LATEST TITLES

THE CHILD Fiona Barton, Bantam Press, £12.99, ebook £7.99

THE second novel from Fiona Barton – author of bestselling The Widow – tells another psychologically thrilling story.

Journalist Kate Waters is back and this time investigating the decades-old skeleton of a baby found on an east London building site. In an effort to land an exclusive story, Kate is determined to find out who buried the baby and if it’s Alice Irving, a newborn stolen from a local maternity hospital in the Seventies.

The pace of Kate’s investigation is matched by the unravelling story of Emma Massingham, who is struggling to come to terms with her own past.

A standalone novel, The Child sees Fiona Barton’s journalist background come to the fore again, with main character Kate’s tenacity to uncover the truth the driving force behind the plot. Every couple of chapters, Barton kicks the novel’s suspense into a new gear, and you won’t be able to put it down until all the secrets have been shared.

THE LYING GAME Ruth Ware, Harvill Secker, £12.99, ebook £7.99

A DARK secret from a forgotten summer gnaws at the heart of this impressive new novel from Ruth Ware.

This pacy and claustrophobic coming-of-age tale hinges on the secrets and lies that bind four friends, Isa, Kate, Thea and Fatima, together into adult life.

Returning to their old boarding school, Isa, now a young mother, is tormented by her hazy and unreliable memories of the weeks surrounding the disappearance of Kate’s father 17 years ago, and the consequences of the so-called ‘Lying Game’ the girls had loved to play. The dreamy narrative leaps from present to past as the horror and guilt is slowly peeled away before reaching a dramatic close.

Ware perfectly captures the overwhelming, heart-wrenching intensity of female teenage friendships.