These few days will validate Dale Whitehead’s work—or expose him as a fraud. When a tragic death devastates the conference, only Dale suspects murder. Computer geeks care about code. But do they care enough… to kill?

     Macy Adams, a beautiful law student, is abducted and assaulted by a vicious serial killer known as the Bayou Butcher. She escapes with the help of a guardian angel and Houston Police Detective Chance O’Brien. After fleeing her captor, she begins to build a new life, but is plunged back into his murderous grasp by circumstances beyond her control. More women are murdered, and only Macy can help the FBI catch the Butcher before he kills again. What they don’t know is that this time he is out for revenge and is pulling Macy into his carefully planned trap.

    Rosenberger Rosenberg, neurotic and underappreciated film critic (failed academic, film-maker, paramour, shoe salesman who sleeps in a sock drawer), stumbles upon a hitherto unseen film made by an enigmatic outsider—a film he's convinced will change his career trajectory and rock the world of cinema to its core. His hands on what is possibly the greatest movie ever made—a three-month-long stop-motion masterpiece that took its reclusive auteur ninety years to complete—B. knows that it is his mission to show it to the rest of humanity. The only problem: The film is destroyed, leaving him the sole witness to its inadvertently ephemeral genius.All that's left of this work of art is a single frame from which B. must somehow attempt to recall the film that just might be the last great hope of civilization. Thus begins a mind-boggling journey through the hilarious nightmarescape of a psyche as lushly Kafkaesque as it is atrophied by the relentless spew of Twitter. Desperate to impose order on an increasingly nonsensical existence, trapped in a self-imposed prison of aspirational victimhood and degeneratively inclusive language, B. scrambles to recreate the lost masterwork while attempting to keep pace with an ever-fracturing culture of "likes" and arbitrary denunciations that are simultaneously his bete noire and his raison d'etre.A searing indictment of the modern world, Antkind is a richly layered meditation on art, time, memory, identity, comedy, and the very nature of existence itself—the grain of truth at the heart of every joke.

    In Thank You for Smoking it was big tobacco and earnest reformers; in God Is My Broker it was business and religion; and in No Way to Treat a First Lady, it's the entire legal profession, not to mention the Washington establishment. The novel opens with the President of the United States returning to the conjugal bed after an illicit Lincoln Bedroom romp with the Streisandesque Babette Van Anka. His wife, the long-suffering Beth McMann, promptly clocks him with a Paul Revere spittoon. Several hours later he dies. "Lady Bethmac," as the First Lady is immediately dubbed by the media, is put on trial, and the resulting media circus gives Buckley lots of opportunity for nicely observed skewerings of legal culture. "Judge Dutch creaked forward in his chair. This is the source of the aura of judges: they have bigger chairs than anyone else. That and the fact that they can sentence people to sit in electrified ones. It's all about chairs." He gets in some neat neologisms--a lawyer performs a "credibilobotomy" on a witness--and sends up the pretensions of law TV: at a roundtable discussion, the guest from Harvard Law is invited "to provide gravitas and to shift uneasily in his seat when the other guests said something provocative." Buckley's Trial of the Millennium is so far-fetched that it seems entirely possible. --Claire Dederer

    Inside is a gigantic taxidermied aardvark. This outrageous, edge-of-your-seat novel hurtles between contemporary Washington, DC, where Wilson tries to get rid of the unsightly beast before it destroys his career, and Victorian England--where we meet Titus Downing, the taxidermist who stuffed the aardvark, and Richard Ostlet, the naturalist who hunted her. Our present world, we begin to see, has been shaped in profound and disturbing ways by the secret that binds these men.

    That storyline drives Jason Mott's novel and is the scaffolding of something much larger and more urgent: since his novel also tells the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour.Throughout, these characters' stories build and build and as they converge, they astonish. For while this heartbreaking and magical book entertains and is at once about family, love of parents and children, art, and money, there always is the tragic story of a police shooting playing over and over on the news.Who has been killed? Who is The Kid? Will the author finish his book tour, and what kind of world will he leave behind? Unforgettably powerful, an electrifying high-wire act, ideal for book clubs, and the book Mott says he has been writing in his head for ten years, Hell of a Book in its final twists truly becomes its title.

