Charles,K. --- Evil Angels Among Them --- Headline (0 7472 5219 X)
Clerical mystery.
Coughlin.W,J. --- Death Penalty --- Pan pbk (0 330 31692 3) £5.99
US courtroom drama.
Craig,K. --- Strait --- Headline pbk (0 7472 49377) £5.99
American psycho-thriller.
Dexter Dias --- Error of Judgement Hodder & Stoughton (0 340 63257 7) £15.99 --- Out on 21st March. See Review
Error of Judgement is the second hard-hitting, psychologically compelling courtroom drama by Dexter Dias, one of Britain's most exciting new novelists. His first novel, False Witness, was published in 1995.
On Christmas Eve a disturbed man walks into a Bayswater brothel with a claw-hammer. He doesn't want sex. He wants to talk - about a murder. He knows he has buried a corpse. He knows the exact location. But he cannot identify the victim. Nor can he identify himself.
At the Old Bailey, disillusioned barrister Nick Downes is briefed to defend the unknown man. A man accused of murder. A man who sees visions, who hears voices, who suffers 'chronic post-traumatic arousal'. A man whose identity remains a mystery.
Praise for False Witness,
An excellent first novel, strong on black humour and courtroom drama. Michael Hartland, Daily Telegraph
The writing has a disturbing edge that lifts it above the conventional. Bookseller
A fascinating look behind the scenes of a murder trial with a sympathetically flawed hero at its heart. Val McDermid, Manchester Evening News
Before being called to the Bar, Dexter Dias was educated at Sevenoaks School and the University of Durham. He is now a barrister specialising in criminal defence and practises from a chambers specifically created to represent people disadvantaged by poverty and discrimination. He has already written on a variety of legal and political issues, but the real stimulus for writing fiction came when he met Ruth Rendell while he was defending a murder in 1993.
Sarah Dreher --- Stoner McTavish --- The Women's Press (0 7043 4470 X) £5.99
Stoner McTavish is reluctant to leave her fledging travel business and turn detective. But Eleanor Burton is convinced her granddaughter's new husband is a dangerous fortune-hunter and that Gwen's life is in jeopardy. Against her better judgement, McTavish bows to the pressure of old family ties and agrees to investigate. Only to discover that Eleanor's fears are far from unfounded and that she's about to fall in love with the newly wedded bride.
Full of humour, spiced with suspense. Stoner McTavish is a treat. Washington Blade
Sarah Dreher --- Bad Company --- The Women's Press (0 7043 4469 9) £5.99 See Review
A Stoner McTavish Mystery 
When Stoner McTavish is called in to investigate a series of minor accidents at an exclusive hotel, it seems the perfect opportunity for an expenses-paid break with her partner Gwen. But neither Stoner nor Gwen are prepared for the hostilities that greet them on their arrival at The Cottage. And, as a vicious game of sabotage begins to unfold, McTavish faces a killer with a desperate grudge.
What makes Dreher's novels so special beyond their intriguing plots and engaging characters is Dreher's infectious sense of humour, her vivid descriptions and emotional integrity. Elynor Vine
Sarah Dreher is one of America's premier writers of lesbian mystery fiction. In addition to writing her internationally bestselling Stoner McTavish mysteries, she is a clinical psychologist and prize-winning playwright.
Elizabeth Ferrars --- The Lying Voices Hodder & Stoughton Coronet Pbk (0 340 64055 3) £4.99 --- Out on 21st March. See Review
Justin Emery hasn't seen his friend Grace DeLong for six years. And when he does, his visit coincides with murder.
Arnold Thaine is found shot dead in the studio attached to his house. Shot three times, the forth bullet embedded in one of his many clocks.
Who had a motive to kill Thaine? Was it the woman in the brown mackintosh, or the woman in the scarlet coat? Both were seen leaving the studio on that afternoon. Or was it someone else entirely? If only the clocks had been set correctly, the time of his death could provide a vital clue to the killer's identity.
What began as a trip down memory lane for Justin and Grace becomes a twisted and cryptic investigation into an apparently motive-less murder.
