Sorted on book title (not in series order)
Alison Hoddinott writes about the history of crime fiction set in Oxford, from the early decades of the 20th century to the present. Her emphasis is on novels written by women and the ways in which their fiction deals with both the mystery and its solution and with the situation of women...Read more
An iconic figure of the 1960s and ’70s, Pattie Boyd breaks a forty-year silence in Wonderful Tonight , and tells the story of how she found herself bound to two of the most addictive, promiscuous musical geniuses of the twentieth century and became the most famous muse in the history of...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
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
The New York Times best-selling author of Magpie Murders and Moriarty brilliantly reinvents the classic crime novel once again with this clever and inventive mystery starring a fictional version of the author himself as the Watson to a modern-day Holmes,...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
IF HE WRITES YOUR NAME DOWN, IT'S A DEATH SENTENCE . .
Los Angeles, December 4th - exactly three weeks until Christmas day. Angela Wood, a master in the art of pickpocket, has just finished for the day - six hundred and eighty-seven dollars – not bad for less than fifteen...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
Six months after the body of Josh Reynolds, a London nightclub owner, was found and determined by police and coroner to be a suicide, DCS James Langton tasks DCI Anna Travis to review the case. Reynolds died from a single gunshot wound to the head, the gun held in his right hand. But...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
JUNE 11, 1940 - WHERE IS WINSTON CHURCHILL?
A private aircraft takes off from a small town in central France, while Adolf Hitler, the would-be conqueror of Europe, prepares for a clandestine meeting near the Belgian border.
For more than 40 years the events of this...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
Sinister rumours link clandestine Arab arms dealing with the man who led the old anti-Nazi Guernica network. Time to reopen the master file on yesterday’s spy… Sinister rumours link clandestine Arab arms dealing with the man who led the old anti-Nazi Guernica network. Time to re-open the...Read more
Amy Boxer, the precocious daughter of London kidnap consultant Charles Boxer and Detective Inspector Mercy Danquah, has drifted from melancholy and frustration to drastic action: she’s leaving home. But Amy can’t just walk out, and goads the talents of her parents, with a challenge: YOU...Read more
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