All you need to know about books at www.booksmonthly.co.uk                                                     Issue 4 July 2008

CODY McFADYEN: THE DARKER SIDE ~ When FBI Agent Smoky Barrett and her team of investigators are called in by the Director himself to handle a case of murder committed on a flight from Texas to Virginia, the case begins with a shock, and the twists keep coming.It soon becomes apparent that Smoky is dealing with a serial killer who appears to have committed a truly horrific number of murders already, someone who can find people with secrets not just the secrets we all admit to ourselves, but the deepest, innermost secrets of all and is using them to target and destroy his victims.The case is on the edge of going public, and when that happens, with all the accelerated power of the internet behind it, public hysteria is not far behind.Just at the time when she is working so hard to bring up her adopted daughter Bonnie, Smoky is now under the most intense pressure of her career to get results. Yet the team has never been faced with such an apparently insoluble problem. Who will the next victim be? Everyone in the world has secrets.Even Smoky.

JOJO MOYES: NIGHT MUSIC ~ The Spanish House is a hotch-potch of designs, Georgian, Gothic and Moorish, as if whoever started it had simply got bored. It has long been known as an architectural folly to locals, and is now nearly derelict to boot. When its reclusive owner dies intestate the Spanish House is left to his city-dwelling niece. For Isabel, recently widowed, the house is a potential lifeline -- the only hope she has of providing for her two children without having to sell her most treasured possession. But for neighbour Matt McCarthy, the house is revenge -- on the family who ruined his father. For his wife it's the key to the perfect family life, while a struggling property developer sees in it a whole new future. As desires clash and intertwine, lives and loves are demolished -- and the Spanish House becomes a true folly indeed...

BOB FISCHER: WIFFLE LEVER TO FULL ~ He may not have a TARDIS or an X-Wing Fighter, but Bob Fischer is boldly going where, um, lots of men have gone before. And, to a lesser extent, possibly even a few women. Encountering gay Cybermen, obsessive Janet Ellis fans and Douglas Adams devotees hell-bent on destroying Blakes 7 lovers with water-pistols, Bob embarks on a marathon twelve-month journey around the country's sci-fi and cult TV conventions. Part fun travelogue, part field report, part misty-eyed childhood memoir, Bob freewheels his way from Doctor Who to Discworld, Star Wars to Star Trek and Robin Of Sherwood to Red Dwarf. In space, no one can hear you scream. And don't expect much sympathy in Peterborough, either.

TRAVIS ELBOROUGH: THE LONG PLAYER GOODBYE ~ For 60 years the way our music has been presented to us has been in the form of the LP, the album: 12-odd tracks representing something much more than the sum of their parts. But if we can download a single track, is the album going to go the way of the old 78 and be consigned to the dustbin of history? Travis Elborough, who has a deep love for music and albums takes a fond, nostalgic, entertaining and informative tour through the history of the album, from its revolutionary arrival on the global scene in 1948, when it entirely transformed the way music was listened to and produced, to its revered position as the creative benchmark to which all musicians aspire. Travis has the most astonishing amount of material at his fingertips on career-ending LPs, record-company bankrupting LPs, never-released LPs, difficult third albums, career fillers, contractual copouts, duff tracks, ill-advised solo projects and comeback LPs. He brilliantly places the revered albums of history in their social context, using the album to examine some of the enormous changes in our society, looking at education, work, wages, race and sexuality, leisure and shopping, teenagers and boredom.He also examines the meaning of the current vinyl revival. This is a book filled with enough detail and idiosyncrasy to satisfy the obsessive but with an entirely unelitist, inclusive insight into how music has shaped our lives and our lives have shaped music.

SCOTT SIGLER: INFECTED ~ They dropped from the atmosphere like microscopic snow. Billions of seeds, smaller than specks of dust, spiralling down from the heavens. A few survived, and began to grow... Now three people face a race against time. Dew Phillips, an agent with a classified unit of the CIA, and Margaret Montoya, a government biologist, must try to stop a modern plague that drives its victims to insanity, murder and suicide. And Perry Dawsey, an ex-footballer in a dead-end job, must race to find a cure for the rash that has appeared on his arm. And his back. And his neck. And which is getting bigger. And then the voices start. Scott Sigler's UK debut is a terrifying, menacing, relentless thriller, which will get under your skin and keep you on the edge of your seat!

JOHN FOLLAIN: THE LAST GODFATHERS ~ THE LAST GODFATHERS charts the rise of the notorious Corleone clan. From it's humble origins in the town of Corleone, the clan manipulated Cosa Nostra's code of honour, deceiving and bludgeoning its way to the summit of the secret brotherhood, purging its rivals and launching a terrorist campaign which decimated anti-mafia judges, police and politicians.Journalist John Follain focuses on the three godfathers who headed the clan from the 1950s onwards. Luciano 'The Professor' Leggio, Salvatore 'The Beast' Riina and Bernardo 'The Tractor' Provenzano, who forged a vicious clan bent on the subversion of democracy.Cutting through the romantic aura of Hollywood films, THE LAST GODFATHERS portrays the true face of the crime family which inspired Mario Puzo's The Godfather". Based on thousands of pages of judicial documents, wiretap transcripts, the testimony of mafiosi defectors and interviews with investigators, this is the last word on the world's most famous criminal organisation.

Books Monthly (formerly Gateway Monthly) is published by Paul Edmund Norman on the first day of each month. You can contact me via e-mail at: editor@booksmonthly.co.uk. If you'd like to get a story published in Books Monthly just e-mail it to me and I'll consider it - no payment though, I'm afraid!