British Literature

DCI Lesley Clarke is back in Dorset, and her world has turned upside down. One of the people she's closest to is to under arrest for the murder of DCI Mackie and a body has been found in the remote lighthouse at Portland Bill. And not just any body, but the body of someone she investigated before moving to Dorset. Can Lesley win the trust of the close-knit Portland community and find the killer? And can DI Zoe Finch of the West Midlands force help her track down potential suspects?

You are Dead is the 11th thrilling crime novel in Peter James' Roy Grace series, narrated by Daniel Weyman. They were marked for death. The last words Jamie Ball hears from his fiancée, Logan Somerville, are in a terrified mobile phone call. She has just driven into the underground car park beneath the block of flats where they live in Brighton. Then she screams and the phone goes dead.

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.

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.

DI Bliss attends the aftermath of an apparent murder-suicide—but the scene tells him and his colleagues something very different occurred. Now the Peterborough Major Crimes Unit face an adversary like no other. They have no idea why his victims had to die. They have no idea who he is. They have no idea where he might strike next—only that he will. But while the killer is cunning, leaving no evidence for them to find, his biggest mistake might be in underestimating the team now hunting him. Because when Jimmy Bliss is on the case, all bets are off.

After his father’s untimely death, Nicholas Nickleby is charged with supporting his mother and sister as he finds his way in the world. Broke, Nickleby goes to his maleficent uncle Ralph for help. The ruthless and resentful businessman appeases his nephew with a thankless position at a grim orphans’ home. Nickleby is swiftly conspired against, and the young man is forced to leave his family and London behind. Accompanied by colorful eccentrics and a rogues’ gallery of villains, Nickleby is tested at every turn on his journey home and to self-discovery.

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.

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.

1957: Jean Swinney is a feature writer on a local paper in the southeast suburbs of London. Clever but with limited career opportunities and on the brink of forty, Jean lives a dreary existence that includes caring for her demanding widowed mother, who rarely leaves the house. It’s a small life with little joy and no likelihood of escape.

Freya Scott is getting married. Her wedding to Matthew, her long-term boyfriend, is the first of eight in her calendar this year, and as someone who prides herself on being meticulously organized, Freya is intent on making it the perfect day to remember. But when Matthew calls things off hours before they walk down the aisle, Freya’s entire life plan goes up in smoke. Humiliated and heartbroken, the last thing she wants is to attend a summer of other peoples’ nuptials on her own.

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.

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.

Stella Hobhouse is a brilliant rider, stalwart friend, skilled sketch artist—and completely overlooked. Her outmodish gray hair makes her invisible to London society. Combined with her brother’s pious restrictions and her dwindling inheritance, Stella is on the verge of a lifetime marooned in Derbyshire as a spinster. Unless she does something drastic…like posing for a daring new style of portrait by the only man who’s ever really seen her.

1995: In the wake of the Rwandan genocide, twenty-four-year-old spy Lachlan Kite and his girlfriend, Martha Raine, are sent to Senegal on the trail of a hunted war criminal. The mission threatens to spiral out of control, forcing Kite to make choices which will have devastating consequences not only for his career at top-secret intelligence agency BOX 88, but also for his relationship with Martha.

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.

Lizzie Bennet’s beloved sister Jane has just married Darcy’s best friend, Bingley, and the Bennet family and Darcy are paying the newlyweds a visit at Bingley’s family home, Netherfield Park. It doesn’t take long for their country retreat to turn into an investigation, though, when a long-dead body is discovered stuffed up the parlor chimney. The locals are convinced that Netherfield is cursed, but Lizzie and Darcy know better than to believe in such nonsense and are determined to uncover the truth about what happened to the mysterious man in the chimney.

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.

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.

Ahead of the German Blitz during World War II, English parents from every social class sent their children to the countryside for safety, displacing more than three million young offspring. In The Secret Guests, the British royal family takes this evacuation a step further, secretly moving the princesses to the estate of the Duke of Edenmore in “neutral” Ireland.

Inspector Witherspoon has been assigned another tough case. The latest murder victim has possibly swindled his shareholders out of a huge sum of money. When the businessman is found with a bullet through is chest, all of them are suspects - but no one is telling the truth. It is up to Mrs. Jeffries and the household staff at Upper Edmonton Gardens to crack the case.