British Fiction

Young, ardent Dorothea Brooke defies her sister by wedding the much older Reverend Edward Casaubon, blindly hoping to assist in his scholarly pursuits. Tertius Lydgate, a progressive doctor, new and unwelcome in provincial Middlemarch, is charmed into marriage with the selfish and shallow Rosamond Vincy, a disastrous mismatch of his own. Soon blatant stubbornness, unruly jealousy, blind idealism, and calculated blackmail threaten to upend the Midlands village and lay waste to happy endings.

When a body is discovered floating in a Thames river lock one dreary morning, Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and Sergeant Gemma James are summoned from Scotland Yard to Chiltern Hills. The dead man is Connor Swann, son-in-law of two of London's most renowned opera personalities. And prints on the corpse's neck suggest that Swann was strangled.

With London's streets deserted, a young flower girl is murdered. But why was she out so late on the foggiest night of the year? Inspector Witherspoon of Scotland Yard has nowhere to even begin looking for a suspect. However, Mrs. Jeffries, his housekeeper, is even more accomplished at detection than she is at household management. A policeman's widow herself, her quick wits allow her to nudge the inspector in the right direction to solve the mystery.

When Dr. Nathan Frost, a lecturer in German literature at Oxford University, is invited to a lavish party at the country house of a wealthy businessman, he knows there'll be a price to pay. After all, as an expert on the legend of Faust and Mephistopheles, he can recognize a deal with the devil easily enough. But even he's not expecting such a sinister end to the evening.

DCI Kett is back, heading Norfolk Constabulary’s brand-new Extreme Crime Task Force. And it’s just in time. The body of a woman bound in thorns has been discovered in Norwich’s historic Cow Tower. In her mouth is a severed finger wrapped in a scrap of red cloth, and the first few lines of a fairy tale. “Once upon a time, a young maiden waited to be saved from a hideous monster.” The finger belongs to another missing woman, and if Kett, Porter and Savage want to find her alive they must follow a chain of blood-drenched riddles, each victim leading to the next.

In England's shadowy corners, from misty woods to ancient university halls, criminal psychologist and head of the Ritualistic Behavioural Crime unit Dr Harrison Lane, confronts the country’s most challenging crimes. A boy's body with cryptic messages. A man pinned down by horseshoes. A student etched with strange symbols. Each scene is a piece of a terrifying puzzle only Harrison can solve. As he unravels these ritualistic killings, Harrison digs up long-buried secrets that shake quiet towns to their core. But the deeper he delves, the more his own past threatens to engulf him.

The Bahamas, 1941. Newly widowed Leonora “Lulu” Randolph arrives in Nassau to investigate the governor and his wife for a New York society magazine. After all, American readers have an insatiable appetite for news of the duke and duchess of Windsor, that glamorous couple whose love affair nearly brought the British monarchy to its knees five years earlier. What more intriguing backdrop for their romance than a wartime Caribbean paradise, a colonial playground for kingpins of ill-gotten empires? Or so Lulu imagines.

It's 1996. Detective Sergeant Tom Thorne is a haunted man. Haunted by the moment he ignored his instinct about a suspect, by the horrific crime that followed and by the memories that come day and night, in sunshine and shadow. So when seven-year-old Kieron Coyne goes missing while playing in the woods with his best friend, Thorne vows he will not make the same mistake again. Cannot. The solitary witness. The strange neighbour. The friendly teacher. All are in Thorne's sights. This case will be the making of him...or the breaking.

Jonathan Roper is a key player in the elite Special Investigations Unit. His autism, and a relentless drive, have given him an extraordinary range of skills which make him a formidable detective. His reputation has grown to the point where he has been invited to join the digital fight against terror - but that's not working out as it means losing contact with his boss, Chief Inspector Brian Hooley. The pair formed a powerful bond while bringing down a gang of ruthless mercenaries running riot in London, and now events are throwing them back together.

