My Most Anticipated Reads of 2018 – The Adult Edit

Yesterday I looked backwards and shared by top ten books of 2017. Today and tomorrow I’m looking forward to 2018 and talking about my most anticipated books of 2018. Today I’m focusing on adult fiction, which turns out is mainly crime and thriller novels, tomorrow I’ll be focusing on young adults.

Titles link to the Goodreads page – Publication dates are UK dates unless stated and correct to the best of my knowledge but subject to change

 Anatomy of a Scandal

Sarah Vaughan; Simon & Schuster

Publication Date: 11^th January 2018

You want to believe your husband. She wants to destroy him.

Gripping psychological drama for fans of Apple Tree Yard, The Good Wife and Notes on a Scandal.

Anatomy of a Scandal centres on a high-profile marriage that begins to unravel when the husband is accused of a terrible crime. Sophie is sure her husband, James, is innocent and desperately hopes to protect her precious family from the lies which might ruin them. Kate is the barrister who will prosecute the case – she is equally certain that James is guilty and determined he will pay for his crimes.

A high-profile marriage thrust into the spotlight. A wife, determined to keep her family safe, must face a prosecutor who believes justice has been a long time coming. A scandal that will rock Westminster. And the women caught at the heart of it.

I’ve not read a novel by Sarah Vaughan but the blurb intrigues me so I’m keen to pick it up!

 The Gathering Dark

James Oswald; Michael Joseph

Publication Date: 25^th January 2018

A truck driver loses control in central Edinburgh, ploughing into a crowded bus stop and spilling his vehicle’s toxic load. The consequences are devastating.

DI Tony McLean witnesses the carnage. Taking control of the investigation, he soon realises there is much that is deeply amiss – and everyone involved seems to have something to hide.

But as McLean struggles to uncover who caused the tragedy, a greater crisis develops: the new Chief Superintendent’s son is missing, last seen in the area of the crash . . .

More McLean! Yes James Oswald featured in my top ten books of 2017 with his last Inspector McLean outing and here is his first entry in my most anticipated books of 2018. There’s less than a month to wait for this one!

 Hangman

Daniel Cole; Trapeze

Publication Date: 8^th February 2018

How do you catch a killer who’s already dead?

Eighteen months have passed, but the scars the Ragdoll murders left behind remain.

DCI Emily Baxter is summoned to a meeting with US Special Agents Elliot Curtis of the FBI and Damien Rouche of the CIA. There, she is presented with photographs of the latest copycat murder: a body contorted into a familiar pose, strung up impossibly on the other side of the world, the word BAIT carved deep into its chest.

As the media pressure intensifies, Baxter is ordered to assist with the investigation and attend the scene of another murder to discover the same word scrawled across the victim, carved across the corpse of the killer – PUPPET.

As the murders continue to grow in both spectacle and depravity on both sides of the Atlantic, the team helplessly play catch up. Their only hope: to work out who the ‘BAIT’ is intended for, how the ‘PUPPETS’ are chosen but, most importantly of all, who is holding the strings.

I loved Ragdoll, so I’m looking forward to picking up with some of the characters 18 months down the line!

 The Memory Chamber

Holly Cave; Quercus

Publication Date: 22^nd February 2018

YOU ARE GOING TO DIE.

YOU CAN PRESERVE A HANDFUL OF SPECIAL MEMORIES FOREVER.

WHICH ONES WOULD YOU CHOOSE?

True death is a thing of the past. Now you can spend the rest of eternity reliving your happiest memories: that first kiss, falling in love, the birth of your children, enjoyed on loop for ever and ever.

Isobel is a Heaven Architect, and she helps dying people create afterlives from these memories. So when she falls for Jarek, one of her terminal – and married – clients, she knows that while she cannot save him, she can create the most beautiful of heavens, just for him.

But when Jarek’s wife is found dead, Isobel uncovers a darker side of the world she works within, and she can trust no one with what she finds…

The Memory Chamber is a thrilling and original story which vaults the reader into a world that is terrifyingly close to our own, where we can avoid everything we fear – even death itself. But can we ever escape the truth?

