The Ghost: Robert Harris
This gripping story features an unusual protagonist: a professional ghostwriter, hired to help former British prime minister Adam Lang compile his memoirs. The 'ghost' has reason to think he's landed a real coup, since the fee is generous and the subject is fascinating. But the interviews are to take place on a bleak stretch of the east coast of the United States, where a strange death has just occured. As the writer commences his work, in an isolated house on windswept Martha's Vineyard, he discovers that he is in far deeper water than he ever imagined possible.

Sacrifice: S J Bolton
A debut novel by a lively and thoroughly engaging writer, Sacrifice gives a new twist to the popular forensic crime genre. The heroine of the story, consultant surgeon Tora Hamilton, finds it unsettling enough, moving to the Shetland Isles off the coast of Scotland to work in an island hospital. And things do not exactly improve, for the next event shakes her even more: a gruesome discovery in a field beside her house one rain-drenched Sunday morning. It is a woman's corpse, bearing strange, rune-like markings, and it leads Tora to delve into a fascinating legend from the island's distant past.

The Man in the Picture: Susan Hill
The author of The Woman in Black, one of the longest-running stage plays in London's West End, has returned to a supernatural theme in this, her latest book. The story beings in the college rooms of a retired professor, as he recounts the bizarre history of one of his oil paintings. Depicting a Venetial carnival scene, it shows costumed revellers by a canal, their faces and expressions concealed behind exotic masks. In their midst, one unmasked man gazes beseechingly at the onlooker. On a cold winter's night, as the narrator sips whisky by the fire, the retired don reveals his deep disquiet about the painting...

Power Play: Joseph Finder
A group of high-powered executives from Hammond Aerospace is going on a retreat, to be held in a remote hunting lodge in the midst of wilderness in British Columbia. Personally, Jake Landry would prefer root-canal therapy to attending -- anaesthesia optional. But he's given no choice. There'll be no computers, no BlackBerries, no phones; it's the perfect place to sort out the company's financial problems. The trouble is, it's also the perfect spot for a kidnapping, and within a few short hours the stranded team find themselves held at gunpoint, unable to call for help and stuck in a nail-biting, high-stakes battle for survival.