Say You’re Sorry – Michael Robotham

$30 large PB

Michael Robotham says he’ll never be famous because he’s never been to jail, used drugs, failed at a suicide,  had a messy divorce or had any other traumatic experience that seem prevalent with some authors.

He should be famous however, for his atmospheric and disturbing thrillers.

Two teenagers went missing.  Now known as the Bingham Girls, they went without trace having arranged to run away with a school friend.

The author presents us with two facets of the story.  Piper, one of the Bingham girls, writes  “  My name is Piper Hadley and I went missing on the last Saturday of the summer holidays three years ago.  I didn’t disappear completely and I didn’t run away, which is what a lot of people thought… I’ve been here all along – not in Heaven or in Hell or that place in between whose name I can never remember.”

We read the diary entries and thoughts of Piper as she struggles with long term imprisonment and worse, while on the outside, tragic events unfold that involve psychologist Professor Joe O’Loughlin.  He persuades police to re-open the Bingham Girls case and it gets dangerous.

Tense, intriguing and cannot be put down!!

Sanctus by Simon Toyne

$30 large format PB

A great thriller from new British writer Simon Toyne
You’ll be intrigued from the beginning. An ancient conspiracy is at the centre of what seems to be just another suicide but could also be a ‘suspicious death’! But the modern world certainties seem threatened by an ancient conspiracy!

A man throws himself to his death from a mountainous Citadel in the historic Turkish city of Ruin. This is no ordinary suicide but a symbolic act and although it is witnessed by the entire world through the media, few understand it.  Kathryn Mann, a charity worker and a few others have been waiting for something like this. The secretive people that live in the Citadel suspect it could mean the end of everything they have built and they’re prepared to fight vigourously to prevent it. For Liv Adamsen, New York crime reporter, it brings news of her brother, thought dead, and starts her on a bizarre journey. And at that journey’s end lies a discovery that will change EVERYTHING !

SANCTUS is an apocalyptic conspiracy thriller like no other — it brings intrigue, excitement and
fascination, and is Mark Toyne’s debut.

Under the Dome by Stephen King

PB $35

The best kind of science fiction is where just one impossible or inexplicable situation is presented and everything else is normal.  This exactly what happens in Under the Dome.

Well not exactly ‘normal’ but within the bounds of possibility.  Suddenly, one day, an apparently sleepy town in New England, USA is surrounded by a mysterious and frightening ‘Dome’ – an invisible fence all round, over and under the town, cuts it off from the rest of the world!

The authorities are dumbfounded, the inhabitants alarmed and many people are thinking ” what’s in it for me?”   The Dome causes some pain and suffering as it appears with animals and people coming to grief on this invisible but unyeilding barrier that extends more than 10,000 metres into the air.  That is nothing compared to what happens later.

The resulting confusion brings the local Townsman, bully, thief and criminal, Big Jim Rennie,  in conflict with more law-abiding elements and an unlikely hero in the cook at the local diner.  The local police figure strongly as do the clerics but it’s the ordinary people that come centre stage.

The story is compelling, with a huge cast of characters, and shows the best and the worst in people as the strange reality sets in.  The source of the Dome is the main question but what it makes people do is even more amazing.  The ending is dramatic, a bit weird as the origin of the dome is revealed and not entirely happy.  It works well as a fitting climax to an excellent thriller.

Under The Dome is Stephen King at his epic best and will capture a brand new readership as well as thrilling his existing fans.