Joseph Delaney used to be an English teacher, before becoming the best-selling author of the Spook's series, which has been published in 30 countries and sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide. The first book, The Spook's Apprentice, was adapted into a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore.

Joseph Delaney

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Annemarie Neary

'Artful and beautifully ambiguous' Irish Independent 
 
'Captivating and entertaining' RTE 
 
Eight-year-old Jess and her little brother were playing at the water's edge when their parents vanished. 
 
For hours the children held hands and waited for them to return. But nobody ever came back. 
 
Years later, Jess has become a locker of doors. Now a lawyer and a mother, she is determined to protect the life she has built around her. But her brother Ro has grown unpredictable, elusive and obsessive. 
 
When new evidence suggests that their mother might be alive, Ro reappears, convinced that his sister knows more than she claims. 
 
And then bad things start to happen.

The Orphans

James Ellroy

Four of James Ellroy's most popular crime novels featuring the infamous Dudley Smith, which include: 'The Black Dahlia', 'The Big Nowhere', 'L.A. Confidential' and 'White Jazz'.

A startling panorama of Los Angeles in the fifties. New Year's Eve as 1949 turns to 1950, Los Angeles: The City of Angels has becomes the city of the Angel of Death. 
 
Communist witch-hunts and insanely violent killings are terrorising the community. Three men are plunged into a maelstrom of violence and deceit when their lives become inextricably linked as each one confronts his own personal darkness. The second of the LA Quartet, the epigraph for The Big Nowhere is a passage from a novel; "It was written that I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice- Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness."

The Big Nowhere

The first novel in Ellroy's extraordinary Underworld USA Trilogy as featured on BBC Radio 4's A Good Read. 
 
1958. America is about to emerge into a bright new age – an age that will last until the 1000 days of John F Kennedy's presidency. 
 
Three men move beneath the glossy surface of power, men allied to the makers and shakers of the era. Pete Bondurant – Howard Hughes's right-hand man, Jimmy Hoffa's hitman. Kemper Boyd – employed by J Edgar Hoover to infiltrate the Kennedy clan. Ward Littell – a man seeking redemption in Bobby Kennedy's drive against organised crime. 
 
The festering discount of the age that burns brightly in these men's hearts will go into supernova as the Bay of Pigs ends in calamity, the Mob clamours for payback and the 1000 days ends in brutal quietus in 1963.

American Tabloid

Frank Bill

__________________________ 
Twenty fighters. One wire-fence ring. One man left standing. 
 
The Donnybrook is a three-day bare-knuckle tournament held on a thousand-acre plot out in the sticks of southern Indiana. Twenty fighters unleash hell until only one man is left standing while a rowdy festival of onlookers – drunk and high on whatever’s on offer – bet on the outcome. 
 
Jarhead is a desperate man who’d do just about anything to feed his children. He’s also the toughest fighter in southeastern Kentucky, and he’s convinced that his ticket to a better life is one last fight with a cash prize so big it’ll solve all his problems. Meanwhile, there’s Chainsaw Angus – an undefeated master fighter who isn’t too keen on getting his face punched anymore, so he and his sister, Liz, have started cooking meth. And they get in deep. So deep that Liz wants it all for herself, and she might just be ready to kill her brother for it. 
 
As we travel through the backwoods on the way to the Donnybrook, we meet a cast of nasty, ruined characters driven to all sorts of evil, all in the name of getting their fix – drugs, violence, sex, money, honour. Donnybrook is exactly the fearless, explosive, amphetamine-fuelled journey you’d expect from Frank Bill’s first novel . . . and then some.

Donnybrook

John Niven

GARY is a sweet and decent man. Only two things would improve his life - having children with his gorgeous wife Pauline, and a lower golf handicap. Both are unlikely. 
 
PAULINE is wondering how she ended up living in an ugly little house, driving a second-hand car and making a living dressing up as Tinkerbell. She's planning to leave Gary for a self-made carpet millionaire. 
 
FINDLAY, the Carpet King of Scotland, wants to trade in his obese wife for a younger model. But if he goes for a divorce she'll take him to the cleaners. If only there was some way she could be made to disappear... 
 
LEE, Gary's luckless brother, has botched one too many drug deals. Local crime overlord Ranta Campbell gives him one more job - one last chance to get it right. Lee's done some bad things - but murder? 
 
When Gary gets smashed on the head by a golf ball and miraculously develops an absolutely perfect swing, everyone finds their fates rest on the final day of the Open Championship...

