British Fiction

Connie lost her words at the age of five, the day she witnessed her mother and father's untimely death. Since then she has been all but mute, only being able to choke out a few select words. Now, years on, Connie's husband is on his deathbed, and all she can do is quietly sit by his side. But there are so many dreadful secrets locked up in Connie's silent prison. And time is running out to set them free....

In June of 1893, the future Nicholas II travels to London for a royal wedding, bringing with him his private security force and his ballerina mistress, Mathilde Kchessinska. Rumored to be the target of a professional assassin known only as La Sylphide, and the subject of conspiracies against his life by his own family who covet his future throne, Nicholas is protected by not only private security, but the professional forces of both England and Russia.

Constable Nick’s beat is modernized, with his police bike replaced by a mini-van. He gets more than he bargained for as his work draws him into closer contact with villagers, in more ways than one. There are compromising positions aplenty in this next charming installment of Aidensfield life. Nick finds himself lost in heavy fog and runs across a couple of illicit lovers trapped in their car. He advises the village grocer about his very respectable lady shoplifter and discovers how farmer Owens copes with his bossy wife.

Caleb Cantrill is an Irishman whose luck may have just run out. He has two fortunes in gold and can't remember the location of either. And that's the least of his worries. A gang of blood-thirsty bandits are riding north to claim his first fortune, sovereign gold, which he fled with after a bank job went wrong. His second fortune, an immense gold strike, comes with a monstrous blight attached, one he accidentally unleashed onto a small mountain town nestled in the heart of a remote Canadian valley.

The evidence was all there: a dead body, two dessert plates, and a gun. Could it be that Mr. Ashbury was sharing his cake with his killer? The old bloke had enemies galore - even his own daughter disliked him. Mr. Ashbury's son-in-law doesn't want Inspector Witherspoon asking questions. Of course this doesn't stop Mrs. Jeffries and her staff from snooping around.

A decade-old animosity is the only thing Liam Davies and Zoe Valentine have in common. Until their mutual best friends pass away and they’re appointed co-guardians of the trusting couple’s precocious toddler, Mira. Liam is committed only to professional football. Relationship-wise, he’s even better at defense. Still wrestling with a tough childhood, he’s not cut out to be a father. Why his late best buddy believed in him, Liam has no idea.

In the ancient kingdom of Dumnonia, there is old magic to be found in the whisper of the wind, the roots of the trees, the curl of the grass. King Cador knew this once, but now the land has turned from him, calling instead to his three children. Riva can cure others, but can’t seem to heal her own deep scars. Keyne battles to be accepted for who he truly is—the king’s son. And Sinne dreams of seeing the world, of finding adventure.

When a film shoot on Wharfedale’s vintage railway turns into a grisly crime scene, DCI Oldroyd’s idyllic visit to the countryside with his partner Deborah is well and truly stopped in its tracks. One of the film’s stars has been shot dead in a train carriage while the cameras rolled outside. But nobody else went in—or came out. Has the killer really pulled off the perfect, impossible crime?

A young boy walks into a police station in France. He claims to be Carl Meagan - a missing child from Sheffield whose name is still whispered as a warning to kids who stay out after dark. On her way home from the supermarket, nine-year-old Keeley Armitage vanishes without trace. Her family is overcome with shock and DCI Matilda Darke can’t help but focus on memories of the Carl Meagan case that almost ruined her career.

Ex-DCI Luke Sackville is asked by Globo Energy to investigate two environmental movements. Both groups promote protests and nonviolent civil disobedience, but when members of his Ethics Team go undercover they discover this is a facade. Beneath the surface sinister forces are at work. Luke becomes embroiled in a race to find and stop a murderer who will stop at nothing to achieve his goals. Sow the Wind is the sixth book in the series of crime thrillers featuring Luke Sackville and his Ethics Team.

