Mystery Church

Beth Haldane is gazing at enchanting paintings of the rolling English countryside when her daydream is rudely interrupted—by the discovery of a teenage girl unconscious on a marble bench. Shocked, Beth realizes this is no snoozing schoolchild. Someone dastardly has carefully crossed the girls’ hands across her white dress, as if she’s in a painting herself. And the girl’s discarded red backpack, found in a corner of the museum, is totally empty. Is someone suspicious hiding evidence? And who would want to harm this innocent soul?

When an archaeology dig uncovers a skeleton, Dr Laurel Nightingale finds herself drawn into another grisly mystery. The bones aren't ancient as everyone hoped, and the police confirm a killer is on the loose. Laurel, alongside her spirited best friend Maggie and history buff Albert, dives into the village's tangled web of secrets and lies. As they dig deeper, a local student winds up dead under mysterious circumstances, a charming police officer turns into an unexpected ally, and suspicion spreads through the village like wildfire.

Ava Kirilova has reached the very top of her profession. After years and years of hard graft, pain and sacrifice as part of the London Russian Ballet Company, allowing nothing else to distract her, she is finally the poster girl for Swan Lake. Even Mr K—her father, and the intense, terrifying director of the company—can find no fault. Ava has pushed herself ahead of countless other talented, hardworking girls, and they are all watching her now.

When Amelia is invited to an all-expenses-paid retreat on a private island, the mysterious offer is too good to refuse. Along with six other strangers, she’s told they’re here to test a brand-new product for Timeo Technologies. But the guests’ excitement soon turns to terror when the real reason for their summons becomes clear. Each guest has a guilty secret. And when they’re all forced to wear a memory-tracking device that reveals their dark and shameful deeds to their fellow guests, there’s no hiding from the past. This is no luxury retreat - it’s a trap.

The winter cold is biting, and a series of assaults is pulling DI Marnie Rome and DS Noah Jake out into the frosty, mean streets of London far more than they'd like. The attacks seem random, but when Marnie's family home is ransacked, there are signs that the burglary can have been committed only by a child - and someone who knows all about her. It will take a prison visit to her foster brother, Stephen, to help Marnie see the connections - and to force both her and Noah to face the truth about the creeping, chilling reaches of a troubled upbringing.

Murder/Mystery missing persons investigation into a church burning in Central Texas - revolving around history, religion and the creation of medical science.

Milan, 1497: Leonardo is completing "The Last Supper". Pope Alexander VI is determined to execute him after realizing that the painting contains clues to a baffling and blasphemous message that he is driven to decode. The Holy Grail and the Eucharistic Bread are missing, there is no meat on the table, and the apostles, shockingly, are portraits of well-known heretics and none of them are depicted with halos. And why has the artist painted himself into the scene with his back turned toward Jesus?

Compulsive, gripping and dark, Never Be Broken is the stunning new novel in the Marnie Rome series, for fans of Peter James, Mark Billingham, and Val McDermid. Children are dying on London's streets. Frankie Reece, stabbed through the heart outside a corner shop. Others recruited from care homes, picked up and exploited, passed like gifts between gangs. They are London's lost. Then Raphaela Belsham is killed. She's 13 years old, her father is a man of influence, from a smart part of town. And she's white. Suddenly, the establishment is taking notice.

Just as the sexton is about to inter the ashes of one of Grace Church's last wealthy patronesses in the Memorial Garden, he unearths a wine crate containing the ashes of an unknown. Next to the ashes is a distinctive pair of shoes. Not only are the woman's relatives furious at the interruption, but they soon have grounds for a lawsuit: yet another piece of the church's tower comes crashing to the ground. With their congregation dwindling and their world literally falling in around them, Father Robert Vickers and his colorful staff members and volunteers put their heads together.

Maggie has everything her sister Rose always wanted. A handsome husband and two adorable children, Emily and Elliot. But what Rose doesn’t see is that Maggie is struggling. Every day is a fog of sleep loss and mess made by two tiny children. Left alone in her distress by husband Stephen, Maggie drifts ever closer to the edge. When Maggie finally cracks, walking out one day and not returning, Rose is right there to step into the breach.

