Two years ago, a hostile Prime Minister launched the Monochrome inquiry, investigating "historical over-reaching" by the British Secret Service “to investigate historical over-reaching.” Monochrome’s mission was to ferret out any hint of misconduct by any MI5 officer—and allowed Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle, the two civil servants seconded to the project, unfettered access to any and all confidential information in the Service archives in order to do so. But MI5’s formidable First Desk did not become Britain’s top spy by accident, and she has successfully thwarted the inquiry at every turn.

When a young man breaks into South Oxford Nursery School with a gun and takes a group of hostages, teacher Louise Kennedy is fearful. But Jaime Segura isn’t there on a homicidal mission. Bad Sam Chapman - head of the intelligence service’s internal security force, the Dogs - tries to find out what Jaime is after. But the only person Jaime will talk to is Ben Whistler, an MI6 colleague of Jaime’s lover, Miro - who has gone missing with a quarter of a billion pounds....

Now, for the first time, Herron’s short fiction has been collected into one volume. In Dolphin Junction, devoted fans and future converts alike will find much to amuse, delight, and terrify them. Five stand-alone nerve-racking and thrilling crime fiction stories are complemented by four mystery stories featuring the Oxford wife-and-husband detective team of shrewd Zoë Boehm and hapless Joe Silvermann. The collection also includes a peek into the past of Jackson Lamb, irascible top agent at Slough House.

When Caroline Daniels takes a deadly fall in front of a train and her lover fails to turn up at the funeral, Zoë Boehm wants nothing to do with the case. But Caroline's boss is persistent, and as Zoë attempts to unlock the secrets of a woman she's never met while in search of a man who could be anywhere, she starts to wonder if he's found her first. And if he has, will that make her the next victim?

When a house explodes in a quiet Oxford suburb and a young girl disappears in the aftermath, Sarah Tucker becomes obsessed with finding her. Accustomed to dull chores in a childless household and hosting her husband’s wearisome business clients for dinner, Sarah suddenly finds herself questioning everything she thought she knew, as her investigation reveals that people long believed dead are still among the living, while the living are fast joining the dead.

When Zoë Boehm agrees to track down the gang who knocked over Sweeney’s jewellery shop, she certainly doesn’t expect to wind up in a coffin. But she’s about to become entangled with a strange collection of characters, starting with suicidal Tim Whitby, who’s dedicating what’s left of his life to protecting Katrina Blake from her late husband’s brothers, Arkle and Trent. Unfortunately for Zoë, Arkle has a crossbow, Tim has nothing left to lose and even Katrina has her secrets.

On July 12th, 1776, Captain James Cook, already lionized as the greatest explorer in British history, set off on his third voyage in his ship the HMS Resolution. Two-and-a-half years later, on a beach on the island of Hawaii, Cook was killed in a conflict with native Hawaiians. How did Cook, who was unique among captains for his respect for Indigenous peoples and cultures, come to that fatal moment? Hampton Sides’ bravura account of Cook’s last journey both wrestles with Cook’s legacy and provides a thrilling narrative of the titanic efforts and continual danger that characterized exploration.

Northern Ireland, spring 1981. Hunger strikes, riots, power cuts, a homophobic serial killer with a penchant for opera, and a young woman’s suicide that may yet turn out to be murder: on the surface, the events are unconnected, but then things—and people—aren’t always what they seem. Detective Sergeant Duffy is the man tasked with trying to get to the bottom of it all. It’s no easy job—especially when it turns out that one of the victims was involved in the IRA but was last seen discussing business with someone from the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force.

The year is 1921. Lesley Hamlyn and her husband, Robert, a lawyer and war veteran, are living at Cassowary House on the Straits Settlement of Penang. When “Willie” Somerset Maugham, a famed writer and old friend of Robert’s, arrives for an extended visit with his secretary Gerald, the pair threatens a rift that could alter more lives than one. Maugham, one of the great novelists of his day, is beleaguered: Having long hidden his homosexuality, his unhappy and expensive marriage of convenience becomes unbearable after he loses his savings—and the freedom to travel with Gerald.

A short story from British Library Crime Classic Deep Waters. The character that made Bailey’s name is the medically trained detective Reggie Fortune, and he’s at his best in this short story investigating a murder and the disappearance of a nurse at a mysterious stately home.