Once known to all in her village as the rector's daughter, Lucy is now a mother herself - to a wonderful 18-month-old son, Ned. Upon discovering that she is expecting a second child, Lucy and Robert are delighted. In anticipation of the new arrival, Lucy is set on expanding her nursery staff. When Agnes, her current nurse, recommends her cousin, it seems like the perfect solution. But trouble arrives along with the new nursery maid from London. When a farmer finds her lifeless body in a drainage ditch, Lucy and Robert fear foul play.

When reclusive artist Gabriel Quinn is gunned down outside a gallery on Oxford High Street, Detective Inspector Bridget Hart investigates the world of contemporary art, where paintings can change hands for millions in the auction room. Bridget is convinced that the last words spoken by the artist - a mysterious code of eight digits and a letter - are key to unraveling the mystery of his death.

As a powerful insurgent army closes on Liberia's capital, London is forced to act, and HMS Beaufort is dispatched to West Africa to pull British nationals from the teeth of encroaching danger. But when the volatile situation ashore unravels, the frigate's crew must draw deep on reserves of skill, ingenuity and sheer bloody-mindedness to save it. And with time running out, Beaufort's Captain makes the decision to take his ship upriver....

The villagers are quite a handful, from the rogue that is Claude Jeremiah Greengrass and his wily dog, Alfred, to the mysterious spinster Adelaide Bowes. Even some of the newcomers seem to be a little odd. But thankfully for Constable Nick, they are mostly law-abiding characters. But when old conflicts between villages flare up, it’s Constable Nick who has to sort things out.

There was only one reason Manchester-based private eye Kate Brannigan was prepared to let her boyfriend help out with an investigation into a car sales fraud - nothing bad could happen. But by now Kate should know that with Richard you have to expect the unexpected. With Richard behind bars, Kate must look after his eight-year-old son - who proves even more troublesome than his father. Kate finds herself dragged into a world of drug traffickers, child pornographers, fraudsters, and violent gangland enforcers in the most terrifying investigation of her career.

Max Tudor has adapted well to his post as vicar of St. Edwold's in the idyllic village of Nether Monkslip. The quiet village seems the perfect home for Max, who has fled a harrowing past as an MI5 agent. But this new-found serenity is quickly shattered when the highly vocal and unpopular president of the Women's Institute turns up dead at the Harvest Fayre. The death looks like an accident, but Max's training as a former agent kicks in, and before long he suspects foul play.

When a promising local artist disappears, the victim's brother begs Detective Tara Thorpe to take the case. It seems there's no evidence of foul play...he simply disappeared without a trace. Tara agrees to do some digging...never mind that her unorthodox approach to policing has got a few of her colleagues' backs up. Amongst them is her former supervisor Detective Patrick Wilkins...he's had enough of Tara calling the shots and will do anything to knock her down. She must be careful.

Glory Akindele returns to London from her seemingly glamorous life in LA to mourn the sudden death of her father, only to find her previously close family has fallen apart in her absence. Her brother, Victor, is in jail and won’t speak to her because she didn’t come home for his trial. Her older sister, Faith, once a busy career woman, appears to have lost her independence and ambition, and is instead channeling her energies into holding together a perfect suburban family.

January 1801, and Captain Alan Lewrie, RN, known as "St. Alan the Liberator" for freeing (stealing!) a dozen black slaves on Jamaica to man his frigate years before, is at last being brought to trial for it, with his life on the line. At the same time, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, and Prussia are forming a League of Armed Neutrality, to Napoleon Bonaparte's delight, to deny Great Britain their vital exports, even if it means war. England will need all her experienced sea dogs, but...even Alan Lewrie?

1809. After his heroic actions during the retreat to Corunna, Captain Sir Thomas Kydd is the toast of London society. Here he falls in with the legendary frigate captain Lord Thomas Cochrane. So begins a relationship, professional and personal, that will be unlike any that Kydd has known: a relationship that will lead him, almost simultaneously, to first glory, then ruin.