminating the scope of the crisis and a continent's desperate struggle.

Thoughts on the HIV

Politics & Social Sciences

Uzodinma Iweala

Sociology

When Ann's granddaughter Ellie, asks for her help on a school project on family history, Ann thinks this will be the perfect opportunity to spend time with her. But as they work together uncovering the past, questions about Ann's early life begin to emerge. What did happen to Ann's first child? Was her life with Theo quite as idyllic as it seemed from the outside? And what happened to cause her mother and father's acrimonious split, can she really trust her mother's version of events? And as secrets from the past seem in danger of being exposed, new secrets emerge about Ann's son and daughter-in-law, secrets which threaten to tear the whole family apart. As events unfold in the present day and we learn what happened during a summer thirty years ago, Simmons depicts the unravelling of a family in this gripping psychological thriller.

The Birdhouse

Kelly Simmons

New York, 1916. Monroe Simonov, a song-plugger from Brooklyn, is in love with a Ziegfeld Follies dancer who has left him for California. Inez Kennedy, a fashion model in a department store, has just one season remaining to find a wealthy husband before she must return to the Midwest. Anna Denisova, a glamorous political exile, gives lectures and writes letters while she waits for the Russian people to overthrow their Tsar. Although the world is changing faster than they could ever have imagined, Monroe, Inez and Anna discover that they are still subject to the tyranny of the heart. In this richly atmospheric and deftly plotted novel, their paths cross and re-cross leaving a trail of passion, infidelity and betrayal, before hurtling towards an explosive climax

The Songwriter. Beatrice Colin

Arts & Photography

Beatrice Colin

Music

As the clock chimed the turn of the twentieth century, Lilly Nelly Aphrodite took her first breath. Born to a cabaret dancer and soon orphaned in a scandalous murder-suicide, Lilly finds refuge at a Catholic orphanage, coming under the wing of the, at times, severe Sister August, the first in a string of lost loves. There she meets Hanne Schmidt, a teen prostitute, and forms a bond that will last them through tumultuous love affairs, disastrous marriages, and destitution during the First World War and the subsequent economic collapse. As the century progresses, Lilly and Hanne move from the tawdry glamour of the tingle-tangle nightclubs to the shadow world of health films before Lilly finds success and stardom in the new medium of motion pictures and ultimately falls in love with a man whose fate could cost her everything she has worked for or help her discover her true self. Gripping and darkly seductive, The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite showcases all the glitter and splendor of the brief heyday of the Weimar Republic, and the rise of Hollywood to its golden age. As it foreshadows the horrors of the Second World War, the novel asks what price is paid when identity becomes unfixed and the social order is upended.

The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite

Contemporary

This tense, gripping novel set in 19C St Petersburg amid desperate revolutionaries bent on the overthrow of the Tsar 'confirms Andrew William's place in the front ranks of English thriller writers' (Daily Mail).  Shortlisted for the CWA Ellis Peters and the Walter Scott Awards, To Kill a Tsar will appeal to readers of John le Carre, Robert Harris and Alan Furst.  St Petersburg, 1879. A shot rings out in Palace Square. Cossack guards tackle the would-be assassin to the ground. In the melee no one notices a striking dark haired young woman in a heavy coat slip away from the scene. Russia is alive with revolutionaries. While Tsar Alexander II remains a virtual prisoner in his own palaces, his ruthless secret police will stop at nothing to unmask those who plot his assassination and the overthrow of the Imperial regime. For Dr Frederick Hadfield, whose medical practice is dependent on the Anglo-Russian gentry, these are dangerous times. Drawn into a desperate cat-and-mouse game of undercover assignations, plot and counter-plot, he risks all in a perilous double life. From glittering ballrooms to the cruel cells of the House of Preliminary Detention, from the grandeur of the British Embassy to the underground presses of the young revolutionaries, To Kill a Tsar is a gripping thriller set in a world of brutal contrasts in which treachery is everywhere and nothing is what it seems.

To Kill a Tsar

WILLIAMS, Andrew

A Good Innings: The Private Papers of Viscount Lee of Fareham

Viscount Lee of Fareham

Chinoiserie: The vision of Cathay

HONOUR, Hugh.

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the John Murray Publishers publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by John Murray Publishers