New fiction for July

Meet Jessica Jones: a private investigator and retired super hero based out of Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, who goes from job to job as a hard living, rough talking, loner. And then a wealthy Upper East Side woman pays her a visit. Amber Randall is concerned about her teenage twins, Lark and Fox, who have acted and looked very different since they returned from spending the summer with their British father in the UK. Something has happened to them. To find out more, Jessica travels to Essex to talk to their father and once there meets Belle who is living a curiously isolated existence in a run-down farmhouse with her guardian Debra. Jessica knows that Lark and Fox had spent the summer with Belle - but can this unworldly teenager really be responsible for Lark and Fox's new personas?

You know Penny Coyne. The little old lady who has solved multiple murders in her otherwise sleepy village, despite bumbling local police. A razor-sharp mind in a twinset and tweed. You know Johnny Hawke. Hard-bitten LAPD homicide detective. Always in trouble with his captain, always losing partners, but always battling for the truth, whatever it takes. Against all the odds, against the usual story, their worlds are about to collide. It starts with a dead writer and a mysterious wedding invitation. It will end with a rabbit hole that goes so deep, Johnny and Penny might just come to question not just whodunnit, but whether they want to know the answer.

Newly promoted Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison has elbowed her way into the Area Major Incident Pool, or AMIP, an elite team investigating non-domestic murders. With her new position, she hopes things will change: the rampant sexism, the snide remarks, the undermining. Then she gets her first assignment: a five-year-old cold case of a missing teenager no one else has any interest in investigating, and an assumed suicide Tennison suspects is, in fact, murder. But as Tennison gathers the crucial evidence to secure arrests, her new colleagues watch like vultures circling prey. And one by one the cases that she has built from the ground up are taken from her - and the glory along with them.

Orphaned, lonely, and lost in his photography work, Tom has no intention of falling in love. And yet, love finds him in the shape of beautiful Vanessa, who lives a dangerous double life in the heart of London's King's Cross. Tom's pursuit of Vanessa leads him to discover an alternate world, hidden amongst the streets and rooftops of London - and inhabited by strange and colourful beings. In this mysterious realm, two ancient factions - one of night, one of day - have waged war for centuries over a forbidden love and a long-lost prince of sun and starlight. But when Tom finds a secret market that appears only in moonlight, where charms and spells are bought with memories, he starts to wonder whether he's been here before.

Lyla Santiago has spent months working on a research project that could be the key to getting a permanent job in her field. So, she can't really drop everything to go to a desert island with her actor boyfriend Nico to film One Perfect Couple, a new reality TV show that Nico is sure will lead to his big break - can she? Two weeks later, Lyla finds herself boarding a boat to an isolated luxury resort in the Indian Ocean. The rules of the game are simple. Ten strangers have to survive together on the island - and the last couple standing scoops the prize. There will be sun, sea, laughs and plenty of flirting. What could possibly go wrong? But when a huge tropical storm cuts them off from everything, the group must band together.

No one knows Margo's real name. Her colleagues and patrons at a small-town public library only know her middle-aged normalcy, congeniality and charm. They have no reason to suspect that she is, in fact, a former nurse with a trail of countless premature deaths in her wake. She has turned a new page, so to speak, and the library is her sanctuary, a place to quell old urges. That is, at least, until Patricia, a recent graduate and failed novelist, joins the library staff. Patricia quickly notices Margo's subtly sinister edge and watches her carefully. When a patron's death in the library bathroom offers a hint of Margo's mysterious past, Patricia can't resist digging deeper - even as this new fixation becomes all-consuming.

It is the summer of 1919 and Constance Haverhill is without prospects. Now that all the men have returned from the front, she has been asked to give up her cottage and her job at the estate she helped to run during the war. While she looks for a position as a bookkeeper or (horror) a governess, she's sent as a lady's companion to an old family friend who is convalescing at a seaside hotel. Despite having only weeks to find a permanent home, Constance is swept up in the social whirl of Hazelbourne-on-Sea and its colourful inhabitants, most notably, Poppy Wirrall. Poppy, the daughter of a land-owning baronet, wears trousers, operates a taxi and delivery service to employ local women and runs a ladies' motorcycle club (to which she plans to add flying lessons). She and her friends enthusiastically welcome Constance into their circle.