Anna and Peter desperately need to escape London for a fresh start. And they’ve found just the place: a perfect house on a perfect street in a perfect new development on the Scottish coast. But before they’ve even unpacked, they discover that the community they’ve moved into might be keeping secrets of its own…

The playground is the last place I thought I’d see you. It was my Billy’s first day at school. It was supposed to be a happy one. But then you turned up. I remembered you instantly from the hospital wing. Our babies born on the same day. Both premature. Both needing intensive care. While Billy grew stronger day by day, your baby sadly slipped away. But now you’re back with one devastating accusation…. Billy isn’t my son at all, he’s yours. And you’ve come to take him away.

In a world where limitless violence defines the very nature of life on the depraved streets, respect is seized at the tip of the blade and the muzzle of the weapon that punctuate life and death when the line between the two is all but invisible. Follow Anya as she battles ultimate deceit, boundless depravity, and the endless thirst for more of everything the dark side of humanity has for sale when money is no object and human life is but a whisper between echoing eternities.

Laurel Nightingale wants to start again. However, after discovering a dead body shortly after arriving in the tight-knit community, she wonders if village life is as wholesome as she first thought. . . Local police are convinced the death was accidental, but Laurel suspects murder, and enlists new friend Maggie to join her quest in uncovering the truth. When a second body is found, Laurel ruffles feathers by pointing the finger at one of the locals. But, when her accusation backfires, she's left alienated and afraid.

As wild fires creep a devastating path towards the idyllic town of Morranez, a vulnerable girl goes missing. But was she taken - or was she escaping. The summer is the hottest yet in the Brittany coastal town of Morranez, but when a new case lands on the desk of the Toussaints detective agency, there can be no time to relax. As wild fires bear down on the town, the alert goes out for a missing girl. Nineteen-year-old Briony Moorcroft has seemingly been taken from her sleepy Welsh village and brought to France.

What's behind the locked door? Who is the couple's mysterious daughter? And can Lauren even trust her own instincts? Desperate for answers, she breaches the forbidden room, where she uncovers a chilling secret that changes everything. Entangled in a twisted web of lies, she realizes the once-kindly couple may not be who they seem. With her safety becoming increasingly precarious and her tumultuous past refusing to let go, can Lauren unravel the truth and get out before it's too late?

Carrie is a successful TV producer in a high pressure job. She’s talented, liked, and well-respected. She and her husband, Adrian, an award-winning screenwriter, decided years before that they didn’t want children. But now, just as they’re both at the pinnacle of their careers, she has discovered she is pregnant and is shocked to find that she wants to keep the baby. But in a competitive industry where time off is seen as a sign of weakness, Carrie looks on the prospect of maternity leave with trepidation.

Autumn brings unwelcome news to Inspector O: he has been wrenched from retirement and ordered back to Pyongyang for a final assignment. The two Koreas, he learns, are now cooperating—very quietly—to maintain stability in the North. Stability requires that Inspector O lead an investigation into a crime of passion committed by the young man who has been selected as the best possible leader of a transition government.

When a young writer accepts a job at a university in the remote English countryside, it's meant to be a fresh start, away from the bustle of London and the scene of a violent assault she is desperate to forget. But a vicious debate about violence against women inflames the tensions and mounting rivalries in her creative-writing class. When a troubled student starts turning in chapters that blur the lines between fiction and reality, the professor recognizes herself as the main character in his book - and he has written her a horrific fate.

I look at our neighbours gathered in the garden for our annual summer barbeque, sipping chilled wine and smiling at my two daughters sprawled on the grass. I go inside to help refill glasses and then I hear it. A shrill scream that stops me in my tracks. I race outdoors to silence, a sea of bewildered faces. My first thought is for my girls, but they are there unhurt. With relief, we push the chilling sound to the back of our minds, returning to our drinks and conversations like it never happened.