The concept of this one intrigues me! I couldn’t even begin to choose which memories I’d pick to rewatch for all of eternity!

 Splinter In The Blood

Ashley Dyer; Corsair

Publication Date: 1^st March 2018

A propulsive debut suspense novel, filled with secrets, nerve-jangling tension, perplexing mystery, and cold-blooded murder, in which a police officer on the hunt for a macabre serial killer is brutally attacked, and only his partner knows the truth about what happened—and who did it.

After months of hunting a cold-blooded murderer that the press has dubbed the Thorn Killer, Detective Greg Carver is shot in his own home. His trusted partner, Ruth Lake, is alone with him. Yet instead of calling for help, she’s rearranged the crime scene and wiped the room clean of prints.

But Carver isn’t dead.

Awakening in the hospital, Carver has no memory of being shot, but is certain that his assailant is the Thorn Killer. Though there’s no evidence to support his claim, Carver insists the attack is retaliation, an attempt to scare the detective off the psychopath’s scent, because he’s getting too close. Trapped in a hospital bed and still very weak, Carver’s obsession grows. He’s desperate to get back to work and finally nail the bastard, before more innocent blood is spilled.

One person knows the truth and she’s not telling. She’s also now leading the Thorn Killer investigation while Carver recuperates. It doesn’t matter that Carver and the rest of the force are counting on her, and that more victims’ lives at stake. Ruth is keeping a deadly secret, and she’ll cross every line—sacrificing her colleagues, her career, and maybe even her own life—to keep it from surfacing.

Utterly engrossing and filled with masterfully crafted surprises, Splinter in the Blood is a propulsive roller-coaster ride, filled with deception, nerve-jangling tension, perplexing mystery, and cold-blooded murder.

I discovered this one while browsing NetGalley and the premise sounds amazing!

 The Smiling Man

Joseph Knox; Doubleday

Publication Date: 8^th March 2018

‘I usually experienced the presence of a dead body as an absence, but in this case, it felt like a black hole opening up in front of me’

Disconnected from his history and careless of his future, Detective Aidan Waits has resigned himself to the night shift. An endless cycle of meaningless emergency calls and lonely dead ends. Until he and his partner, Detective Inspector Peter ‘Sutty’ Sutcliffe, are summoned to The Palace, a vast disused hotel in the centre of a restless, simmering city. There they find the body of a man. He is dead. And he is smiling.

The tags have been removed from the man’s clothes. His teeth filed down and replaced. Even his fingertips are not his own. Only a patch sewn into the inside of his trousers gives any indication as to who he was, and to the desperate last act of his life…

But even as Waits puts together the pieces of this stranger’s life, someone is sifting through the shards of his own.

When the mysterious fires, anonymous phone calls and outright threats escalate, he realises that a ghost from his own past haunts his every move.

And to discover the smiling man’s identity, he must finally confront his own.

Sirens was a great dark crime novel so I’m hoping the follow up will be just as gripping!

 No Safe Place

Patricia Gibney; Bookouture

Publication Date: 22^nd March 2018

As funeral mourners stand in silence at Ragmullin cemetery, a deafening cry cuts through the air. Lying crumpled at the bottom of an open grave is the bloodied body of a young woman, and Detective Lottie Parker is called in to investigate.

Knowing the body can’t have been there long, Lottie wonders if it could be Elizabeth Bryne, a young woman who vanished without trace just days earlier. And with a new boss who seems to have it in for her, Lottie is under pressure to solve both cases quickly.

As two more women go missing from Ragmullin, Lottie and her team fear there is a serial killer on the loose. And the disappearances are strikingly similar to a cold case from ten years earlier. Could history be repeating itself?

As journalists begin to interfere with Lottie’s investigation, she fears the killer is about to strike again. Lottie is in a race against time to find the missing women, but the killer is closer than she thinks. Could Lottie be his next target?

If you love Angela Marsons, Robert Bryndza and Rachel Abbott, you’ll love the latest pulse-pounding thriller from Patricia Gibney. No Safe Place will keep you guessing until the very last page.

