Introducing Marshal Salvatore Guarnaccia of the Florentine carabinieri, a Sicilian stationed far from home. He wants to go south for Christmas to spend the holiday with his family, but he is laid up with the 'flu. At this awkward moment, the death of a retired Englishman is reported. A most inconvenient time for a murder case. Who has shot Mr...

It is 330 B. C. The Macedonian Alexander the Great has conquered Asia Minor but now his armies are far from Athens, and those who support Athenian independence are beginning to chafe and plot against him. Foreigners, like Aristotle, and those suspected of befriending foreigners, such as Stephanos, are threatened. A series of threats persuade these two that they will...

Danny DiMedici's ex-wife Laura is missing, there's a corpse in her blood-spattered beach house, and Danny is the prime suspect. Desperate to get to Laura before the cops, Danny returns to the underworld he had known as a drug-dealer, a world of fast sex and hard drugs, casual violence and sudden death. Danny walks the knife-edge between law and order...

Three times a day in a Parisian square, a curious modern-day crier announces the news items that are left in his box. Over the course of a few days he receives a number of disturbing and portentous messages of malicious intent, all of them referring to the Black Death. Strange marks have also appeared on the doors of several buildings:...

A walk through Kensal Green Cemetery, a meat pie in the greasy spoon, a weekend away complete with flannel pyjamas - Dangerous Davies knows how to treat the woman he loves. Detective Constable Davies has two things on his mind: Jemma Duval, the beautiful, black, hymn-singing social worker, and 'Lofty' Brock, the harmless old eccentric who drowned in the canal....

The place is Ceylon, the time the 1930s. Set amid tea plantations, corruption and the backwash of empire, this is a world teetering on the edge of chaos. Sam Obeysekere is a Ceylonese lawyer, a perfect product of empire. His family, which once had wealth and influence, starts to crack open as political change comes to the island, and Sam's...

Alongside the names of James Hadley Chase and Erle Stanley Gardner we must now add that of John Hartley Williams - though Mystery in Spiderville is no run-of-the-mill hard-boiled thriller. The décor is by Dali, the plot is a mixture of Breton and Burroughs, and the main character - the protean and unkillable Spider Rembrandt - has six toes, sleeps...

Young Thomas Culhane grows up in the small Californian town of Eureka. But, although he is adopted by one of the town's wealthy families, he knows he must escape Eureka to make his own way in the world. Then World War I intervenes and Culhane ships to Europe to join the American forces in Europe, where he proves himself a...

Alexander Short is a stylish young reference librarian. With his job in jeopardy and his marriage coming apart, Alexander meets the improbably named Henry James Jesson III, a book-lover who hires the librarian for some after-hours research. His task: to complete a cabinet of curiosities chronicling the life of a mysterious eighteenth-century inventor. As the investigation heats up, Alexander realizes...

The fifth book in the epic Masters of Rome series. Gaul. 54 BC. Julius Caesar sweeps across Gaul, brutally subduing the united tribes who defy the Republic. But, at home, his enemies are orchestrating his downfall and disgrace. Vindictive schemers like Cato and Bibulus, the spineless Cicero, the avaricious Brutus. Even Pompey the Great, Caesar's former ally. But all have...

A complex thriller of ancient and modern betrayal from the author of The English Assassin. ...

The second book in the epic Masters of Rome series. Rome. 97 BC. Gaius Marius is one of the greatest generals Rome has ever known. under him, Rome has conquered the Western world, withstood invasion and crushed its enemies. But when the ageing Marius grows weak, the stability of the mighty Republic looks uncertain. Ambitious, tormented Lucius Cornelius Sulla, once...

Stephanie Plum's fast becoming the most unpopular woman in New Jersey. Even her own mother can't love her for taking on the job of tracking down Uncle Mo, everybody's favourite candy store owner. Cursed with a disastrous new hair colour and an increasing sense that it's time to get a new job, the world's favourite bounty hunter sets off on...

While a young medical student at Edinburgh, Arthur Conan Doyle famously studied under the remarkable Dr Joseph Bell. Taking this as a starting point, David Pirie has woven a compelling thriller, which partners Bell and Doyle as pioneers in criminal investigation, exploring the strange underworld of violence and sexual hypocrisy running below the surface of the Victorian era. The Patient's...

In 1984, Jolene Iolas, a student in upstate New York, encounters Martin Sloane's work while visiting a Toronto gallery. She strikes up a correspondence with the older artist, and eventually they become lovers. And then, without warning, without a word, he vanishes. There is no hint of his fate, no chain of cause and effect to be followed. Over the...