Latest news with #SueHincenbergs
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Stephen King, the king of horror, is back with another gem...5 new books to read
Fiction The Retirement Plan by Sue Hincenbergs is published by Sphere in hardback, priced £18.99 (ebook £7.99). Available June 3 If crazy, switcheroo mysteries with a dark comic edge are your thing, then The Retirement Plan is the summer read for you. Sue Hincenbergs' story of disappointment, grief, deceit, murder and casinos is based around the friendship of a group of women. After the death of one of their husbands in a freak accident (or was it a hitman catching up with him for past misdeeds?), his widow is left a million-dollar life insurance payout, sparking a Golden Girls' retirement dream for the other wives. But cleverly, this isn't just their tale. The husbands also have a retirement plan, and a suspicion that someone is about to find out about it. The three remaining husbands reach out to their barber to help 'fix' the problem. A triumphant crime caper that is funny and exciting. 9/10 Review by Rachel Howdle Never Flinch by Stephen King is published in hardback by Hodder & Stoughton, priced £25. Available now A brutal murderer seeks revenge for a wrongly convicted man, taunting police with a letter threatening to kill '13 innocents and one guilty.' Meanwhile, outspoken feminist activist Kate McKay launches a lecture tour, packing venues with her noisy fans, angry opponents and unwittingly, a stalker intent on killing her. Two dramatic storylines in one book by award-winning, master-crime writer Stephen King, Never Flinch is a double treat for his army of fans. Detective Izzy Jaynes leads the hunt for the letter writer, made urgent when the promised killings start. She asks for help from her friend, private investigator Holly Gibney, who is suddenly hired by McKay to be her bodyguard amid increasing threats to her safety. The hunt for the killer and the stalker merge into one as time runs out to avert a bloodbath. King says it was a difficult book to write as he had surgery on his hip, revealing it went through multiple rewrites and three title changes after his wife told him he could "do better." The author of more than 70 books proves yet again he doesn't flinch from writing best-sellers. 9/10 Review by Alan Jones Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Photo: Hutchinson Heinemann/PAAtmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid is published in hardback by Hutchinson Heinemann, priced £20 (ebook £10.99). Available June 3 Taylor Jenkins Reid - author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - is back with Atmosphere. Set amid the 1980s space shuttle programme, it explores female empowerment, space and science, queer love and everything in between. From the beginning of the emotional rollercoaster that the novel takes you on, Jenkins Reid hits at every heart string imaginable. Astronomy professor Joan Goodwin leaps at a chance to work for NASA, embarking on a celestial and scientific dream that brings her into the orbit of fellow astronaut candidate Vanessa Ford. Atmosphere jumps from past to present, examining NASA culture, and readers are also given a great view of the kind of training needed to be part of the Space Shuttle program. Moving, pacey and a read that will stick with you. 8/10 Review by Sara Keenan Year of the Rat: Undercover in the British Far Right by Harry Shukman is published in hardback by Chatto & Windus, priced £20 (ebook £10.99). Available now Year of the Rat: Undercover in the British Far Right by Harry Shukman. Photo: Chatto & Windus/PA Harry Shukman's brave delve into the dark recesses of Britain's Far Right feels especially timely. He spent a year undercover, infiltrating a series of extremist groups in the hope of understanding - and exposing - their dreams and ambitions. That Shukman's book provides few surprises is less a slight on his quest than an admission of the extent to which the ideas he encounters have been allowed to infiltrate the mainstream. The people Shukman meets are not, for the most part, big-booted skinheads swathed in Nazi tattoos, or white-hooded American backwoodsmen. They are normal people - men, mostly - who espouse their beliefs in pubs and clubs, or on specially-arranged camping trips. Some members of the lower-ranked orders appear so gullible as to inspire a tinge of sympathy. But such moments of light relief - there's an excruciatingly funny incident involving a notorious football hooligan being caught short - don't mask the real power and threat posed by extremist groups. The strength of Year of the Rat is not so much the tales of low-level loudmouths, but the inferences to the shady puppet-masters who continue to shape world politics for the worse. 