The Amateurs

Neely Tucker

'Gripping from start to finish, it has a great line in snappy dialogue and a twist that puts Tucker in the finest Elmore Leonard tradition.' Daily Mail 
 
When Billy Ellison, the son of Washington, D.C.’s most influential African-American family, is found dead in the Potomac near a violent drug haven, veteran metro reporter Sully Carter knows it’s time to start asking some serious questions—no matter what the consequences. 
 
With the police unable to find a lead and pressure mounting for Sully to abandon the investigation, he has a hunch that there is more to the case than a drug deal gone bad or a tale of family misfortune. Digging deeper, Sully finds that the real story stretches far beyond Billy and into D.C.’s most prominent social circles. 
 
An alcoholic still haunted from his years as a war correspondent in Bosnia, Sully now must strike a dangerous balance between D.C.’s two extremes—the city’s violent, desperate back streets and its highest corridors of power—while threatened by those who will stop at nothing to keep him from discovering the shocking truth.

Murder, D.C.

Alonso Cueto

Adrián Ormache, a high-flying lawyer with a beautiful wife and two daughters, leads a privileged and glamorous life in one of Lima’s wealthiest neighbourhoods. But when his mother dies, he discovers a letter amongst her possessions making shocking claims about her now long-dead husband, Adrián’s father – a commander in the army during the Peruvian Civil War of the 1980s. As well as being linked to atrocities committed against the ‘Shining Path’ guerrillas, it appears that he also kidnapped and kept a local girl, whose family now seeks retribution. 
 
Shocked out of his comfortable existence, Adrián becomes obsessed with finding the girl at the heart of the mystery, and sets out to face the harrowing realities of Peru’s recent past, and uncover the truth about his father.

The Blue Hour

Liz Moore

**NOW A MAJOR CHANNEL 4 TV SERIES** 
 
SELECTED BY BARACK OBAMA AS ONE OF HIS BEST BOOKS OF 2020 
 
A New York Times bestseller and Guardian Book of the Month 
 
'This flawless masterpiece deserves to be a bestseller.' DAILY EXPRESS 
 
'Tough, tense and twisty - but tender, human and deeply affecting, too ... I don't have a sister, but when I finished the book I called my brother, just to hear his voice.' LEE CHILD 
 
'An outstanding crime novel.' PAULA HAWKINS, author of The Girl on the Train 
_____________________________________ 
 
Once inseparable, sisters Mickey and Kacey are on different paths, but they walk the same streets. Mickey on her police beat and Kacey in the shadows of the city's darkest corners where the drug addicts and sex workers preside. When a string of murders coincides with Kacey's disappearance, Mickey is terrified her sister could be next. 
 
But in a community where death and murder is rife, will Mickey be able to save her sister before it's too late? 
_____________________________________ 
'A remarkable, profoundly moving novel about the ties that bind and the irrevocable wounds of childhood. It's also a riveting mystery, perfectly paced. I loved every page of it.' DENNIS LEHANE 
 
'It is by some considerable distance my crime novel of the year' IRISH TIMES 
 
'Outstanding . . . an intense family thriller . . . The clever plot and involving characters set a high standard for this new year.' DAILY MAIL 
 
'This is a thrilling and heartbreaking exploration of the strain the opioid crisis puts on families. A masterpiece.' DAILY MIRROR 
 
'A dazzling, propulsive, humane work that not only bears comparison to Dennis Lehane and George Pelecanos but occasionally beats them at their own game' METRO 
 
'heart-pounding thriller' VOGUE 
 
'compassionate and enthralling' INDEPENDENT

Long Bright River

Marisha Pessl

'THE BOOK EVERYONE'S TALKING ABOUT.' Observer 
 
On a damp October night the body of beautiful Ashley Cordova is discovered in a Manhattan warehouse. 
 
Though her death is ruled a suicide, investigative journalist Scott McGrath suspects otherwise. 
 
The last time McGrath got too close to the Cordova dynasty, he lost his marriage and his career. 
 
This time he could lose his mind.

Night Film

Ireland, 2004 
 
Róisín Burns has spent over twenty-five years living a lie. 
 
Brian Lonergan, a rising politician, has used the time to reinvent himself. 
 
But scandal is brewing around him, and Róisín knows the truth. 
 
Lonergan stole her life as a young girl. And now she wants it back. 
 
But he is still one step ahead …

Siren

Matthew Sullivan

'Not for the faint-hearted.' Scotsman 
 
What do you do when the life you’ve carefully built for yourself comes apart? 
 
