The people at Bitter Lemon Press are really evil 
They send me these seemingly innocuous little messages with notes about books and suddenly I've got cravings. Surely this is just addict encouragement. Anyway - this arrived in my email box this morning and now I can feel that desperate sweat breaking out:
The Sinner
by Petra Hammesfahr
Out now in the UK in bookshops and through online retailers
B-Format paperback, 338 pages, RRP £8.99
Cora Bender killed a man on a sunny summer afternoon by the lake and in full view of her family and friends. Why? What could have caused this quiet, lovable young mother to stab a stranger in the throat, again and again, until she was pulled off his body? For the local police it was an open-and-shut case. Cora confessed; there was no shortage of witnesses. But Police Commissioner Rudolf Grovian refused to close the file and started his own maverick investigation. So begins the slow unravelling of Cora’s past, a harrowing descent into a woman’s private hell.
The Author
Hailed as Germany’s Patricia Highsmith, Hammesfahr has written a dark, spellbinding novel which stayed at the top of the nation's bestseller list for fifteen months. Born in 1951, she has not had an easy life: she left school at thirteen and became pregnant by an alcoholic husband at seventeen. It is a life that has provided inspiration for her bittersweet family crime novels where the sweetness of childhood and the horror of adults meet. Hammesfahr has written over twenty crime and suspense novels and writes scripts for television and film. She has won numerous literary prizes, including the Crime Prize of Wiesbaden and the Rhineland Literary Prize.
The Translator
John Brownjohn is one of Britain's foremost translators from German and French. His work has won numerous awards on both sides of the Atlantic, including the US Pen Prize. He is also a screenwriter whose credits include 'Tess' and 'Bitter Moon', both directed by Roman Polanski.
Sigh - Book Depository here I come.
Cora Bender killed a man on a sunny summer afternoon by the lake and in full view of her family and friends. Why? What could have caused this quiet, lovable young mother to stab a stranger in the throat, again and again, until she was pulled off his body? For the local police it was an open-and-shut case. Cora confessed; there was no shortage of witnesses. But Police Commissioner Rudolf Grovian refused to close the file and started his own maverick investigation. So begins the slow unravelling of Cora's past, a harrowing descent into a woman's private hell.