I’ve been hooked on the DI Lottie Parker books since I discovered them towards the beginning of the year so I’m really looking forward to book four!

 How Do You Like Me Now?

Holly Bourne; Hodder & Stoughton

Publication Date: 14^th June 2018

‘Turning thirty is like playing musical chairs. The music stops, and everyone just marries whoever they happen to be sitting on.’

Who the f*ck is Tori Bailey?

There’s no doubt that Tori is winning the game of life. A straight-talking, bestselling author, she’s inspired millions of women around the world with her self-help memoir. And she has the perfect relationship to boot.

But Tori Bailey has been living a lie.

Everyone around her is getting engaged and having babies – but her long-term boyfriend won’t even talk about marriage. And when her best friend Dee – her plus one, the only person who understands the madness – falls in love, suddenly Tori’s in terrifying danger of being left behind.

When the world tells you to be one thing and turning thirty brings with it a loud ticking clock, it takes courage to walk your own path.

It’s time for Tori to practice what she’s preached, but the question is: is she brave enough?

The debut adult novel by bestselling author Holly Bourne is a blisteringly funny, honest and moving exploration of love, friendship and navigating the emotional rollercoaster of your thirties.

I’m yet to read any of Holly Bourne’s YA novels although they are on my TBR, so many people have told me I must read them! This is Holly’s first adult novel and it’s already sitting on my iPad waiting to be read!

 Lies Sleeping

Ben Aaronovitch; Gollancz

Publication Date: 28^th June 2018

a fabulous new adventure, london under threat, and the scent of magic in the air . . . it must be a new PC Grant mystery . . .

PC Peter Grant has a new case, and it’s going to take London by storm. There’s a confrontation coming, and the Faceless Man may never be more dangerous than when he’s cornered . . .

The seventh in the bestselling series which began with Rivers of London, this is the best yet.

I’ve recently listened to the novella that was published recently so I can’t wait for this one to arrive in bookshops!

 The Fifth To Die

J.D. Barker; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Publication Date: 3^rd July 2018 (US publication)

Detective Porter and the team have been pulled from the hunt for Anson Bishop, the Four Monkey Killer, by the feds. When the body of a young girl is found beneath the frozen waters of Jackson Park Lagoon, she is quickly identified as Ella Reynolds, missing three weeks. But how did she get there? The lagoon froze months earlier. More baffling? She’s found wearing the clothes of another girl, missing less than two days. While the detectives of Chicago Metro try to make sense of the quickly developing case, Porter secretly continues his pursuit of 4MK, knowing the best way to find Bishop is to track down his mother. When the captain finds out about Porter’s activities, he’s suspended, leaving his partners Clair and Nash to continue the search for the new killer alone.

Obsessed with catching Bishop, Porter follows a single grainy photograph from Chicago to the streets of New Orleans and stumbles into a world darker than he could have possibly imagined, where he quickly realizes that the only place more frightening than the mind of a serial killer is the mind of the mother from which he came.

 No Time To Cry

James Oswald; Wildfire

Publication Date: 26^th July 2018

Undercover ops are always dangerous, but DC Constance Fairchild never expected things to go this wrong.

Returning to their base of operations, an anonymous office in a shabby neighbourhood, she finds the bloodied body of her boss, and friend, DI Pete Copperthwaite. He’s been executed – a single shot to the head.

In the aftermath, it seems someone in the Met is determined to make sure that blame for the wrecked operation falls squarely on Con’s shoulders. She is cut loose and cast out, angry and alone with her grief… right until the moment someone also tries to put a bullet through her head.

There’s no place to hide, and no time to cry.

James Oswald’s second appearance on this list, this is a brand new series for him. I spotted this browsing Headline’s coming soon books and my jaw dropped, if this is even half as good as the Inspector McLean series we’re in for a treat!

Quick mentions also go to Carol Wyer – I know a fifth Robyn Carter book is scheduled for publication in 2018 and also Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling) surely 2018 is the year we’ll see Lethal White published! I can only hope.

So that’s my 11 most anticipated adult books of 2018. Do any of these make your list? Check back tomorrow for the young adult books I can’t wait for!