Showing results for "Doug Johnstone" in Literature & Fiction

Meet the Skelfs: well-known Edinburgh family, proprietors of a long-established funeral-home business, and private investigators.... When patriarch Jim dies, it's left to his wife Dorothy, daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah to take charge of both businesses, kicking off an unexpected series of events. Dorothy discovers mysterious payments to another woman, suggesting that Jim wasn't the husband she thought he was.

Lennox is a troubled teenager with no family. Ava is eight months pregnant and fleeing her abusive husband. Heather is a grieving mother and cancer sufferer. They don't know each other, but when a meteor streaks over Edinburgh, all three suffer instant, catastrophic strokes...only to wake up the following day in hospital, miraculously recovered. When news reaches them of an octopus-like creature washed up on the shore near where the meteor came to earth, Lennox senses that some extra-terrestrial force is at play.

Six months since the earth-shattering events of The Space Between Us, the revelatory hope of the aliens' visit has turned to dust and the creatures have disappeared into the water off Scotland's west coast. Teenager Lennox and grieving mother Heather are being held in New Broom, a makeshift US military base, the subject of experiments, alongside the Enceladons who have been captured by the authorities. Ava, who has given birth, is awaiting the jury verdict at her trial for the murder of her husband.

Gloria Jennings is a strikingly beautiful woman. She went on the run when she was accused of murdering her wealthy husband back east. Luke Jensen tracks her down to a ranch in West Texas, only to discover that she has re-married, and is a widow once again; and once again her rancher husband was a victim of murder! Despite appearances, Luke begins to doubt her guilt...and surprises himself by not bringing her in - and actually helping her face down rival ranchers.

Driven by amateur whisky-nut Adam, four late-thirties ex-university mates are heading to Islay—the remote Scottish island world famous for its single malts—with a wallet full of cash, a stash of coke and a serious thirst. Over a weekend soaked in the finest cask strength spirit, they meet young divorcee Molly, who Adam has a soft spot for, her little sister Ash who has all sorts of problems and Molly's ex-husband Joe, a control freak who also happens to be the local police. As events spiral out of control, they are all thrown into a nightmare that gets worse at every turn.

The Skelf women are back on an even keel after everything they've been through. But when a funeral they're conducting is attacked by a drone, Jenny fears they're in the middle of an Edinburgh gangland vendetta. At the same time, Yana, a Ukrainian member of the refugee choir that plays with Dorothy's band, has gone missing. Searching for her leads Dorothy into strange and ominous territory. And Brodie, the newest member of the extended Skelf family, comes to Hannah with a case: Something or someone has been disturbing the grave of his stillborn son.

The Skelf women are recovering from the cataclysmic events that nearly claimed their lives. Their funeral-director and private-investigation businesses are back on track, and their cases are as perplexing as ever. Matriarch Dorothy looks into a suspicious fire at a travellers' site, and takes a grieving, homeless man under her wing. Daughter Jenny is searching for her missing sister-in-law, who disappeared in tragic circumstances, while granddaughter Hannah is asked to investigate increasingly dangerous conspiracy theorists targeting a retired female astronaut...putting her own life at risk.

Seventeen-year-old Tyler lives in one of Edinburgh’s most deprived areas. Coerced into robbing rich people’s homes by his bullying older siblings, he’s also trying to care for his little sister and his drug-addict mum. On a job, his brother Barry stabs a homeowner and leaves her for dead, but that’s just the beginning of their nightmare, because the woman is the wife of Edinburgh’s biggest crime lord, Deke Holt.

In a reimagined contemporary Edinburgh, where a tectonic fault has opened up to produce a new volcano in the Firth of Forth, and where tremors are an everyday occurrence, volcanologist Surtsey makes a shocking discovery. On a clandestine trip to new volcanic island The Inch, to meet Tom, her lover and her boss, she finds his lifeless body and makes the fatal decision to keep their affair, and her discovery, a secret. Desperate to know how he died, but also terrified she’ll be exposed, Surtsey’s life quickly spirals into a nightmare when someone makes contact - someone who claims to know what she’s done....