Enjoy an early Easter treat with these four brilliant new books | Books | Entertainment
The Hiding Season by A C Glass, Hardback, £18.99
After her husband leaves her, Maya Landry moves to Montana and takes a job maintaining exclusive ski lodges off-season in the Rocky Mountains, fulfilling her need for solitude until she stumbles across a dead body in one of them. Forced to flee the killer as the sole witness, FBI agent Riley Maguire helps her hide in Texas living under a new identity but when this is compromised and she is forced to reach out to Riley again, Maya starts to fear she will be on the run forever.
This classy standalone thriller from the author of the Emma Makepeace spy series hooks you from the first page and never lets up until a hugely enjoyable final twist. 8/10
The Artful Anna Harris by Tracy Maton, Hardback, £16.99
When the vivacious Sofia Carstairs rents a cottage in her sleepy village in Somerset and they become friends, Anna Harris is reminded of the carefree and rebellious life she once had in London. She thought she had been happy to leave that behind, and as a chameleon who has always known how to blend in Anna had immersed herself in the lives of her boyfriend and in-laws.
But Sofia makes her think it’s time to have some fun again – after all, leading two lives is more enticing than one. This debut was inspired by the author’s love of Patricia Highsmith and this modern twist on The Talented Mr Ripley is clever, sassy and great fun, of which Highsmith would surely approve. 8/10
Unreliable Narrator by Araminta Hall, Hardback, £18.99
With an eight-part TV drama starring Elisabeth Moss and Kerry Washington based on her novel Imperfect Women starting earlier this week on Apple TV+, Araminta Hall is having a well-deserved moment. And her thrilling new novel can only win more fans. Unreliable Narrator is an instant classic, a psychological guessing game based on one of the oldest and most duplicitous of literary devices – the blurring of truth and fiction.
Hope left her dream job as live-in PA to bohemian author Ambrose Glencourt after a fatal accident. Ten years on, the devastating events are brought back to life in his new novel. It’s a very different story from the one Hope remembers, so who is the reliable narrator? Utterly unputdownable. 8/10
The Frenchman by Jack Beamont, Paperback Original, £9.99
Former fighter pilot and DGSE operative Jack Beaumont, a pseudonym, has turned his experiences working for the French equivalent of MI6 into a gripping thriller – think James Bond with a Parisian twist and more croissants. When agent Alec de Payn’s Pakistani source is tortured to death, he must contemplate the unthinkable – a mole inside his organisation has betrayed them.
Tasked with investigating a sinister bio-weapons facility in Islamabad, de Payns must put his fears to one side, concentrate on his cover story and pray his family isn’t sold out. The spy genre is enjoying a revival and this thrilling roller-coaster ride of a novel from Paris to Palermo to Pakistan is a worthy addition. 9/10.