     The chairman of the board, billionaire arms dealer and part-time philanthropist David Soper, decides that it's time to kill or cure. Business School alumnus and Las Vegas hotel genius Max Green is the perfect man for the job. A man of vision. A man with a mission. A man who knows that wealth-care is smarter than healthcare. He's going to make Samaritans great again. Andrew Sharp, star cardio-thoracic surgeon, turns his back on the NHS and buys in to this brave new world of Porsches and payola. But when his American Dream turns into a living nightmare, Andrew discovers that even the new-found love of his assistant, Cathy, may not be enough to save him… Samaritans is the new novel from the co-creator and writer of Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister. Praise for Samaritans 'A book George Orwell would have approved of.' The Sunday Times ‘It’s wonderful! I was hooked, mouth open, heart pounding. The catastrophic state of medical care is his story but Samaritans can be read too as a wider allegory, a discourse on a politics of greed, dis-entitlement, deregulation and social brutality that has run quite mad.’ Stephen Fry ‘It is with the highest confidence that I recommend this book, with particularity, to those Members of Congress who remain committed to making access to life saving care far too difficult for far too many people. It is my fondest hope that they might laugh their way to the education they so sorely require.’ Rick Ungar ‘Jonathan Lynn tackles the US healthcare system in satirical splendour. I laughed out loud. It is both hilarious and scary at the same time! Nobody does it better.’ Barbara Broccoli 'There is reason to believe Jonathan Lynn was not born in the US and, while probably not a spy, he has spent some little time observing Americans in the wild. His observations are not always flattering—he’s talking Big Medicine, Big Insurance, Big Business and their cousin, Small Ethics—but he certainly seems to have our number. Samaritans is smart, dark, and very, very funny. Stay healthy, America!' Michael McKean, Better Call Saul, Spinal Tap ‘Jonathan Lynn's Samaritans does for hospitals what Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One did for cemeteries. The book is laugh-aloud funny, but also deadly serious--because it deals with the lethal effect profit-minded health care can have on patient lives...I haven't read satire this hilarious and powerful since Riotous Assembly, the late Tom Sharpe's indictment of apartheid in South Africa. This is essential reading for anyone who has a body and wants to keep it alive.' M.G Lord ‘Comedy genius...as politically and socially important as is it is entertaining.’ Muriel Gray Jonathan Lynn is the multi-award winning author of The Complete Yes Minister and The Complete Yes, Prime Minister, which were drawn from the phenomenally successful BBC series which he created and wrote with Antony Jay, and which sold more than a million copies in hardback.

    Vicious, funny stuff."—Andrew Klavan, author of Hunting Down AmandaCyrus is a millionaire recluse. Oh, and a serial killer who preys upon apartment hunters in New York City. Armstead Maupin meets Carl Hiaasen in a brilliant black comedy that traces the paths of disparate characters floating through New York, about to collide in a treacherous story that will make you think twice about ever answering a classified ad.Chris Niles was born in New Zealand, and currently resides in New York. She is the author of a series of mysteries featuring radio reporter Sam Ridley: Spike It, Run Time and Crossing Live.

    Their shared passion for adventure draws them to scale a sheer cliff one fateful day, but despite their experienced precautions, Bridgette suffers a terrible accident and plummets to an untimely death. Shattered by grief, Lauralyn soon makes a sobering discovery: this was no accident—her sister’s climbing rope was cut. But who wanted Bridgette dead, and why? It’s up to Lauralyn and her grieving brother-in-law, Dade, to uncover the truth, even if it means putting themselves in the path of a ruthless killer. As their search for clues leads them deep into the heart of Gold Country, they discover that in the world of prospecting, greed knows no limits.

    But when the London press pack descends to report on a series of gruesome murders of young women, Betty's world changes. In particular she is transfixed by mysterious and aloof reporter, Mr Gallagher. As the death toll rises, an unlikely friendship blossoms between Betty and Gallagher. But as their bond deepens, they find themselves entangled with the murders and each is forced to make a devastating choice, one that will shape their own lives - and the life of an innocent man - forever.

    Things get dicey when killings happen, using our heroe's unpublished scripts as a template. With its chess-playing and references to Alice in Wonderland, one suspects a Spanish admirer for Mr. Brown, as the great Arturo Perez-Reverte also wrote a book about chess-playing, before taking it to new heights with a Dumas-inspired mystery. This book was also published as "A Plot for Murder."

    There's been a tragic accident: the old man fell asleep in his chair, woke up in the dark, fell and hit his head on the mantelpiece. But the Crime Scene Manager isn't happy. There are just too many details that aren't quite right and Charles Michaelson's accident becomes a suspicious death.And, as DCI Warren Jones investigates, he and his team discover that all is not as it appears to be in the dead man's caring family when his son-in-law disappears. Then they uncover some dark secrets in Michaelson's past and a motive for murder.Fans of Peter Robinson and Peter James will love Blood is Thicker Than Water, an all-new short story in Paul Gitsham's DCI Warren Jones series.

    Dispossessed farmer Pearl Jewett ekes out a hardscrabble existence with his three young sons: Cane (the eldest; handsome; intelligent); Cob (short; heavy set; a bit slow); and Chimney (the youngest; thin; ill-tempered). Several hundred miles away in southern Ohio, a farmer by the name of Ellsworth Fiddler lives with his son, Eddie, and his wife, Eula. After Ellsworth is swindled out of his family’s entire fortune, his life is put on a surprising, unforgettable, and violent trajectory that will directly lead him to cross paths with the Jewetts. No good can come of it. Or can it?In the gothic tradition of Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy with a healthy dose of cinematic violence reminiscent of Sam Peckinpah, Quentin Tarantino and the Coen Brothers, the Jewetts and the Fiddlers will find their lives colliding in increasingly dark and horrific ways, placing Donald Ray Pollock firmly in the company of the genre’s literary masters.

    That’s what Sarah thinks as she settles into life with her new husband, Dr. Johnny McDonald. But all too soon she discovers an undercurrent of deception. And one October evening when Johnny is away, sudden tragedy destroys Sarah’s happiness.Dazed and stricken with grief, she and Johnny begin to rebuild their shattered lives. As she picks up the pieces of her broken home, Sarah discovers a shocking secret that forces her to doubt everything she thought was true—about her neighbors, her friends, and even her marriage. With each stunning revelation, Sarah must ask herself, Can we ever really know the ones we love?

    Although he would prefer to write short stories, he earns a living composing obituaries for a newspaper. He longs to see his work published, yet the subjects of his obituaries continue to cling to life. But when he opens the newspaper to see his work in print for the first time, his pride swiftly turns to terror. He and Misha have been drawn into a trap from which there appears to be no escape.