British Literature

Melissa couldn’t be happier that summer has arrived. She’s delighted to have her mother back by her side, and she is extending her beloved Hawthorn Cottage so her new family can live together. Meanwhile, Melissa’s mother, Sylvia, is back in good health and enjoying a brief stay at a stately retirement home. She loves getting to know the residents, until first a dog and then his owner are both found dead in the dining room. Like mother, like daughter, Sylvia decides to do a little investigating of her own.

If there’s one thing detective Bath Peter Diamond has no patience for, it’s a dumb git trying to get involved in one of his investigations - for example, a Philip Marlowe-wannabe private investigator like the self-styled Johnny Getz. But fate has saddled Diamond with this trial. A Bath antiques dealer, “Seppy” Hubbard, has disappeared without a trace, and his daughter has hired Getz to find him. When a body is discovered in Seppy’s locked-up store, the missing persons case becomes a murder investigation, and now Diamond has to collaborate with the insufferable private eye.

When human remains are discovered under Bradford’s derelict Odeon car park, DS Nikita Parekh and her team are immediately called to the scene. Distracted by keeping her young nephew out of trouble, Nikki is relieved when the investigation is transferred to the Cold Case Unit, and she can finally focus on her family. But after the identity of the victim is revealed, she’s soon drawn back into the case. The dead man is a direct link to her painful past. As the body count begins to rise, Nikki must do everything she can to stop the killer in their tracks before anyone else gets hurt.

What happened while they were sleeping? A school for the deaf takes an overnight trip to the snowy woods. Five teenagers go to sleep, but only four wake up. Leon is missing, and a teacher’s body is found in the forest. Sign-Language Interpreter Paige Northwood is brought in to help with interrogations. Everyone at the school has a motive for murder - but they all have an alibi. As Paige becomes increasingly involved, she suspects there’s something sinister going on.

A routine missing person enquiry takes a grisly turn when a young couple drag a box containing human remains out of a Somerset river. The victim was a surveillance expert investigating an exaggerated injury claim—a murder with an obvious motive, until a police officer is implicated and suspended. Still brooding after his recent brush with police Professional Standards, Detective Chief Inspector Nick Dixon is on extended leave, helping his pregnant fiancée, Detective Sergeant Jane Winter, fight for her place on the major investigation team.

DC Sophie Jones was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Viciously bludgeoned one night in a dark alley, she is left fighting for her life in hospital, leaving no clues as to why she was there or what might have motivated the attack. For Detective Karen Hart, fiercely protective of her young protégée, this is already deeply personal: an attack on Sophie is an attack on the whole team. When a car workshop near the crime scene is linked to local mobster Quentin Chapman, the man Hart has spent years trying to bring down, it’s hard not to jump to the most obvious conclusion.

Arthur Finch-Hatten’s MI6 cover as a degenerate nobleman is falling apart fast, which means not only will he be in danger, but so will his jerk brother, his innocent nieces, and everyone else he cares for, especially Gen Ward.

Salisbury, 1226. A mysterious poacher claims to be a long-lost heir - to a man found crushed by his own cart wheel. Ela Longespée is determined to find the truth, even though the king has coldly appointed another sheriff in her place. Ela takes pity on the man - an injured knight who once saved her husband’s life - and convinces the sheriff to release him from jail while she investigates. Will it turn out to be a deadly mistake?

London, 1930. The five greatest women crime writers have banded together to form a secret society with a single goal: to show they are no longer willing to be treated as second class citizens by their male counterparts in the legendary Detection Club. Led by the formidable Dorothy L. Sayers, the group includes Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham and Baroness Emma Orczy. They call themselves the Queens of Crime. Their plan? Solve an actual murder, that of a young woman found strangled in a park in France who may have connections leading to the British establishment.

In the wake of Hilary Mantel’s brilliant conclusion to her award-winning Wolf Hall Trilogy, this collection of loosely autobiographical stories locates the transforming moments of a haunted childhood. Sharp and funny, these drawn-from-life stories begin in the 1950s in an insular northern village “scoured by bitter winds and rough gossip tongues.” For the child narrator, the only way to survive is to get up, get on, get out.

