Library of the Dead by Glenn Cooper Arrow Books HK$100
Banker David Swisher, 36, is stabbed to death while walking his dog at 5am. Elizabeth Kohler, 37, is shot in an apparent robbery at the drug store she manages. Illegal immigrant Consuela Lopez, 32, is raped and stabbed on her way home from her job as an office cleaner. Myles Drake, a 24-year-old bicycle courier, is killed in a hit-and-run incident. Milos Kovic, 82, falls to his death from his ninth-floor apartment. Marco Napolitano, 18, fresh from secondary school, dies of a heroin overdose. Ida Santiago, 78, is shot dead in her bedroom. Jazz pianist Lucius Robertson, 66, dies suddenly from no obvious cause.
Apart from the fact that all the deaths occur in New York after May 21 this year, they appear to be unconnected, but for one chilling factor: each victim had been sent a postcard bearing a coffin and the date of their death.
The police suspect a serial murderer, who newspapers dub the Doomsday Killer.
In the year 777, a comet appears in the sky, alarming the monks of Vectis Abbey on the Isle of Wight. The wife of a seventh son of a seventh son is about to give birth to her seventh son and Prior Josephus fears the worst.
In February 1947, Britain's prime minister, Clement Attlee, coaxes Winston Churchill out of retirement to help after a discovery at the abbey. Churchill turns to US president Harry Truman, who delegates the matter to naval secretary James Forrestal, who then kills himself.
In the present day, a computer operator at Area 51 in Roswell, New Mexico, bored with his job at the base where the US allegedly stores its aliens, dreams of fame and fortune as a scriptwriter.