The Resurrectionist, James Bradley

London, 1826. Leaving behind his father's tragic failures, Gabriel Swift arrives to study with Edwin Poll, the greatest of the city's anatomists. It is his chance to find advancement by making a name for himself. But instead he finds himself drawn to his master's nemesis, Lucan, the most powerful of the city's resurrectionists and ruler of its trade in stolen bodies. Dismissed by Mr Poll, Gabriel descends into the violence and corruption of London's underworld, a place where everything and everyone is for sale, and where - as Gabriel discovers - the taking of a life is easier than it might seem.

A Week in December, Sebastian Faulks

London, the week before Christmas, 2007. Over seven days the lives of seven major characters are followed: a hedge fund manager trying to bring off the biggest trade of his career; a professional footballer recently arrived from Poland; a young lawyer with little work and too much time to speculate; a student who has been led astray by Islamist theory; a hack book-reviewer; a schoolboy hooked on skunk and reality TV; a Tube train driver whose Circle Line train joins these and countless other lives together in a daily loop. As the novel moves to its gripping climax, they are forced, one by one, to confront the true nature of the world they inhabit.

The Great Stink, Clare Clark

William May returns to his family and London after the horrors of the Crimean War. Scarred and fragile though he is, he lands a job at the heart of Bazalgette's transformation of the London sewers.

There, in the darkness of the stinking tunnels beneath the rising towers of Victorian London, May discovers another side of the city and remembers a disturbing, violent past. The corruption of the growing city soon begins to overwhelm him and a violent murder is committed.

Will the sewers reveal all and show that the world above ground is even darker and more threatening than the tunnels beneath?

Beautifully written, evocative and compelling, with a fantastically vivid cast of characters, Clare Clarke's first book is a rich novel, full of suspense, that draws the reader right into Victorian London and into the worlds of its characters who are desperately attempting to swim the tides of change.

A Small Death in Lisbon, Robert Wilson

This stunning, atmospheric thriller set in war-torn Europe won the CWA Gold Dagger and has now been reissued with the Javier Falcon series.

A Portuguese bank is founded on the back of Nazi wartime deals.

Over half a century later a young girl is murdered in Lisbon.

1941
Klaus Felsen, SS, arrives in Lisbon and the strangest party in history where Nazis and Allies, refugees and entrepreneurs dance to the strains of opportunism and despair. Felsen’s war takes him to the bleak mountains of the north where a brutal battle is being fought for an element vital to Hitler’s blitzkrieg.

Late 1990s
Inspector Ze Coelho is investigating the murder of a young girl with a disturbing sexual past. As Ze digs deeper he overturns the dark soil of history and unearths old bones. The 1974 revolution has left injustices of the old fascist regime unresolved. But there’s an older, greater injustice for which this small death in Lisbon is horrific compensation, and in his final push for the truth, Ze must face the most chilling opposition.

The Secrets of the Lazarus Club, Tony Pollard

Young surgeon Dr George Phillips is invited to meet Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Charles Babbage, Charles Darwin and Joseph Bazalgette at an undisclosed location in London (1857) for a meeting of the greatest minds of the age; The Lazarus Club.

The club meets to discuss ideas so unorthodox they cannot be voiced in public, so advanced are they that they will change the course of history but it is a brotherhood of questionable morality.

Meanwhile, mutilated bodies are being washed up from the murky Thames, leading police to Dr Phillips’ door: can he help solve some brutal murders?

It is a dark and twisted conspiracy and Dr Phillips soon realises that the Lazarus Club is being used by one member for some evil purpose. Can he discover who in time to prevent an extraordinary invention falling into the wrong hands?

The Return of the Dancing Master, Henning Mankell

Herbert Molin, a retired police officer, is living alone in a remote cottage in the vast forests of northern Sweden. He has two obsessions: one is the tango and the other is a conviction that he is being hunted, constantly pursued by 'demons'. He has no close friends, no close neighbours, and by the time his body is eventually found, Molin is almost unrecognisable. Lindman, a police officer on extended sick leave, hears of the death of his former colleague and, to take his mind off his own problems, decides to involve himself in the case. What he discovers, to his horror and disbelief, is a network of evil almost unimaginable in this remote district, and one which seems impossible to link to Molin's death.

The One Hundred and Ninety Nine Steps, Michael Faber

The Crimson Petal and the White author, Michael Faber, is back with this historical thriller, romance and ghost story. Sian, troubled by dark dreams and looking for distraction, joins an archaeological dig at Whitby Abbey. The abbey's one hundred and ninety-nine steps link the twenty-first century with the ruins of the past and Sian is swept into a mystery involving a long-hidden murder, a fragile manuscript in a bottle and some peculiar characters. This is an ingenious literary page-turner and is completely unforgettable.