Listen to the first book in the new heart-stopping series Gentlemen of the Order. Noah Ashwood has suffered his fair share of injustices. It’s why he joined the Gentlemen of the Order, why he solves crimes committed against the vulnerable and needy. To his friends he’s known as Dauntless - a fearless fighter, a man with steely determination. And yet his strength is tested when he forms an infatuation for his new client. When a catalogue of strange events leaves Evangeline Dunn fearing for her life, she has no option but to seek professional help.

Ella has discovered a secret room in the Yellow Cottage, but with it comes a ghost. Who was she? And how did she die? Ella needs to find the answers before either of them can find peace. But suddenly, things take a nasty turn for the worse.

DI Kate Young is on leave. She’s the force’s best detective, but her bosses know she’s under pressure, on medication and overcoming trauma. So after her bad judgement call leads to a narrowly averted public disaster, they’re sure all she needs is a rest. But when Staffordshire Police summon her back to work on a murder case, it’s a harder, more suspicious Kate Young who returns. With a new ruthlessness, she sets about tracking down a clinical, calculating serial killer who is torturing victims and leaving clues to taunt the police.

Arthur Finch-Hatten is six-feet-four-inches of hot, ripped, loaded English billionaire nobleman who is wasting his life and his earldom so audaciously that his younger brother is suing him for control. Arthur stands to lose everything, including his cover as an MI-6 spy. Genevieve is a lawyer, not a babysitter, and certainly not a dog trainer. She is just about to become a full barrister when her mentor dies unexpectedly. She is shuffled off to another barrister, one who’s nothing at all like her kind, decent former mentor, and then she is assigned the office’s worst case: Arthur.

If someone was in your house, you’d know...wouldn’t you? But the Hunter family are deaf, and don’t hear a thing when a shocking crime takes place in the middle of the night. Instead, they wake up to their worst nightmare: the murder of their daughter. The police call Paige Northwood to the scene to interpret for the witnesses. They’re in shock, but Paige senses the Hunters are hiding something. One by one, people from Paige’s community start to fall under suspicion. But who would kill a little girl? Was it an intruder? Or was the murderer closer to home?

Gabby Lane is a Senior Field Agent in British Intelligence. When she is sent on an undercover operation to kill Europe's largest arms dealer and find a British spy who has disappeared, she discovers that the two men are connected and are part of the criminal gang who are stealing western weapons.

There's a new man in charge at Bow Street Magistrates' Court and all is not well. His ambition is to split up Lavender and Woods—and to add to Lavender's woes, someone is leaking exaggerated stories about his investigations to The Times. Lavender is tasked with solving the theft of an aristocrat's precious jewels, while Woods is instructed to track down a libeler. But after a series of vicious murders and surprising coincidences, they discover that these apparently unconnected crimes have more in common than they could ever have imagined.

September 1888. A 29-year-old Arthur Conan Doyle practices medicine by day and writes at night. His first Sherlock Holmes story has only netted him 25 pounds. Embittered by the experience, he vows never to write another "crime story". Then a messenger arrives with a mysterious summons from former Prime Minister William Gladstone, asking him to come to London immediately. Once there, he is offered one month's employment to assist the Metropolitan Police as a "consultant" in their hunt for the serial killer soon to be known as Jack the Ripper.

Retired policeman turned killer Jeffrey Brandt has gone underground. He is even living something like a normal life in North Wales. He killed to make society stand up and take notice. It did. His crimes are notorious. So infamous, in fact, that someone wants to emulate him. How will Brandt react to a copycat killer? Will he be flattered, or disturbed that someone wants to steal his limelight? Crucially, for investigating officer DSI Stella Johnson, the new spate of murders might offer an opportunity to finally bring Brandt to justice.

DCI Lesley Clarke thinks she’s close to solving her predecessor’s murder. But when the body of a police officer connected to the crime turns up in the abandoned village of Tyneham, the case steps up a gear. And when someone she's close to is threatened by the killer, Lesley’s quest for the truth becomes even more urgent. Can Lesley convince her senior officers of the truth, keep her team on track and protect her family?