A young student sits on a bench in a park in San Miguel, Mexico. Bonita is away from her home in India to learn Spanish. She is alone, somewhere she has no connection to. It is bliss. And then a woman approaches her. The woman claims to recognize Bonita because she is the spitting image of her mother, who made the same journey from India to Mexico as a young artist. No, says Bonita, my mother didn't paint. She never travelled to Mexico. But this strange woman insists, and so Bonita follows her. Into a story where Bonita and her mother will move apart and come together, and where the past threatens to flood the present, or re-write it.

Late one summer, the town of Monta Clare is shattered by the abduction of local teenager Joseph 'Patch' Macauley. Nobody more so than Saint Brown, who is broken by her best friend's disappearance. Soon, she will eat, sleep, breathe, only to find him. But when she does: it will break her heart. Patch lies in a pitch-black room - all alone - for days or maybe weeks. Until he feels a hand in his. Her name is Grace and, though they cannot see each other, she takes him from the darkness and paints their world with her words. In this hopeless place, they fall in love. But when he escapes: there is no sign she ever even existed. To find her again, Patch charts an epic search across the country. And, to set him free, Saint will shadow his journey: on a darker path to hunt down the man who took them. Even if finding the truth means losing each other forever.

Nothing ever happens in sleepy little Fairhill, Vermont. The teenagers get their kicks telling ghost stories in the old graveyard. The parents trust their kids will arrive home safe from school. Everyone knows everyone. Curtains rarely twitch. Front doors are left unlocked. But this morning all of that will change. Because Diana Brewer isn't lying safely in her bed where she belongs. Instead she lies in a hayfield, circled by vultures, discovered by a local farmer. How quickly a girl becomes a ghost. How quickly a town of friendly, familiar faces becomes a town of suspects, a place of fear and paranoia. Someone in Fairhill did this. Everyone wants answers. And one innocent question could be deadly.

Ann is a reluctant Vicar's wife. She loves her family and tries hard to do her duty, but is beginning to wonder how she ended up here. Her husband is too preoccupied with the needs of his congregation to notice those closer to home and her son is asking questions she is struggling to answer. When her brother makes a cry for help, Ann travels from Cornwall to be with him in London. And then she meets Jamie, and a new world unexpectedly opens up. Ann knows what the older women of the parish would say - she's made her bed and now she has to lie in it. But temptation is easier to avoid than it is to resist.

There have always been whispers. Legends. The warrior who cannot be killed. Who’s seen a thousand civilizations rise and fall. He has had many names: Unute, Child of Lightning, Death himself. These days, he’s known simply as “B.” And he wants to be able to die. In the present day, a U.S. black-ops group has promised him they can help with that. And all he needs to do is help them in return. But when an all-too-mortal soldier comes back to life, the impossible event ultimately points toward a force even more mysterious than B himself. One at least as strong. And one with a plan all its own.

Late at night, Abi and Ben are driving home down foggy country roads, arguing about having had to cut short their weekend away. Abi's driving, but her eyes leave the road for a moment as she turns to say something to Ben - just as he gasps. A man is in front of the car, waving a torch. Abi swerves to avoid him. Ben tells her they should stop and go back, but Abi refuses. It's dark, the roads are isolated and they don't know this stranger. But, as Abi turns the corner ahead of them, they see a broken-down car. Every instinct is still telling Abi to drive on, but then she notices the woman holding a car seat with a baby in it. Would you stop? For a moment, Abi hesitates, but they can't leave a mother and baby on the side of the road. Agreeing to give the family a lift, they set off again. But now these strangers are inside their car and it might be the worst mistake they have ever made.

The Inner Temple: a warren of shaded courtyards and ancient buildings forming the hidden heart of London's legal world. A place where tradition is everything, and murder belongs only in the casebooks. Until now. When barrister Gabriel Ward steps out of his rooms on a sunny May morning in 1901, his mind is so full of his latest case that he scarcely registers the body of the Lord Chief Justice of England on his doorstep. But even he cannot fail to notice the judge's dusty bare feet, in shocking contrast to his flawless evening dress, nor the silver carving knife sticking out of his chest. The police can enter the Temple only by consent, so who better to investigate this tragic breach of law and order than a man who prizes both above all things? But murder doesn't answer to logic or reasoned argument, and Gabriel soon discovers that the Temple's heavy oak doors are hiding more surprising secrets than he'd ever imagined.