The Guest Room

Tess has a bad habit. She can’t stop snooping through her guests' belongings . . .

When Tess is forced to rent out her late sister’s old room to pay the bills, the urge to rummage through her guests’ belongings overtakes her every thought. Teasing herself with...Read more

All She Ever Wanted

Only the weak fall in love. The strong survive on their own. Tina was weak a scrawny, vulnerable child, deserted by her father, bullied at school, an object of derision and fun. Not any longer. Now she's Chrissie. Bold, self-reliant, beautiful. Girls envy her. Men desire her. She is...Read more

Dead Romantic

Murder is the outcome when a middle-aged virgin agrees to risk a secret weekend of love at White Jasmine CottageRead more

A Very Good Hater

Goldsmith and Templewood investigate the background of a man, whom they think may be a Nazi war criminal, and plot his deathRead more

Bleak Water

Beyond the new city center developments, the old Sheffield canal is overgrown, run down, and deserted. Signs of regeneration creep along its towpaths, including a small innovative gallery housed in one of the warehouses. But between the renovations it’s a dark and lonely place—the perfect...Read more

Ghost Song

The old Tarleton music hall is the subject of a mysterious building restriction that has kept it closed for more than 90 years. When Robert Fallon is asked to survey the structure, he finds clues indicating that its long twilight sleep may contain a sinister secret. Joining forces with...Read more

The Carbuncle Clue

It is the summer of 1894. The Garry Street murder is the talk of London, and no one is more baffled than Gerald Conway, in whose library the dead man's body was discovered, stabbed. The only clue to the man's identity seems to be the gold bangle containing a small carbuncle, worn on the...Read more

Little Disasters

Liz Trenchard is an experienced pediatrician with a duty to protect all children admitted to her busy emergency room When Jess Curtis, an affluent, stay-at-home mother, turns up at the ER one night with her baby girl, she immediately prompts suspicion. The ten-month-old has a blow to the...Read more

Home Fire

Practical-minded Isma has spent the years since her mother’s death watching out for her twin brother and sister in their North London home. When an invitation to grad school in America comes through unexpectedly, it brings the irresistible promise of freedom too long deferred. But even an...Read more

Bone Rites

"I collected the first bone when I was twelve. This fact was not mentioned in court... Such a tiny little bone, more like a tooth. I only kept it to keep him safe."

Kathryn Darkling, imprisoned in Holloway, is facing death by hanging for her vengeance killing. Haunted by a...Read more

Playing Marcos

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After committing an impromptu murder, Paul Barker finds himself trapped in a London apartment house.

Paul meets residents, Mayar and Kim, both of whom have dangerous secrets of their own.

While Paul contrives to conceal the crime and make good his escape, the...Read more

A Stain on the Silence

You can run from a guilty conscience, but you can't hide . . . 

James wasn't much more than a child when he had an affair with Lily. And now, twenty-four years later, Lily confesses to James that their affair led to a daughter, Kate. And Kate desperately needs her...Read more

A Dark Dividing

Journalist Harry Fizglen is sceptical when his editor asks him to investigate the background of Simone Anderson, a new Bloomsbury artist. But once he's met the enigmatic Simone, Harry is intrigued.

Just what did happen to Simone's twin sister who disappeared without trace several...Read more

Dirty Tricks

When the nameless narrator embarks upon an affair with Karen, a seemingly vapid P.E. teacher married to a boring accountant, he does not know her fetish is for adultery while her husband is in the room or loitering nearby. But once he finds out, he doesn’t care. He has been abroad for...Read more

Young Philby

When Kim Philby fled to Moscow in 1963, he became the most notorious double agent in the history of espionage. Recruited into His Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service at the beginning of World War II, he rose rapidly in the ranks to become the chief liaison officer with the CIA in...Read more

Down River

Johnny Mays has the moral conscience of a selfish child in the frame of a plain-clothes cop. The city is his playground, the rest of us his toys. He likes to find out where we work, and where we live, and what will scare us most. And Johnny never had a toy he didn't break.