Emma Makepeace is headed to Edinburgh for the global G7 Summit when her team is tipped off about a high-profile assassination the Russians are planning—but they have no idea who the target is. Surrounded by the world’s most powerful political leaders in a gridlocked city, Emma must set a trap and use herself as bait. With time running short, Emma faces the most perilous mission of her career. How far will she go to catch the killer?

A series of baffling murders among a group of imprisoned agents threatens the outcome of World War II in this chilling mystery from the New York Times best-selling author of Mr. Churchill’s Secretary. World War II is raging, and former spy Maggie Hope knows too much. She knows what the British government is willing to do to keep its secrets. She knows the real location of the planned invasion of France. She knows who’s lying. She knows who the double-crossers are. She knows exactly who is sending agents to their deaths.

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.

Buckingham Palace, 1981. Her engagement to Prince Charles is a dream come true for Lady Diana Spencer, but marrying the heir to the throne is not all that it seems. Alone and bored in the palace, she resents the stuffy courtiers who are intent on instructing her about her new role as princess of Wales. But when she discovers a diary written in the 1800s by Princess Charlotte of Wales, a young woman born into a gilded cage so like herself, Diana is drawn into the story of Charlotte’s reckless love affairs and fraught relationship with her father, the prince regent.

After another disappointing Season fending off matchmaking mamas and grasping debutantes, Fitzwilliam Darcy has given up hope of finding a wife. His business partner, Edward Gardiner, suggests a sojourn into Hertfordshire to escape the machinations of Town—and meddlesome aunts who take every opportunity to help him on the marriage mart.

In 1920, at their country home in County Cork, Sir Richard Naylor and his wife, Lady Myra, and their friends maintain a skeptical attitude toward the events going on around them, but behind the facade of tennis parties and army camp dances, all know that the end is approaching-the end of British rule in the south of Ireland, and the demise of a way of life that had survived for centuries. Their niece, Lois Farquar, attempts to live her own life and gain her own freedoms from the very class that her elders are vainly defending.

MI6 operative Duncan Grant has been officially missing in action for the last six months. Going on deep-cover to hunt down those responsible for the death of a close ally. Half a world away, enjoying sedate retirement under new identities, former Albion agents are being murdered. And now there's only one left. Given an ultimatum to save the last Albion or face expulsion from the agency he's sacrificed so much for, Grant has no choice but to pursue both missions at the same time.

Minerva Kenny is a dear woman, but her tendency to "borrow" things without asking has finally caught up with her. William Barrett has learned Minerva's shameful secret, and he's holding it over her head. Mrs. Jeffries and the staff at Upper Edmonton Gardens have hatched a scheme to save her - but when they try to recover the damning evidence from Barrett, they discover something more shocking: Barrett's corpse. Considering the victim's wicked ways, Minerva is far from the only suspect.

In 1922 Agatha Christie set sail on a 10-month voyage around the British Empire with her husband as part of a trade mission to promote the forthcoming British Empire Exhibition. Leaving her two-year-old daughter behind with her sister, Agatha set sail at the end of January and did not return until December, but she kept up a detailed weekly correspondence with her mother, describing in detail the exotic places and people she encountered as the mission travelled through South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii and Canada.

The year is 1861. The American Civil War has just begun, and London arms dealer Daniel Alberton is becoming a very wealthy man. His quiet dinner party seems remote indeed from the passions rending America. Yet investigator William Monk and his bride, Hester, sense growing tensions and barely concealed violence.

From hunting pickpockets in London omnibuses and ghosts in Hesse Square, Sergeant Watters and Detective Silver are led into the notorious Wild Geese public house, and a tangled mystery that involves the murder of a guardsman and the vivacious wife of an Austrian diplomat. With the help of the Irish woman Rowena, Watters trawls through the back streets of London, encounters female prize-fighters and suave cracksmen, and finds himself in the savage world of espionage. But can he unravel the mysterious words: "There is a storm from the east and the west"?