Book subscription: Gripping stories selected by Val McDermid

Dubbed the Queen of Crime, Val McDermid has sold over 19 million books to date across the globe and is translated into more than 40 languages. She is perhaps best-known for her Wire in the Blood series, featuring clinical psychologist Dr Tony Hill and DCI Carol Jordan, which was adapted for television starring Robson Green and Hermione Norris. She has written three other series: private detective Kate Brannigan, journalist Lindsay Gordon and, most recently, cold-case detective Karen Pirie, whose debut appearance in The Distant Echo became a major ITV series. She has also published in several award-winning standalone novels, books of non-fiction, short story collections and a children’s picture book, My Granny is a Pirate.

Photo credit: Charlotte Graham

• a darkly comedic story of a heroine unlike others discovering the truth about her past and finding community in the present
• a short novel that packs a punch filled with compassion and sharply observed, dry wit. Margaret Thatcher is satirised in drag during the miner's strikes.
• can you move through life without doing harm in a country divided by civil war? A personal, gripping story filled with spellbinding storytelling

• a vivid historical crime novel where the setting is an unforgettable character, and a detective must unravel and confront the realities of Empire both to solve the murder mystery at hand and within himself.
• a modern classic, a Great American Novel that's also a compelling and page-turning read about the opioid crisis in rural United States.
• Love banned books? Try this Scottish coming-of-age story, and a book that divided readers so much that it was marketed using its bad reviews
• an experienced detective is paired with a pilot AI programme and logic clashes with instinct - but is the AI pilot the secret to two cold cases? However you think this is going to go, it won't
• four witches, one unusual government department, an enthralling world of LGBTQ+ characters and magic
• a whodunit set in 17th century Edinburgh with a feminist twist