An inherited cottage. A body buried in the garden. And a secret spanning three generations.
10 SKELTON PLACE
by Claire Douglas
Penguin UK, August 2021
When Saffy’s beloved grandmother, Rose, goes into a care home Saffy learns that she has inherited her Cotswolds cottage. But as work begins on much-needed renovations, the body of a young woman is uncovered in the garden. Who is she? During Rose’s more lucid moments, she reveals snippets of information that Saffy pieces together. And then another body is discovered. As she delves into Rose’s past, Saffy uncovers dark secrets, calling into question everything she thought she knew about her family.
Claire Douglas has worked as a journalist for fifteen years writing features for women’s magazines and national newspapers, but she’s dreamed of being a novelist since the age of seven. She finally got her wish after winning the Marie Claire Debut Novel Award, with her first novel, The Sisters, which was followed by Local Girl Missing, Last Seen Alive and Do Not Disturb, all Sunday Times bestsellers. She has been a German bestseller twice, with Local Girl Missing spending three months on the Spiegel Bestseller list. She lives in Bath with her husband and two children.
Nothing gets by Jill Bailey. As a CIA analyst, she’s in charge of investigating and vetting new sources. Sources like FALCON, who’s been on the fast-track to recruitment. He says he’s a Syrian defense official attached to a covert biowarfare program–and with a global pandemic fresh in their minds, CIA officials are desperate to use him. It’s Jill’s job to make sure he is who he claims to be, and that his case officers in the field haven’t been duped–or coerced. But before she can get to work, she gets a call. One that’s every parent’s nightmare. We have your son. And to get him back, Jill does something she thought she’d never do. As it turns out, she isn’t the only one with questions about FALCON. Alex Charles, a journalist eager to break the next big story, begins to investigate an anonymous tip: an explosive claim about the CIA’s hottest new source. This is the story that Alex has been waiting for. As the two begin to work together, they uncover a vast conspiracy that will force them to confront their loyalties to family and country. You Can Run is an edge-of-your-seat thriller that will have you asking: What would you do to save the ones you love?
While searching a windswept mountainside for the fabled ghost moth fungus, a young Tibetan boy unearths a mysterious relic. Moments later the People’s Liberation Army of China marches into his isolated village in the valley below and begins to dismantle an ancient way of life. As the brutal oppression grows, the boy’s precious find becomes first a symbol of hope for the villagers then a tool of survival for a people and a religion. It must be preserved at all costs. Sixty years later, mountain guide Neil Quinn is wrapping up his last climb of the season on the highest mountain in Tibet when a transport shortage leaves him stuck in an empty base camp. An earthquake sets off a chain of mysterious events that directly connect the English climber to the ongoing tragedies of a troubled land where the Chinese authorities strive still for complete control. Unsure of precisely what he witnessed yet determined to protect its truth, Quinn returns to Kathmandu and enlists the help of a famous historian of the Himalayas, an erstwhile American journalist, and a cast of locals as enigmatic as that ancient city-each with their own reasons for joining his quest. Manipulation and murder dog their every step as they strive to piece together a complex puzzle from Tibet’s tortured past while navigating the treacherous present.
Whitney had some misgivings when she dropped her increasingly moody teenage daughter, Amelia, off at Lauren’s house. She’d never met the parents, and usually she’d go in, but Amelia clearly wasn’t going to let something so humiliating happen, so instead Whitney waved to her daughter before pulling away from the little house with the roses in front.
On wealthy Commodore Island, Fern is watching and waiting—for summer, for college, for her childhood best friend to decide he loves her. Then Ivy Avila lands on the island like a falling star. When Ivy shines on her, Fern feels seen. When they’re together, Fern has purpose. She glimpses the secrets Ivy hides behind her fame, her fortune, the lavish parties she throws at her great glass house, and understands that Ivy hurts in ways Fern can’t fathom. And soon, it’s clear Ivy wants someone Fern can help her get. But as the two pull closer, Fern’s cozy life on Commodore unravels: drought descends, fires burn, and a reckless night spins out of control. Everything Fern thought she understood—about her home, herself, the boy she loved, about Ivy Avila—twists and bends into something new. And Fern won’t emerge the same person she was. An enthralling, mind-altering psychological thriller, TELL ME MY NAME is about the cost of being a girl in a world that takes so much, and the enormity of what is regained when we take it back.