Lydia Smith lives a quiet life, spent in the company of her colleagues and customers at the bookstore where she works. But when Joey Molina, a young and mysterious regular, hangs himself in the bookstore and leaves Lydia secret messages hidden in the pages of his books, her world starts to unravel. 
 
Why did Joey do it? 
 
What did he know? 
 
And what does it have to do with Lydia?

Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore

You thought you could leave the past behind. 
 
Think again. 
 
 
Donnie Miller counts himself lucky. Living in a beautiful, spacious house in the wild and remote landscape of central Canada, he spends his days writing for the local newspaper, working on a film script, and acting as house-husband. After a troubled and impoverished upbringing in Scotland, he now has all he wants: a caring wife, a bright and happy son, a generous father-in-law. As the brutal northern winter begins to bite, he can sit back and enjoy life. 
 
But his peace is soon broken. There are noises in the nearby woods, signs of some mysterious watcher. When the family dog disappears, Donnie makes a horrifying discovery. Is it wolves, as the police suspect, or something far more dangerous, far darker? What secrets has Donnie been keeping? And why does he have the terrible sense that his dream was never going to last? 
 
A taut, shocking and visceral novel that will leave you gasping for breath, Cold Hands is the first thriller by the remarkable John Niven.

Cold Hands

Cara Hoffman

'A man can only take so much pretty walking back and forth in front of him.' 
 
When nineteen-year-old Wendy White disappears, the small town of Haeden, New York, is shaken to its core. The police are unable to trace the missing waitress; everyone assumes that she has run away. But, six months later, Wendy's tortured body is found in the nearby woods. She has only been dead for a matter of days. 
 
With no one willing to talk, the investigation slows to a halt. But local reporter Stacy Flynn and high school student Alice Piper have their own reasons for finding out what really happened. 
 
The truth behind Wendy's disappearance has a devastating effect on the town: what was once a rural idyll is now the backdrop to murder, violence and revenge.

So Much Pretty

Best-selling crime fiction author James Ellroy returns with the fourth in his LA Quartet. 
 
Los Angeles, 1958: a city on the make. A boom town at the edge of a new era ripe for plunder. 
 
Lieutenant Dave Klein: in turn a lawyer, bagman, slum landlord, mob killer. Klein stands at the centre of a complex web of plots where violence and death will intersect. He's a slumlord, a bagman, an enforcer--a power in his own small corner of hell. Then the Feds announce a full-out investigation into local police corruption, and everything goes haywire. 
 
Klein's been hung out as bait, "a bad cop to draw the heat," and the heat's coming from all sides: from local politicians, from LAPD brass, from racketeers and drug kingpins--all of them hell-bent on keeping their own secrets hidden. For Klein, "forty-two and going on dead," it's dues time...

White Jazz

Krysten Ritter

'A phenomenal, haunting debut.' Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl 
 
Kaycee Mitchell died. And everyone has been lying about it. For years. 
 
Ten years ago, Abby Williams left her hometown behind. Ever since, she has tried her best to forget the past. The sinister ‘Game’; the merciless bullying; the night of the bonfire, when The Game stopped. 
 
Most of all, she wants to forget Kaycee Mitchell. 
 
But now Abby must return home. Her task at hand: to investigate Optimal Plastics, the corporation that forms the backbone of the small town. A successful environmental lawyer, she swears things will be different. She is older. Sophisticated. Confident. But once she begins digging, the memories start creeping back and as past and present collide, the investigation turns deadly. 
 
How far would you go to keep the past hidden? 
 
'Packed with suspense ... This portrait of small-town life by Breaking Bad and Jessica Jones actress is spot on.' Daily Mail 
 
'Excellent ... an appealingly feisty yet vulnerable heroine.' The Times

Bonfire

The debut thriller from the star of Jessica Jones

Andre Dubus III

One early September night, at the moment before the world changes, a young woman brings her daughter to work. 
 
April's usual babysitter, Jean, has had a panic attack that's landed her in hospital. April doesn't really know anyone else, so decides it's best to have her three-year-old daughter close by, watching children's videos in the office, while she works. 
 
But April is a stripper at the Puma Club for Men. And tonight she has an unusual client, a foreigner both remote and too personal, and free with his cash. His name is Bassam. Meanwhile, another man, AJ, has been thrown out of the club for holding hands with his favourite stripper, and he's drunk and angry and lonely. 
 