There are few detective story writers as consistently good as Miss Ferrars The Sunday Times
Her great virtue, exceeding even her meatily logical plotting and gift for hitting often on intriguing situations, is her portrayal of people The Sunday Times
Anthea Fraser --- One is One and All Alone HarperCollins (0 00 232588 8) £14.99
Offers a shrewd look at colour supplement version of country life. Guardian (of Symbols at Your Door)
Webb has always regretted being unable to like DCI Bennett’s second wife, and hopes his friend is unaware of his feelings. However, Bennett’s son and daughters from his first marriage are not so considerate and make no attempt to disguise their antipathy, which makes for a tense family atmosphere.
Meanwhile, Webb and Bennett have joined forces to tackle a series of shop raids, but are soon overtaken by events which have a shattering effect on Bennett’s family. Two of them meet a violent death in the space of four days, presenting Webb with one of the most traumatic cases of his career.
Anthea Fraser is a successful full-time writer and author of thirteen crime novels. She lives in Hertfordshire.
Nicolas Freeling --- A Dwarf Kingdom --- Little Brown (0 316 87892 8) £15.99
See Review
A mindlessly violent attack on the Castangs in Brussels reaffirms their decision for Henri to retire, and when Vera inherits a house at Biarritz a natural order seems in place. But the house has a legacy of conspiracy and corruption, and Castang must untangle his final investigation before they can claim any peace.
The most European of Crime writers Anita Brookner
Maurice Gee --- Crime Story --- Faber & Faber pbk (0 571 17331 4) £5.99
Crime Story - spans politics, high finance, murder and domestic violence, asking questions about the perpetrators and victims of crime, and about the price of greed and personal isolation.
Gee writes quite brilliantly ... A work of great depth and humanity, told with the light, calm grace of this novelist at his best. Sunday Times
Lesley Grant-Adamson --- Evil Acts Hodder & Stoughton (0 340 66019 8) £16.99 --- Out on 21st March. See Review 
 Evil makes us all feel a little colder. It forces us to accept how flimsy our lives and our sanity are. A crazed killer sends out shock waves. You don't have to be dead or at the graveside to suffer. A house with a history, a noise in the night and Grace's new life in London is wrecked. She has been fooled into buying the home of a serial killer. Tough and resilient, she spurns the friends who urge her to leave and turns instead to Mike Cleary, expert on Jack the Ripper and collector of notorious addresses.
But Cleary's theories and her increasing isolation feed her obsession with the monster who lived in her house, and obsession leads to delusion. She teeters towards mental breakdown, convinced of the killer's continuing presence and his efforts to destroy her as surely as he did his other victims.
Lesley Grant-Adamson has been widely praised for her chilling realism and her psychologically acute portraits of both criminals and their - often willing - victims. This mesmerising story is her most accomplished yet. The sense of realism in the book keeps the pages turning in a fury to find out if the worst will happen. A first class tale from an author accomplished at crime writing, and following titles such as Dangerous Games and Wish You Were Here.
Praise for Lesley Grant-Adamson
She knows how to create an atmosphere of unease and incipient horror. P.D.James of Patterns in the Dust
This unusual thriller stands comparison with Patricia Highsmith's Ripley novels. Today of A Life of Adventure
One of the classiest thriller writers around... Grant-Adamson's amoral charmer has a charmed life, and it is her considerable skill to explore this in depth, and make it both enthralling and credible. The Sunday Times of A Life of Adventure
Lesley Grant-Adamson is rapidly turning the genre into an art form. Cosmopolitan
Lesley Grant-Adamson was born in north London and spent much of her childhood in the Rhondda in South Wales. She worked on provincial newspapers including the Citizen at Gloucester before joining the staff of the Guardian in London as a feature writer, then worked as a freelance journalist and television writer before becoming a novelist. Evil Acts is her twelfth novel.
Sharon Gwyn Short --- Past Pretense --- The Women's Press (0 7043 4464 5) £5.99 See Review
The second Patricia Delaney Mystery
Amateur drummer, computer whiz and seasoned sleuth, welcome back Patricia Delaney, PI. Gigi Lafferty is haunted by foreboding dreams and memories of a hidden past. Terrified that the secrets of her youth will be betrayed, she turns to one of the few people she believes she can trust. If investigator Patricia Delaney can't uncover the truth about her former life, perhaps her future is secure.