6/10 Review by Mark Staniforth Audre & Bash Are Just Friends by Tia Williams is published in paperback by Quercus priced £9.95 (ebook £4.99). Available now A super-summery YA rom com, Audre & Bash Are Just Friends is a spin-off from US writer Tia Williams' page-turner of an adult romance, Seven Days In June. Audre is the highly-motivated, thoroughly ambitious, incredibly well-behaved daughter of best-selling erotica novelist Eva Mercy (the heroine of Seven Days), and it's the last day of school when Audre's summer plans disintegrate. Audre & Dash Are Just Friends by Tia Williams. Photo: Quercus/PA Sick of her mum doting on her new baby sister and sleeping on the sofa while their apartment gets a remodel, Audre decides to hire a 'fun-consultant' to help her let loose a bit and give her material for a project that could help her get into college - enter new kid, Croc-wearer and expert partier, Bash. While the trajectory of this pair's relationship is to be expected (yes, sparks do fly), Williams' characters are suffused with anxieties and family angst that feel wholly real. A flirty, entertaining read that should hit a nerve with lots of teens. 8/10 Review by Ella Walker 1. The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig 2. By Your Side by Ruth Jones 3. Nightshade by Michael Connelly 4. Silver Elite by Dani Francis 5. The Devils by Joe Abercrombie 6. This House of Burning Bones by Stuart MacBride 7. The Cardinal by Alison Weir 8. Tyrant:The Nero Trilogy by Conn Iggulden 9. Vianne by Joanne Harris 10 The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong (Compiled by Waterstones)
Daily Mail
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Serial thriller from the king of storytellers; NEVER FLINCH by Stephen King, THE RETIREMENT PLAN by Sue Hincenbergs, DEAD WATER by Simon Toyne
Never Flinch is available now from the Mail Bookshop NEVER FLINCH by Stephen King (Hodder & Stoughton £25, 432pp) THE founder of the Finders Keepers detective agency, Holly Gibney – one of King's most memorable characters in recent years – returns to help her friend, detective Izzy Jaynes, track down a serial killer who has threatened to 'kill 13 innocents and one guilty' to avenge the death of an innocent man, who was killed in jail after he had been wrongly convicted of murder. But then Holly is diverted to act as bodyguard for women's rights advocate Kate McKay who is embarking on a nationwide tour of the US, but who is being stalked and threatened by a ruthless vigilante. The master storyteller has lost none of his grasp of the dark heart in the soul of Middle America: the result is simply superb. The Retirement Plan is available now from the Mail Bookshop THE RETIREMENT PLAN by Sue Hincenbergs (Sphere £16.99, 336pp) THREE suburban American housewives of a certain age decide they have had enough of their humdrum lives and husbands who do not seem to care about them. They want to match their friend, whose world changed when her husband was found dead. She took off for a new life in Florida with the insurance money. So they come up with a plan to kill their husbands to enable their new lives. What they don't know is that their husbands have a secret scheme of their own – to steal $10million from a local casino. A wonderful cosy crime novel with a sharp edge. Ingenious, twisty and often hilarious – with a neat ending – this debut from a former TV producer is certainly a match for Richard Osman 's The Thursday Murder Club. DEAD WATER by Simon Toyne (Hemlock Press £16.99, 384pp) A CORPSE is washed up on the banks of the Thames near Tower Bridge with no head and no hands, simply an address mysteriously tattooed on one arm. DCI Tannahill Khan realises the killer wanted the body found, and the tattoo is the reason. It is the address of Khan's friend and collaborator, forensic criminologist Dr Laughton Rees. So begins the third of Toyne's excellent series involving the two detectives. It transpires that Rees is living in the flat once owned by her late father, Met detective John Rees, who was responsible for the conviction of a brutal band of robbers 16 years ago – and one of the gang is set on revenge for his years in prison. Written with Toyne's practiced flair for suspense, the story is as fast flowing and threatening as the Thames itself