From these explosive elements comes a relentless, raw, searing, passionate page-turning narrative, a big-hearted and painful novel about sex and parenthood, honour and masculinity. Set in the seamy underside of American life at the moment before the world changed, it juxtaposes lust for domination with hunger for connection, sexual violence with family love. It seizes the reader by the throat with the same psychological tension, depth and realism that characterised Andre Dubus's bestselling House of Sand and Fog - and with an even greater sense of the dark and anguished places in the human heart.

The Garden of Last Days

Josh Bazell

The Doctor will see you now.... 
 
Meet Peter Brown, a young Manhattan ER Doctor who has a past he'd prefer to stay hidden. When a figure from the old days emerges it looks increasingly unlikely that his secret will stay intact. 
Nicholas LoBrutto, aka Eddy Squillante, is given three months to live, and it's clear to Peter that the clock is ticking for both of them. He must do whatever it takes to keep him - and his patient - alive. 
 
It's time to beat the reaper....

Beat The Reaper

Ray Robinson

Zoë Nielsen was just like any other ten-year-old walking to school, not knowing that a chance encounter with Thurman Hayes would lead to her abduction and imprisonment in a converted nuclear bunker, 4,000 miles away, beneath a remote ranch house in Arizona. Enslaved in her underground tomb, deprived of food and light and water, the girl Zoe once was steadily begins to disappear... But over time Thurman grows tired of the rapidly maturing Zoë, and when he decides it is time to get rid of her, Zoë must finally make her bid for freedom. 
 
Forgetting Zoë is a moving, epic tale of courage, survival, horror and loss, that explores how a bond of affection and intimacy can develop between captive and captor.

Forgetting Zoe

‘The Ways of the Dead is a great read. If this is Tucker’s first novel, I can't wait for what's coming next.’ Michael Connelly 
 
TRUE DETECTIVE meets HOUSE OF CARDS in the electrifying first novel of a new crime series from a veteran Washington, D.C., reporter 
 
The body of the teenage daughter of a powerful Federal judge is discovered in a dumpster in a bad neighbourhood of Washington, DC. It is murder, and the local police immediately arrest the three nearest black kids, bad boys from a notorious gang. 
 
Sully Carter, a veteran war correspondent with emotional scars far worse than the ones on his body, suspects that there's more to the case than the police would have the public know. 
 
With the nation clamouring for a conviction, and the bereaved judge due for a court nomination, Sully pursues his own line of enquiry, in spite of some very dangerous people telling him to shut it down.

The Ways of the Dead

From the author of Electricity and Forgetting Zoë, comes a thought-provoking, beautifully written and taut thriller. 
 
Ravenstor, the Peak District. New Year’s Day. 
 
A young woman stands on the shore of a frozen lake and watches a Land Rover crash off the bridge wall and into the ice. Two hundred miles away, a young man is woken by a devastating telephone call. The accident, and what it brings to the surface, will change both of their lives for ever.

Jawbone Lake

Helen Dunmore

______________________________ 
'A deceptively simple masterpiece' Independent on Sunday 
'Will haunt you for months, if not years' Guardian 
'Outstanding ... if you only buy one book, make it this one' Good Housekeeping 
 
The Cold War is at its height, and a spy may be a friend or neighbour, colleague or lover. 
 
At the end of a suburban garden, in the pouring rain, a woman buries a briefcase deep in the earth. 
 
She believes that she is protecting her family. 
 
What she will learn is that no one is immune from betrayal or the devastating consequences of exposure.

Exposure

A tense Cold War spy thriller from the author of The Lie

Asa Avdic

A masterly locked-room mystery set in a near-future Orwellian state — for fans of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games 
 
‘With a terrifying dystopian core and a foreboding that lurks on every page, this is terrifying stuff.’ Heat 
 
‘An Orwellian debut novel that never lets up . . . A heady mix of And Then There Were None and The Hunger Games.’ Booklist 
 
'Resembling Agatha Christie at her zaniest, this fascinating, ever- changing scenario is deftly and grippingly handled' Sunday Times 
 
‘Oh, it’s really quite simple. I want you to play dead.’ 
 
On the remote island of Isola, seven people have been selected to compete in a 48-hour test for a top-secret intelligence position. One of them is Anna Francis, a workaholic with a nine-year-old daughter she rarely sees, and a secret that haunts her. Her assignment is to stage her own death and then observe, from her hiding place inside the walls of the house, how the other candidates react to the news that a murderer is among them. Who will take control? Who will crack under pressure? 
 
But as soon as Anna steps on to the island she realises something isn’t quite right. And then a storm rolls in, the power goes out, and the real game begins…

The Dying Game

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