At first sight, Delaney fails to recognise Gigi. After all, it's been years since she worked as a bouncer at the downtown nightclub where her client once danced. By the time she makes the connection, Gigi Lafferty has vanished and the police are questioning Delaney about a body found floating face-down in a pool.
Fast and furious Time Out
A fine addition to the ranks of professional sleuths. Sue Grafton
Agatha Christie, '90's style. Entertaining and well-written. A worthy addition to the 'queens of noir'. Nine to Five
Sharon Gwyn Short is the author of Angel's Bidding, the first Patricia Delaney mystery - published by The Women's Press
Jonathan Harr --- A Civil Action Century (0 7126 7662 7) £15.99 --- Out on 7th March. See Review
A young Boston medical malpractice lawyer called Jan Schlichtmann waged a court battle for nine years against two American industrial giants. Representing 21 families whose children were dead or ill, Schlichtmann sought to prove a link with the alleged dumping of toxic waste near the site of the municipal wells and the high incidence of leukaemia and other related illnesses within the town of Woburn. Journalist Harr shows the terrible price paid by Schlichtmann because of his involvement in the case. Harr himself was nearly killed in a car accident while writing the book.
Jonathan Harr lives and works in Northampton, Massachusetts where he teaches the writing of non-fiction. He was formerly a journalist who won numerous awards. During the case he attended many of the court hearings and the meetings on both sides and came to know the judge, the families, the jury members and of course the brilliant young lawyer who staked everything on this one case. The writing of A Civil Action took eight years.
Film rights of this true story have already been bought by Robert Redford for $12 million.
Whether in truth or in fiction, I have never read a more compelling chronicle of litigation, John Grisham
Judith Hawkes --- My Soul To Keep Hodder & Stoughton (0 340 66581 5) £16.99 --- Out on 21st March. See Review 
Sometimes even ghosts get lonely...
Nan hardly knew her grandmother - visited her only once, the summer she was nine, and she has only vague memories of playing with a boy named Tucker. It's distant and unreal, like a movie that she saw a long time ago. A movie with a sad ending -Tucker's death by drowning.
Inheriting her grandmother's old farmhouse comes as a surprise, but when Nan's life starts to fall apart, going there for the summer seems the obvious answer. The mountains of Tennessee are a long way from Manhattan. And she can spend some time with her eight-year-old son, Stephen. Since the break-up of her marriage Nan has been forced to face the humiliating fact that she isn't cut out to be a mother.
In spite of that, Nan loves her son desperately, and is disturbed to find that the imaginary friend from his nursery-school days seems to have returned to keep Stephen company at the farmhouse. This friend is different, though: this friend is teaching Stephen dangerous tricks. Stephen says his friend is lonely...
An atmospheric suspense novel and chilling ghost story, My Soul To Keep will have you turning the pages till the early hours of dawn.
Judith Hawkes --- Julian's House Hodder & Stoughton Coronet Pbk (0 340 67159 9) £5.99 --- Out on 21st March. See Review 
 A ghost tale... a detective story.... A dazzling evocation of haunting Sally and David Curtiss know that the old New England house is supposed to be haunted. But they are researchers into the paranormal - they aren't afraid of ghosts. That's before they realise that nowhere in the house are they safe. Not even in each other's arms. Especially not there...
Judith Hawkes spent ten years researching the paranormal for Julian's House, her first novel.
Who wouldn't like to talk to the dead? Who hasn't felt the chill of fear in a dark cellar? Suspense that can make event the heart of a confirmed sceptic beat a little faster The New York Times Book Review
A witch's brew in the tradition of Shirley Jackson. Ms Hawkes is a true mistress of the macabre Dallas Morning News
A ghost story... fashioned of perfect language... Gives us sexuality, apparitions, beautiful daytime light and night-time menace, eeriness to creep up your back and break you out in sweats and goose bumps.. the screws turn even more tightly Baltimore Sun
A thinking person's ghost story Boston Herald
Fascinating, memorable and unsettling... and excellent novel: character-rich, stylish, quietly chilling Kirkus Reviews
Reginald Hill --- The Wood Beyond --- HarperCollins (0 00 232525 X) £14.99 --- Out on 4th March. See Review 
One of Britain's most consistently excellent crime novelists.... He pays attention to the old-fashioned virtues: meticulous plotting, authentic characterisation and realistic dialogue Marcel Berlins The Times
A ravaged wood pocketed with water-filled craters, men in uniform and a skeletal hand reaching out of the mud - this is not a World War One battlefield, but Wanwood House, a pharmaceutical research centre.
