Acid Drops

In the pages that follow, I have collected some of my favourite exchanges which can fairly be described as acid drops. The cruel bon mot which has its sting drawn from the laughter that ensues. It was Oscar Wilde who pointed out that no comment was in bad taste if it was amusing - and if...Read more

Bleeding Heart Square

It's 1934, and the decaying London cul-de-sac of Bleeding Heart Square is an unlikely place of refuge for aristocratic Lydia Langstone.  But as she flees her abusive marriage there is only one person who she can turn to - the genteelly derelict Captain Ingleby-Lewis, currently lodging at no...Read more

Faith

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Ross Ransome is at the top of his profession; one of the most successful, and certainly one of the richest, plastic surgeons in the business. Such a man would expect his wife to be perfect - and why not? After all, he has spent enough hours in surgery to get her that way. But when his wife...Read more

Criminal Tendencies

Val McDermid, Reginald Hill, and Peter James are just some of the 24 top selling crime writers who have contributed stories to Criminal Tendencies, an exciting new crime short collection. Alongside the big names will be stories from first-time authors Chris Nickson and Caroline Shiach,...Read more

Christmas is Murder

Available in ebook for the first time ever, this duo of classic Christmas crime short stories by Sunday Times number one bestseller, Val McDermid - A Traditional Christmas and A Wife in a Million - introduces DI Maggie Staniforth.

In A Traditional Christmas, the peace of a...Read more

A Game for All the Family

You thought you knew who you were. A stranger knows better.

You've left the city - and the career that nearly destroyed you - for a fresh start on the coast. But soon after the move, your daughter starts to withdraw, because her new best friend, George, is unfairly...Read more

Murder at The Open

Sometimes you really need a break…

Angus MacVicar and Aidan Campbell are both keen golfers, taking a much-needed break at the legendary St. Andrews during the Open Championship.

But their hopes of enjoy a relaxing week of playing and watching golf are disrupted when...Read more

We All Begin As Strangers

It's 1984, and summer is scorching the ordinary village of Heathcote.

What's more, a mysterious figure is slipping into homes through back doors and open windows. Dubbed 'the Fox', he knows everything about everyone - leaving curious objects in their homes, or taking things from...Read more

All The Wicked Girls

Everyone loves Summer Ryan. A model student and musical prodigy, she's a ray of light in the struggling small town of Grace, Alabama - especially compared to her troubled sister, Raine.

Then Summer goes missing. Grace is already simmering, and with this new tragedy the police...Read more

Ersatz World

His bestselling author has vanished, he’s under surveillance, and a killer is trying to hack bits off his wife. It’s not easy being a publisher in the 21st century...

Samuel Verso is an ordinary, old-fashioned publisher trying to resist the lure of e-books. As his wife fills the...Read more

Aladdin in London

In no way do I wish to force your inclinations, my dear Hilda, said Lord Kenny, taking up his favourite position on the hearthrug. I simply point out to you that Sir Richard is rich and Mr. Dacre is poor. Your common sense should tell you which to choose.Read more

Between the Lies

What would you do if you woke up and didn't know who you were?

Chloe Daniels regains consciousness in a hospital with no memory of how she got there.
She doesn't recognise the strangers who call themselves family. She can't even remember her own name...Read more

Rules for Perfect Murders

A chilling tale of psychological suspense and an homage to the thriller genre tailor-made for fans: the story of a bookseller who finds himself at the center of an FBI investigation because a very clever killer has started using his list of fiction’s most ingenious murders.

...Read more

98.4

One man can change the world.

One man can end it.

Nigel Yenn is a Security expert, working for a mysterious corporation riddled with secrets.

His life is unsurprising and by-the-book.

