British Fiction

This fascinating audiobook is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time.

Unremarkable legal assistant Gary Thorn goes for a pint with his coworker Brendan, unaware his life is about to change. There, Gary meets a beautiful woman, but she leaves before he catches her name. All he has to remember her by is the title of the book she was reading: The Clementine Complex. And when Brendan goes missing, too, Gary needs to track down the girl he now calls Clementine to get some answers. And so begins Gary’s quest, through the estates and pie shops of South London, to find some answers and hopefully, some love and excitement.

Book 1 in the thrilling new crime series, by David J. Gatward, author of the DCI Harry Grimm crime series, and set in the hauntingly beautiful Somerset countryside.

Bernard Samson is a spy on the run, forced to abandon his life and job and plunge into hiding. But in the murky, dangerous streets of Berlin, he knows where to hide. Wanted for an act of treachery he has not committed, he must not only escape the grasp of London Central, but get to the bottom of a tangled conspiracy that is about to change everything. In the thrilling penultimate installment of the Hook, Line, Sinker trilogy, Bernard's personal and professional life collide with devastating consequences.

When Harry Falcon, a wealthy boatyard owner and decorated World War Two veteran, is found drowned in his bath, DI John Tanner and DC Jenny Evans start by questioning his two sons, each with a motive for wanting him dead. But when the elder son is found with his head smashed in under a toppled yacht, and the younger son has been talking to a local property developer, one who’d spent months trying to buy the yard from his father, the investigation soon leads them towards a dark and dangerous secret, one which nobody can quite believe.

When a girl’s body is found strangled, raped, and horrifically mutilated by a boat’s propeller, deep in the heart of the Norfolk Broads, newly arrived Detective Inspector John Tanner is asked to assist with the investigation. At first, all the evidence points to a man who had a multi-million-pound reason to kill her. But when an alibi is produced from an unexpected source, and another body appears at the base of a slipway, Tanner finds himself turning to local girl Detective Constable Jenny Evans for help.

Former allies in the IRA, Sean Dillon and Martin Brosnan have chosen different paths. Now Dillon is a terrorist for hire, a master of disguise employed by Saddam Hussein. Brosnan is the one man who knows Dillon’s strengths and weaknesses…and brilliant mastery of espionage. Once friends, now enemies, they are playing the deadliest game of their careers. A game that culminates in a frightening - and true - event: Iraq’s attempted mortar attack on the British war cabinet at 10 Downing Street in February 1991.

Nick: Failed writer. Failed husband. Dog owner. Bee: Serial dater. Dress maker. Pringles enthusiast. One day, their paths cross over a misdirected email. The connection is instant, electric. They feel like they’ve known each other all their lives. So they decide to meet.

When I’m offered the chance to leave New York to live in London for three months, I can’t pack my suitcase fast enough. As soon as I touch down, I’m obsessing over red telephone boxes, palaces, and all the black cabs. But my favorite place is the tube. It’s wall-to-wall hot British men in suits.

This third and final volume of the unexpurgated diaries of Sir Henry 'Chips' Channon begins as the Second World War is turning in the Allies' favour. It ends with a prematurely aged Chips descending into poor health but still socially active and able to turn a pointed phrase about the political events that swirl around him and the great and the good with whom he mingles.

For an instant the two trains ran together, side by side. In that frozen moment, Elspeth witnessed a murder. Helplessly, she stared out of her carriage window as a man remorselessly tightened his grip around a woman's throat. The body crumpled. Then the other train drew away. But who, apart from Miss Marple, would take her story seriously? After all, there were no suspects, no other witnesses...and no corpse. This title was previously published as What Mrs. McGrillicuddy Saw!

Detective Harry Grimm can’t catch a break. When his much-needed vacation is interrupted by a call reporting a decomposed corpse, he races home to examine the gruesome remains. Learning the young woman was tortured, he’s stunned when the peaceful countryside site explodes, destroying evidence and causing more death. Uncovering clues from the victim’s car, Grimm struggles to keep up with a cunning killer when he discovers yet another body.

Deborah and Simon St. James have taken a holiday in the winter landscape of Lancastershire, hoping to heal the growing rift in their marriage. But in the barren countryside awaits bleak news: The vicar of Wimslough, the man they had come to see, is dead - a victim of accidental poisoning. Unsatisfied with the inquest ruling and unsettled by the close association between the investigating constable and the woman who served the deadly meal, Simon calls in his old friend Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley. Together they uncover dark, complex relationships in this rural village.

When a senior Metropolitan Police officer and High Court judge die in quick succession, criminal profiler Doctor Alex Gregory is convinced their deaths are linked to the most shameful case of his career: the notorious wrongful conviction of Carl Deere, an innocent man found guilty of a series of heinous murders perpetrated by the ‘Soho Killer'. Four years later, released from prison and with his record wiped clean, Deere is an invisible spectre with a new name and a new face.

When it’s announced that 1958 will be the last year debutantes are to be presented at court, thousands of eager mothers and hopeful daughters flood the palace with letters seeking the year’s most coveted invitation: a chance for their daughters to curtsy to the young Queen Elizabeth and officially come out into society. In an effort to appease her traditional mother, aspiring university student Lily Nichols agrees to become a debutante and do the Season, a glittering and grueling string of countless balls and cocktail parties. In doing so, she befriends two very different women.

Struggling with his new role as a detective chief inspector, John Tanner is warned of a convicted psychopath’s early release. When a couple is found later that day; the man stabbed to death, the woman with her throat cut, he's forced to assume the convict is responsible. But when the male victim turns out to be heir to a global pharmaceutical company, and his twelve-year-old son is nowhere to be found, he has to start looking closer at the victim’s family, and their sprawling stately ancestral home.

A beautiful socialite is dead. Roy Grace’s leading suspect, her husband, was sixty miles away when she died, but all other evidence points to him. Has someone stolen his identity or is he simply a very clever liar? Grace’s investigation, and his budding new relationship, are derailed after a reported sighting of his wife, Sandy, who has been missing for nine years. Grace desperately tries to cast light on the truth in both cases as his emotional turmoil – and the body count – grows . . .

Eager to move on from a master’s thesis that left her questioning her passion for history, Josie dives headlong into her new job and life in a small town. Faced with the prospect of remaining long-term, she must decide if she will fight to carve a place for herself in Wells’s idiosyncratic community. What follows is the story of a young woman trying to find connection and purpose in the twenty-first century while living in a village seemingly frozen in the past.

Fitzwilliam Darcy is a powerful mage and master of illusions. His abilities make him the perfect man for a dangerous mission to end the devastating war with Napoleon—a mission that would leave him little chance of returning alive. When he meets the enchanting Elizabeth Bennet, whose magical talents are as deep as they are inexplicable, he knows he needs her help. There's only one way to get that—marriage. Immediately.

Twenty-six-year-old single mum Brianna Lewis (a.k.a. Bree) doesn't believe in fairy tales - not after being abandoned by the father of daughter, Isabelle. Suddenly finding herself in dire straits, she converts her garden shed into a rental suite in hopes of climbing out of the financial hole she's in. But when the only person interested in renting the suite turns out to be to Leopold Davenport, the ridiculously good-looking co-worker she loves to hate, she knows she must choose between being happy and being broke.