Archives de catégorie : Frankfurt 2024 Adult Fiction

THIS GIRL’S A KILLER d’Emma C. Wells

Meet your new best friend (who also just happens to be a serial killer). For readers of Finlay Donovan is Killing It and The Bandit Queens comes a bright and biting thriller following Cordelia Black, a best friend, a businesswoman, and, in her spare time, a killer of bad men.

THIS GIRL’S A KILLER
by Emma C. Wells
Poisoned Pen Press/Sourcebooks, October 2024

Ask Cordelia Black why she did it. The answer will always be: He had it coming.

Cordelia Black loves exactly three things: Her chosen family, her hairdresser (worth every penny plus tip), and killing bad men.

By day she’s an ambitious pharma rep with a flawless reputation and designer wardrobe. By night, she culls South Louisiana of unscrupulous men—monsters who think they’ve evaded justice, until they meet her. Sure, the evening news may have started throwing around phrases like « serial killer, » but Cordelia knows that’s absurd. She’s not a killer, she is simply karma. And being karma requires complete and utter control.

But when Cordelia discovers a flaw in her perfectly designed system for eliminating monsters, pressure heightens. And it only intensifies when her best friend starts dating a man Cordelia isn’t sure is a good person. Someone who might just unravel everything she has worked for.

Soon enough Cordelia has to come face to face with the choices she’s made. The good, the bad, and the murderous. Both her family, and her freedom, depend on it.

Emma C. Wells loves anti-heroes, dark humor, witty banter, and ride-or-die friendships. Twisty relationships are her kryptonite (or catnip—depending on how you look at it) and her favorite characters are often called unlikable (but at least they’re never boring). Emma enjoys camping, yoga, researching spooky folklore, and collecting copies of Wuthering Heights from used bookstores.

FALLS THE SHADOW de Mike Nicol

An edgy new detective series from master of noir Mike Nicol.

FALLS THE SHADOW
by Mike Nicol
Pan Macmillan (South Africa), late 2025
(via The Lennon-Ritchie Agency)

A cop in a quiet rural town kills his family and then turns the gun on himself. In his shed is a cache of weapons: Russian automatics, handguns, 9mils, .38s. You don’t need forensics to work out what’s going on. This is a cop with a side racket. Which gets the attention of Captain Zara Dewane of the Internal Crime Unit. A single mom, known among cops as the Jackal, what she uncovers about the family murder puts her in the firing line. There are cops running guns stolen from the police armoury. There are cops selling guns to gangsters. Thing is, the money chain goes deep into the police hierarchy. Even fingers the political bosses. Close her down, comes the order from on high. Kill her, in other words. Making Zara and her family targets. With only one way out.

Mike Nicol is the author of twenty-four books. He has written novels, works of non-fiction and poetry. His thrillers are published in the UK and the USA, and have been translated into Afrikaans, Dutch, French and German. His long list of accolades starts in 1979, with his debut poetry collection receiving the Ingrid Jonker Prize. His Revenge Trilogy featured in the KrimiZeit Top 10 list in Germany, as did Of Coprs and Robberts and Power Play, while Payback was shortlisted for the VN Thriller of the Year award in Holland and the Prix SCNF Du Polar 2016 in France. He lives in Cape Town.

A HITWOMAN’S GUIDE TO REDUCING HOUSEHOLD DEBT de Mark Mupotsa-Russell

A thriller that hits the target.

A HITWOMAN’S GUIDE TO REDUCING HOUSEHOLD DEBT
by Mark Mupotsa-Russell
Affirm Press, September 2024
(via Kaplan/DeFiore)

Olivia Hodges used to do horrible things – back when she worked for a Spanish crime syndicate – but she fled that life and moved home to Australia, building a family in the hippie, hipster community of the Dandenong Ranges.

When a small-time criminal gang brings tragedy to her family, superstitious Olivia believes it’s the universe demanding payment for her crimes. She wants revenge, but has to get it without adding to her karmic debt. So she creates situations where these bad men get themselves killed through their anger, ego and greed – all while trying to mislead the cops long enough to finish what she started.