All that is about to change…

Dazed after losing his...Read more

Murder by Natural Causes

A double life with a single purpose, getting away with murder. Cilla is a 22-year-old contract killer, specialising in the dry a murder interpreted as death by natural causes.Read more

The Luckiest Guy Alive

The Luckiest Guy Alive is the first new book of poetry from Dr. John Cooper Clarke for several decades3and a brilliant, scabrous, hilarious collection from one of our most beloved and influential writers and performers. From the "Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman" to a hymn to the seductive...Read more

Terry Pratchett: The BBC Radio Drama Collection

Somewhere on the frontier between thought and reality exists the Discworld, a parallel time and place which might sound and smell very much like our own, but which looks completely different…

Collected together for the first time are seven full-cast BBC Radio dramatisations of...Read more

An Ideal Husband

An Ideal Husband is an 1895 stage play by Oscar Wilde that revolves around blackmail and political corruption, and touches on the themes of public and private honour. The action is set in London, in the present, and takes place over the course of twenty four hours.
Sooner or later...Read more

Kane and Abel

William Lowell Kane and Abel Rosnovski, one the son of a Boston millionaire, the other a penniless Polish immigrant - two men born on the same day on opposite sides of the world, their paths destined to cross in the ruthless struggle to build a future. The marvellous story, spanning 60...Read more

A Misalliance

After twenty years of marriage Blanche Vernon is alone; abandoned by her husband Bertie for a childishly demanding computer expert named Mousie. While Blanche finds this turn of events baffling, she feels that Bertie must have left her because of her overly sensible demeanor. Yet many of...Read more

Lie Down with Lions

Jane, a brave and sensual Englishwoman, is caught in a deadly romantic triangle between rival spies Ellis and Jean-Pierre. Love, hatred and deception sweep them from terrorist conspiracies in Paris to full-tilt guerilla warfare in Afghanistan. Jean-Pierre and Jane marry and go to work as...Read more

Blessings in Disguise

'Blessings in Disguise', which was originally published in 1986, is Sir Alec's autobiography. It is a profoundly rich, subtly delineated series of sketches of self and others (among the latter, internationally famous British actors such as Gielgud and Richardson).Read more

Luciano's Luck

A fictional account of General Eisenhower's scheme to have Lucky Luciano help in the Allied invasion of Sicily centers on Major Harry Carter's attempts to get Luciano to SicilyRead more

The Reaper

After years spent saving souls, Otis Joy, the rector of St. Bartholomew’s Church in Foxford, Wiltshire, has found a new ending lives. His young French wife? Anaphylactic shock, what a shame. The bishop? Fell into a quarry. Tragic. It’s not Joy’s fault, really—not that he’s concerned about...Read more

A Dustbin of Milligan

My son has asked me to write the "blurb" for this book. What can I say? When he was a lad. he showed a natural inclination to write so I sent him to Eton, and by the time he was 21 he had mastered the Alphabet. He took to travelling everywhere by pram - said it made him look younger. In...Read more

Giotto's Hand

General Bottando of Rome’s Art Theft Squad believes that a lone criminal mastermind—dubbed “Giotto”—has been stealing priceless Renaissance art for over thirty years. But his theory—prompted by a letter from an embittered, dying old woman—is scorned by archrival Corrado Argan, a bureaucrat...Read more

Blayde, R.I.P.

Traces the life of a tough and ambitious policeman, chief superintendent Robert Blayde, who must track down his own brother for murderRead more

Death On A Broomstick

Was Mrs. Sibley, the fat, elderly lady found dead tangled up with a broomstick on the East Anglian marshes, really a witch? The small Norfolk town was agog with the mystery, but Inspector Lovick was not convinced that witch-like flying had caused her death. There was a bruise on her head...Read more

Crime in Question

Denis is living on the edge of society; neglected and unwanted, he scrapes by on his earnings as an odd-jobber. His is the sort of desperation that will tip into lawlessness at the drop of a monkey wrench. A chance encounter with Len, inmate of the local open prison, enables Denis to prove...Read more

Hitman

A paranoid old woman offers you a hundred grand to kill someone. Trouble is, you're no silent assassin and your target is psychic and quite clearly knows you are coming. So our (anti)hero takes the only option open to him—he gets a gun, gets smashed out of his brain, and hits the streets...Read more

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