Sorted on book title (not in series order)
A Swedish crime writer as thrilling as Mankell, a detective as compelling as Wallander . . .
Woman with Birthmark by Håkan Nesser is the fourth title in his atmospheric Van Veeteren series.
A young woman shivers in the December cold as her mother'...Read more
This book is a study of the "mothers" of the mystery genre. Traditionally the invention of crime writing has been ascribed to Poe, Wilkie Collins and Conan Doyle, but they had formidable women rivals, whose work has been until recently largely forgotten. The purpose of this book is to "...Read more
A ravaged wood, a man in uniform long dead - this is not a World War One battlefield, but Wanwood House, a pharmaceutical research centre. Peter Pascoe attends his grandmother's funeral, and scattering her ashes leads him too into wartorn woods in search of his great-grandfather who fought...Read more
Wolf Hadda's life has been a fairytale. From humble origins as a Cumbrian woodcutter's son, he has risen to become a successful entrepreneur, happily married to the girl of his dreams. A knock on the door one morning ends it all. Universally reviled, thrown into prison, abandoned by friends...Read more
The first in an ongoing series featuring the Italian detective, Inspector Anders. Anders has seen action in the past and even became a national hero when he closed down an anarchist cell. But he lost a leg in the process - and his nerve. Now he has been given one last job before early...Read more
Inspector Alan Markby and his long-time friend Meredith Mitchell have taken a cottage in the country for a much needed holiday. But so sooner are they relaxing with a neighbor over a glass of blackberry wine, when Markby is being badgered for an "off the record" opinion about a somewhat...Read more
A bonzer (p. 288) discussion of the strange but dinkum (p. 289) pedigree (p. 224) of the naughty (p. 202), nice (p. 212), and, sometimes, obscene (p. 217) English language.
We live in a torrent of words — from radio and television, books and newspapers, and now from the...Read more
Whatever you need, Susie Dent has a word for it.
Do you know the name for someone who loves reading in bed, or what a binfluencer does? How about the medieval invention of Lubberland as a place for lazy teenagers, or the...Read more
Recently widowed, Anna Southwood opens up her own detective agency.
Tired of investigating minor cases of missing pets and nuisance calls, she is about to call it quits.
Until she is hired to solve the disappearance of local girl, Beth Channing.
Leonie...Read more
In the sleepy hamlet of Lumpkins Corners, Professor Peter Shandy's reputation as an amateur sleuth was almost as well known as his success in developing a new strain of rutabaga. So when violent and exceedingly unpleasant death visited Horsefall Farm, the third phone call - after the police...Read more
He doesn’t speak a word of French — but the language of murder is spoken everywhere…
Provence, 1960
When a chance meeting in Provence leads Detective Inspector Herbert Swinton to the strange vineyard home of...Read more
A wickedly twisty and atmospheric thriller set at a writers' retreat in the South of France, The Writers Retreat is Knives Out meets Anna Downes’ The Safe Place...Read more
In this sweeping and suspenseful start to the Bloodstorm series, an ex-cop turned crime writer teams up with a mysterious hacker to solve a murder—and uncovers corruption along the way.
Julia Malmros is thriving. A former police officer making her way in the...Read more
A case for Varg Veum . . . Bergen, Norway. Young teenage girls are being drawn into prostitution, partly for kicks, but also to earn money for drugs and clothes. Matters take a turn for the worse when the local magistrate is discovered in a luxury hotel, clad only in women_s lingerie_and...Read more
' I took the skull from its evidence bag and gently set it on the stainless steel table. 'Tell me who you are...'Forensic anthropologist Dr David Hunter should be at home in London with the woman he loves. Instead, as a favour to a beleaguered colleague, he's on the remote Hebridean island...Read more
He is a record collector — a connoisseur of vinyl, hunting out rare and elusive LPs. His business card describes him as the “Vinyl Detective” and some people take this more literally than others.
Like the beautiful, mysterious woman who wants to pay him a large sum of money to...Read more
In 2006, three-year-old Phoebe Piper went missing on a family holiday. Despite massive publicity and a long investigation, no trace of her was ever found.
Seven years later, Molly Jackson, aged ten and recently uprooted to a Norfolk village, finds her great uncle Dan dead in his...Read more
In this new novella from the number one internationally best-selling author of The Sisters and The Murder Rule, Dervla McTiernan, a mother and son fighting to prove her innocence are reunited with an estranged friend—a detective who may hold the key to her freedom—as they’re forced to put...Read more
A private investigator returning to the hometown he fled years ago becomes entangled in the disappearance of two teenage girls in this stunning literary crime thriller.
Reid left the small town of Manson a decade ago, promising his former Chief of Police boss he'd never return....Read more
Wyatt's been away; now he's back. The job's a jewel heist, quick and simple. Stake out the international courier, one Alain Le Page. Hold up the goods in transit. Get away clean. Wyatt prefers to work alone but this one belongs to Eddie Oberin - his very smart ex-wife Lydia has inside...Read more
Murder threatens the quiet charm of a Cotswold village where all is not as it seems.Read more
Cochran Wilder, only son of crimebashing MP Royston Wilder, is missing on a walking holiday in Cornwall. He was last seen on Saturday evening, on the North Cornwall coastal path between Gwithian and Hayle.... Cochran was recently discharged from a psychiatric hospital where he had been...Read more
Each year, at Hallowe’en, high on the Cornish cliffs, a life-sized effigy of a man was strapped to a blazing wheel and run into the sea—a re-enactment of a hideous old legend where the figure had been a living sacrifice.
And now Jonathan Riddle, well-known and respected local...Read more
Terry Pratchett’s fantasy classic Wyrd Sisters, a novel in the Discworld series, is the story of Granny Weatherwax, the most highly regarded non-leader a coven of non-social witches could ever have.
Generally, these loners don't get involved in anything, much less...Read more
Widely acclaimed author Jackie French's journal of a year in the life of the Araluen Valley in the beautiful Southern Highlands of NSW. It's a combination of many stories - foxes in the autumn and the first of the asparagus, dashes to the school bus in the mornings and sleepy lizard...Read more
If, like Kane, you're a Denied Access Area spy for the CIA, then boundaries have no meaning. Your function is to go in, do whatever is required, and get out again - by whatever means necessary. You know when to run, when to hide - and when to shoot.
But some places don't play...Read more
Claire is a Dunedin freelance writer who is hired by a dodgy lawyer to write a biography of a serial rapist at present in prison. She's wary, but she's a solo mother with a teenage daughter and desperately needs the money. The rapist's very name, Travis Crill, inspires revulsion from...Read more
Hercule Poirot gets an an alarming telephone call late at night, in which the phrases “it’s life and death” and “the table with the yellow irises," are whispered. It results in Poirot rushing to the luxurious restaurant Jardin des Cygnes. He's desperate to stop an impending murder, and find...Read more
Knowing that he will soon die, Albert ‘Poppy’ Gondiwindi takes pen to paper. His life has been spent on the banks of the Murrumby River at Prosperous House, on Massacre Plains. Albert is determined to pass on the language of his people and everything that was ever remembered. He finds the...Read more