But...Read more

Soldiers

Breen sometimes thought sourly that Tiger Jackson would have made a good fascist. He told unreliable stories, he liked power and admiration, and he had all three military virtues- self-belief, luck, and an eye for the main chance. Despite all this, Breen liked him. Somehow it was impossible...Read more

Almost the Truth

A country village, a family home, a quiet evening...
When two armed intruders break into the Jarvises’ country house, the lives of Derek, his wife Janet and daughter Hannah are to be changed forever. Fearing for their safety, Derek offers no resistance, but one of the men is not...Read more

A Shock To The System

After being passed over for the position of Head of Personnel, Graham Marshall despairingly perceives the underpinnings of his secure middle-aged existence slipping awayRead more

Death of a Dormouse

When policemen remove their hats, they do not bring good news. The bare-headed policeman on Trudi Adamson’s doorstep brought the worst news possible – her husband Trent has been burned to death in a freak car accident.

Suddenly a widow after years of marriage, Trudi finds herself...Read more

Come Back, Alice Smythereene!

Just as he strikes it rich with his pseudonymous romance novels, poet and professor of literature Arnold Simon finds his double life falling apart, with his agent vanished, a fellow author murdered, and the model hired to pose as the author missing.Read more

Blood From Stone

Nobody really liked Marianne Shearer - but nobody murdered her either.  She did that all by herself, booking into a Kensington hotel for the sole purpose of checking out through a sixth-floor window.  But why would a stylish and highly successful criminal barrister do such a thing?  She was...Read more

The Hidden Hours

Keeping her secret may save her family.

But telling it may save her life.

Arabella Lane, senior executive at a children’s publisher, is found dead in the Thames on a frosty winter’s morning after the office Christmas party. No one is...Read more

The Swift and the Harrier

Dorset, 1642. England is on the cusp of civil war.

Jayne Swift, a daughter of the Dorset gentry, has resisted all offers of marriage and instead trained as a physician, using her skills to tend to her Royalist father's tenants and the local population. When civil war sweeps...Read more

Sherlock Holmes: A Tradition of Evil

CORRUPTION AT THE VERY HEART OF LAW ENFORCEMENT!

The body of a young woman is found on a park bench, the victim of foul play, all but in the shadow of the Tower of London. When SHERLOCK HOLMES takes the case, the police are oddly reluctant to assist, denying the great detective...Read more

Death of a Countess

It is May 1957. In London eight friends gather for a party. They are all displaced persons who have survived the worst World War II could throw at them. This gathering will be a time to share the fragile joy of liberty. But before the night is out, one of them will be dead. Who would commit...Read more

Blood Lines: Long and Short Stories

I think you know who killed your stepfather', said Wexford, and so begins this scintillating collection of long and short stories by the world's best living crime writer, Ruth Rendell. It was clear both to Wexford and Burden that Tom Peterlee was not killed for £360, but various people...Read more

Bombproof

Sami Macbeth is not a master criminal. He's not even a minor one. He's not a jewel thief. He's not a safe-cracker. He's not an expert in explosives. Sami plays guitar and wants to be a rock god but keeps getting side-tracked by unforeseen circumstances. Fifty-four hours ago Sami was...Read more

The Small Hand

Returning home from a visit to a client late one summer's evening, antiquarian bookseller Adam Snow takes a wrong turning and stumbles across the derelict old White House.  Compelled by curiosity, he approaches the door, and, standing before the entrance feels the unmistakeable sensation of...Read more

A Woman of No Importance

Oscar Wilde's audacious drama of social scandal centres around the revelation of Mrs Arbuthnot's long-concealed secret. A house party is in full swing at Lady Hunstanton's country home, when it is announced that Gerald Arbuthnot has been appointed secretary to the sophisticated, witty Lord...Read more

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