Olivia’s voice is astounding: she’s cynical, witty and deeply human in a way that never feels forced. It’s quite a feat to write a novel that’s all-in-one package—a deliciously tangled thriller and a searing depiction of a marriage in crisis—and to make it so funny.

Mark Mupotsa-Russell lives in Australia. Before this book, he was a screenwriter, film reviewer cocktail columnist and PR consultant. He lives among the trees with his art therapist/superstar wife and hilarious son. When not writing, he obsesses about movies and martial arts.

THE AUSTEN AFFAIR de Madeline Bell

Outlander meets Bridget Jones’s Diary in Jane Austen’s Regency England.

THE AUSTEN AFFAIR
by Madeline Bell
St. Martin’s Griffin, September 2025
(via KT Literary)

C-list actress Tess Bright grew up in a messy SoCal apartment watching Jane Austen flicks on repeat with her mom. When Mom passes away and Tess lands a breakout role as the female lead in a Northanger Abbey adaptation, she emerges from her grief cocoon with everything to prove. One big problem? Her upsettingly handsome castmate, Hugh Balfour, whose rigid acting methodology allows no room to collaborate with a go-with-the-flow whirlwind like Tess.

When sparks fly between the leads (literally) and an electrical accident zaps the pair back in time to the Regency era, Tess and Hugh must grudgingly learn to cooperate, leaning on each other to navigate the strict protocols of the past and find their way back home. Soon, they’re faking an engagement to misdirect the neighbors’ suspicions about their sudden arrival in country society.

Between militia rakes, nosy ancestors, and persistent suitors, the couple is swept into a comedy worthy of Austen herself. Tess never thought she could fall for anyone as uptight as Hugh, but as she gets to know his sensitive side, she realizes she might have misjudged him. With the romantic tension swelling between them, and her childhood fantasy made miraculously real, what happens if Tess doesn’t want to risk what they have by returning to her lonely 21st century reality?

Madeline Bell is a romance writer who has never met an enemies-to-lovers trope she didn’t like. She spends much of her free time ranking and continually reranking different adaptations of Jane Austen novels, and like a true rom-com heroine, she has a quirky day job working in a creative arts field in New York City.

ESPERANCE d’Adam Oyebanji

A whip-smart thriller in the vein of Blake Crouch, Andy Weir, and Neal Stephenson, ESPERANCE plumbs the depths of a seemingly impossible crime rooted in racism, intergenerational trauma, and an inhuman concept of justice.

ESPERANCE
by Adam Oyebanji
DAW US; Quercus UK, May 2025
(via JABberwocky)

Detective Ethan Krol is on the twentieth floor of a Chicago apartment building. A father and son have been found dead—their lungs full of sea water hundreds of miles from the ocean.

Abidemi Eniola has arrived in Bristol, England. She claims to be Nigerian, but her accent is wrong and she can do remarkable things with technology, things that Abi’s new friend, Hollie Rogers, has never seen before. Abi is in possession of a number of heirlooms that need to be returned to their rightful owners and Hollie is more than happy to go along for the ride.

But neither Abidemi Eniola nor her heirlooms are quite what they seem. Abidemi is a target of Ethan Krol’s investigations and Hollie’s life is about to become far more uncomfortable than she bargained for. In a clash of cultures, and histories and different ideas about right and wrong, Hollie’s safety is very much at risk. Someone’s justice will have to give way, and the consequences will be deadly.

Of Scottish and Nigerian descent, Adam Oyebanji is an escapee from Birmingham University and Harvard Law School. He currently lives in Pittsburgh, PA with a wife, child, and two embarrassingly large dogs. When he’s not out among the stars, Adam works in the field of counter-terrorist financing: helping banks choke off the money supply that builds weapons of mass destruction, narcotics empires, and human trafficking networks.