Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. For the rules see her blog. The topic this week is Most Anticipated Books of the Second Half of 2021. I’ve chosen these 10 books because I’ve read other books by these authors and enjoyed them in the past. I’m expecting these to be just as good.

I’ve listed them in release date order:

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8 July
That Night by Gillian McAllister. During a family holiday in Italy, you get an urgent call from your sister. There’s been an accident: she hit a man with her car and he’s dead. She’s overcome with terror – fearing years in a foreign jail away from her child. She asks for your help. It wasn’t her fault, not really. She’d cover for you, so will you do the same for her? But when the police come calling, the lies start. And you each begin to doubt your trust in one another.

15 July
Running Out of Road: A gripping thriller set in the Derbyshire peaks by Cath Staincliffe – A missing schoolgirl, a middle-aged recluse, an exploited teenager. Lives thrown into chaos and set on collision course. With the police in hot pursuit.

22 July
The Crooked Shore by Martin Edwards – Lake District Cold-Case Mysteries Book 8. Hannah Scarlett is investigating the disappearance of a young woman from Bowness more than twenty years ago.

4 August
A Narrow Door by Joanne Harris – an explosive psychological thriller about one woman who, having carved out her own path to power, is now intent on tearing apart the elite world that tried to hold her back . . . piece by piece.

19 August
1979 by Val McDermid, the first book in the Allie Burns series. It is the winter of discontent, and reporter Allie Burns is chasing her first big scoop. There are few women in the newsroom and she needs something explosive for the boys’ club to take her seriously.

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19 August
Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney. Things have been wrong with Mr and Mrs Wright for a long time. When Adam and Amelia win a weekend away to Scotland, it might be just what their marriage needs. Adam Wright has lived with face blindness his whole life. He can’t recognize friends or family, or even his own wife.

2 September
The Dark Remains by William McIlvanney and Ian Rankin. When McIlvanney died in 2015, he left half a handwritten manuscript of DC Laidlaw’s first case, a prequel to his Jack Laidlaw trilogy. Now, Ian Rankin has finished what McIlvanney started.

30 September
The Midnight Hour by Elly Griffiths, the sixth book in the Brighton Mysteries series, set in 1965. When theatrical impresario Bert Billington is found dead in his retirement home, no one suspects foul play. But when the postmortem reveals that he was poisoned, suspicion falls on his wife, eccentric ex-Music Hall star Verity Malone.

1 October
The Unheard by Nicci French. Tess’s number one priority has always been her three-year-old daughter Poppy. But splitting up with Poppy’s father Jason means that she cannot always be there to keep her daughter safe.

7 October
April in Spain by John Banville – the eighth book in the Quirke series. When Dublin pathologist Quirke glimpses a familiar face while on holiday with his wife, it’s hard, at first, to tell whether his imagination is just running away with him. Could she really be who he thinks she is, and have a connection with a crime that nearly brought ruin to an Irish political dynasty?