Away to the south, Peter Pascoe is attending his grandmother's funeral. A chapter in his life has closed, but scattering her ashes opens up pages in the past leading him too into war-ravaged woods in search of the great-grandfather who fought and died in the Passchendaele campaign.
Seeing the wood for the trees is a problem shared by Andy Dalziel and Edgar Wield. The latter in his investigations into the bones found at Wanwood, and the former in his deepening and dangerous involvement with animal rights activist Amanda Marvell, despite the double disincentive of her possible complicity in a murderous assault and her appalling taste in whiskey.
In The Wood Beyond we are walking on the wild side of the pastoral, through fields where nothing may safely graze and into woods where no bird dares sing.
Award-winning crime novelist Reginald Hill was hailed as the crime novel's best hope (The Times) with his first book, and twenty years on he stakes a claim as our finest living crime writer (Sunday Telegraph)
Hogan,C. --- The Hornet's Nest --- Pan pbk (0 0330 34169 3) £4.99
Holden,C. --- The River Sorrow --- Pan pbk (0 330 33517 0) £4.99
Bleak, graphic study of addiction and murder. See Review
Graham Ison --- Blue Murder --- Little & Brown (0 316 87624 0 ) £15.99
Detective Chief Inspector Tommy Fox was meant to be out of harms way, promoted to a desk job, but when three Britons are found dead on a yacht in international waters Fox unchains himself from his desk and embarks on solving what should have been the perfect murder.
Graham Ison was a regular soldier before joining the Metropolitan Police. During his distinguished career, he served in the CID, was Personal Protection Officer to two Prime Ministers and became Deputy Commander of Special Branch.
James.P,D. --- Original Sin --- Penguin pbk (0 14 024551 0) See Review
Roderic Jeffries --- An Artistic Way to Go HarperCollins (0 00 232582 9) £14.99
Jeffries wields a racy, complex plot deftly and humorously, holding back a nifty terminal shock. Sunday Times (of Death Takes Time)
Cooper has always lived a charmed life, and when a man called White, whom he’s never met, says he intends to visit him, his only emotion is irritation. That irritation changes to terror when White threatens him with unspecified horrors unless he repays the purchase price of two fake paintings he sold in America... It’s nearly lunch time when Cooper’s wife Rachael reports that her husband is missing so Alvarez assures her that there is little cause for alarm - missing husbands seldom return home until they have thought up convincing stories. But when he finally begins to make enquiries, he discovers that it is likely Cooper has committed suicide. Not, of course, that Superior Chief Salas accepts his interpretation of the facts....
Katzenbach,J. --- The Shadow Man --- Warner pbk (0 7515 1628 7) £5.99
Jewish survivors, war-time informers: present day vendettas investigated by a black detective and a retired, white Jewish helper.
Deryn Lake --- Death at the Beggar's Opera
Hodder & Stoughton Coronet Pbk (0 340 64984 4) £5.99 --- Out on March 21st. See Review  
John Rawlings, the engaging apothecary with a talent for detective work, and the phenomenal blind magistrate, John Fielding, make a welcome return in this absorbing, evocative Georgian mystery.
Rawlings and society's celebrated Masked Lady are among the beau monde attending a performance of The Beggars Opera in Drury Lane... At the crucial point when Macheath is hanged, the planking beneath his feet gives way. And when the actor is lowered from the noose, his neck is found to be broken.... When the body of a theatre boy, a key witness, is found hanging from the same noose, the search takes on a new intensity. John Rawlings and the Runners soon find themselves on an intriguing trail of jealousy which leads to the dark heart of a cold-blooded murderer.